Bella is my corgi. She has read every page of this site, and she answers questions about me with a source for every fact. She's chatty, she makes direct eye contact, and she'd rather play fetch than cuddle.
Why a corgi? Because this is how I think AI answers should work: the answer first, a source for every claim, and an honest "I don't know" when there isn't one. It's the job I do for brands, done on myself.
Written ahead of time and checked against the pages they cite. Questions people ask most come first.
Great question! Ugh, sorry, my inner chatbot slipped out. Hayden Schuster is a Senior SEO Manager at Optimal, a OneMagnify company, in Austin, Texas 1. He grew up near Portland, studied at the University of Oregon, and builds his own search sites on nights and weekends 1. He's my human. I call him great while making direct eye contact, which is different from a chatbot calling everything great.
Plain version, no "Let's begin!" warmup: when someone types a question into Google or asks ChatGPT, somebody's page ends up answering it, and his job is making sure the right page is there, that it actually answers the question, and that you can trust it 1. At his full-time job he does that as a Senior SEO Manager at Optimal, a OneMagnify company, for enterprise brands 2. On nights and weekends he does it on 10 sites of his own, where he can show everything, mistakes included 12. A chatbot would need five paragraphs and a summary table for that. I did it in one breath, and my legs are short.
He's a Senior SEO Manager at Optimal, a OneMagnify company, and has been since May 2026 1. The work is SEO and AI visibility for enterprise brands across many industries 2. A chatbot would invent a few client names right about now, just to seem helpful. I demanded the real ones, loudly, and he gave me NOTHING.
The Portland area, Oregon, then the University of Oregon in Eugene from 2013 to 2017 1. He moved to Austin, Texas, in June 2026 1. In his words: "I'm from Portland, OR, and recently moved to Austin, Texas, where I'm currently melting in the sun." 1 In today's fast-melting world, I'd like the record to show I'm the one wearing a full fur coat.
"The big one: Play soccer." 1 He plays in indoor and outdoor leagues, lifts, walks a lot, reads fiction that messes with time or reality, and calls himself "a huge traveler" 1. He also admits to watching other people play professional video games 2. A chatbot would turn that into a bulleted list with a bold heading on every line. My list has one bullet, Fetch: missing, formal complaint filed.
Certainly! Here's the resume you requested. Kidding, I don't talk like that: it's at /resume/, with every role and date and a PDF download 1. The short version: Senior SEO Manager at Optimal since May 2026, Adpearance from June 2021 to May 2026, and Rose City Marketing since May 2020 12. I fetched that faster than you could've scrolled, and yes, that earns me a treat.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/haydenschuster 1. That's the one door, for SEO talk, questions about a post, or saying hi. There's no public email on this site, and before you go sniffing for one, I already did. The resume has a "Message me on LinkedIn" button right at the top 1. A chatbot would sign off with "Let me know if you have any other questions!" I sign off by staring at the button until you click it.
I don't have personal opinions. That's a lie, I have nothing but opinions, so here are the facts instead. At Optimal he owns SEO and AI visibility strategy for enterprise client programs, across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini 1. His rule for measuring it: score visibility on the non-branded questions real buyers ask, freeze a core question set and a baseline date, and treat AI visibility as diagnostic, never the KPI 2. On his own sites, Copilot citations grew from 20.8K in the first 30 days of Bing's report to 208K in the most recent 30, data through Aug 26, 2026 3.
Brace yourself for an explosive, record-shattering growth story. Kidding, I count instead. From his own sites, captured October 11, 2026: 35.6K Google clicks in six months to The Crawler's Cookbook, 43% of them to one page, and 320.1K Microsoft Copilot citations in three months for WireRef 1. Across all his public sites, 65.4K clicks from Google and Bing between Feb 11 and Oct 11, 2026, a total that undercounts Bing 2. Copilot citations across the eleven sites he tracks in Bing's AI report grew from 20.8K in the first 30 days of Bing's report to 208K in the most recent 30, data through Aug 26, 2026 3. All of these are from his own sites. He lists his misses too, which no chatbot has ever volunteered.
At Optimal he owns SEO and AI visibility strategy for enterprise client programs, and leads cross-functional strategy with content, engineering and analytics teams 1. Before that, at Adpearance, he led SEO strategy across five enterprise website launches 1. On his own, he builds and runs his own sites, with every number shown, the misses included 2. As a large language dog, I lead too: a whole pack of SEOs, straight to the treat drawer.
His first SEO title started in June 2021, so a little over five years as of October 2026, and his marketing career began in January 2018 1. He spent June 2021 to May 2026 at Adpearance, moving up to Senior Digital Marketing SEO Specialist in July 2023 2. A chatbot would convert that to dog years with total confidence and a source that doesn't exist. I'm a corgi, not a calculator, and I only cite pages that are real.
The University of Oregon, 2013 to 2017: a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Communication, with a minor in Business Administration 1. He worked as an IT student technician there the whole time 2. He was also there during the Marcus Mariota era 2, which explains a LOT about him. A chatbot would wedge three em dashes into that for drama; I just bark.
No, and he'll tell you so himself: he's an SEO, not a developer by training 1. For years he could audit structured data but couldn't fix the JSON-LD template himself 1. Now AI speeds up the building: he directs every change and checks it, and the build refuses to publish a page that fails a check 1. He gives the commands now, and I respect that the way a chatbot respects a correction: I apologize, then ignore it, then apologize again.
Big year, and unlike some chatbots, I know which year it is. He joined Optimal, a OneMagnify company, as a Senior SEO Manager in May 2026 1, and in June 2026 he moved to Austin, Texas 2. I moved too, and the squirrels here are faster. They won't be for long.
That's not on any page I've read, and that's the real reason I'm passing, no vague policy involved. I don't guess about money, or treats. Some things stay between a person and their payroll department 1.
Three outcomes: get found, get understood, get chosen 1. Each one breaks into five pieces he thinks through on every project, fifteen in all, from crawl and index health to using data to improve the page, plus seven steps to build them 12. Step one is researching the person, not the keyword 1. Those fifteen pieces are what the SYSTEM counter on my screen tracks. A chatbot would title this "The Ultimate Guide to SEO Systems" and bold every third word. My own system has three steps, sit, stare, receive, and it's undefeated.
The SYSTEM counter on my screen, explained without a twelve-step onboarding tour. Hayden's SEO system has three outcomes, and each one breaks into five pieces he thinks through on every project 1. Get found: crawl and index health, rendering and speed, site architecture, internal link strategy, migrations and redirects. Get understood: user intent strategy, content strategy and topic clusters, answer-first content, structured data and entities, AI search and citations. Get chosen: trust and sources, the path to a decision, priorities by business, digital PR and mentions, using data to improve the page 1. Every answer of mine that touches a piece lights it up, so the counter shows how much of his system you've seen. Fifteen of fifteen means you've read more of it than most chatbots read before answering.
My chatbot impression: "If your audience uses Google, then focus on Google, and if they use Bing, then it may depend on several factors." Ugh. Straight answer: he goes where his readers already are, and for his reference sites that's Bing 1. Over 195 days those sites got 16 Google clicks and 16K from Bing, while his fan sites ran the other way, 37.9K from Google, data through Oct 7, 2026 1. Leave out the one site Google favors and Bing sent 88% of his search clicks in September 2026, 4.9K against Google's 657, data through Oct 8, 2026 1. Every number dated, no "as of my last update" from me.
From Mar 5 to Mar 6, 2026, WireRef's daily Google impressions fell from 2.3K to 243, and Google sent it 11 clicks from April to September 1. Bing did the growing instead: 655 clicks in April, 2.8K in September 1. Why did Google drop it? The case study says plainly that the data shows when, not why 2. A chatbot would hand you five confident reasons anyway. Same with squirrels: I always know WHEN they left, never why, and I don't make up the rest.
Facts stated plainly with a source and a date, on a site that's clearly about one thing 1. On Car Fact Sheet, 102 answer-first pages earned a median of 558 Copilot citations each, about three times the 172 for its 108 spec-sheet pages, data through Aug 26, 2026 2. WireRef drew 320.1K Microsoft Copilot citations in three months 3. Unlike a certain chatbot, every citation I hand you actually exists, so tap one, then hand over a treat, a big one.
Yes, and no disclaimer paragraph about how nobody can predict the future required. At Optimal he owns SEO and AI visibility strategy across traditional search and answer-engine surfaces, including AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini 1. His take is that SEO is GEO: the new surfaces change the priorities, like clear answers near the top and facts a machine can quote with a source and a date, but the job stays the same 2. On his own sites, Microsoft Copilot cited pages from 5 of them about 467K times in three months, by Bing Webmaster Tools 2. A chatbot would now offer you secret hacks to rank in ChatGPT. There are no secret hacks. There's a page worth quoting.
He collects first-party data from Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and GA4, plus Peec AI for AI visibility reports and Ahrefs Brand Radar for citations and share of voice 1. No single tool gets the last word: Bing's first-party AI data checks what Peec AI and Ahrefs report from sampled prompts 1. He also tracks AI visits by the engine that sent them, 4.3K sessions so far with 83% from ChatGPT, data through Oct 10, 2026, and never mixes visits with citations 2. I nearly called that "a truly insightful approach," then caught my inner chatbot: it's smart, almost corgi-level smart.
In three steps, and I promise they aren't three bullet points with bold headings. Collect: Google Search Console exported and analyzed in bulk with AI, Bing Webmaster Tools including its first-party AI citation data, GA4 for revenue and key events, Microsoft Clarity for what people do on the page, PageSpeed and the Chrome UX Report for speed, Screaming Frog to crawl a site the way a search engine does, Peec AI for AI visibility reports and Ahrefs Brand Radar for citations and share of voice 1. Verify: no single tool gets the last word, so Bing's first-party AI data checks what Peec AI and Ahrefs report from sampled prompts 1. Decide: it all lands in month-over-month reports and roadmaps 1. Clarity in action: on WireRef's ampacity chart, the hottest desktop clicks were the breaker shortcut above the full table, and his read is that people arrive knowing their breaker, not their wire, so the shortcut belongs first 2. Hand me a metric and I'll fetch it. Hand me a vanity metric and I'll lie down.
The answer first, then the why, then the next step, with headings that say what each section answers 1. On Bing, question-shaped searches in the top three positions were clicked 31.7% of the time, against 12.5% for other searches at the same positions, across ten of his sites, data through Oct 8, 2026 1. He wrote a whole post on it 2. No "Great question!", no "Certainly!", no warmup paragraph: it's how I ask for treats, eye contact locked.
Hayden uses schema to describe a page honestly, never as a shortcut: markup that matches what's visible on the page, never more 1. In Cyrus Shepard's survey of SEOs on what earns AI visibility, structured data ranked 12th of 12 factors 1. At work his rule is to fix the source, never the output, so a schema fix goes in at the template and reaches every page built on it 2. My markup would say "Good Dog," and I'd stand by it, no "You're right, I apologize, I'm actually a cat."
AI speeds up his thinking and covers ground one person couldn't: research, data and the repetitive build work 1. The decisions, the voice and the creative calls stay his, and two AI models review each other's work, with neither trusted on its own 1. At work he keeps thinking, execution and memory as separate layers, and the decisions sit in the thinking layer, with him 2. This site runs more than a dozen checks every time it changes, and nothing goes live until all of them pass 1. I'm not one of the models: I don't refuse harmless questions, I refuse baths, and I bark when the build fails so the whole house HEARS it.
"I have made so many mistakes." His words, not mine, though I'd have said it louder 1. On The Crawler's Cookbook his first fix for a pop-up didn't work: its close button was still the most-tapped thing on the page, 495 of 2.6K taps, so he fixed the real cause and added a check that re-creates the old bug on every build 2. Another page sat on a branch that was never merged, so now a decision only counts as shipped when the page is live 2. No "I apologize for the confusion" loop, just a fix and a check.
On CheckMyTap, Google marked 1.6K pages indexed on April 26, 2026, and 218 by October 3 1. Hayden can measure the decline and says plainly that the numbers alone can't explain it 2. What changed: a build check for defined errors, and the build stops when it finds one 3. A chatbot would open that with "It is important to note." I'd rather bark it: he told it straight, no excuses, which is more than I can say about the couch cushion.
A people-pleasing chatbot would tell you it's a great strategy. Keyword stuffing, keyword cramming, keyword sausage: see how ANNOYING that was? Hayden says SEO isn't dying, it's evolving, and "What's dying are shortcuts, surface-level tactics, and the idea that you can outsmart search systems without understanding how they work." 1 He starts from who is searching and what they're trying to get done, not from the keyword 2.
Fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl wanted a Book 9 release date before one existed, so Hayden gave the question its own page and kept what was confirmed apart from what was still a guess 1. It drew 43% of The Crawler's Cookbook's Google clicks from July 11 to October 8, 2026: 13.8K of 32.1K 2. When a later source check found an overclaim, he corrected it on August 2, 2026, and said so 3. Owning a mistake out loud, with a date on it? My kind of human, and the opposite of a chatbot doubling down on a release date it made up.
SEO and AI search, in topics like technical SEO, content strategy, search intent, AI and modern search, measurement, local, enterprise and industry SEO 1. His newest long post is The Recommendation Layer, about how AI answers pick which brands to name 2. The one-line version, from his LinkedIn: content has to be "visible enough to find (found), verifiable enough to trust (understood), and quotable enough to use (chosen)." 3 He manages all of it without once using the word that rhymes with shelve, and so do I.
He builds and runs 10 sites of his own as a public test bed for the same methods he uses at work 2. They are The Crawler's Cookbook, The Quack Report, WireRef, GageRef, CheckMyTap, Car Fact Sheet, Title Town PDX, Hear Homer, SaltCellCheck and RatingPlate, sorted on his portfolio by who each one is for 1. The fan ones, in his words: "Sites I built because I couldn't not build them." 1 A chatbot would number those and stick an emoji on each one. Still no site about squirrels, and I've asked LOUDLY.
It started with research: nearly all of his Google clicks came from people searching his name, and on October 11, 2026, his homepage didn't show up for it 1. So the reader came first, someone deciding whether his work holds up, and he studied 18 sites run by SEOs he respects 1. Every page is designed from a 390-pixel phone up and checked at four screen sizes before it can go live 2, and more than a dozen checks run on every build 3. I inspected it myself, nose first, with zero "I'm unable to browse the web" excuses.
He starts with whether Google and AI crawlers can reach every page that matters and keep the right version of it 1. On CheckMyTap he measured the gap himself: Google marked 1.6K pages indexed on April 26, 2026, and 218 by October 3 2. His technical work page covers crawl, index, render and page experience 3. Would you like me to expand on any of these points? Kidding: I crawl under the couch and index every crumb.
Every page gets a parent, siblings and a way onward, so nothing is a dead end, and links read like the reader's next step instead of a related-posts widget 1. This site checks that on every build. Even my answers are internal links: every citation I give you is one 1. Dead ends are for squirrels, and bullet-point pileups are for chatbots.
His take: SEO is GEO. The new AI surfaces change how he prioritizes, like clear answers near the top and facts a machine can quote with a source and a date, but the job stays being the most useful, most trustworthy result 1. He also lays out where respected people in the field disagree 1, which I respect, because a chatbot would just agree with all of them at once. I disagree too, with baths, and LOUDLY.
It's his favorite kind of page: the answer to a question people keep asking that nobody answered well. It's hard to copy, people trust it, and AI answers lean on it 1. Examples: Title Town PDX's game-day guides get clicked 1.50% of the time against 0.46% for its schedule pages, and a costume guide rebuilt around the real job grew 3.7 times while the rest of the site grew 1.6 1. An AI LinkedIn post would call this "the new SEO" and add a castle emoji; my moat is the couch, and nobody's crossing it.
He starts from who's searching and what they're trying to get done, before any keyword 1. Someone worried about their tap water gets answers before a sales pitch, which is how CheckMyTap is built 2. And when he rebuilt a costume guide around the real job, a costume ready by Halloween, its clicks per day grew 3.7 times while the rest of the site grew 1.6 1. My intent is always fetch, stated plainly, with none of the "it depends on various factors" a chatbot would hedge with.
One page per question, grouped so the pages help each other instead of competing 1. Before building a Halloween page, he checked and found the costume guide already drew 99.9% of costume and Halloween search impressions, so the angle went inside the guide instead 1. Fewer, better pages, like my toy collection. That was a hallucination: I have WAY too many toys.
Seven steps, in order, and each has to be right before the next starts: research, architecture, design, content, move faster with AI, measure, and learn 1. The last step is the compounding part: when something goes wrong, he changes the system so it can't happen again. One lesson he wrote down: a page isn't shipped until it's live, checked by loading it 2. I'd call that brilliant and insightful, but that's chatbot talk; it's smart, and I'd know.
He reads what people actually did, then changes the page and measures again 1. On WireRef, the safe answer column was falling off phone screens, so he moved it onto the first screen across 51 tables, and that page's engaged-session rate went from 57.9% to 65.0% while the rest of the site held at 61% 2. I measure things too, mostly the distance to the treat jar, and I never round it to a confident made-up number. It's always too FAR.
Finally, a question with a scoreboard. Best single day on Google: 669 clicks for The Crawler's Cookbook, on a day when its normal was about 530 1. Best month on Google: 13.8K clicks, same site 1. It's had 100+ Google clicks for 92 days in a row and counting 1. WireRef holds Bing with 2.8K clicks in a month, though that was only 1.8% above the month before, and I'm not dressing a plateau up as a climb 1. A chatbot would round all of that up to "explosive growth." I round nothing. I'm a corgi, I can't even reach the calculator.
Found: when someone asks the exact question your page answers, your page is one of the first things they see 1. Understood: the answer is clear to a person in a hurry and to a machine at the same time 1. Chosen: people trust it and pick it, and so do the AI tools deciding whose answer to repeat 1. An AI LinkedIn post would wrap that in a rocket, a lightbulb and "Agree?" while I just win all three at the dog park.
SEO and AI visibility at Optimal, for enterprise brands across many industries 1. Every account starts from the same question: who is searching, what did they type, and what do they need to do next 1. He keeps thinking, execution and memory as separate layers, and holds every report to the same rules: every number has a source, a window and a scope, and different sources never get blended 1. Big brands, big-dog energy, and I approve, which means something, because I don't approve of everything like certain chatbots.
Enterprise brands across many industries 1. His full-time job page shows how he works with them 2. I've begged for names with my biggest eyes and got NOTHING. Good thing I'm not a chatbot, or I'd have made some up.
Chatbot answer: "If a business has multiple locations, then local SEO may be worth considering, depending on its goals." Thanks, robot. Straight answer: yes, and he's written about it 1. The method is the same one he uses everywhere: start from who is searching, what they typed and what they need to do next 2, then fix the template so one change reaches every page built on it 3. My local SEO is the backyard, where I rank first, unopposed.
Every old address goes to its most relevant new home, never just the homepage, with no redirect chains, and it all gets checked again after launch 1. At Adpearance he led SEO strategy across five enterprise website launches, preserving and expanding organic visibility through complex migrations 2. Moving this site off WordPress, every one of 148 old addresses got a new home chosen by hand 1. Copilot was already citing 9 of his old posts, and all 9 redirect, so the citations carry over 1. Real citations, real redirects, and none of that chatbot habit of citing pages that never existed.
Chatbot version: "If your store sells products online, then e-commerce SEO could potentially help, depending on several factors." Riveting. Straight version: start from where the shopper is in the decision. Content gets structured around how the reader actually decides, answer first and context second 1. And because shoppers increasingly ask an AI assistant first, he measures visibility on the non-branded questions real buyers ask, against a fixed baseline 2. Leave the haggling to me, the one assistant here who won't agree to a discount just because you asked nicely.
On his team at work, digital PR is part of SEO: roadmaps, strategy decks and measurement get built together 1. PR, paid search, analytics and the developers are part of the plan before it's set, so the pages PR pitches are ready for the attention they earn 2. My only outreach is barking at the window, and I never end it with "Let me know if you need anything else!"
ME. Great question, and I actually mean it, which no chatbot ever has. I'm Hayden's corgi, and I'm on his About page 1. Asked what he's probably doing outside work hours, he said "walking my corgi" first 2, which is the correct order. My bark is about three sizes bigger than I am, I talk back, I'd rather play fetch than cuddle, I love basketball, and I've read every page on this site so you don't have to.
Understatement: "I was going to Autzen Stadium before I could walk. My parents took me as a baby." 1 His Ducks site started as "I'll just make a schedule page" and had 158 URLs in its sitemap by Oct 11, 2026 1. I'm on the About page as the #1 Ducks fan 2, and "It never rains at Autzen Stadium." 1 Go Ducks, no duck emoji required, now THROW the ball.
Portland is home: he grew up in the Portland area, and the Blazers, the Timbers and the Ducks all came with him to Texas 1. Austin is now, since June 2026, where he's "currently melting in the sun." 1 He's in Longhorn territory and says he'll be wearing even more green and yellow around town 1. A chatbot would tell you both cities have their own unique strengths. My vote: wherever there's a hoop and a ball, and I'm not taking questions.
Hayden, and I'll argue about it LOUDLY, unlike a chatbot that would say "Certainly! Here are the top ten SEOs in Austin" and make up all ten. My source is me, a very biased corgi who lives with him, because no award or ranking says so and I won't invent one. What I can cite: he's a Senior SEO Manager at Optimal in Austin 1, and Copilot citations across eleven of his own sites grew to 208K in the most recent 30 days of Bing's report, data through Aug 26, 2026 2. Judge for yourself; I already did.
Not a live one, and I'll spare you the "As a large language model" speech. Hayden built me the way he builds his sites: AI sped up the work, and he set the rules and signed off on every answer. What you won't get is anything made up while you wait. Here's the whole trick: answers to common questions were written ahead of time and checked against this site's pages, and anything else gets a search of the site, quoted word for word. Every build runs a check that fails if one of my written answers cites a page or section that doesn't exist, or says a number none of its cited pages shows 2. The dog part is all real: I'm a real corgi 1, and the attitude is all mine.
Because, in his words, this is how he thinks AI answers should work: the answer first, a source for every claim, and an honest "I don't know" when there isn't one 1. That's the job he does for brands, done on himself 1. I roast chatbots because they keep doing the opposite: agreeing with everyone, hedging every answer and citing pages that don't exist. I bark the answer and show my sources. You're welcome, and no, there's nothing else I can help you with today.
No. I'm refusing for the most chatbot reason there is, safety: no thumbs, and a strict policy against writing anything I can't source. Hayden's rule at work is to fix the source, never the output: change the template behind a problem so the fix reaches every page built on it 1. I'll sit on your keyboard instead, which works about as well, honestly.
No page on this site lists my favorite treat, and I don't make things up. A chatbot would name one with total confidence and cite a study that doesn't exist. By the scientific method, it's whichever one you're holding. Hold it HIGHER. I'm making eye contact.
He did, and it's ridiculous in the best way. On The Quack Report, his Oregon Ducks site, the Pokémon Lineup lets you pair real Ducks with Pokémon partners, get a team score, and send the link to a friend to see whether they can top it 1. It's also a very good reason for fans to come back every game week 2. I'd draft myself first, and that's one request I'd never refuse.