Field notes on search, AI & growth.
Practical SEO, AEO, and content playbooks for founders, from an operator who runs the same engine in production at The Gourmet Host. What actually moves rankings and earns AI citations, in the order you should do it.
SEO for Startups: What to Do in the First 90 Days
Runway is short, so sequence matters. The first-90-days order of operations, and the timeline a startup should actually expect.
Answer Engine Optimization: What AEO Actually Is
Ranking and getting cited by AI are two different wins. What AEO actually means, why it matters now, and where to start.
Content Strategy for Founders: A Library That Ranks, Gets Cited, and Pays for Itself
A library that ranks, gets cited by AI, and pays for itself. The content approach that compounds instead of resetting monthly.
Ten Days Is a Sequencing Problem, Not a Speed One
A full replatform from proposal to live in ten days. Almost nothing was done faster than usual. What changed was the order.
How Long Does SEO Take? An Honest Timeline
First signals in weeks, real lift in months. The honest timeline for SEO, and what to expect at each stage instead of guessing.
GEO vs SEO vs AEO vs LLMO: What They Mean
Four acronyms, one axis. What GEO, SEO, AEO, and LLMO each optimize for, which are real, and which a founder should do first.
Topic Clusters and Pillar Pages: How They Work
The architecture that concentrates authority: how pillar pages and their clusters compound rankings instead of scattering them.
Why Category Pages Need an Answer Above the Grid
A product grid is a list of names. Twenty-seven words above it moved a category page out of the Partial band, and showed where the ceiling is.
Is SEO Worth It for a Startup? When to Invest and When to Wait
It pays off only when runway and real demand line up. A two-sided framework for when to invest in SEO and when to wait.
How AI Answer Engines Choose Their Sources
Retrieval, evaluation, citation: three steps decide whether AI names you. Find the one that's costing you the citation.
How Many Blog Posts Do You Need to Rank?
Post count is the wrong target. Coverage equals your distinct buyer questions. Here is how to find your actual number.
Never Run a Bulk Catalogue Job Without a Way Back
135 descriptions and 175 images rewritten on a live store. Neither job was allowed to run until it could be undone with one command.
They are written by David Jubé, the operator-builder behind TDM Insights and The Gourmet Host. Every piece reflects the same SEO, AEO, and content system he runs in production, so the advice comes from practice rather than theory.
Four areas: SEO for ranking in Google, AEO for getting cited by AI answer engines, content strategy for building a library that compounds, and case notes documenting real, measured results. Each field note answers one real founder question and links to the others in its cluster.
Yes. The methods come from growing The Gourmet Host's search visibility, measured in Google Search Console, and they are the same ones TDM Insights now runs for clients.