Position Zero Playbook — Start Here

What the Position Zero Playbook is now, the seven nav groups, and the order to read them in.

This is the Position Zero Playbook, the Spearleaf operating manual for ranking, getting cited, and growing. It started as the SEO Neo off-page manual (synthesized from the Clint Butler consulting sessions) and has grown well past that. It now covers high-level strategy, AI and LLM search visibility, runnable how-to playbooks, the SEO Neo software campaigns, tool-agnostic SEO craft, reference material, and a conference session library from SEO Spring Training 2026.

The SEO Neo material is still here, intact, in its own bucket. It is one tool inside a much larger playbook now, not the whole thing.

Start here, in order

If you are new, read along this spine:

1. Strategy — the decisions that come before any tactic: niche, national vs local, pricing, channels.
2. Rules — the scannable do/don't list and core principles.
3. AEO / get cited by AI — the AI bucket starts here: how to get cited by AI and LLM search.
4. Onboard a new client — the day-1 playbook for a fresh client, then stop and wait.
5. Weekly + Monthly — the recurring cadence loops once a client is live.
6. SEO Neo: Zero to Hero — when you are ready to run the software, start in the SEO Neo bucket.

Doing a specific job right now? Skip the spine and jump straight to its page via the nav, grouped by the seven subjects below.

The seven nav groups

The left nav is grouped by subject so you can find a job by what it is about.

• Start Here — this orientation page. Where you are now.
• Strategy — the high-level decisions: niche, national vs local, pricing, multi-location, plus agency-growth, off-page multichannel link strategy, digital PR / conversion / demand, and social + short video. Pages: strategy, rules, st-offpage-multichannel-links, st-agency-growth-and-ma, st-digital-pr-conversion-demand, st-social-and-short-video.
• AI — the dedicated AI bucket: AI and LLM search visibility plus AI agents and automation. Pages: aeo (get cited by AI), st-ai-search-visibility, entities-schema, st-ai-agents-and-automation.
• Playbooks — runnable how-tos, action-first checklists you can work top to bottom. Pages: onboard, publish, weekly, monthly, site-migration, gbp-reinstatement, digital-pr-sprint, llms-txt-stack.
• SEO Neo — the SEO Neo software campaigns: the desktop automation tool and its presets. Pages: zero-to-hero, setup, das, rd100, cloud, gbp, content-buckets, link-buying, network-safety, build-stack.
• SEO Craft — tool-agnostic SEO: on-page, anchors, schema, technical and migrations, local. Pages: on-page, anchors, schema, st-technical-onpage-and-migrations, st-local-seo-gbp.
• Reference — glossary, tooling, and the session-library overview. Pages: st-overview, glossary, tooling.

A seventh thread runs across the playbook: the Conference Sessions library from SEO Spring Training 2026. Those session writeups carry the st- prefix and are filed into the bucket that matches their topic (Strategy, AI, SEO Craft, Reference). Start at st-overview for the session-library index.

SEO Neo getting started (still accurate)

If your job right now is the SEO Neo software, the original getting-started sequence still holds:

1. Platform setup — the one-time setup (cloud API providers, spin, bios, NAP). Do this before anything else.
2. Onboard a new client — the day-1 sequence for a fresh client, then stop and wait.
3. Weekly + Monthly cadence — the recurring loops once a client is live.

What NEO actually is

SEO Neo is a desktop automation tool that runs on YOUR computer (Mac or Windows) and pushes backlinks to a fixed library of properties: cloud storage sites (S3, Backblaze, etc.), high-quality social bookmarking sites, Web 2.0 ring sites, profile sites, and PDF distribution sites. It is NOT a discovery tool. It hits the same network of properties over and over.

It has two surfaces:

• Wizards — fast preset campaigns (GBP Sniper, GBP Blast, RD100, Zero to Hero, Domain Authority Stacking).
• Diagram Editor — the underlying campaign builder where you copy a wizard's diagram, strip nodes, or build your own.

NEO has two jobs (at agency scale)

Everything else is either supporting infrastructure (cloud blog network, content buckets, NAP block, spin settings) or wizards that don't move the needle.

Realistic timeline expectations

• DAS / brand-knowledge-graph work: 1–2 weeks per DAS run; 2–3 months before the knowledge graph triggers.
• RD100 + cloud templates after publish: results in 2–8 weeks.
• GBP Blast / Sniper: weekly runs, grid movement after 4–8 weeks.
• National SEO with NEO alone: realistically a year. Case studies leave this part out.

Case studies that look like "I ran one campaign and ranked" are people who've run NEO consistently for a long time. Most users run two campaigns, see nothing move, and write off the software. Don't be that user.

Goal of the whole system

Build a brand entity Google recognizes, get cited by AI and LLM search, point a controlled flow of contextual backlinks at the client's money pages and GBP listings, then ride that flow with content actually structured to rank. Every action in this playbook serves one of these goals: entity, links, content, citations.

Each page carries a colored type chip so you know whether you're reading a quick checklist or a deep manual. Use the Changelog button to reach older archived versions.