SEO has long been seen as tactical, but the rise of generative AI makes strategy the defining frontier for visibility and authority.
The post SEO Has Been Tactical For 20 Years. GenAI Forces The Strategy Question appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Assessments.
Alan Weiss is one of those rare people who can say he is a consultant, speaker, and author and mean it.
His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, GE, Mercedes-Benz, State Street Corporation, Times Mirror Group, The Federal Reserve, The New York Times Corporation, Toyota, and over 500 other leading organizations. He has served on several boards of directors in various capacities.
His prolific publishing includes over 500 articles and 60 books, including his best-seller, Million Dollar Consulting (from McGraw-Hill) now in its 30th year and sixth edition. His newest is Your Legacy is Now: Life is not about a search for meaning but the creation of meaning (Routledge, 2021). His books have been on the curricula at Villanova, Temple University, and the Wharton School of Business, and have been translated into 15 languages.
•Do you know people who are loquacious, verbose, prolix?
•Ask a “yes or no” question and they respond with opinions, history, and self-therapy.
•Have you been to the Jersey Shore?
Well, I did go once, as a child, but my parents really couldn’t afford the vacation, and then when they could, they preferred Cape Cod. I haven’t taken my children because my spouse thinks that “Jaws” was a documentary.
•Why so much talk?
-Articulating cognitive processes
-Buying time
-Believing it adds credibility and esteem
-Just a bigmouth who loves to hear him/herself talk
•Tell people what they need to know, not everything that you know.
•Assume intelligent people will ask you questions if needed.
•Don’t be afraid to stop people from rambling:
-What’s your point?
-What’s your question?
•Verbosity attempts to hide the point: politicians do it and it probably helped cost Kamala Harris the election.
•It dilutes your real power, like planting the Mona Lisa in the midst of a much larger painting.
•People forget the major points because they are drowned in minor points. She talked at length about needing ice cream, but I don’t remember what flavors she said to avoid at all costs.
•Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address took about 2.5 minutes to deliver. Can you recall who else spoke that day for hours?
•The US Constitution is a couple of pages. The rules of golf are over 600. Is it really easier to run the most successful and powerful democracy in history than to hit a ball with a stick?
Alan Weiss’s The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Introduction to the show recorded by Connie Dieken
When technical debt blocks SEO progress, use this prioritization matrix and collaboration tactics to move critical fixes forward.
The post Ask An SEO: How Do You Prioritize Technical SEO Fixes With Limited Dev Support? appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
Posting more often definitely helps you grow on LinkedIn. The research has shown it, and I’ve experienced it myself. But, how much more?
I’ve grown my account to nearly 20,000 followers with different experimental approaches to posting, from 30-day consistency challenges to skipping entire weeks. Meanwhile, my colleague Sabreen has crossed 17,000 by posting every single day for the past year.
These varied approaches are common. Some creators swear by posting once a week. Others insist on posting daily — or even multiple times a day. With so much conflicting advice, it’s hard to know who’s actually right.
So we teamed up with Buffer’s data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, to dig into over 2 million posts from 94,000+ LinkedIn accounts. Our goal: to figure out how posting frequency really impacts reach and engagement on LinkedIn — and whether you can post too much.
If you’ve only been guessing at your LinkedIn cadence till now, this is for you.
🚀 According to our findings, moving from 1 post a week to 2 to 5 is like flipping a switch — LinkedIn starts distributing your content more widely and rewarding you with stronger per-post performance.
L: 👉 More posts spark more conversations. Accounts posting 11+ times weekly see nearly triple the engagements per post compared to once-a-week posters. R: 👉 The more often you post, the further each post travels. Reach per post climbs steadily, with the sharpest jump once you cross into 6–10 and 11+ posts per week.
Our data shows that posting 2 to 5 times weekly on LinkedIn is the sweet spot for improving reach and engagement without overwhelming your schedule.
This cadence can mean +1,182 more impressions per post and a 0.23 percentage point lift in engagement rate compared to posting just once a week.
Julian also adds that, if you can sustain it, posting more is almost always better, not only in terms of total engagement, but engagement per post as well.
📈 Posting 6 to 10 times weekly pushes the gains further with +5,001 more impressions per post and a 0.76 percentage point increase in engagement rate.
⚡ At 11+ posts per week, the lift is dramatic with nearly 17,000 more impressions per post, 3x more engagements, and a 1.4 percentage point jump in engagement rate compared to posting just once.
One post a week isn’t enough. It keeps you active, but leaves growth on the table.
What’s more, these results are consistent no matter your audience size. Whether you’ve got 500 followers or 50,000, posting more often makes every single post work harder.
Our recommendations in a nutshell:
Buffer’s data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, analyzed more than 2 million LinkedIn posts from 94,000+ accounts to understand how posting frequency really impacts performance.
In this analysis, instead of looking only at totals (which can be misleading), he focused on three per-post metrics:
This addresses a common pain point at its root — when the same account posts more often, do their posts actually perform better?
To make sure the results weren’t skewed by account size or niche, he used two different approaches:
This analysis covers all four major post formats (text, image, video, and carousels or document PDFs) without breaking them out individually.
Let’s get into the data.
The short answer: no.
Our analysis shows that posting more often helps your performance on LinkedIn. Each step up in frequency delivers better per-post results, even after controlling for account size and niche.
Here’s what we found when comparing higher-frequency weeks to quieter ones for the same accounts:
In other words, LinkedIn doesn’t “cap” your reach or punish you for posting often. Instead, it compounds your visibility, surfacing more of your content to more people.
The myth of “posting too much” probably comes from other platforms, where algorithms can suppress frequency. On LinkedIn, the opposite is true — more posts mean more opportunities for distribution.
Moving from posting once a week to 2 to 5 times is where performance really begins. That shift alone means:
It’s the point where LinkedIn’s algorithm seems to recognize you as “active” and starts rewarding your content with better distribution.
From there, each step up continues to deliver significant gains, but the curve steepens. At 6 to 10 posts per week, you see a bigger acceleration. And then 11+ posts per week is where you’ll get the biggest benefits.
For me, the best news here is that you don’t need to post daily to see meaningful improvement. Even small increases in your weekly cadence can unlock compounding gains.
So if more is better, is there ever a point where it stops paying off?
Posting more always helps, but the marginal payoff decreases as you climb higher. Going from 1 to 5 posts transforms your performance. Pushing from 6 to 11 posts is still worth it if you can manage the workload, but the gains are incremental rather than exponential.
Take the graph below as the source for this perspective. At first glance, engagement rates look higher at 1 post per week — but that’s misleading. Engagement only seems to dip because the frequency of posts is increasing, so the rate is spread across more content.
Going from 2 to 5 to 6 to 10 posts still delivers meaningful gains, but the growth isn’t as dramatic as that first jump.
At 11+ posts per week, you see the strongest lift, but the improvement between 6 to 10 posts and 11+ posts is even smaller than the leap from 1 post a week to 2 to 5.
💡 If you do want to post more, Julian’s recommendation is to focus on quality. “Post as often as you can — as long as the quality stays high. Low-quality content posted frequently won’t yield great results.”
This is why we see 2 to 5 posts per week emerge as the “sweet spot” for most accounts — it balances meaningful growth with a sustainable content cadence.
A common pushback to posting-frequency advice is: “Sure, that works for big accounts — but will it work for me?”
It’s a fair question. Larger accounts naturally get more reach and engagements, and they also tend to post more often. At first glance, it can look like the frequency effect is just a byproduct of size.
That’s why in this study, we controlled for account-level differences. Using Z-scores (which compare each account to its own baseline) and fixed effects regression (which isolates performance changes within the same account), we stripped out the variable of size to see what really happens when an account posts more often. And the results found that the pattern holds across the board.
In other words, this isn’t just a big-brand advantage. Whether you have 500 followers or 50,000, increasing your posting frequency makes your posts perform better relative to your own average.
Frequency is a lever every creator can pull. The algorithm rewards activity and consistency, not just account size.
If posting more often is one part of the equation, choosing the right format for you is another.
Over the last few years, LinkedIn has transformed from a professional networking site into a true creator platform. Along the way, it’s embraced video, carousels, and new feeds designed to keep people scrolling.
Start with the formats that help you stay consistent (text and images), then layer in video and carousels to accelerate growth. Carousels dominate in performance, but quality matters more than format — the best format is the one you can sustain with valuable content.
We now have our answer: more posts mean better per-post performance. But real life often butts heads with the best laid plans. In practice, the “ideal” posting frequency often collides with energy levels, inspiration, and the risk of burnout.
This is why your posting strategy shouldn’t exist in isolation. Start in the 2 to 5 posts a week range and focus on making that cadence a habit. From there, experiment:
If you can’t post as often as the top-performing tiers suggest, you can still increase your visibility by pairing posting with a strong commenting strategy.
LinkedIn recently introduced impressions for comments, meaning thoughtful, engaging comments now work like micro-posts, surfacing to people beyond your own network. This is a game-changer for staying visible without creating more original posts.
If you’re in a lighter posting week, try this:
Whether you’re posting 3 times or 13, sustainability should be the first priority. The fastest way to stall growth is to burn through your best ideas in a short burst and then disappear.
The goal is to build a rhythm that keeps your content sharp, your audience engaged, and you excited to show up.
Consistent posting beats short bursts any time, and on LinkedIn, every extra post is an opportunity for the algorithm to work harder for you.
Good luck!
Posting more often definitely helps you grow on LinkedIn. The research has shown it, and I’ve experienced it myself. But, how much more?
I’ve grown my account to nearly 20,000 followers with different experimental approaches to posting, from 30-day consistency challenges to skipping entire weeks. Meanwhile, my colleague Sabreen has crossed 17,000 by posting every single day for the past year.
These varied approaches are common. Some creators swear by posting once a week. Others insist on posting daily — or even multiple times a day. With so much conflicting advice, it’s hard to know who’s actually right.
So we teamed up with Buffer’s data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, to dig into over 2 million posts from 94,000+ LinkedIn accounts. Our goal: to figure out how posting frequency really impacts reach and engagement on LinkedIn — and whether you can post too much.
If you’ve only been guessing at your LinkedIn cadence till now, this is for you.
🚀 According to our findings, moving from 1 post a week to 2 to 5 is like flipping a switch — LinkedIn starts distributing your content more widely and rewarding you with stronger per-post performance.
L: 👉 More posts spark more conversations. Accounts posting 11+ times weekly see nearly triple the engagements per post compared to once-a-week posters. R: 👉 The more often you post, the further each post travels. Reach per post climbs steadily, with the sharpest jump once you cross into 6–10 and 11+ posts per week.
Our data shows that posting 2 to 5 times weekly on LinkedIn is the sweet spot for improving reach and engagement without overwhelming your schedule.
This cadence can mean +1,182 more impressions per post and a 0.23 percentage point lift in engagement rate compared to posting just once a week.
Julian also adds that, if you can sustain it, posting more is almost always better, not only in terms of total engagement, but engagement per post as well.
📈 Posting 6 to 10 times weekly pushes the gains further with +5,001 more impressions per post and a 0.76 percentage point increase in engagement rate.
⚡ At 11+ posts per week, the lift is dramatic with nearly 17,000 more impressions per post, 3x more engagements, and a 1.4 percentage point jump in engagement rate compared to posting just once.
One post a week isn’t enough. It keeps you active, but leaves growth on the table.
What’s more, these results are consistent no matter your audience size. Whether you’ve got 500 followers or 50,000, posting more often makes every single post work harder.
Our recommendations in a nutshell:
Buffer’s data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, analyzed more than 2 million LinkedIn posts from 94,000+ accounts to understand how posting frequency really impacts performance.
In this analysis, instead of looking only at totals (which can be misleading), he focused on three per-post metrics:
This addresses a common pain point at its root — when the same account posts more often, do their posts actually perform better?
To make sure the results weren’t skewed by account size or niche, he used two different approaches:
This analysis covers all four major post formats (text, image, video, and carousels or document PDFs) without breaking them out individually.
Let’s get into the data.
The short answer: no.
Our analysis shows that posting more often helps your performance on LinkedIn. Each step up in frequency delivers better per-post results, even after controlling for account size and niche.
Here’s what we found when comparing higher-frequency weeks to quieter ones for the same accounts:
In other words, LinkedIn doesn’t “cap” your reach or punish you for posting often. Instead, it compounds your visibility, surfacing more of your content to more people.
The myth of “posting too much” probably comes from other platforms, where algorithms can suppress frequency. On LinkedIn, the opposite is true — more posts mean more opportunities for distribution.
Moving from posting once a week to 2 to 5 times is where performance really begins. That shift alone means:
It’s the point where LinkedIn’s algorithm seems to recognize you as “active” and starts rewarding your content with better distribution.
From there, each step up continues to deliver significant gains, but the curve steepens. At 6 to 10 posts per week, you see a bigger acceleration. And then 11+ posts per week is where you’ll get the biggest benefits.
For me, the best news here is that you don’t need to post daily to see meaningful improvement. Even small increases in your weekly cadence can unlock compounding gains.
So if more is better, is there ever a point where it stops paying off?
Posting more always helps, but the marginal payoff decreases as you climb higher. Going from 1 to 5 posts transforms your performance. Pushing from 6 to 11 posts is still worth it if you can manage the workload, but the gains are incremental rather than exponential.
Take the graph below as the source for this perspective. At first glance, engagement rates look higher at 1 post per week — but that’s misleading. Engagement only seems to dip because the frequency of posts is increasing, so the rate is spread across more content.
Going from 2 to 5 to 6 to 10 posts still delivers meaningful gains, but the growth isn’t as dramatic as that first jump.
At 11+ posts per week, you see the strongest lift, but the improvement between 6 to 10 posts and 11+ posts is even smaller than the leap from 1 post a week to 2 to 5.
💡 If you do want to post more, Julian’s recommendation is to focus on quality. “Post as often as you can — as long as the quality stays high. Low-quality content posted frequently won’t yield great results.”
This is why we see 2 to 5 posts per week emerge as the “sweet spot” for most accounts — it balances meaningful growth with a sustainable content cadence.
A common pushback to posting-frequency advice is: “Sure, that works for big accounts — but will it work for me?”
It’s a fair question. Larger accounts naturally get more reach and engagements, and they also tend to post more often. At first glance, it can look like the frequency effect is just a byproduct of size.
That’s why in this study, we controlled for account-level differences. Using Z-scores (which compare each account to its own baseline) and fixed effects regression (which isolates performance changes within the same account), we stripped out the variable of size to see what really happens when an account posts more often. And the results found that the pattern holds across the board.
In other words, this isn’t just a big-brand advantage. Whether you have 500 followers or 50,000, increasing your posting frequency makes your posts perform better relative to your own average.
Frequency is a lever every creator can pull. The algorithm rewards activity and consistency, not just account size.
If posting more often is one part of the equation, choosing the right format for you is another.
Over the last few years, LinkedIn has transformed from a professional networking site into a true creator platform. Along the way, it’s embraced video, carousels, and new feeds designed to keep people scrolling.
Start with the formats that help you stay consistent (text and images), then layer in video and carousels to accelerate growth. Carousels dominate in performance, but quality matters more than format — the best format is the one you can sustain with valuable content.
We now have our answer: more posts mean better per-post performance. But real life often butts heads with the best laid plans. In practice, the “ideal” posting frequency often collides with energy levels, inspiration, and the risk of burnout.
This is why your posting strategy shouldn’t exist in isolation. Start in the 2 to 5 posts a week range and focus on making that cadence a habit. From there, experiment:
If you can’t post as often as the top-performing tiers suggest, you can still increase your visibility by pairing posting with a strong commenting strategy.
LinkedIn recently introduced impressions for comments, meaning thoughtful, engaging comments now work like micro-posts, surfacing to people beyond your own network. This is a game-changer for staying visible without creating more original posts.
If you’re in a lighter posting week, try this:
Whether you’re posting 3 times or 13, sustainability should be the first priority. The fastest way to stall growth is to burn through your best ideas in a short burst and then disappear.
The goal is to build a rhythm that keeps your content sharp, your audience engaged, and you excited to show up.
Consistent posting beats short bursts any time, and on LinkedIn, every extra post is an opportunity for the algorithm to work harder for you.
Good luck!
Crowe has announced a new central Birmingham office to support its continued growth ambitions in the Midlands. The growing profile of Birmingham as a hub of digital business, and technologically capable talent has seen a succession of consultancies arrive in recent years.
According to Kyle Hauptfleisch, AI won’t save bad consulting; it will expose it. The chief growth officer at Daemon explains that the next 12-24 months will split firms that redesign how work is done, from those that just add tools to antiquated workflows.
EY has appointed Rahul Patel, Alok Panda and Gaurav Tandon as new partners in its UK financial services cyber and resilience practice. The trio joins from managing director positions at rival Accenture, and brings a combined six decades of experience to the partner team.
Despite the insistence of the streaming segment, and its proponents, that price is no object for consumers, new research suggests the opposite. As the likes of Netflix and Disney+ hike prices, and foist new advertsing tiers to users who can’t keep up with the inflated cost, visits to bootleg streaming websites have surged since the pandemic.
