What we know
about websites, SEO and AI
Practical breakdowns and working hypotheses — no filler or generalities. We write about what we test on our own projects and client projects.
How to Choose an SEO Agency in 2026: 9 Questions and 5 Red Flags
An honest guide for businesses: what questions to ask before signing a contract with an SEO vendor, which promises should raise concerns, and how to tell an agency that delivers results from one that just sells process.
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Perplexity SEO: How to Become a Source for the AI Search Engine with 100 Million Users
How the Perplexity algorithm works, why it cites some sites and ignores others, how to check your presence, and what exactly you need to change in your content to earn referral traffic from Perplexity.
Read →Link Building in 2026: What Works, What Gets Penalized by Yandex, and How to Avoid Wasting Your Budget
An honest breakdown of link building for the Russian market in 2026: safe methods for acquiring links, what Yandex penalizes via Minusinsk, how to evaluate donor quality, and why 10 good links outperform 1,000 bad ones.
Read →Yandex Business and Local SEO: How to Get Leads from Maps and Geo Queries
How to set up Yandex Business to appear in Yandex Maps and geo search results — a complete guide from filling out your profile to managing reviews and geo signals for organic rankings.
Read →Image Optimization for SEO in 2026: WebP, AVIF, Lazy Load, and the Size Rule
A practical guide to image optimization: choosing the right format (WebP vs AVIF vs JPEG), lossless compression, lazy loading, fetchpriority for LCP images, and correct width/height attributes to eliminate CLS.
Read →ChatGPT as a Traffic Channel: How Your Site Gets Into AI Answers and Earns Clicks
A breakdown of the ChatGPT Search mechanics: why one site appears in AI answers while another doesn't, how to track citations, and exactly what you need to do to get your first clicks from ChatGPT within 6–8 weeks.
Read →Semantic Core for a Website: How to Build It, Clean It, and Actually Use It
A step-by-step process for building a semantic core in 2026: tools, sources, SERP-based clustering, URL mapping, and the most common mistake — collecting keywords and leaving them in a drawer.
Read →Schema.org Markup for Business: What Actually Works in 2026
A practical guide to Schema.org: which markup types to add to a business website right now, how JSON-LD looks for Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQPage and Article, and why structured data has become the entry ticket to AI-generated answers.
Read →Russia's Advertising and Marketing Market: 2025 Results and 2026 Outlook
A breakdown of ACAR, ADIR, and RAMU data: nearly one trillion rubles in media advertising, 1.57 trillion in digital, e-Retail Media outpacing everything. What slowed down, what is growing rapidly, and what to expect through the end of 2026.
Read →What Is SEO in 2026 — A Plain-Language Guide for Business
We break down what search engine optimisation is, how Yandex and Google rank results, and why SEO remains the most cost-effective traffic channel even in the age of AI.
Read →GEO and AEO: How to Optimize Your Website for ChatGPT, Alice, and Perplexity in 2026
What Generative Engine Optimization and Answer Engine Optimization are, how they differ from classical SEO, and how to get cited in AI search answers right now.
Read →Yandex vs Google in 2026: How SEO Promotion Differs
Algorithms, ranking factors, behavioral signals, regional targeting, AI-generated results — where Yandex and Google diverge in 2026 and how to account for it in your SEO strategy.
Read →E-E-A-T in YMYL Niches 2026: How to Prove Expertise
What Google and Yandex mean by Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness in YMYL categories, and what concrete steps improve expertise signals on medical and financial websites.
Read →Google AI Overviews in 2026: How SEO Is Changing
What AI Overviews are, how they work, how much they reduce clicks, and exactly what to do with your content to appear in the AI block instead of losing traffic because of it.
Read →Core Web Vitals 2026: Which Metrics Actually Matter
The updated Core Web Vitals set for 2026 (LCP, INP, CLS) — what they measure, what the thresholds are, how to improve them, and why page speed matters more in 2026 than it did in 2020.
Read →Canonical: 5 Mistakes That Break SEO on Large Sites
The rel=canonical tag looks simple, but it is responsible for some of the most painful indexation disasters. We break down 5 common mistakes and how to detect and fix them.
Read →robots.txt in 2026: Rules, Mistakes, and Deprecated Directives
What should and should not be in robots.txt in 2026. Why Host: is no longer needed, how to configure Clean-param for Yandex, and which mistakes are still killing indexation.
Read →Googlebot and Crawl Budget: How to Help Search Engines See Your Site
What crawl budget is, why Googlebot can't keep up with large sites, and what practical steps help: sitemap configuration, internal linking, log analysis.
Read →Render-Blocking Resources: How to Speed Up First Paint Without Sacrificing Functionality
What render-blocking CSS and JS are, why they hurt LCP, and which practical techniques eliminate them — preload, async/defer, critical CSS, code splitting.
Read →rel=nofollow, ugc, sponsored: link attribute rules in 2026
What rel=nofollow and its extensions ugc and sponsored are for, how they work in Google and Yandex, and which mistakes in 2026 still lead to manual penalties.
Read →Title and Alt Tags in 2026: What Google Measures, What Yandex Wants
A well-crafted title and proper alt attributes are the most underrated SEO factors. We break down length, wording, keywords, AI search results, and accessibility for visually impaired users.
Read →Internal Linking in 2026: A Strategy for Websites of Any Size
How to structure internal links to help Google and Yandex understand priorities, speed up indexing, and distribute link equity. Practical blueprints.
Read →X-Robots-Tag: Advanced Indexing Control via HTTP
X-Robots-Tag gives you control over indexing where meta robots can't reach — PDFs, images, media files. Practical scenarios and nginx configurations.
Read →Search Console: 7 Reports Almost Nobody Uses
Performance, Page Experience, Crawl Stats, and other Google Search Console reports — where to find them and what practical conclusions to draw. No fluff, straight to the point.
Read →Web Fonts and Performance: How Not to Kill LCP with a Custom Font
Custom fonts are the leading cause of CLS and LCP failures. We break down font-display strategies, preload, self-hosting, and the Font Loading API for premium typography without the performance cost.
Read →HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 in 2026: What Speeds Things Up and How to Enable It
HTTP/2 is already the standard; HTTP/3 over QUIC accelerates mobile. We break down what changes at each layer, how to configure nginx, and where the gains come from.
Read →Sitemap.xml: Best Practices and Common Mistakes in 2026
A sitemap looks like a simple XML file, but it hides a lot of subtleties. We break down structure, size limits, sitemap-index, update frequency, and typical failures.
Read →Valid HTML and SEO in 2026: What Actually Matters and What Doesn't
Does HTML validity affect rankings? What Google and Yandex actually take into account, what they ignore, and how to check.
Read →Text Links vs Image Buttons: What's Better for SEO
Anchor text, accessibility, link equity — why text links outperform image links and how to build clickable images the right way.
Read →SEO Is a Marathon: Why 6 Months Is the Norm
Realistic SEO timelines: what happens each month, why 'top 10 in 30 days' is a myth, and how to stay the course in the early weeks.
Read →4xx and 5xx Errors: The SEO Cost of Broken Requests
Every 404, every 500 — wasted crawl budget and a blow to search engine trust. We break down how to find and fix systemic errors.
Read →@import in CSS: Why It's Slow and What to Use Instead
The @import directive in CSS is a common cause of render delay. We break down how it works, why it hurts performance, and what alternatives exist.
Read →Combining CSS in the HTTP/2 Era: Is It Still Necessary in 2026?
The 'merge everything into one file' concept was born in the HTTP/1.1 days. In the era of HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, the rules have changed. We break down when to combine and when to split.
Read →Critical Rendering Path: How the Browser Draws the First Frame
What happens between 'received HTML' and 'user sees content'. A step-by-step breakdown and where time is typically lost.
Read →AMP in 2026: What's Left of It and Do You Still Need It
AMP was the hype of 2016-2020. Here's what happened to the project, whether search engines still support it, and whether building AMP versions of pages is worth the effort.
Read →apple-touch-icon and Icons in 2026: The Right Icon Stack
How many icons does a website actually need, how to set up manifest.webmanifest, and where to cut the fat. PWA, favicon, apple-touch, MS Tile — without overdoing it.
Read →rel=author: its history, and what actually works for authorship in SEO today
Google killed rel=author in 2014, but the concept of authorship never went away — it came back under the name E-E-A-T. A breakdown of what works in 2026 and how to mark up an author correctly.
Read →dns-prefetch, preconnect, preload: the prefetching pipeline in 2026
Four ways to hint to the browser what to load in advance. When to use each one, how to avoid overloading the network, and how to squeeze the most out of LCP.
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