SEO + GitHub stars growth plan

Date: 2026-07-02. Read-only research; grounded in docs/dev/seo_audit.md, docs/dev/seo_plan.md, docs/dev/2026-07-02_user_docs_humanization_plan.md, the engine code, and web research (cited inline).

TL;DR

The one guaranteed AI-solo move: publish a batch of ~15 keyword-targeted comparison + how-to pages on the docs site itself (Step 1), backed by the last five engine-level SEO fixes (Step 2). The docs site runs on trip2g, so every page is both content that ranks and a live demo of the product — and an AI can ship the whole batch this week with no human in the loop.

The honest ceiling: an AI solo can reliably deliver indexable, structurally sound, keyword-targeted pages and a conversion-ready GitHub surface. That earns long-tail organic traffic over 2–6 months in low-competition niches (MCP memory, "Obsidian publish alternative") — realistically tens to low hundreds of visits/day, not thousands. It cannot guarantee stars: star spikes come from launch-day distribution (HN, Reddit, X), which needs a human account, human timing, and a human replying in the comments. Data point: HN exposure averages ~121 stars in 24h and ~1.4 stars per upvote (arxiv 2511.04453) — the AI can fully prepare that launch (Step 4) but cannot fire it. Order of operations: AI builds the compounding asset (Steps 1–3), human spends ~2 hours pressing the distribution buttons (Steps 4–5).

Grounding: where trip2g's SEO stands today

Verified against code on 2026-07-02 (the June audit is partially stale — several P0s have since shipped):

Capability Status Evidence
Server-side rendering, cached shipped whole pipeline; docs/en/user/seo.md
<link rel="canonical"> shipped since audit views.html:35-38 (reuses og:url)
JSON-LD (Article + BreadcrumbList, noindex-aware) shipped since audit internal/defaulttemplate/jsonld.go, jsonld.html
hreflang EN/RU in <head> shipped endpoint.go buildHrefLangs
sitemap.xml, multi-domain shipped internal/sitemap/sitemap.go
Meta description frontmatter-only, no fallback endpoint.go:67 — only resp.Note.Description
robots.txt Sitemap: pointer missing grep Sitemap: in cmd/+internal/ = 0 hits
og_image frontmatter key missing (docs claim it exists) seo_audit.md §4; grep = 0 hits
sitemap xhtml:link hreflang alternates missing seo_audit.md §5
llms.txt missing grep llms in cmd/+internal/ = 0 hits
SoftwareApplication JSON-LD on home missing only Article/Breadcrumb emitted

Positioning context (from the humanization plan): three surfaces say three different things — README says "Markdown Operating System", the live landing says "Join the network", the docs home says "publish your Obsidian vault as a website". SEO content must pick lanes deliberately (see Step 1) rather than inherit the split.

One more asset already in the vault: RU docs have comparison/integration pages (Quartz, WordPress, Obsidian Publish, Confluence, Super.so) that EN lacks — free EN backlog for Step 1.

Step 1 — [AI-solo] Ship the SEO content batch on the docs site (dogfooding)

The single highest-leverage thing an AI can ship this week.

Action. Author ~15 pages under docs/en/user/ (+ RU pairs, house rule), each with description: frontmatter, answer-first lead, an honest comparison table, and wikilinks into existing docs. Sync with obsidian-sync; sitemap/canonical/JSON-LD/hreflang apply automatically because the engine already ships them — this is the dogfooding loop: the pages demonstrate the product and rank.

Two keyword lanes (resolves the positioning split instead of fighting it):

Lane A — Obsidian publishing (big audience, medium competition):

  • obsidian-publish-alternative.md — "trip2g vs Obsidian Publish" (backport + expand the existing RU page). Target: obsidian publish alternative, obsidian publish self-hosted.
  • trip2g-vs-quartz.md — vs Quartz (RU exists). Target: quartz alternative, obsidian digital garden self-hosted. Honest angle: Quartz is static/free; trip2g adds paywalls, live sync, MCP.
  • trip2g-vs-hugo.md — Target: publish obsidian vault hugo (a real pain workflow trip2g replaces).
  • trip2g-vs-notion-sites.md, trip2g-vs-gitbook.md — Target: notion sites alternative self-hosted, gitbook open source alternative.
  • publish-obsidian-vault-as-website.md — the head how-to. Target: how to publish an obsidian vault as a website (top-of-funnel intent; the docs home already makes this promise).

Lane B — MCP / agent memory (low competition, fastest to rank — full keyword table already in docs/dev/seo_plan.md §1):

  • mcp-memory-server.md hub page. Target: MCP server memory, persistent memory MCP server, self-hosted agent memory. Links agent-memory.md, llm-wiki.md, mcp.md, federation.md.
  • claude-code-persistent-memory.md — tutorial. Target: Claude Code memory MCP (per seo_plan.md, a top community question).
  • obsidian-mcp-server.md — Target: Obsidian MCP server (perfect-fit intent, thin competition).
  • trip2g-vs-mem0-vs-memgpt.md — agent-memory comparison shoppers.

Programmatic layer: one use-case page per shipped capability that lacks an intent page — telegram-blog-from-obsidian.md, sell-obsidian-notes.md (monetization), team-knowledge-base-mcp.md, self-hosted-wiki-sqlite.md. Frontmatter widgets (magazine_include_files) can auto-index them — a small programmatic-SEO demo in itself (pSEO guide).

Why it works. Comparison ("X vs Y", "X alternative") pages catch bottom-of-funnel searchers already shopping; low-competition MCP terms can rank in weeks (seo_plan.md §1 rationale). Every page is served by trip2g itself, so it's also proof.

Impact / timeframe. Indexed in days; MCP-lane rankings in 2–8 weeks; Obsidian-lane in 2–6 months. Expect long-tail trickle, not a flood — but it compounds and every page links the GitHub repo (stars via qualified visitors).

Guardrails. Honest tables only (competitors win rows too — the existing seo.md tone is the model); no vapor: only shipped features (README status column is the source of truth); bilingual pairs; run lint docs after.

Step 2 — [AI-solo] Close the last five engine SEO gaps + llms.txt

Action. Five small engine changes (each benefits every trip2g site — product feature, not just marketing):

  1. robots.txt: append Sitemap: {publicURL}/sitemap.xml to the opened default (cmd/server/main.go handleRobotsTxt).
  2. Meta-description fallback: first paragraph via PartialRenderer().Introduce() (already used at views.html:380), truncate ~155 chars, in rendernotepage. Kills the audit's biggest remaining P0.
  3. og_image: frontmatter key — currently documented but ignored (docs actively mislead; seo_audit.md §4). Implement the key.
  4. Sitemap xhtml:link hreflang alternates for EN/RU pairs (internal/sitemap/sitemap.go).
  5. /llms.txt endpoint (or a plain note routed there) — generate from public notes: site summary + key-page list, per llmstxt.org. Draft content already written in seo_plan.md §5. Add SoftwareApplication JSON-LD on the home page (extend jsonld.go, pattern established).

Why it works. Crawl discovery (robots pointer), snippet quality on every page without description: (most pages today), correct social previews, no EN/RU signal-splitting, and AI-crawler citability — the target audience researches tools in ChatGPT/Perplexity, so llms.txt + consistent factual phrasing is unusually high-ROI here (LLM visibility signal set).

Impact / timeframe. 1–2 days of work; effects land with the next crawl cycle (1–4 weeks). Multiplies Step 1: content can't earn snippets/citations without this plumbing.

Step 3 — [AI-solo, merge-dependent parts AI-assisted] GitHub surface: make the repo convert visitors it already gets

Action.

  • README hero: keep "Markdown Operating System" as the technical hook but add the plain promise + primary keywords in the first two lines ("publish your Obsidian vault as a website · self-hosted MCP memory for AI agents"), per the humanization plan's positioning verdict. Add a ~15s GIF (sync in Obsidian → page live) above the fold — day-1 README polish is where star conversion happens (HN diffusion study: "polish before you post"; ToolJet stars guide).
  • Repo topics (one settings change, AI-executable via gh api): obsidian, obsidian-publish, mcp-server, ai-agent-memory, self-hosted, knowledge-base, markdown, digital-garden. Topics feed GitHub search + Explore.
  • CONTRIBUTING.md + 5–10 good first issue labels via gh — contributor-readiness is a ranked trust signal and awesome-list acceptance criterion.
  • Submissions as PRs (AI writes and opens them; merges are at maintainers' discretion → that part is AI-assisted): awesome-mcp-servers, awesome-selfhosted, awesome-obsidian, awesome-ai-agents; MCP directories (mcpservers.org, mcp.so, pulsemcp.com) — per seo_plan.md §4 the single highest-leverage off-page action, since directories already rank for "MCP memory server" and are high-authority backlinks.

Why it works. Steps 1–2 route searchers to the repo; the repo must convert in 10 seconds (GIF + plain promise) or the click is wasted. Awesome lists + directories are the only backlink channel with a submission process an AI can drive end-to-end.

Impact / timeframe. README/topics/issues: this week, permanent. List inclusions: days–weeks per maintainer; each accepted listing is a durable backlink + steady star trickle (single-digit weekly, compounding).

Step 4 — [AI-assisted] The launch kit: AI prepares 100%, a human presses the button

Action. AI produces, human fires:

  • Show HN draft around the strongest verifiable asset — the token-economy benchmark (reproducible script; opinionated + verifiable is ideal HN material, seo_plan.md §3). Title A/B options, first comment (honest limitations + architecture), FAQ crib sheet for the thread.
  • Reddit posts tailored per subreddit: r/ObsidianMD (two-way sync), r/selfhosted (docker compose up, SQLite, MIT), r/LocalLLaMA (self-hosted MCP memory + benchmark).
  • Social share images with the headline stat; dev.to cross-posts of the Step-1 comparison articles with canonical URLs back to trip2g.com (dev.to ranks fast for dev queries and the canonical passes the equity home).

Why human-gated. HN/Reddit accounts, posting time, and — decisive — author presence in the comments are human. The data says timing matters and most impact is day-1 (arxiv 2511.04453; Show HN by the numbers — the "Show HN" tag itself confers no advantage after controls, so substance > format). Expected value if it lands: ~100–300 stars in 48h at ~1.4 stars/upvote. Sequence rule: do not fire until Steps 1–3 are live — launch traffic hitting an unpolished README is spent once and wasted.

Impact / timeframe. Kit ready in 2 days; launch = ~2 human hours; the largest single star event available.

Step 5 — [human-required] Recurring presence and relationships

Action (lowest priority precisely because no AI can guarantee it): an X/Twitter build-in-public presence (the benchmark thread; Karpathy's LLM-wiki audience is the natural niche); answering memory/publishing questions in the MCP and Obsidian Discords with doc links; an Obsidian community-plugin listing for the sync plugin (very high-authority backlink, but a human-owned review process); outreach to 5–10 AI-agent-architecture bloggers with the benchmark data; never ask for stars directly (violates GitHub ToS and reads as spam).

Why last. These channels drive the biggest long-run numbers for OSS dev tools, but they are irreducibly human: trust, timing, voice. The AI's role is feeding them — drafts, data, replies to review — not executing them.

Impact / timeframe. Months; compounding; the difference between a 500-star and a 5,000-star repo lives here, not in on-site SEO.

What "guaranteed" honestly means

AI can guarantee AI cannot guarantee
Pages exist, are indexable, structurally sound (canonical/JSON-LD/hreflang/descriptions) That Google ranks them above incumbents for contested terms
Engine SEO gaps closed for every trip2g site Backlinks beyond PR-based list submissions
README/topics/issues conversion-ready; launch kit written An HN front page, upvotes, or comment-thread goodwill
Long-tail impressions in low-competition niches (MCP lane) within weeks A star spike without human distribution

Measurement (AI-solo, ongoing): Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster (Bing feeds several AI search products), star-history.com snapshots, a monthly check that Step-1 pages hold their target-query positions.

Sources: arxiv 2511.04453 — HN impact on GitHub stars · Show HN by the numbers · ToolJet GitHub stars guide · llmstxt.org · Programmatic SEO guide 2026 · LLM visibility signals · internal: docs/dev/seo_audit.md, docs/dev/seo_plan.md, docs/dev/2026-07-02_user_docs_humanization_plan.md