Technical SEO for the AI Search Era

Technical SEO is no longer just about ranking on Google. It now determines whether your content is discovered, understood, and cited across AI search systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews.
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Illustration showing that Google ignores the priority and changefreq tags in XML sitemaps, with those tags crossed out and loc and lastmod highlighted as the signals actually used.
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

Does Google Use the Priority and Changefreq Tags in My Sitemap?

Part of the SiteMap Series No. Google ignores both the priority and changefreq tags in…

showing why Google Search Console reports fewer URLs indexed than the count submitted in an XML sitemap
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

Why Does Search Console Show Fewer URLs Than My Sitemap Submitted?

Part of the SiteMap Series Search Console shows fewer URLs than your sitemap submitted because…

The Cornerstones

Why Some Sites Get Found and Others Don't

Why Some Sites Get Found and Others Don't

Some sites are everywhere. Others stay invisible no matter what they publish. The reason starts with how Google and AI crawlers actually find pages, and why most sites quietly block themselves from being found.
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How Search Engines Decide What Your Site Is About

How Search Engines Decide What Your Site Is About

Most sites have a clear idea of what they're about. Most search engines and AI engines don't agree. Schema, entities and semantic signals decide how machines interpret your content, and the gap between the two is where rankings live or die.
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How AI Engines Decide Whom to Cite

How AI Engines Decide Whom to Cite

When ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews answer a question, only two or three sites get cited. The rest stay invisible. Here's what those engines actually weigh when they decide who makes the list, and why traditional ranking signals aren't enough on their own.
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Fuel your growth with a regular dose of Technical SEO breakdowns and AI Search experiments, crafted to keep you current, capable, and one step ahead of how search is changing.
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Latest Post

Character at a desk with a screen showing old URLs on one side and new URLs on the other connected by arrows, with three time markers above and a sitemap document highlighted in violet reflecting the new state
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Handle Your Sitemap During a Website Migration

Migration sitemaps are about orchestration. Here is how to coordinate the sitemap with redirects and…

Character at a desk reviewing an e-commerce product grid where selected products are highlighted in violet and connected by lines to entries in a sitemap document, with some products greyed out as excluded
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Create a Sitemap for a JavaScript Site or Single-Page App

JavaScript sites and SPAs face a discovery problem before they face a canonical one. Here…

Character at a desk reviewing an e-commerce product grid where selected products are highlighted in violet and connected by lines to entries in a sitemap document, with some products greyed out as excluded
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Create a Sitemap for an E-commerce Site

E-commerce sitemaps are where most sitemap mistakes happen. Here is how to handle products, categories,…

Character at a desk with a central sitemap document branching out into multiple distinct site type variations, each highlighted with a different abstract shape, with the central document accented in violet
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

Why Sitemap Setup Depends on Your Site Type

The sitemap spec is the same for every site. The decisions you make around it…

Character at a desk weighing two sitemap arrangements: one combined document on one side, multiple separated documents connected to a central index on the other, with the index highlighted in violet
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

When to Combine or Separate Specialised Sitemaps

The architectural decision behind specialised sitemaps. Three patterns, when each makes sense, and the one…

Character at a desk with four document icons representing XML, RSS, plain text, and Atom file formats, with the XML icon highlighted in violet as the central choice
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

Other Sitemap Formats and When to Use Them

Search engines accept more than XML for sitemap submission. Here is what each alternative format…

Character beside a stylised globe surrounded by language code tags connected by bi-directional arrows, with a sitemap document highlighted in violet on the side
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Use Hreflang in Sitemaps for International SEO

Hreflang in sitemaps centralises international SEO signals into one file instead of every page head.…

Character beside a video thumbnail with metadata fields branching outward and connecting to a sitemap document highlighted in violet
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Create a Video Sitemap

Video sitemaps help search engines discover and index video content. Here is when they actually…

Character at a desk sorting news article cards by timestamp into a sitemap structure with a 48-hour clock visible on the wall
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Create a News Sitemap

News sitemaps help approved Google News publishers index time-sensitive editorial content quickly. Here is how…

Character at a screen showing a grid of stylised image thumbnails connected by thin lines to entries in a sitemap document, with violet accent on the sitemap
Crawl Systems
By Victor Ijomah

How to Create an Image Sitemap

Image sitemaps surface your images to Google, image search, and the AI Search era engines…

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