How the diagnostic gets applied.
Every engagement starts with the same diagnostic question: which layer is failing? The case studies below are structured around that logic — constraint identified, intervention designed, outcome measured.
Case studies reference the diagnostic framework layers. Each engagement starts by identifying the binding constraint, not by executing a predefined playbook.
Banksparency
Live LabData Granularity as a Differentiation Strategy
The Live Lab
The Challenge
Proving that a low-authority challenger can compete against entrenched incumbents without link building or editorial investment — by engineering data granularity and designing against every layer of the diagnostic from the ground up.
The Intervention
Designed and built the full stack (Next.js, Supabase, automated data pipelines) with layer compliance as the architectural requirement. Layer 2: ISR rendering with no JS dependency for crawlers. Layer 3: page-level schema and entity disambiguation at template scale. Layer 6: structured answer formatting and primary data for AI retrieval. Layer 7 (Competition) is the active frontier — the architectural bet is data granularity as a differentiation strategy, capturing query windows where a low-authority challenger can compete before achieving authority parity on head terms.
Fortune Media
Programmatic Architecture at Publisher Scale
Director of Search Strategy
The Challenge
The binding constraint was the template architecture — a news-optimized CMS stack misrepresenting evergreen financial content (Layer 3 failure). Evergreen pages were carrying freshness signals designed for breaking news, causing rapid ranking decay. A secondary Layer 2 problem: valuable editorial hours were consumed manually fetching rate data that should have been automated. That approach later ran into Google's site reputation abuse policy changes — a useful forcing function that clarified what durable organic infrastructure actually requires.
The Intervention
Engineered a dedicated template set distinct from the news stack, resolving the representation mismatch. Established a data partnership (Curinos) to automate the rate-fetching pipeline, eliminating the manual Layer 2 bottleneck. Deployed programmatic internal linking to build topical authority and distribute link equity across the financial content cluster.
2U, Inc.
Stabilizing a 50-Domain Network
Sr. Technical SEO Analyst
The Challenge
The binding constraint was access and rendering performance across the multisite network (Layers 2–3). Core Web Vitals emerged as a ranking factor with no internal playbook. The WordPress multisite was cluttering the Critical Rendering Path across 50+ domains; the newly acquired edX platform faced parallel performance failures without a unified response.
The Intervention
Pioneered the organization's CWV defense strategy. Directly engineered the CRP cleanup for the multisite network. Served as technical consultant to the edX engineering team — implementing strict asset prioritization and a defensive review protocol to prevent regression. Layer 2 compliance was treated as a non-negotiable baseline across the full domain portfolio.
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