Internal page. Set to No Index in super.so. This is the strategy memo; the Directions page is the operating manual.

The thesis

wiki.paulmaxwell.dev is not a blog. It is a structured knowledge graph of philosophy, career, and deconversion ideas, with a narrative layer (Stories), a learning layer (Courses/Katas/Exercises), and a monetization layer (Offerings) layered on top of the same source-of-truth entities.

The entire strategy follows from one structural bet: in a world where AI search is replacing keyword search, structured, internally-linked, primary-source-citing wikis are the highest-leverage content format that an individual can produce. They compound for humans (SEO), for LLMs (citations), and for the author (every new page makes every previous page slightly better).

This document explains how to play that bet well.

The three audiences

Every page is written for three readers simultaneously. Order matters.

1. The human reader searching for a real answer. They click, they skim the first paragraph, they decide whether to stay. If we lose them here, nothing else matters.
2. The LLM that may cite this page in an AI-generated answer (ChatGPT search, Claude search, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews). LLMs reward clear structure, plain definitions, explicit citations, and unambiguous claims.
3. The search engine crawler that needs the slug, the title, the H1, the meta description, the internal link graph, and the schema.org markup to rank the page.

All three want the same things: a tight definition up top, a clear structure, and primary-source citations. Writing well for humans = writing well for LLMs = writing well for SEO. The strategy is not a compromise between them; it's their intersection.

Architecture: hub-and-spoke at every layer

The wiki uses hub-and-spoke organization at three nested layers:

Layer 1: Pillar Concepts (the hubs)

A small, intentional set of ~25–40 Pillar concepts anchor the entire site. Each Pillar concept is a 2,000–4,000 word foundational entry that:

• targets a head-term search query (what is virtue, what is stoicism, philosophy of mind)
• becomes the destination that satellite concepts link into
• is the page LLMs are most likely to cite for that topic
• is the page Offerings cluster around

Layer 2: Satellite Concepts (the spokes)

Orbit each Pillar with 8–15 satellite Concepts: more specific, more recent, more contested, or more applied variants of the Pillar idea. Each satellite is 800–1,500 words and links up to its Pillar plus across to related satellites. Satellites target long-tail queries that are easier to rank for and bring in qualified, specific-intent traffic.

Layer 3: Stories (the narrative bridges)

Stories are the most distinctive thing on this site, and the highest-leverage layer for both SEO and brand. A Story is a 1,500–3,500 word narrative essay that threads multiple Concepts + Figures + Publications into the actual telling of how an idea moved through time. Examples:

• How the Stoics Inherited and Inverted Heraclitus
• The Republic's Second Life: Reading Plato Through Christian Theology
• Why Kierkegaard Wrote in Disguise
• Career Strategy in the Margins of Aurelius

Stories are what set this wiki apart from Wikipedia, SEP, and IEP. They are the page a reader sends to a friend. They are also a structural SEO weapon: each Story passes link equity to 5–7 cluster pages at once.

Pillar concept taxonomy (proposed)

The Pillar set should be approved by Paul before going long. Below is the recommended first cut.

Philosophy pillar (15 Pillar concepts)

• Virtue / Aretê — the master concept of ancient ethics
• Eudaimonia — human flourishing as the aim of a life
• Logos — reason, word, order, the rational structure of reality
• Dialectic — reasoning through opposition
• Substance — what fundamentally exists
• Form / Idea — the Platonic vs. Aristotelian fight
• Causation — the four causes and their modern collapse
• Knowledge (Epistēmē) — the conditions of knowing
• Justice — from Republic to Rawls
• Free Will — the longest-running unresolved problem in Western thought
• Mind–Body Problem — how thinking relates to matter
• The Good — normative grounding across traditions
• The Self — personal identity, persistence, narrative
• Faith — the structure of belief beyond evidence
• Truth — correspondence, coherence, pragmatic

Career pillar (8 Pillar concepts)

• Leverage — the asymmetry between input and outcome
• Positioning — distinct value in a contested market
• Compounding — inputs whose returns curve up over time
• Optionality — the value of preserved choice
• Decision Under Uncertainty — how to choose when you can't know
• Skill Stacking — the rare combination beats the deep specialty
• Reputation — the long memory of markets and networks
• Asymmetric Bets — small downside, large upside

Deconversion pillar (7 Pillar concepts)

• Belief Systems — the architecture, not the content, of what you hold
• Inherited vs. Chosen Belief — the diagnostic distinction
• Identity Reconstruction — rebuilding the self after a worldview collapses
• Values Construction — building a personal value system intentionally
• Coherence Without Certainty — living with held-but-not-final beliefs
• Tradition and Departure — the relationship to what you leave
• Meaning Without Ground — the post-religious meaning question

That's 30 Pillars total. Build them out methodically; let satellites accrue around them organically as you publish.

SEO playbook

On-page essentials (every page, no exceptions)

• Title tag = canonical page name. No clickbait, no curiosity gaps. Eudaimonia: The Ancient Greek Concept of Human Flourishing beats What the Greeks Knew About Happiness (That We Forgot).
• Meta description = the Hook field, ≤155 chars.
• H1 = same as title (Notion handles this automatically; the page title is the H1).
• First paragraph = contains the exact title term and defines it.
• URL = /concepts/{slug}, slug is lowercased and hyphenated. Never change after publish.
• Internal links = ≥3 per page, more is better, all pointing to other wiki pages.
• External links = link out to primary sources (canonical translations, public-domain texts) and authoritative references (SEP, IEP). Outbound links to high-authority sites are a positive ranking signal, not a leak.
• Image alt text = descriptive. "Bust of Plato at the Vatican Museum, 4th century BCE copy of Greek original" — not "plato.jpg".

Schema.org markup (super.so injection)

Super.so supports custom code injection. Recommended schema types per DB:

• Concepts → DefinedTerm or Article
• Figures → Person
• Publications → Book or CreativeWork
• Traditions → Thing (no perfect fit; use Article and an about property)
• Stories → Article with articleSection set to the Pillar
• Learning → Course or LearningResource
• Offerings → Product with offers and aggregateRating once we have reviews

A developer (or Claude with code tools) should write a super.so head-injection that reads structured page properties and emits the right JSON-LD per page type. This is a one-time engineering investment with permanent compounding value.

Internal link density target

• Pillar Concept: ≥8 outbound internal links, ≥5 inbound from satellites within 90 days of publish
• Satellite Concept: ≥5 outbound, ≥1 inbound from its parent Pillar
• Figure: ≥6 outbound (≥2 Publications, ≥2 Concepts, ≥1 Tradition, ≥1 Story)
• Publication: ≥5 outbound
• Story: ≥8 outbound (this is the whole point of Stories — they're connective tissue)

Keyword targeting by Pillar tier

• Pillar concepts → target head terms. Accept long ranking timelines (6–18 months for unranked sites). The traffic, when it lands, is massive and durable.
• Satellite concepts → target long-tail variants. what does eudaimonia mean in stoicism beats eudaimonia for a new site. Faster ranking, lower volume, higher conversion.
• Stories → target narrative queries. how stoicism evolved from cynicism, why kierkegaard used pseudonyms. Almost no one writes these as essays. The competition is thin and the LLM-citation value is high.
• Figures, Publications, Traditions → target name queries. marcus aurelius, nicomachean ethics, german idealism. These are competitive against Wikipedia; we win on the cross-link graph and the application angle, not the encyclopedic surface.

LLM optimization (the underrated half)

LLM-driven search is the fastest-growing source of traffic that nobody has fully optimized for. Conventional SEO is necessary but no longer sufficient. The good news: writing well for LLMs and writing well for humans converge.

What LLMs reward

1. Definitions in the first 100 words. When a model extracts an answer, it pulls the opening. Lead with the answer to the question your page exists to answer.
2. Explicit primary-source citations. In Republic 514a, Plato writes that... is extractable. Plato discusses cave imagery throughout his work is not.
3. Numbered or bulleted structure for enumerable content. A model can extract 5 points from a list trivially; from a paragraph, less reliably.
4. Plain, declarative section headings. Origin, Core claim, Common confusions, Why this still matters — not A Journey Through the Cave or other narrative titles. Save the cute writing for the body.
5. Disambiguation in the title. Justice (Platonic) vs Justice (Rawlsian) vs the Pillar Justice page. Models hate ambiguous concept names.
6. Author and date attribution. Add a hidden published_date and last_modified_date to schema. Models weight recency.
7. No SEO-spam patterns. Don't repeat the target keyword 30 times. Don't use synonym soup. Don't write "in this article" or "as we'll see below." Modern models penalize these patterns.

What LLMs punish

• Hedged, qualified claims (some argue that..., it could be said that...).
• Padding (it is important to note that, in many ways).
• Buried thesis.
• Listicle filler (Number 7 will shock you).
• Content farms' signature: lots of words, no information density.

The CTA monetization ladder

The Offerings database is structured around a five-tier ladder. Each tier is a step up in commitment and price.

Every published page on the wiki carries two embedded CTA blocks, top and bottom, sourced from the Offerings DB filtered by the page's Pillar. Top CTAs lean toward Freemium/Lead Magnet (low-friction); bottom CTAs lean toward Ebook/Course (after the reader has gotten value).

Existing offerings to seed (from PaulMaxwell.Dev Lead Magnets and Products docs)

Lead Magnets (free — 8 across pillars):

1. Career Reset Protocol (Career)
2. First $10K Offer Builder (Career)
3. Belief Audit (Deconversion + Philosophy)
4. Daily System Builder (Career)
5. Self-Esteem Operating System (Deconversion)
6. Personal Values Construction Guide (Deconversion + Philosophy)
7. Social System Builder (Career)
8. Attention Control System (Career)

Products in development:

1. How to Think Clearly (intro / gateway course)
2. Visual Thinking Strategies
3. Mental Models & Frameworks
4. Career Strategy (forthcoming)
5. History of Philosophy (applied)
6. Religious / Belief System Transition
7. Personal Value System Design

The book: How to Change Your Mind Without Losing Yourself / The Architecture of Belief — spans all three pillars; lives as the top-tier offering across the entire site.

Publishing cadence (recommended)

A realistic, sustainable cadence for one operator with AI assistance:

• Weeks 1–4 (foundation): Build the 5 most important Pillar concepts in each Pillar (15 Pillars total — less than half the eventual set). Start with Philosophy: Virtue, Eudaimonia, Logos, Substance, Knowledge. This anchors the network.
• Weeks 5–8 (linking layer): Build 3–5 satellite concepts under each Pillar (45–75 satellites). Each one is fast to write because the Pillar already exists to link into.
• Weeks 9–12 (Stories): Publish 1 Story per week. By week 12 you have 4 Stories, each linking 5–7 entities into a narrative. The cross-link graph starts to compound.
• Throughout: Add Figures and Publications opportunistically as they're referenced by Concepts/Stories. Don't try to build out Figures comprehensively in advance — do it on demand.
• Monthly: Publish one Pillar-grade Story (3,000+ words) and promote it on social/newsletter as the month's anchor piece.

Do not try to publish daily. Daily is the enemy of compounding. Weekly cadence at Pillar quality beats daily at satellite-and-filler quality, every time.

Distribution layer (outside the wiki)

The wiki is the asset. Distribution is what makes the asset earn.

• Newsletter — weekly, one Pillar concept or Story per issue. Existing infra: the Newsletter sub-page. This is the primary repeat-attention vehicle.
• Short-form social (existing 3x daily formula: one thought / one moment / one process) — each post should reference a wiki page where applicable. Goal: send qualified traffic to deep pages.
• YouTube / podcast (existing PaulMaxwell.Dev Videos plan) — each video should have a paired wiki page that goes deeper than the video. Video grows audience; wiki captures intent.
• Cross-podcast appearances (list of guests + list of podcasts to be on, per existing planning doc) — every appearance includes a wiki URL drop.

Measurement framework

Four metrics, reviewed monthly:

1. Organic sessions to the wiki — the leading indicator. Should grow month-over-month from month 3 onward.
2. Top-10 keyword rankings — count keywords ranking in positions 1–10 in Google for the wiki domain. Should grow steadily.
3. LLM citation count (manual sampling) — once a month, ask ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity 20 questions related to Pillar concepts. Count how often a wiki URL appears in cited sources. This is the new SEO.
4. Offering conversions — free signups (lead magnet), then paid (ebook+). The funnel is wiki page → CTA → checkout. Track per-Pillar.

Do not optimize for time-on-page or bounce rate. Wiki traffic naturally has high bounce rates because readers get the answer and leave — which is the goal.

90-day plan summary

Month 1: Foundation

• Approve the 30 Pillar concepts (Paul + Claude)
• Build the 15 Philosophy Pillars + Hooks
• Set up super.so schema injection (one-time engineering)
• Seed Offerings DB from existing strategy docs

Month 2: Linking layer

• Build 30–40 satellite concepts across all three Pillars
• Build 20–30 Figure pages (the ones referenced by the Pillars)
• Build 15–20 Publication pages (the canonical works)
• Build 10 Tradition pages (the schools referenced everywhere)

Month 3: Stories and distribution

• Publish 4 Stories (one per week)
• Newsletter cadence locks in at weekly
• First Ebook tier offering launched (probably Belief Audit upgrade: free magnet → $29 expanded ebook)
• Measure month 3 baseline of all four metrics

From there: keep compounding. The architecture supports indefinitely.

This strategy doc and the Directions for Claude doc are paired. The Directions doc tells you HOW to do the work; this doc tells you WHAT work matters and WHY. Re-read both before any large batch of writing.