SEO & AI-Search Audit · silvaris.com

A $250M business with the online footprint of a newcomer

Silvaris moves surplus building materials at national scale. In Google's organic results — and in the new AI answer engines that increasingly sit above them — almost none of that scale shows up. This report measures the gap with live data and lays out the plan to close it.

01 — Snapshot

Current standing

Every number here was pulled live from SEMrush for silvaris.com (United States) on Aug 14, 2026. These are directional search-intelligence estimates, not your own analytics — but they show the shape of the opportunity clearly.

1,919
Keywords you rank for
33
Rankings in the top 3
33 of 1,9191.7%
~1,401
Est. organic visits / mo
$1,855
Monthly value of that traffic
1,270
Keywords that trigger Google AI answers
0
Paid-search keywords

Source: SEMrush domain overview — silvaris.com (US database, live Aug 14, 2026). SEMrush Rank 881,579.

The gap in one picture

For a company this size, ~1,401 organic visits a month is a fraction of what the brand and catalog can command. Only 33 keywords — under 2% of everything Silvaris ranks for — actually sit in the top three spots where nearly all clicks happen. Meanwhile 1,270 of your search terms already show an AI-generated answer at the top of Google, and Silvaris is rarely the source being quoted. That is the single largest untapped channel in this report.

Where the 1,919 ranking keywords sit

Positions 1–3
33
page-one winners
Positions 4–10
80
one nudge from the top
Positions 11–20
228
page two — effectively invisible
Positions 21+
1,578
deep, untapped
1,919 total

Source: SEMrush domain overview — silvaris.com (US), Aug 14, 2026. The 308 keywords in positions 4–20 are the fastest wins: they already rank, they just need to move up.

Keyword, competitor and backlink detail need a live SEMrush seat
This snapshot uses domain-level figures. The keyword-by-keyword gap list, competitor comparison, and full backlink profile require an active SEMrush subscription on the account — included as a line item in the proposal so this data flows every month.
Included in plan

02 — Priorities

Top three moves

The highest-return work, in order. Full detail lives in the Technical and AI Visibility tabs.

1

Make the homepage fast

The homepage takes 9.2 seconds to show its main image and weighs 5.4 MB. Speed is both a ranking factor and the first thing a buyer feels. This is the clearest, most visible win.

Medium effort · High impact
2

Win the AI answers

1,270 of your terms already trigger an AI answer box. Adding FAQ and comparison markup — content you already have, just not machine-readable — is what gets Silvaris quoted instead of a competitor.

Low effort · Very high impact
3

Lift the 308 near-misses

308 keywords already rank on pages one–two (positions 4–20). Strengthening those pages and their internal links moves existing rankings up into the click zone — no new pages required.

Medium · High

Technical foundation

Site health

A live crawl of silvaris.com on Aug 14, 2026 — real page renders, not estimates. The foundation is sound: clean site plumbing and strong layout stability. The drag is weight and speed, and a handful of fixable on-page gaps.

Scorecard

What the crawl found

9.2s
Homepage main-image load (LCP)
5.4MB
Homepage page weight
131
Requests on the homepage
0.007
Layout shift (CLS) — excellent

Real lab metrics from a single unthrottled desktop render (headless Chromium, 1440×900). Google's field data (CrUX) and a formal Lighthouse score were unavailable — there is no verified Search Console property for silvaris.com yet (granting access is one of the client items in the plan). On a real phone these load numbers will be worse.

The homepage is slow and heavy
Its main image takes 9.2s to appear (Google calls anything over 4s "poor"), the page is 5.4 MB across 131 requests, and it is the slowest page to respond (~1s to first byte). Fix: compress and pre-load the hero image, serve modern image formats (WebP/AVIF), defer non-essential scripts, and cache the homepage. This is the #1 technical win.
Fix first
Every page is 5–6 MB with 120+ requests
Plywood 4.9 MB, Case Studies 6.4 MB — mostly uncompressed images plus third-party widgets. Fix: an image-compression pass and script cleanup will cut load times across the whole site at once.
Fix first
Two product and service pages have two H1 headings
Plywood, OSB Panels and Custom Services each use a second H1 for their FAQ section. Search engines expect one H1 per page. Fix: demote the second heading to an H2 — a five-minute change per page.
Action needed
Most images are missing descriptive alt text
The homepage has 27 images but only 3 with descriptive alt text; the plywood page, 5 of 23. This hurts accessibility, image search, and AI understanding of the page. Fix: add plain-language alt text to hero and product photos.
Action needed
A dead /resources/ URL and two menu links that go nowhere
The bare /resources/ address returns "not found", and the "Company" and "Resources" menu headers link to # even though a real /company/ page exists. Fix: point "Company" to /company/ and either build a /resources/ hub or remove the dead link.
Action needed
The homepage description is too long; two service pages are thin
The homepage meta description (199 characters) will be cut off in Google. Daily Deals (631 words) and Custom Services (787 words) are light for commercial pages. Fix: trim the description to ~155 characters; expand the two pages with process detail and FAQs.
Action needed

Speed & weight — three key pages (live render)

PageMain image (LCP)Layout shiftFirst byteRequestsTransfer
Homepage9.24s0.0071,015ms1315.4 MB
/products/plywood/3.02s0.001505ms1274.9 MB
/case-studies/5.05s0.005625ms1236.4 MB

On-page basics — six pages checked

PageTitleDescriptionH1sWordsCanonical
Homepage54 ✅199 ⚠️1 ✅1,135self ✅
/case-studies/58 ✅155 ✅1 ✅1,059self ✅
/products/plywood/35 ✅149 ✅2 ❌1,787self ✅
/products/osb-panels/42 ✅146 ✅2 ❌1,870self ✅
/services/custom-services/44 ✅147 ✅2 ❌787 ⚠️self ✅
/services/daily-deals/58 ✅156 ✅1 ✅631 ⚠️self ✅

Already correct

The foundation is solid

These are working well and need no attention — a genuinely healthy base to build on.

Clean site plumbing
One canonical address (http → https, www → non-www all redirect correctly), every page points to itself as the master copy, and the whole site is on HTTPS. Powered by WordPress with the Yoast SEO plugin; sitemap lists 258 pages.
Healthy
Search engines and AI crawlers are all welcome
The robots file allows every crawler, including AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and more). Nothing is accidentally blocked.
Healthy
Rock-solid layout stability
Pages barely shift as they load (CLS ≤ 0.007, well inside Google's "good" range) — a real strength most sites struggle with.
Healthy
Good baseline structured data
Organization, website, breadcrumb and page markup render on every page, and product pages carry proper Product + Brand + Offer data. This is a strong starting point to extend (see AI Visibility).
Healthy
Easy to navigate
Products, Services and Case Studies are all reachable in one to two clicks from the homepage — comfortably within best practice.
Healthy

AI search readiness

Getting cited by AI answers

Search is splitting in two. Alongside the classic list of blue links, Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and others now write a direct answer and cite a few sources. Traditional SEO gets you ranked; AI-search optimization (AIO) gets you quoted. Silvaris already has a head start here — and one big, easy win left on the table.

Readiness

Where Silvaris stands with AI

1,270
Your terms that show an AI answer
33
Top-3 rankings — so rarely the cited source
✓
llms.txt file already live
0
FAQ pages marked up for AI

"AI answer" counts from SEMrush (silvaris.com, US, Aug 14, 2026). Other findings from the live page crawl the same day.

An llms.txt file is already published — ahead of most B2B peers
Silvaris already serves a machine-readable summary for AI engines at /llms.txt (auto-generated by Yoast). Most competitors have nothing. Minor cleanup: a few characters render oddly (e.g. "Win\-Win") and two location labels are swapped. Quick fix, real head start.
Strength
Pages open with a clear, quotable answer
Each page starts with a self-contained definition an AI can lift verbatim — e.g. the homepage: "We simplify buying and selling semi-truckload quantities of Downfall building materials and surplus products." This is exactly the format AI engines prefer.
Strength
Your FAQs aren't machine-readable — the biggest miss
Product pages already have rich FAQ sections (the plywood page alone has 30 expandable questions) and there's a dedicated FAQ page — but none of it carries "FAQ" structured data. That markup is what feeds AI answers and rich Google results. Adding it is low effort and high return; it's the single biggest AI-search opportunity on the site.
Fix first
No comparison tables anywhere
There are zero comparison tables site-wide, even though the intent is obvious — the OSB page's own description mentions "OSB vs. plywood." Side-by-side tables are one of the most-cited formats in AI answers. Fix: add genuine comparison tables (grades, OSB vs plywood, use cases).
Action needed
Case studies and blog posts lack author and article markup
206 blog posts and the case-study library show little in the way of visible authors, credentials, or "article" markup. AI engines weight expertise signals heavily. Fix: add author bylines with credentials and mark case studies up as articles.
Action needed

Order of work

How we earn AI citations

Ranked by return. Research on what makes content get quoted by AI (Princeton's GEO study, KDD 2024) is clear: citing sources, adding statistics, and clear comparison content lift AI visibility the most — while keyword stuffing actively hurts.

1

Mark up every FAQ

Turn the FAQs you already have into "FAQ" structured data across product pages and the FAQ page. Fastest path to AI answers and rich results.

Low effort · Very high impact
2

Add comparison tables

Grade-by-grade and OSB-vs-plywood tables — a top format for getting quoted, and genuinely useful to buyers.

Medium · High
3

Strengthen expertise signals

Author bylines and credentials on blog and case-study content, plus article markup, so AI engines trust Silvaris as a source.

Medium · High
4

Polish the llms.txt

Fix the character glitches and swapped labels so the file you already publish reads cleanly to every AI engine.

Low · Medium

Engagement plan

How we close the gap

An ongoing program that improves how Silvaris shows up in both classic Google results and the new AI answer engines. The two overlap — a fast, well-structured, authoritative site wins in both — but each also needs its own dedicated work. Below is what the engagement covers and the three levels it comes in.

Two channels, one program

SEO and AI-search, side by side

Where they overlap
Site speed, clean structure, helpful content, credible links, and solid structured data lift both classic rankings and AI citations at the same time. Most foundation work pays off twice.
Where they differ
Classic SEO chases ranking positions and clicks. AI-search chases being the quoted source inside an answer — which rewards FAQ/comparison markup, machine-readable files, and third-party presence even when you're not #1.

What's included

The work we do each month

  • Technical SEO — speed, crawlability, fixes
  • On-page optimization — titles, headings, structure
  • Content production — new and improved pages
  • AI-search optimization — FAQ & comparison markup, llms.txt, answer-ready content
  • Digital PR & link building — earned authority
  • Competitor & keyword tracking (via SEMrush)
  • Structured-data / schema expansion
  • Monthly reporting in plain language

Choose your level

Three ways to engage

Same discipline, three intensities. Pricing is presented separately; this shows what each level includes so you can pick the pace that fits.

Foundation

Fix what's broken and build a healthy base.

  • Core technical fixes (speed, headings, links)
  • On-page optimization of key pages
  • Baseline AI-search setup (FAQ markup, llms.txt)
  • Light monthly content + link building
  • Monthly reporting
Aggressive

Push hard on growth across both channels.

  • Everything in Foundation
  • Higher content velocity
  • Full AI-search program (FAQ, comparison tables, expertise signals)
  • Competitor displacement on target terms
  • Expanded link building & digital PR
Recommended
Best Foot Forward

The full weight of the team, maxed for results.

  • Everything in Aggressive
  • Highest content & link velocity
  • Digital PR program for earned authority
  • Programmatic category & location pages at scale
  • Dedicated strategist + priority AI-answer capture
  • Paid-search alignment

Tools & media

Pass-through costs, billed at cost

A couple of outside services power the work. We pass these through at cost — no markup — separate from the monthly fee.

$300/moSEMrush subscription — keyword, competitor and rank data that feeds the whole program.
$750–$1,500/moBacklink acquisition through a vetted third-party provider — earned authority that lifts rankings and AI trust.

To get started

What we'll need from you

A short list to kick the engagement off on the right foot.

  • Your list of main competitors
  • A current products & services list
  • Access to your existing ad accounts
  • Any keywords you already want to target
  • Access to Google Search Console & Analytics (for accurate reporting)