Five things you get sold for your website that your business does not need · Guide

Businesses with five to twenty five employees get these calls almost weekly. Someone has looked at the website, found a problem and can fix it. Five arguments come up again and again, and all five fail when you check them. For each one there is exactly one case where it does hold, and I write that case down too.

One disclosure first, so you can place this list: I sell SEO, maintenance and hosting myself. What I offer, and where I had to correct my own reasoning, is further down.

The five points

FAQ markup as a ranking lever. Google stopped showing this display on 7 May 2026. For ordinary company sites it had already been gone since September 2023.
llms.txt, so AI systems find you. A proposal from 3 September 2024, with no evidence that any provider reads the file.
Four posts a month. The number is the promise. The effect depends on something else.
Presence on every channel. Five channels mean five editorial plans. A business with five people cannot keep that up.
Guaranteed rankings on Google. Google writes in its own documentation that nobody can guarantee this.

If you only need the list, you are done here. From here on, each point has what gets sold, what does not hold, and when it does hold after all.

1. FAQ markup as a ranking lever

What gets sold. We add FAQ markup to your pages, then your questions appear directly in the search results, your listing gets bigger and you get more clicks.

What is wrong with it. That display no longer exists. Google marked it as deprecated in its own documentation changelog on 8 May 2026, with the sentence that the feature would no longer appear in Google Search starting 7 May 2026. On 15 June 2026 Google deleted the documentation for it, on the grounds that the feature is no longer shown in search results. FAQ no longer appears in Google’s gallery of supported structured data features.

For a normal business the matter had in fact been settled years earlier. Google announced the change on 8 August 2023, and the changelog entry of 14 September 2023 states that the FAQ display is only shown for well known, authoritative government and health websites. A joinery in the Rhine Valley has been outside that group since September 2023. The related format for instructions ended at the same time: the same changelog date records that the HowTo documentation was removed because that display is no longer shown on desktop or on mobile.

Anyone who today justifies FAQ markup with a bigger listing has not checked for three years. Incidentally, the markup never changed the rank, only the look of the listing.

When it does hold. The markup in the source code does no harm, and it costs almost nothing to implement. The visible part matters more: an FAQ block with a real customer question as the heading and the answer in two sentences below it helps the person who wants to look something up quickly instead of calling. And that kind of section is exactly the format AI systems pull out of a page easily. But that is an argument for good content, not for a markup package on the invoice.

2. llms.txt, so the AI finds you

What gets sold. We put an llms.txt file on your server. That way ChatGPT and Perplexity understand your site and name you in their answers.

What is missing. The evidence. llms.txt was proposed by Jeremy Howard on 3 September 2024 and describes itself on its own page as a proposal to standardise, not as a standard. That page does not claim that any search engine or AI provider reads the file. To this day I know of no evidence that a major provider evaluates it, and I have found none showing the opposite either. A service whose effect nobody can prove does not belong on a quote.

When it does hold. The file takes a few minutes and does no damage. I create it on my own site because it is cheap and because it may be used one day. I do not bill for it, and I promise nothing with it. What actually counts in AI search is consistent details about your company, clear answer sentences and mentions outside your own website. I wrote that up in Get found in ChatGPT, and When GEO is not worth it covers the businesses for which the topic does not pay off at all.

3. Four posts a month

What gets sold. A subscription with a fixed number of blog posts per month, usually two or four, often with the addition that Google rewards fresh content.

What does not hold. This is my own experience, not a study. Posts with no real question behind them achieve nothing. I have written texts myself that nobody was searching for, and I have seen client blogs whose last post is two years old because once the subscription ended, nobody kept writing. Both cost money and bring no enquiries.

The fixed number is also a volume promise. It states how much gets delivered, not whether it is useful to anyone. A business with a clear catchment area often has only twelve to twenty questions that customers really ask. Once those are answered properly, you are through after six months. Writing four posts a month after that fills a contract, not a need.

When it does hold. If there is a question behind every text that people actually ask you on the phone, and if somebody updates the texts a year later, then it works. What does it cost, how long does it take, what is included in the price, who is responsible when something breaks. Pages like that keep working for years, for example the price question I bring up to date every few months: What a website costs in Switzerland.

4. Presence on every channel

What gets sold. A package for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and a newsletter, so that you are everywhere your customers are.

Why it is not sustainable. Every channel needs its own material, its own tone and somebody who answers comments and messages. In a business with five people, the owner does that in the evening, on top of the quotes still to be written. After three months one channel is still running, the other four sit online half dead and look as if you had given up. That is worse than no presence at all, because a profile whose last post is over a year old raises doubts.

On top of that comes the real bottleneck, which rarely appears in the sales conversation: the constraint is not the plan, it is the material. Without photos of your own work, the finest editorial plan has nothing to show.

When it does hold. One channel where your customers actually are, maintained rather than complete. For joineries, interior fit out and landscaping that usually means pictures of finished work, the before and the after, and the people who did it. It pays twice, because the same pictures also work for hiring and for finding apprentices, and in many businesses that shortage is bigger than the shortage of orders. For local businesses the most important channel is not social media anyway, but the Google Business Profile with current pictures and correct opening hours.

5. Guaranteed rankings on Google

What gets sold. Position 1 for your main keyword, guaranteed, or your money back. Sometimes phrased more softly as a top three guarantee or as a special relationship with Google.

Why it does not work. Google writes it in one sentence in its own guide for companies looking for an SEO: no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. In the same guide, Google warns explicitly about providers who claim to guarantee rankings or allege a special relationship with Google. And right at the start of that warning list stands the advice to be wary of firms that contact you out of the blue by email. That is exactly how most of these offers arrive.

The technical reason behind it is mundane: the order of results comes from the comparison with every other page on the same question, and those pages change constantly, as does Google’s own assessment. A provider can commit to their own work, but not to the behaviour of somebody else’s system, and certainly not to the behaviour of the competition. Where a guarantee is kept anyway, it usually hangs on a keyword nobody searches for in the first place, such as the company’s own name.

What a usable offer commits to instead is three things: which work gets done, by when it is done, and in what form you will afterwards see what changed. If those three points are in the quote, you can check them. A guarantee cannot be checked, only believed.

When it does hold. In no case. What does exist is paid advertising: there you can buy visibility for as long as you pay. That is a bought slot, not an earned rank, it stops the day you stop the budget, and honest providers say so.

What I sell myself, and where I got it wrong

So that this list does not read as an attack on others: I sell an SEO audit for CHF 1,200 once, ongoing support from CHF 290 a month, maintenance from CHF 79 a month with hosting included, hosting on its own for CHF 19, and hourly packages from CHF 800. On AI search I offer a GEO check from CHF 800. All of that is work with effort behind it, not a commitment about the order of somebody else’s list of results.

Two points where I had to correct my own reasoning. First, for years I also justified FAQ blocks with the display in Google. That justification has been void since 7 May 2026. I still build the blocks, but only with the argument that remains: people read them, and AI systems quote from them. Second, I have written posts because a topic list called for them, not because anyone had asked. They are still online and they achieve nothing. These days I only write about questions people actually put to me.

Three questions for checking an offer

These three questions are almost always enough, whether the topic is SEO, AI visibility or social media.

What exactly is the service, in hours or in finished results? Not “support”, but: how many hours per month, for which tasks, and what exists at the end.
How will we see in three months whether it works? The measure has to be fixed in advance, you have to be able to verify it yourself, and it must not consist of the provider’s own report alone. Enquiries and phone calls beat clicks.
What happens if it does not work? Can you cancel monthly, does it run for twelve months regardless, or does the provider rework it? Anyone who dodges this question has never asked it of themselves.

If you can only ask one of them on the phone, ask the second.

Conclusion

Four of these five points are not false, they are falsely justified, and in the right form they have their value. The fifth, the guaranteed ranking, has no case where it holds, and Google says so itself. An offer becomes checkable through work, a deadline and a report, not through a promise.

If you have such an offer in front of you and want a second opinion, send it to me through the contact form. I will look at it and tell you what holds, even when the answer is that you need none of it. I reply within one working day (Mon to Fri).

Sources

Google Search Central, documentation changelog, entry of 8 May 2026 (FAQ feature no longer appears in Google Search starting 7 May 2026) and entry of 15 June 2026 (documentation removed), developers.google.com/search/updates
Google Search Central, changelog entries of 14 September 2023 on HowTo (display discontinued on desktop and mobile) and on FAQ (only shown for well known, authoritative government and health websites)
Google Search Central Blog, “Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results”, 8 August 2023
llmstxt.org, proposal by Jeremy Howard, 3 September 2024
Google Search Central, “Do you need an SEO?”: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google”, developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo

Last checked: 9 August 2026.