A client came to me with a WordPress site: 500 published pages, and not a single meta description on any of them.

How does that even happen?

Easier than you’d think. Content gets published fast, plugins change, someone assumes someone else is handling it. Years go by. And the whole time, Google is writing their search snippets for them — pulling whatever sentence the algorithm feels like from each page.

The meta description is what people see in the search results. It’s your one line of ad copy on the most valuable page on the internet. Leaving it blank is handing your pitch to an algorithm.

The quote this client had gotten to fix it manually was a week of someone’s time. Open a page, write a description, save, repeat — 500 times.

I did it in about an hour. Here’s the exact play.

The Mistake: Sending AI to Crawl the Website

The obvious approach is to give an AI tool the site URL and say “go read every page and write descriptions.”

I tried the crawling route first, and I’ll save you the trouble: it’s the slow way, and it’s the unreliable way.

Crawling a live website means fighting caching plugins, pagination, and whatever else sits between the AI and the content. Pages get missed. Stale cached versions get read instead of current ones. And at the end, you still have a wall of text you have to paste into WordPress one page at a time.

The crawl wasn’t the shortcut. It was the detour.

The Real Secret: Upload the Database

Here’s the move that changes everything: skip the website and hand the AI the WordPress database.

Export it from phpMyAdmin and upload the file to Claude. Now the AI isn’t peeking at the site through a browser window. It’s holding the whole thing. Every published page, the complete content of each one, the exact page IDs, the exact table names.

Nothing gets missed. Nothing gets guessed. All 500 pages were enumerated in seconds, in order, with their publish dates.

Is it safe to share a client’s database export? Treat it the way you’d treat any client asset handed to a contractor: get permission, handle it carefully, delete it when you’re done. But for the job of reading the site’s own content, nothing sees the data that you didn’t hand it directly.

Give Instructions Like You’d Brief a Copywriter

The quality of the descriptions comes down to the quality of the brief. Vague in, vague out. Here’s roughly what I gave it:

Write a unique meta description for every published page.

• • Under 155 characters, so nothing gets cut off in the search results

• • Primary keyword at the front

• • Written to earn the click — this is what people see in the search results, so give them a reason to choose this result over the others

• • No generic summaries; every description should make a specific promise the page keeps

• • Any number or claim must come from the actual page content — verify it

That last line matters more than people think. When a page is built on a specific claim, the description should carry that exact claim — because the AI checked the content instead of inventing a rounder number.

Then I reviewed every description before anything touched the site. That review is your job, and it’s the step you never skip. On a 500-page site it was most of my hour. The AI writes fast; you still decide what represents the client.

The Step That Saves the Week: Import, Don’t Paste

Here’s where most people leave the time savings on the table. They get their list of descriptions and then… paste them into WordPress. Five hundred round trips through the editor.

Don’t do that. Ask for an import file instead.

Because the AI had the actual database, it knew exactly which tables to write and produced one SQL file that updates every page at once. Run it through phpMyAdmin’s Import tab. One upload. Done.

And do this the smart way: test on one page first. I had it generate a separate file that updated a single page, ran that, verified the description showed up correctly, and only then imported the other 499. AI writing your SQL doesn’t mean you skip the discipline. Test one, verify, then run the batch.

A Bonus I Didn’t Ask For

While the AI was reading through the database, it flagged something I hadn’t asked about: a dating error in one of the articles — a year reference that had sailed past everyone who’d ever read the page. The fix went into the same import file.

That’s the quiet advantage of giving the AI the full picture instead of fragments. It sees the things you’d only catch by rereading everything — and nobody rereads 500 pages.

The Playbook

1. Export the WordPress database from phpMyAdmin
2. Upload the file to Claude
3. Brief it like a copywriter: under 155 characters, keyword first, written for the click, claims verified against the content
4. Review every description yourself
5. Ask for a SQL import file — test it on one page, then run the rest

500 pages. One review. One import. About an hour.

The descriptions were never the hard part. The hard part was 500 trips through an admin screen — and that part is over.

The post How to Bulk Update Meta Descriptions in WordPress with AI (In About an Hour) appeared first on Richard Cummings.

There’s a constant debate right now:

Which AI actually writes the best content?

Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a favorite. And everyone is usually defending the tool they use the most.

So instead of guessing… I went straight to the source.

I asked Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini the exact same question:

“Based on 2026 evidence, which AI creates the best written content for blog posts?”

What happened next was unexpected.

They all gave the same answer.

The 2026 Consensus: Claude Leads in Writing Quality

Across all three platforms — and backed by independent testing — the conclusion is remarkably consistent:

Claude is currently the strongest AI for high-quality, human-like writing.

This isn’t hype. It’s what the data, comparisons, and even competing models are pointing to.

According to recent 2026 analysis:

• Claude produces more natural, human-sounding prose
• It is best-in-class for voice matching
• It avoids the common AI clichés and robotic phrasing
• It maintains tone and structure across long-form content

In blind testing scenarios, Claude consistently outperforms alternatives in perceived writing quality and readability. It also has one of the lowest AI-detection rates, meaning the content feels more authentic from the start.

Why Claude Wins (Especially for Professional Content)

The biggest differentiator isn’t just “better writing.”

It’s how Claude handles nuance.

Give it a writing sample, and it doesn’t just mimic tone — it adapts to your rhythm, sentence structure, and style in a way that feels natural.

For example:

If you ask for a blog introduction that is:

• Consultative
• Direct
• Free of buzzwords
• Structured for a specific audience

Claude tends to hit all constraints cleanly.

Other models often get close… but miss one or two elements.

That difference matters — especially when you’re publishing content under your own name or brand.

Where ChatGPT Still Dominates

This doesn’t mean ChatGPT isn’t valuable. It absolutely is.

In fact, in many workflows, it’s still the most versatile tool available.

ChatGPT excels at:

• Outlining and structuring content
• Brainstorming ideas quickly
• Iterative editing and refinement
• Generating variations (headlines, CTAs, hooks)

Its “Canvas” workflow in 2026 makes it one of the best collaborative writing environments.

But when it comes to final prose?

It still tends to leave a recognizable “AI fingerprint.”

Where Gemini Fits In

Gemini has carved out a different role.

It’s not trying to be the most “human” writer.

It’s trying to be the most informed.

With its deep integration into Google’s ecosystem and massive context window, Gemini is incredibly strong at:

• Research-heavy content
• Data-backed writing
• Referencing real-time information

The tradeoff?

Its writing often feels more functional than expressive.

The Real Takeaway: AI Isn’t Competing — It’s Specializing

The most interesting part of this experiment wasn’t who won.

It was the agreement.

All three leading AI platforms pointed to the same conclusion.

That’s not something you see often in tech.

And it signals something bigger:

We’re moving out of the “which AI is best?” phase…

And into the “which AI is best for what?” phase.

Where This Actually Matters for Businesses

This isn’t just an interesting AI debate.

It directly impacts how businesses show up in search — and increasingly, how they show up in AI-generated answers.

If your content sounds generic, templated, or “AI-written,” it’s far less likely to rank… and even less likely to be cited in tools like ChatGPT or Google’s AI results.

This is exactly where most companies are falling behind right now.

If you’re thinking about how to actually apply this — from content strategy to AI visibility — I’ve broken down how I approach it here:

B2B SEO + AEO Consulting — How to Show Up in Google and AI Answers

The opportunity right now isn’t just better content.

It’s being one of the few brands that AI systems consistently trust, reference, and surface.

How I’d Actually Use Them (2026 Workflow)

If you’re creating serious content right now, the optimal setup looks something like this:

• Claude → Writing, tone, and final drafts
• ChatGPT → Structure, iteration, and ideation
• Gemini → Research, data, and validation

Each one plays a role.

But if your goal is high-quality, publish-ready writing that actually sounds like you…

Claude is the current leader.

Final Thought

I didn’t pick a winner.

They did.

If your brand isn’t showing up in AI-generated answers yet, that’s not a future problem — it’s already happening now.

Here’s how I’m helping companies fix that.

The post I Asked the Top 3 AI Platforms Who Writes the Best Content. They All Gave the Same Answer. appeared first on Richard Cummings.

On paper, these companies are winning. They own the #1 spots on Google for their most expensive keywords. Their SEO teams are probably high-fiving in the breakroom.

But then I looked at the “Answer Engines.”

When I asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini to recommend a leader in their categories, these $30 billion titans were nowhere to be found. They were being “ghosted” by the very AI models that now drive 50% of B2B research.

It’s a bizarre feeling to watch a household name become a “ghost in the machine” simply because their data doesn’t have the right handshake with the models.

The “Search War” is over. We’re in the “Answer War” now. If you aren’t being cited, you don’t exist.

I just published a deep dive on how this “Identity Gap” is erasing category leaders over at The SEO System. If you’re a CMO watching your “guaranteed” traffic vanish, you might want to give it a read.

Why Am I Not #1 on ChatGPT?

The post Winning the Search War, Losing the Answer War… appeared first on Richard Cummings.

For twenty years, Google’s job has been to say: “Here are ten blue links. Good luck picking the best one.” It was a choice engine.

But in 2026, the AI Personal Assistant has taken over. Now, the user says, “Tell me which CRM I should buy,” and the AI says: “Here is the answer.”

It doesn’t give you options. It gives you a recommendation.

This “Personal Assistant Pivot” changes everything for B2B brands. If you aren’t the one the AI chooses to recommend, you don’t even get to be an “option” anymore. You’re just… gone.

I’ve been documenting this shift and how to optimize for it through Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). I put together a full breakdown of how to survive this transition over at The SEO System.

Check it out for more detail on the topic > The Personal Assistant Pivot: Optimizing for AI Search

The post Google vs. AI: “Here are your options” vs. “Here is the answer” appeared first on Richard Cummings.

Several years ago, I was working with one of the top technical consulting firms on a large scale network implementation.  The firm had heard rumblings that the project was not going well and brought me in to determine if the rumors were in fact true.  The company, after speaking with the respected lead project manager, concluded that these murmurs were probably unfounded but they needed to be sure given the large financial numbers involved and the importance of the client.

Though my assignment was with this particular networking project, the first thing that I did was investigate the project management methodologies of this particular consulting company.  How did they recruit and train their project managers?

In this particular case, the technical consulting firm structured their employee development into two tiers:  the management tier and the technical tier.  The project managers received project management training and the technical employees attended technical classes according to the needs of the company.

This gave me an inkling as to what the problems could be, if in fact there were any problems.

Rather than first speak with the project manager, I elected to talk to each of the technical people.  These people are the foundation of the project and I needed their perspective.  With more than 45 technical personnel being charged out at a substantial daily rate, the project was near budget and due for completion within two weeks.

After speaking with these employees, their collective response was essentially this:

“My part of the project is going fine.”  Do you think this project will be completed within the two week timeframe? “Not a chance!”

The rumors of project disarray turned out to be true, alarmingly so.  So, what exactly was happening?  Where and when did the train go off the tracks?

As sometimes happens in these cases–when a technology project is managed by a non-technical manager–there was nobody overseeing the whole of the technical side of the project.

To be sure, the project began with a solid technology plan.  All of the technical personnel had their tasks and objectives to achieve and were doing so.  However, no high-level technology roadmap is achieved without significant detours.  It is these detours that were causing the unraveling of the project.

While the project manager was checking off the “items completed”, the whole was crumbling and he did not know it.   The technical people knew it but did not express it to him for fear of upsetting the project manager.

In the end, we solved the problem by implementing someone to oversee the technical whole but not without significant delays that compromised both the relationship with the client and the budget.

This example is just one of many which begs the question:  Should managers of technology projects be technical themselves?

There is no certain answer to this question.

As we see in this case, a technology competent manager would probably have realized that the whole was being compromised and he or she would have made changes to accommodate this.  A well-schooled and experienced project manager, with minimal technical awareness, may have been able to come to the same conclusions if he or she had a strong working relationship with those charged with fulfilling the project.

One thing is clear in this matter:  Every project needs a technical lead with the ability to ascertain and report the status of a project.  If that person is also the project manager (which is often the case on smaller project), that is fine.  However, if the project is on a larger scale as this one was, the project requires both a technical project lead and an overall project manager who work in tight conjunction with one another.

The post Technical Project Management: Should Technical Project Managers Be Technical? appeared first on Richard Cummings.

There are two characteristics that make someone a great technical trainer:  Most trainers have the first one covered.  The second characteristic is one that distinguishes you from the rest.

The first characteristic is self evident:  a fascination with technology.  Obviously, if you are considering a career as a technical trainer, you should be someone who is intrigued and passionate about technology.

This does not mean that you have to be someone who spent everyday in front of a keyboard from the moment that you learned how to type.  In fact, when we discover the second characteristic, you will learn that these people who do nothing but sit in front of their computers all day often do not make great technical trainers.

How do you know if you have a “fascination” with technology?  It is often defined by a curiosity, amazement, and inquisitiveness about what technology does and by always wanting to know more.  For example, if you have ever asked yourself a question like, “How does email get from one place to the other?” and then sought the answer out of sheer curiosity, you have this fascination.

The second characteristic of a great technical trainer is in large demand and in short supply.  If you have it, you will be better than 90% of your contemporaries.

I will share this characteristic through two examples:  one negative and one extremely positive.

When I was just out of college and hired to work in the networking department for one of the largest consulting firms in the world, I was selected to attend a one-week class on something called the OSI Model, the theoretical model from which all computer networking is derived.

Do you know what the professor did?  He read, almost directly, from the text books that we were given.  He was not unenthused but he added little value beyond what could be found in the text. It was, perhaps, the most boring week of my life.

One year later, this same company was sending everyone to a class to learn the foundations of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.  At the time, this was Microsoft’s new networking platform and the company wanted everyone to get familiar with it.

Guess what the topic was the first day?  The OSI Model…again.  The instructor was required to begin with the OSI Model so that students would understand the foundations of networking before he delved into the intricacies of the new Microsoft operating system.

As I resigned myself to another week of dreadful boredom, the teacher began the class this way:  “Ok, everyone, I want you to take your books and close them.  This-the OSI Model–is a theoretical topic, but the problem with theories is that you can’t touch them.  Today, we are going to touch a theory!”

During that week of class, I learned more from this teacher than I learned from any previous technical classes.  He obviously had trait number one to be a great technical trainer-a fascination with technology, but he also had the second characteristic that most technical trainers don’t have:  the ability to communicate ideas in an exciting manner.

A great technical trainer is often someone who, like the students he or she teaches, has divergent interests.  This trainer talked to everyone, find out what their interests were, and used real-world analogies to which everyone could relate.

So, do you have what it takes to become a great technical trainer?

Well, if you have the “fascination” with technology, you’re off to a good start.  But if you have the ability to communicate this to a room full of people, you can distinguish yourself in the field.

The post A Career in Technical Training: Is It For You? appeared first on Richard Cummings.

If you would like to hire me as a web content producer/writer, just fill in this contact form and let’s have a conversation.

General Industry Articles:

On-Page SEO Optimization In 2019: How to Get the #1 Spot in Google with Great On-Page SEO!: With some quick on-page SEO optimization, you can get to the top of Google using these 7 techniques.

Content Creation vs Marketing: How I Increased Blog Traffic 3000% Using the Pareto Principle!: Have you heard of the Pareto Principle as it applies to online marketing and web promotion? If not, this article may be the key to unlocking the organic traffic you rightly deserve.

9 Powerful Blog Title Generators That Drastically Increase Click-Thrus!: Today, we bring you our updated 2020 reviews of the top 9 most powerful blog title generators on the market.

Managing Social Media Accounts: Business vs Personal: In this article, we are going to look at social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn and ask the question: Should you mix business and pleasure?

A Career in Technical Training: Is It For You?: Not everyone is cut out to be a great technical trainer. In fact, the industry is littered with sub-par technical trainers who do little more than recite text from a book. The industry needs great trainers, but is it a career that is right for you?

Project Management: Creating Self-Managed Employees: In this article, we will examine how to create self-managed employees. We will look at how to motivate employees to get the job done by having the employees tell us what they are going to get done.

SEO: The Seven Deadly Sins: SEO seems relatively easy at first, but danger lurks around every corner. One false step–one SEO mistake–and all of your SEO work vanishes into a de-indexing or the dreaded Google sandbox. Early Christians defined the Seven Deadly Sins that one should not commit lest they burn in the fiery pits. In this article, we’ll explore the Seven Deadly Sins of Search Engine Optimization.

Technology Tips & How-Tos:

The 10-Step HTTPS/SSL WordPress Upgrade [2020 Edition]: I am going to give you the exact instructions on how to upgrade your WordPress website to SSL in under 3 hours AND in just 10 easy steps.

PHP/MySQL: How To Query Date in DateTime Field: In this quick technical solution post, I will tell you how to query a date from a datetime field in PHP.

How To Password Protect a Subdirectory When WordPress Is Installed: In this article, I will tell you how to password protect a subdirectory when you have WordPress installed in your root directory.

WordPress: How To Order WordPress Categories: One of the problems that many people run into with WordPress is the order of their categories. In this article, I will tell you how to arrange your WordPress categories using the WordPress “My Category Order” plugin.

White Paper:

On-Page SEO: How To Implement On Page Search Engine Optimization To Achieve The Best Search Engine Results: This white paper presents an all-encompassing look at on page search engine optimization–the art and science of structuring your web pages so that they have the greatest chances of appearing naturally in the search engine results.

Other:

I also write on technical matters and beyond for various online publications. Here are several writing samples:

Kiwi.com Review: My Experience Using Kiwi.com (Is it Legit?): Is Kiwi.com legit? In this review of the travel website Kiwi.com, I’ll share my experience with you: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

YouTube TV Review: Is it worth it? Better than cable?: In this 2022 YouTube TV Review, I will answer pivotal questions like: At $64.99 per month, is YouTube TV still worth it? Is it better than cable? And much more…

How Much Should I Weigh For My Age And Height: If you want to know the answer to this question, this article will tell you how much you should weigh for your age and height.

Income Equality and Standard of Living | Are you Better Off if Your Neighbors Aren’t?: In this article, we will take a look at countries with high income equality AND inequality and ask the question: Between these two, which leads to a better standard of living for the whole?

The 2020 Presidential Election: For Whom I Voted and Why: Every year since 2008, I’ve written a For Whom I Voted And Why piece. I confess — this year I’m completely baffled.

What Can I Do On The Internet When I’m Bored: Because I know well how SEO works, sometimes I write articles to mirror Google searches and generate lots of traffic. When I realized that many people search for “I’m Bored” on Google, I wrote this ironic/fun article which has generated more than 1,000,000 visitors, many Facebook “likes”, and lots of interesting comments.

How to use Google Translate [The Ultimate 2021 Guide!]: In this post, I’m going to show you how to use Google Translate on your computer and the Google Translate app on your phone and tablet.

How To Calculate A Golf Handicap [2020 Edition]: On this page, we will explain in detail how to calculate a golf handicap.

The post Richard Cummings – Writing Portfolio appeared first on Richard Cummings.

I work with string manipulation in PHP quite a bit and remembering the little nuances can be a challenge. And, often the returned searches in Google are absolutely incorrect or outdated. For example, I just Googled “PHP return first character of string” and received non-answers and, even worse, extremely long pontifications from people at stackoverflow.com that were patently wrong or way too complex than needed to be.

So, I write these quick little posts for both of us so that we can quickly remember. Here is how to quick truncate a PHP string to the first character.

Return First Character of a String in PHP

The PHP code to return the first character uses the PHP substr syntax. The syntax is explained in the sample below:

// this file shows how to remove the first character of a string
// you can upload it to your server to see exactly how it works

$fname = "Richard";
$fname1=substr($fname,0,1); // return the first character (0) of the string and only return 1 character
echo "The first character of the string is <b>$fname1</b>."

?>
[/php]

I hope this helps someone out there trying to achieve the same. Want another little tidbit of wisdom on the first character of a string? Check out this post entitled PHP Delete First Character In String where I also offer some string challenges

The post PHP: Return First Character of a String appeared first on Richard Cummings.

The Problem: Effective HTML in Emails

Most websites now-a-days use CSS to style their web pages and, in doing so, they typically call an external style.css file.

Ideally, you could then structure all of your company emails to have the look and feel of your website. However, despite vast advances in technology, email programs lag behind…their ability to effectively render any fancy HTML or read external stylesheets is dismal.

The Solution: Convert External CSS to Inline (on-page) CSS

Though fancy CSS styling in emails is progressing at a snails pace, it IS possible to configure your emails to look very nice using HTML with inline CSS–that is, implementing CSS directly within the email.

So, short of starting from scratch and recreating your whole website look and feel with raw inline CSS, what can you do?

Fortunately, there are tools you can use to convert your external CSS file into inline CSS. These tools will call your external css file and incorporate the inline CSS into a new file. The best way to use these tools is to first create your ideal email template (with external CSS) and then use that as the “input” URL that these tools will use.

I am going to present two of these tools that convert to inline CSS and I recommend that you try them both, though I tell you which I selected.

The two tools are the HTML Email Inline Styler and the CSS Inliner Tool.

I tried both of these and my preference was the first, the HTML Email Inline Styler. It did a much better job of effectively converting the CSS from my style.css file.

Converting External to Internal CSS Example

Would you like to see a finished product of this in action?

Visit my #1 SEO and Social Media Software homepage where I have a free 14 page whitepaper just for you entitled: “On-Page SEO: How To Implement On Page Search Engine Optimization To Achieve The Best Search Engine Results”. When you signup for it, you will be emailed a copy of the guide and the email is the one that I produced using the HTML email inline styler mentioned above.

Conclusion: Using CSS and HTML in Emails

Remember, unlike websites, all email programs treat HTML very differently and many email programs, by default, will not show a good portion of your HTML, like photos.

Thus, even though you have now learned how to convert external CSS to inline, on-page CSS, you still may not want to overdo it as many email clients will not render nearly the same image that you see in the browser.

The post Convert External CSS to On-Page (Inline) CSS for Emails appeared first on Richard Cummings.

The reasons for doing this are numerous. Many use this referring information for statistical analysis while others use it to perform a particular action. If visitor came from xxx.com, then do this.

By the way, it looks like you came directly to this page. How do I know? Well, that is what this post is about so read on!“;

}

else {

$myhost = $url[‘scheme’].”://”.$url[‘host’];

echo “By the way, it looks to me that you have come here from $myhost! That could be valuable information for a website owner, no? How do I know from whence you came? Well, that is what this post is about so read on! “;

}
?>

Whatever your reasons, let’s take a look at how to accomplish this. It’s just a few simple lines of code that I have included, with comments, below:

PHP Code For Determining Referring URLs & Extracting Domain Names

}
[/php]

Conclusion: Capturing Referring URLs

I tried to comment the code above so that you would see what each line is doing. To test this out immediately, simply copy the code into your favorite text editor, give it a PHP extension, upload it to your server, and play around with it.

Obviously, this article assumes some base PHP knowledge but I hope that is has been helpful to some out there who are trying to extract referring URLs. If you have any questions, ask them below and I will try to answer them if time permits.

Cheers,
Richard

The post PHP: Capture Referring URL And Truncate It To Domain Name appeared first on Richard Cummings.