Technical abilities

• AI search optimisation & content architecture [8/10]: Tanaya showed strong instincts about how AI models prioritise content, particularly when she explained that the first line should directly answer queries with no fluff, using simple vocabulary over complex language – she clearly understands AI platforms scan for direct answers rather than narrative storytelling. Building on this, her work on Ralph Lauren's heading hierarchy demonstrated she grasps how structural elements matter for AI crawlers, catching that H4s and H3s appearing before the H1 would confuse scanning systems. She also connected FAQ schemas to "People Also Ask" visibility and diagnosed Ralph Lauren's content gaps as the primary barrier to AI discovery, offering practical solutions like adding "Read More" sections that create scrapable content without compromising aesthetics. What's particularly promising is her awareness of the transition from traditional SEO to AI-driven search and her active testing across ChatGPT and Perplexity, which shows she's learning by doing rather than just reading about it.

• Structured data & technical implementation [7.5/10]: Her technical audit approach was methodical and practical, using Google's Rich Results Test tool to identify that whilst Ralph Lauren had core schemas like product and breadcrumbs, review and rating schemas were missing. Her reasoning was solid too, explaining that whilst Ralph Lauren doesn't need social proof for credibility, Google's algorithms don't understand brand reputation and will prioritise pages with ratings regardless. Beyond this, she caught a legitimate crawl budget issue with variant URLs where each product size had a different indexed URL despite pointing to the same canonical, which shows she connects traditional SEO efficiency to newer AEO requirements. Her FAQ schema suggestion came backed by competitive analysis using Gucci as an example, demonstrating she thinks strategically about structured data, and the way she bridged these implementations to both traditional search and AI discovery shows intelligent integration of old and new practices.

• AI-powered content production [7/10]: Tanaya demonstrated solid execution skills in keyword research and on-page optimisation, mentioning she looks for semantic variations rather than just repeating primary keywords to help AI platforms understand content covers multiple relevant queries. Her suggestions for "Read More" and FAQ sections showed she understands creating content clusters within pages, and her thinking about interlinking related collection pages demonstrated practical grasp of topical relationships. She clearly handles the volume of SEO activities well and can work across teams to understand rationales, which was evident when she thoughtfully considered how luxury brand audiences might search differently than general consumers, giving her a strong execution foundation to build more advanced entity work upon.

• Entity SEO & topical strategy [6/10]: Tanaya demonstrated solid execution skills in keyword research and on-page optimisation tactics, which came through when discussing the men's clothing page. She mentioned looking for related terms and semantic variations rather than just repeating the primary keyword, explaining that using different ways people search for the same concept helps AI platforms understand the content covers multiple relevant queries around the main topic. Her suggestions for "Read More" and FAQ sections showed she understands creating content clusters within pages, and her thinking about interlinking related collection pages demonstrated practical grasp of topical relationships. She clearly handles the volume of SEO activities well and can work across teams to understand rationales, which was evident when she thoughtfully considered how luxury brand audiences might search differently than general consumers, giving her a strong execution foundation to build more advanced entity work upon.

• Search behaviour analysis & performance tracking [7/10]: She's hands-on with standard SEO tools like Ahrefs, GSC, GA4, and Site Checker, using them with clear efficiency whilst handling reporting independently, despite numbers challenging her, which shows valuable self-awareness and determination. For Ralph Lauren, she ran searches across ChatGPT and Perplexity to check citation patterns, identifying that the brand appeared through third-party sources rather than directly, which demonstrates initiative to test multiple AI platforms. She can analyse data points effectively, understanding how to use Ahrefs to check for "People Also Ask" features, interpreting what missing schemas mean for performance, and connecting technical issues like crawl budget waste to potential traffic implications. Her suggestion to manually search for top-performing pages periodically showed practical thinking about monitoring visibility even without perfect tools. What's encouraging is her openness to exploring automations and her acknowledgement that she's still learning, suggesting she recognises where efficiency could improve and is willing to develop those skills.

Areas of growth