Technical base
Lessons recovered, hubs reordered, disavow and brand entity.
4Geeks Lab · Lab report
SEO and GEO for 4geeks.com
The plan, the rankings, the KPIs and all the link building: everything done since August so 4geeks.com wins traffic, leads and AI citations. Every figure comes from Search Console, DataForSEO, the CRM or the live site.
+57 %weekly organic clicks: from 1,165 to 1,828Search Console · Jul 20 → Oct 5
218→386keywords in Google's top 3 (+77%)4 weeks vs previous 4
3,348→3,936keywords in the top 10 (+18%)Search Console
13.8→9.3site average position (lower is better)Search Console
4.3%of organic leads end up buying; Google Ads, 1.3%CRM · Jul 17 → Sep 28
21organic leads in the first 5 days of the site's own lead logSite · since Oct 9
0→42dofollow links to 4geeks.com from Financial MagazineLinkbuilding
142pages with a direct answer for AIGEO
Search Console
Organic clicks per week
Impressions are not used as a KPI: bots and AI Overviews inflate them 30–670× the real volume. We measure clicks, rankings and leads.
Strategy
The plan
A clear commercial north star and rules that protect what already works.
North star
Everything pushes to the comparison page
- The money page is the program comparison (EN /en/program-comparison, ES /es/comparar-programas); programs are the second hop.
- One commercial link per piece, with the commercial keyword as anchor, without over-optimizing.
- Markets: Spain, US and LATAM, each with its own keyword list and DataForSEO volume.
Architecture
Hubs and pillars
- 14 commercial hubs in the CMS, every post assigned to its pillar.
- Pillars: /en/coding-bootcamp and /es/curso-de-programacion-desde-cero; the Spanish AI hub points to AI Engineering.
- Cannibalization: one owner page per keyword; duplicates consolidated with 301s.
Rules
Grow without breaking things
- A page with 10+ clicks in 28 days keeps its title: we only add content or links.
- Changed URL = 301, and the plan's 215 redirects are monitored weekly.
- Never a published 4Geeks price: it depends on the candidate and the scholarship.
- Everything is checked on the live site, not in the CMS.
SEO + GEO plan
21 new URLs, 38 optimized, 26 consolidations, 44 posts pruned, how-tos optimized and first short answers.
Bootcamp MCP plan
11 of 16 bootcamp queries without clicks were bots; programs and cost pages rewritten for real demand.
Full audit
Links, images, GEO, FAQ, H1s, metas, content and cannibalization, page by page.
Rankings
Where 4geeks.com shows up
Real Google rankings: the queries with the most clicks over the last 4 weeks vs the previous 4, and the target AI keywords.
Non-brand queries that bring the most clicks
| Query | Clicks 28 d | Position | Before | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| juegos de programacion | 43 | 4.3 | 5.4 | ▲ 1.1 |
| nvm | 37 | 6.1 | 7.7 | ▲ 1.6 |
| nvm install | 37 | 7.5 | 8.2 | ▲ 0.7 |
| how to update python | 35 | 4.3 | 4.6 | = 0.3 |
| pyenv | 33 | 6.0 | 5.0 | ▼ 1.0 |
| grok bot use cases | 26 | 7.6 | 8.2 | ▲ 0.6 |
| install nvm linux | 24 | 2.6 | 2.5 | = 0.1 |
| update python | 24 | 5.1 | 4.8 | = 0.3 |
| nvm install linux | 22 | 3.4 | 2.8 | ▼ 0.6 |
| stagehand v4 | 22 | 4.5 | 5.0 | ▲ 0.5 |
| linux install nvm | 20 | 2.6 | 2.6 | = 0.0 |
| nvm install windows | 20 | 5.0 | 5.1 | = 0.1 |
| python double slash | 20 | 1.6 | 2.4 | ▲ 0.8 |
| list to string python | 19 | 4.5 | 3.5 | ▼ 1.0 |
AI keywords (DataForSEO, 36 targets)
- In the top 10: «machine learning bootcamp» (#8, US), «ai product manager courses» (#10, US) and «grok bot» (#7, Spain, also cited in the AI Overview).
- Rising: «best online machine learning course» 45 → 23, «stagehand» 23 → 8.4, «alternativas a chat gpt» 51 → 39, «como ser ingeniero de prompts» 46 → 34.
- New entries: «hermes agent» (4.1), «estructura de un prompt» (5.4), «bit grok app que es» (7.1), «what is buzz» (8.7).
- AI in Spanish: top-10 keywords from 15 to 21 in a month; across the rest of the site, 286 → 307 (ES) and 206 → 262 (EN).
- We show up in Google AI Mode: 7,000 impressions for «what is grok bot» from AI Mode.
- The rankings report updates itself every Thursday, with AI keywords at the top.
Linkbuilding
Authority and links that bring leads
No bought links in the US, anchors by target keyword and every link checked live.
Financial Magazine · from 0 to 42 dofollow links in 24 days
Starting point
Financial Magazine (Spanish education outlet): 0 links to 4geeks.com; the profile pointed to the old domain.
13 dofollow
They apply our request: profile to 4geeks.com, new programs (Applied AI and AI Fluency) and links in old news.
34 dofollow, 0 nofollow
They switch every link to dofollow and publish the first 4Geeks news piece in under 8 hours, with our exact anchors.
38 dofollow
Second news piece (AI Engineer workshop) with 4 strategic links to the plan's money pages.
42 dofollow
News piece on mandatory AI training. Total: 18 on the profile, 6 on programs and 18 in news.
Spain
Audit and strategy
- Toxic profile detected: spam score 46 and ~1,900 links from Telegram farms (@SEO_ANOMALY, @BHS_LINKS).
- Target table: every money page with its keyword, Spanish volume and anchor.
- Biggest opportunity: the AI course, ~9,000 searches a month with near-zero difficulty.
- Financial Magazine ranks 4Geeks #1 in 4 of its rankings (data science, app masters, tech schools and AI schools).
Leads
Links that convert
- 26 leads from external links in 90 days: Forbes converts 6.7% of its visits vs ~1.5% for organic.
- 7-line plan: recover links to the old domain (Forbes, Dataquest, US press), Course Report, SwitchUp and Career Karma profiles, Reddit and internal links.
- Target: from ~9 to 20 leads a month from referral links.
Engine
Automated link building
- Engine in AI Growth OS: publishes on free channels (dev.to, Tumblr, WordPress.com) with rotated anchors to avoid footprints.
- Sacred links: the AI pages that sell most get links first.
- Lock: no piece is published without its link, and it is re-verified every two weeks.
- Press: 4G Press in 19 countries and an inventory of 38 US outlets that already cite us.
Disavow 1
444 link-farm domains disavowed in Search Console.
Disavow 2
454 domains and 54 URLs: new Telegram .xyz networks added.
Disavow 3
552 domains and 58 URLs: a PBN network («DA 50») and the @SEO_LINKK_ORDER farm on hacked sites show up.
GEO
Getting AI to recommend 4Geeks
Leads coming from ChatGPT and Gemini convert at ~10–11% vs a 3.9% average. That's why GEO is a priority.
Entity
Making AI know who we are
- Home schema with 4geeks.com, one description and sameAs to Course Report, SwitchUp and Career Karma.
- Real authors: Alejandro Sánchez (9 EN posts) and Víctor Gómez (11 ES), with their expertise declared.
Answers
Content AI can quote
- 142 short answers (40–60 words) at the top of the highest-impression pages.
- FAQs on 24 how-tos and new questions where search demands it (e.g. «when was grok bot released»).
Measurement
Baseline and tracking
- Every month: 4 search-enabled AIs, Perplexity and Google AI Overview, in Spain, the US and Mexico.
- Baseline (Sep 30): 25 of 120 answers cite 4geeks.com (branded 11/15, unbranded 14/105).
- ChatGPT brought 60 leads in 90 days as its own channel (AI Assistant).
Content
Blog and how-tos
How-tos are the biggest organic asset (6,400 clicks and 1M impressions in 90 days); the blog pushes AI.
New
New content with demand
- 21 new URLs from the Sep 30 plan (how to use ChatGPT, AI, Claude, AI certifications, AI for lawyers, teachers…).
- Daily AI news routine: publishes in EN and ES only when there is search demand (Hermes, OpenClaw, ChatGPT Dots, Gemini Agent…).
- «Aprender IA desde cero», a zero-difficulty keyword where 4Geeks didn't appear.
Optimized
What already had traffic
- 38 pages optimized in the plan and 35 how-tos with their own title, meta and keyword.
- 458 fixes to facts and code on the 67 highest-traffic pages.
- 79 metas rewritten for CTR and 18 H1s fixed.
Cleanup
Less is more
- Pruning: 44 posts without traffic redirected to their best replacement.
- Cannibalization: 26 consolidations on Sep 30 and 6 more on Oct 13.
- Linking: 79 links to the comparison page, 35 new internal links and related guides on 74 how-tos.
Technical
Making Google find and understand everything
Root problems fixed via MCP and checked live.
Crawl
URLs recovered
- 389 lessons in soft-404 (~26,000 impressions a month) redirected to learn.4geeks.com.
- 121 URLs broken or sent to the blog listing, with exact redirects.
- 501 body links pointing straight to their final destination, without hops.
Indexing
Google up to date
- Indexing API: every changed page is sent to Google (up to 200 a day).
- CMS hubs: 268 posts with their pillar; posts without a hub from 327 to 162.
Quality
Healthy pages
- 46 lost images regenerated and those on 80 pages protected from the CMS cleanup, ~90% lighter.
- 82 real alt texts and 4Geeks prices removed from 17 posts.
Measurement
Knowing what works and what doesn't
No measurement, no decisions: clicks, rankings and leads, never raw impressions.
Weekly
Rankings progress
- Every Thursday: 6 weeks of Search Console and DataForSEO for the 36 AI keywords.
- Monitors the plan's 215 redirects and restores any that get lost.
Business
Leads and sales
- SEO leads matched in the CRM minute by minute: organic sells 4.3% (Ads 1.3%, Social 0.8%).
- GA4 alert: since Sep 30 it loses the channel of ~75% of leads; measurement uses the site's own lead log.
21-OCT
Before and after
- Clicks and leads for every page changed since Sep 30, compared with the rest of the site.
- Proposes what to roll back only if the drop is real (statistically).
Next steps
What's next
In date order.
Plan measurement
Result of every change since Sep 30, with what to keep and what to roll back.
Monthly GEO
Second AI-citation measurement against the 25/120 baseline.
Disavow and link building for leads
Upload the 552-domain disavow and start recovering Forbes, Dataquest and US press links.
What needs the web team
Sitemap without redirects, cross-folder hreflang, /llms.txt, FAQ schema that regenerates and a CMS that doesn't delete images in use.