Barev! My name is Vahan

I make websites fast, findable and hard to break.

By day I'm Director of Technology at Search Engine Journal, a publication SEOs have read since 2003. I look after its technical SEO, site speed, analytics, servers and security.

Lately I spend most of my time on AI. I've built more than a dozen AI systems that run in production: they triage the news, review drafts, research sales leads, build reports and watch for security holes. A person signs off on anything that matters.

I studied theoretical physics at Yerevan State University, I report WordPress vulnerabilities through Wordfence, and I write about all of it for SEJ.

I also take on a few consulting projects. If your site needs an audit, a rebuild or less manual work, let's talk.

Work with me What I do

Vahan Petrosyan, a bald man in a blue polo shirt, smiling slightly

Credits Search Engine JournalDirector of Technology, 32 articles WordfenceWordPress vulnerability research Yerevan State UniversityTheoretical physics

Consulting

I take a few projects at a time and do the work myself.

SEO and GEO audits

A check of how Google and AI assistants read your site. I look at crawling, indexing, speed, structured data, internal links and analytics, then at whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI answers can reach, understand and cite your pages. You get a ranked list of fixes, each with the reason behind it.

Crawl and server-log review, AI crawlers included
Core Web Vitals and rendering checks
AI answer visibility across the major assistants
A prioritized fix list your developers can act on

Background: I wrote SEJ's guides to AI crawler user agents, robots.txt, redirects, LCP and CLS.

AI readiness

A review of whether your website and your team are ready for AI-driven search and AI tools. It covers which bots you let in, how your content and schema read to answer engines, the security risks AI brings to a website, and which internal tasks are worth automating first. It ends with a short plan ordered by payoff.

AI crawler and bot access policy
Content and schema structure for answer engines
Security review: scrapers, fake bots, plugin risk
An automation shortlist with effort and payoff

Background: running AI in production at a publisher, and my research on how AI is changing website security.

Website development

Fast, secure WordPress and static sites, with SEO built into the templates from day one. I write custom themes and plugins, migrate sites without losing traffic, fix performance and harden security.

Custom WordPress themes and plugins
Migrations with redirect maps and HTTPS done right
Performance and Core Web Vitals work
Security hardening and monitoring

Background: I run the technical side of Search Engine Journal's WordPress site and report WordPress vulnerabilities through Wordfence.

AI workflow automation

Automations that take repetitive work off your team. AI agents research, draft, classify, report and update your tools, and a person approves anything that leaves the building. I build on what you already use, such as Slack, WordPress, HubSpot, GA4 and Google Workspace, and host it where you control it.

Process mapping and a pilot on one workflow
Slack-based agents with human approval
Integrations with your CRM, CMS and analytics
Monitoring, cost tracking and handover docs

Background: more than a dozen of my automations run in production at SEJ, from newsroom triage to invoicing.

Things I've built

A few of the systems I've designed, built and run. Most of them live in Slack, where the team already works.

Newsroom triage: Screens about 190 news links a day, routes the relevant ones to the right editor in Slack, and prepares a fact-checked WordPress draft once an editor approves. People publish.
Editorial review: Four specialist AI passes review contributor articles from a sidebar inside the WordPress editor.
Search visibility alerts: Hourly, per-article alerts for Google Search, Discover and News, with AI title suggestions applied in one click.
AI answer tracking: Tracks how six AI answer engines mention and cite a brand over time.
Security watch: Checks 356 advisory sources against every plugin and package in use and flags what needs patching.
Sales research: Finds, enriches and scores prospects, then posts a daily top-10 outreach plan that the sales team approves in Slack.
Social distribution: Posts each new article to LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads.
Back office: Turns won deals into QuickBooks estimates and reconciles subscription payments against Stripe every day.
Slack agents: A marketing assistant, a research agent and a sandboxed coding agent that take requests in Slack and wait for sign-off before anything ships.

Built on Google Cloud with Claude, OpenAI and Gemini models, connected to the tools the team already uses.

Writing

32 articles for Search Engine Journal on technical SEO, analytics, AI and WordPress. Some of the most useful:

All 32 articles on SEJ

Questions people ask me

What is a GEO audit?

GEO, or generative engine optimization, is about being found and cited in AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews. A GEO audit checks whether AI crawlers can reach your pages, whether your content answers questions in a form they can quote, and where you are cited today.

How is a GEO audit different from an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is about ranking in classic search results. The two overlap a lot, because crawlable, fast, clearly written pages help both, so I usually run them together and point out where they differ, such as AI crawler access and citation tracking.

What do I get from an AI readiness review?

A short written plan: which AI bots to allow or block, what to change in your content and schema, which security risks to close, and which workflows to automate first, ordered by payoff.

Can you automate work across Slack, HubSpot or WordPress?

Yes. Most of what I build lives in Slack and talks to tools like WordPress, HubSpot, GA4, Search Console, Asana and Google Workspace. If a tool has an API, it can usually be part of the workflow.

Do your automations replace people?

No. They gather, draft and check, and a person approves anything that matters. Every system I run works that way.

Do you only work with WordPress?

WordPress is where I have the most experience, but I also build static and Next.js sites and work with any stack that has an API.

How do we start?

Send me a message on LinkedIn with your site and what's not working. I'll tell you whether I can help and what a sensible first step looks like.

Let's talk

The quickest way to reach me is a LinkedIn message. Tell me about your site and what you want fixed or automated.

Message me on LinkedIn X @vahandev Bluesky