SEO Automation - Search-Driven Content
Your SEO tool flagged dozens of issues. You fixed them. Rankings didn't move. The problem might be that the tool was checking the wrong things.
Most SEO tools measure what's easy to measure: keyword density, readability scores, schema markup. Wire ignores all three, deliberately, because controlled experiments and a leaked Google API showed they don't affect rankings. What Wire tracks instead is what Google's own internal systems confirmed they use. Before you run anything, Wire needs to pull your Google Search Console data into a local database. That fetch takes a few minutes and everything else depends on it. What's your situation right now?
The audit output has four sections and they're not equal weight. HEALTH gives you pass/fail signals. ACTION gives you specific commands to run. SEO gives you reword candidates ranked by score. Most people focus on HEALTH because the red flags are visible, but the SEO section is where the ranking leverage is. There's also a split between problems Wire can fix automatically and problems that require a judgment call, like whether to merge two pages or keep them separate. Which part of the audit output is giving you trouble?
Here's the part most tools skip: not all keyword overlap is the same problem. Wire classifies each overlap into four scenarios based on traffic distribution. A hard overlap, where one page takes 70% of the shared traffic, gets resolved differently than a soft overlap where Google is splitting traffic evenly between two pages. The distinction matters because the fix is different: merge versus differentiate. And "differentiate" doesn't mean adding a paragraph. It means rewriting both pages so they target distinct intent. Which pattern matches what you're seeing?
Position 1 used to mean roughly 28% CTR. Independent research now puts AI Overview interception at 34 to 61% of searches before users reach organic results, which means a page ranking first for a high-volume keyword might see 2 to 3% CTR in practice. Wire's scoring formula flips the assumption: high impressions with low CTR signals demand that exists but isn't reaching you, not a weak keyword. The pages worth rewriting are ranked 5 to 30, not 1 to 5. Pages already in the top 5 are performing. Pages past 30 need authority signals, not better content. Does that change which pages you were planning to work on?
Wire doesn't rewrite every page. It splits your pages into three groups by opportunity score and only fully rewrites the top 20%. The next 30% get title and description changes only. The bottom 50% are skipped. This isn't a cost-cutting shortcut. Pages in the bottom half either already rank well or have so little search demand that rewriting them wouldn't change their position. The uncomfortable implication: most of your pages probably don't need content work. They need something else, or nothing at all. What does your distribution look like?
Wire's gap detection has a specific definition of "gap": a keyword appearing across 3 or more of your pages, with no single page ranking in the top 20, and no page slug matching the keyword. That last condition matters. If you already have a page on the topic but it's buried in a subdirectory with a mismatched URL, Wire treats it as a gap. The fix might be a new page, or it might be an internal linking problem pointing Google to the wrong page. The audit output clusters these by theme so you can tell the difference.
Pages with fewer than 3 inbound internal links are flagged as underlinked. That threshold comes from correlation data, not a Google statement. The SearchPilot experiment on orphan page internal linking showed significant ranking uplift when links were added, which is Tier 2 evidence in Wire's hierarchy: a controlled A/B test on live production sites. The gap between "Google says internal links matter" and "a controlled experiment measured the effect" is larger than most SEO advice acknowledges. Wire only enforces rules with evidence behind them. That's why some things you'd expect to see flagged aren't.
The 2024 Google API leak confirmed that Google's public statements about how ranking works were wrong in specific, documented ways. They denied using click data. NavBoost, their strongest ranking signal, is built entirely on click data. They denied domain authority. The field `siteAuthority` was in their internal API. Wire's evidence hierarchy treats Google's public guidance as the lowest tier, below leak-confirmed signals, controlled experiments, and large-scale correlation studies. Every audit check Wire runs has a citation. Every check it skips has a reason. That's not a philosophy. It's the methodology behind every threshold in the system.
Wire uses five tiers of evidence, and the gap between Tier 1 and Tier 5 is significant. Tier 1 is the leaked API: internal Google documentation confirmed under oath during the DOJ antitrust trial. Tier 5 is "Google says," which Wire notes but never treats as sufficient on its own. The practical effect: Wire enforces H1 keyword alignment because a SearchPilot experiment measured a 28% traffic increase. Wire skips readability scoring because two large-scale studies found zero correlation with rankings. Every rule traces back to a specific study, experiment, or confirmed API field.
Wire reads Google Search Console data into a local SQLite database and uses it to make every content decision. No guessing which pages need work. The database tells you what Google sees, and Wire acts on it.
The Data Pipeline
Everything starts with pulling GSC metrics.
python -m wire.chief data
This fetches keyword data for every page across all topics and stores it locally. The database tracks impressions, clicks, positions, and CTR for each keyword-page combination. Data older than 28 days is considered stale and re-fetched on the next run.
After fetching, Wire prints a summary:
Database: products
Pages with data: 142
Total keywords: 8,530
Latest snapshot: 2026-03-08
Overlap pairs (3+): 23
Audit - Read-Only Analysis
The audit command examines your entire site without changing anything.
python -m wire.chief audit products
python -m wire.chief audit # All topics at once
Audit produces four sections:
HEALTH. Pass/fail indicators. A + means clean, a - means problems found. Covers GSC data freshness, dead pages, cannibalization, duplicate titles, duplicate descriptions, news staleness, orphan pages, broken links, source diversity, H1 tags, thin content, and heading structure.
ACTION. Specific problems with commands to fix them. Dead pages to archive, overlaps to resolve, broken links to fix, pages needing news updates.
SEO. Reword opportunities ranked by score, content gaps where no page owns a keyword cluster.
INFO. Summary statistics: page count, archived pages, untracked pages without GSC data.
Keyword Cannibalization
When multiple pages rank for the same keywords, Google splits traffic between them. Wire detects this through database analysis and classifies each overlap.
| Scenario | Detection | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Hard overlap | Ratio > 0.4, one page gets 70%+ traffic | Merge weak into strong |
| Soft overlap | Ratio > 0.15, balanced traffic | Differentiate both pages |
| Google confused | Ratio > 0.15, 50/50 split | Differentiate both pages |
| Dead page | Below site median threshold | Archive and expand covering page |
python -m wire.chief deduplicate products
The deduplicate command runs the full resolution: merging, differentiating, and archiving based on the classification. Each operation uses Claude to rewrite content, so the output reads naturally rather than being a mechanical splice.
Opportunity Scoring
Traditional CTR benchmarks are obsolete. Position 1 used to mean 28% CTR (First Page Sage, 2023). In 2025-2026, AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, and Perplexity intercept 34-61% of search traffic before users reach organic results (Seer Interactive, Advanced Web Ranking). For niche B2B sites, real CTR at position 1 is closer to 2-3%.
This changes everything about how content tools should score opportunities. Click-based metrics undercount demand. A keyword with 500 impressions and 0.5% CTR looks weak by old standards but represents genuine search interest that AI Overviews are intercepting.
Wire scores every keyword where your page ranks position 5-30. The formula: impressions * (1 - CTR). High impressions with low click-through means search demand exists but your page is not capturing it. This scoring works in the AI era because it prioritizes demand volume, not click volume.
The position window matters too. Position 1-5 pages are already performing well. Position 30+ pages are unreachable through content changes alone (they need authority signals). The 5-30 range is where content quality directly affects rankings.
Keywords scoring above the threshold (configurable, default 15) become candidates for content improvement. The enrich command uses these scores to decide what to add to each page.
Why Wire Ignores What Others Check
Most SEO tools audit factors that have weak or no evidence behind them. Wire skips these deliberately.
Readability scores have zero correlation with rankings. Portent analyzed 750,000 pages and Ahrefs studied 15,000 keywords: Flesch score does not predict position. Dwell time matters (confirmed in Google's leaked API as NavBoost), but reading level is not the same as clarity.
Keyword density is an artifact of early search engines. The 2024 Google API leak confirmed that NavBoost shifted ranking signals away from TF-IDF frequency toward user behavior metrics. Topical coverage matters; word repetition does not.
Schema markup shows no direct ranking change in SearchPilot A/B tests. The leaked API confirms entity signals feed ranking indirectly through CTR, but generating JSON-LD is a template responsibility, not a content pipeline task.
Wire focuses on signals the leaked API confirmed actually matter: click data (NavBoost), internal linking structure, title-H1 alignment, content freshness, and keyword cannibalization.
Tiered Reword
Not every page deserves the same level of SEO attention. Wire's reword command applies three tiers based on opportunity score.
python -m wire.chief reword products
Top 20%. Full SEO rewrite. Claude rewrites headings, body text, title, and description to target the highest-scoring keywords. Uses the content_seo.md prompt.
Next 30%. Light touch. Only title and description are rewritten. Body stays unchanged. Uses the content_seo_light.md prompt.
Bottom 50%. Skipped entirely. These pages either rank well already or have too little search demand to justify the API cost.
Content Gap Detection
Wire finds keywords where search demand exists but no page owns the topic. Detection criteria: the keyword appears on 3+ pages, no page ranks in the top 20, and no page slug matches the keyword.
Results are clustered by theme and reported in the audit output:
Content Gaps: products
5 keywords in 3 topic clusters
1. "invoice" — 280 impressions, 2 keywords
"invoice processing benchmark" (140 imp, 3 pages)
"invoice automation comparison" (140 imp, 4 pages)
These suggest new pages to create with the content pipeline.
Dead Page Detection
Ahrefs found that 90.63% of all pages get zero organic traffic from Google. HubSpot pruned 72% of their audited posts and saw a 458% increase in organic views. The evidence is clear: dead content hurts the pages that should rank.
Wire uses a relative threshold, max(10, site_median * 0.05), so the bar adapts to your site's scale. Pages below this threshold for 180+ days are flagged as dead. Wire checks whether other pages already rank for the dead page's keywords. If coverage exists, the dead page is safe to archive.
Internal Link Health
Wire counts inbound internal links for every page. Pages with fewer than 3 inbound links are flagged as underlinked. The crosslink command adds links to fix this.
python -m wire.chief crosslink products
Broken internal links are detected during audit and fixed by the sanitize command, which re-saves affected pages through the auto-fix pipeline.
python -m wire.chief sanitize products
The Evidence Hierarchy
Wire does not follow Google's public guidance. The 2024 Google API leak proved that Google systematically misrepresents how their ranking system works. They denied using click data while NavBoost, based entirely on click data, was their strongest ranking signal. They denied having domain authority while siteAuthority sat in their API documentation.
Wire uses a strict evidence hierarchy for every SEO decision:
Tier 1: Leak-confirmed signals. NavBoost click data, siteAuthority, titleMatchScore, badBacklinks, ChromeInTotal, bylineDate. These are ground truth: internal API documentation that Google cannot deny without perjury (NavBoost was confirmed under oath during the DOJ antitrust trial).
Tier 2: Controlled A/B tests. SearchPilot runs experiments on live production sites with statistical significance. H1 keyword alignment produced a 28% traffic increase. Orphan page internal linking produced significant uplift. Schema markup produced no measurable change. These results are reproducible and independently verifiable.
Tier 3: Large-scale correlation studies. Zyppy analyzed 80,959 title tags and 23 million links. Backlinko studied 15,000 keywords. Ahrefs analyzed their entire index. These show what correlates with rankings. Not causation, but strong signals when combined with Tier 1 and Tier 2 evidence.
Tier 4: Case studies. HubSpot pruned 3,000 posts and saw 458% more traffic. 201Creative deleted thin ecommerce pages and saw 867% more traffic and 291% more sales. RecipeLion deleted 1,156 thin articles with a neutral result, because those articles had unique queries, proving thin content only hurts when it cannibalizes.
Tier 5: "Google says." Noted but never sufficient. Every Google public statement is filtered through their legal and PR teams. The leak proved this is not cynicism; it is pattern recognition.
This hierarchy is encoded in every Wire threshold, every auto-fix rule, and every audit check. When Wire skips keyword density checking, it is because NavBoost shifted ranking power to user behavior signals. When Wire enforces H1 alignment, it is because a controlled experiment measured a 28% uplift. No rule exists without evidence. No evidence exists without a citation.