Question 1

Will you make changes directly to my website?

Accepted Answer

Yes, if you permit us. We are comfortable working in WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and modern headless stacks (Next.js / Astro / Sanity / Contentful). Alternatively, we can provide detailed, developer-ready specs for your in-house team to implement. Most clients prefer we ship directly for speed; some prefer we hand off specs for engineering control.

Question 2

Who writes the content on Toronto SEO clients' websites?

Accepted Answer

All editorial content is written by our in-house team based in Toronto. We do not outsource to overseas content farms or use AI-only content generation. For highly technical niches (law, healthcare, financial services), we work with subject-matter experts (often from your team or external SMEs we coordinate) to ensure accuracy and proper E-E-A-T signal. AI tools assist with research and outlining but never replace human authorship.

Question 3

Do you build links?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We use white-hat, outreach-based link building and digital PR to secure placements on high-authority, relevant Canadian websites. We never use PBNs, link farms, or any spammy link networks that put your site at risk of a penalty. Typical sources: industry publications, Canadian news outlets for newsworthy content, partnerships with non-competing complementary businesses, sponsorships of local events, and HARO-style journalist responses.

Question 4

What are Core Web Vitals and how much do they affect SEO?

Accepted Answer

Core Web Vitals are Google's measurement of real-user experience: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint, loading speed), INP (Interaction to Next Paint, responsiveness), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift, visual stability). They're a real but moderate ranking factor — most useful as a tiebreaker between similar-quality content. Targets: LCP under 2.5 seconds, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1 (all measured at 75th percentile in CrUX field data).

Question 5

What's schema markup and do I need it for SEO?

Accepted Answer

Schema markup is structured data (typically JSON-LD) that tells search engines and AI engines what your content is — Article, Product, LocalBusiness, FAQPage, Person, Organization, etc. It's not a direct ranking factor but it's increasingly important for AI engine citation eligibility, rich-result eligibility in Google SERPs, and entity recognition. Every modern site should have at minimum Organization, LocalBusiness (if applicable), Article (on editorial content), and BreadcrumbList schema.

Question 6

What's llms.txt and do I need one?

Accepted Answer

llms.txt is an emerging convention (2024-2026) for declaring a site's preferred LLM-friendly content map at /llms.txt — analogous to sitemap.xml but for AI agents. Adoption by major AI engines is partial in 2026 but trending positive. Cost is low (a few hours to generate one), benefit is non-zero (some AI engines do use it), so we typically include it for clients on AEO-focused programs. We have a free generator at /tools/llms-txt-generator/.

Question 7

Should I block AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) in robots.txt?

Accepted Answer

Almost never. Blocking AI crawlers means your content cannot be cited in AI engine answers — you remove yourself from the discovery surface. The only legitimate reasons to block: your business model depends on protecting copyrighted content from ingestion, or you have specific contractual obligations restricting AI training. For most Canadian businesses doing SEO, blocking AI crawlers is self-defeating. Use our /tools/ai-crawler-robots-txt/ tool to make per-bot decisions with rationale.

Question 8

What's AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?

Accepted Answer

AEO is the practice of optimizing content to be cited in answers from AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. It overlaps significantly with classical SEO (the same structured, authoritative, well-schema'd content tends to win both surfaces) but adds emphasis on direct-answer formatting, FAQ schema, semantic chunking for retrieval, and entity establishment. Modern SEO programs include AEO as an integrated discipline, not a separate workstream.

Question 9

Do you handle SEO for site migrations and replatforms?

Accepted Answer

Yes — site migrations are one of the highest-risk events in SEO, and proper migration planning is essential. Our migration scope: pre-migration audit (URL inventory, ranking baseline, schema audit), URL mapping (every old URL mapped to new, with 301 redirect plan), staging-site QA (technical checks, schema validation, internal-link verification), launch monitoring (real-time GSC + log monitoring), and post-launch recovery work. Most well-planned migrations preserve 90%+ of pre-migration organic traffic.

Question 10

What's an orphan page in SEO?

Accepted Answer

An orphan page is a page on your site that has no internal links pointing to it — it can only be reached if a user knows the direct URL. Orphan pages typically rank poorly because they receive no internal link equity and are crawled less often. Diagnosis: a Screaming Frog or Sitebulb crawl compared against your sitemap surfaces orphans. Resolution: add contextual internal links from related content, or remove the page if it's no longer needed.

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