Consumer Cellular · SEO Consultant · 2024 — present
A blog reengineered for generative search.
Consumer Cellular's blog was declining and increasingly invisible to AI. I pruned what wasn't working, refreshed what had potential, and authored net-new content purpose-built to be cited by generative engines. Nine months in, the results speak for themselves.
The situation
By mid-2025 the blog was in trouble. Overall keyword visibility had been declining for over a year, and the blog was invisible to AI Overviews at the exact moment those answers started eating organic traffic across the category. Content shipped on a predictable cadence, but with no strategic frame for what generative engines actually surface.
The team knew something was wrong. What they didn't have was a clear read on what to fix, or a playbook for what to build toward.
The approach
We started with a full audit across technical, content, and measurement. The content audit surfaced a large tail of pages doing more harm than good. The technical audit flagged structure and markup issues making retrieval harder than it needed to be. The measurement review made clear that without better tooling, no one could tell whether any of the work was landing. From there it split into three parallel streams.
Pruning
We removed or consolidated the long tail of content that was diluting topical authority and sending confusing signals. Not every page earns its keep, and ruthless editing came first.
Refreshing
We rewrote pages with real potential but poor structure: clear claims, explicit attribution, proper formatting, appropriate depth. The kind of editing that makes a page citable.
Net-new production
We authored original content designed from the ground up to be quoted by generative engines. Answer-shaped pieces, explainers with real authority, content carrying clear opinions from real experts. This is where the largest share of the citation growth came from.
The results
Nine months in, the shift is clear. AI Overview citations went from roughly 327 in the month before engagement to 2,088 in January 2026, a 6.4× increase still climbing. Overall keyword visibility nearly quadrupled: the blog now ranks for 6,615 keywords on page one or two of Google, up from 1,748. Top-3 positions grew from 269 to 758. Most importantly, the team came away with a working measurement system to see all of it clearly, and a playbook to keep building on.
What this shows
The AI search shift is real, and it rewards a specific kind of work: not content farming, not technical tricks, but disciplined editorial thinking paired with disciplined technical execution. Brands that commit to both will own the next decade of search visibility. Brands that keep doing what they've been doing will quietly disappear from the results.