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I increased monday,com’s traffic by 1,570% via SEO. I compiled 4hrs of video showing the exact strategy.
Like + Reply with 👋 and I’ll DM it to you for free, right now.
(I’ve lead SEO for 100+ SaaS startups)
Like + Reply with 👋 and I’ll DM it to you for free, right now.
(I’ve lead SEO for 100+ SaaS startups)
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I've been saying this repeatedly, you're probably sick of hearing me say it...
Most who claim GEO is taking over and SEO is dead have simply been doing terrible SEO for ages.
When asked what they do that is entirely GEO specific, they say things like "structure content X way, etc" and "SEO was about meta tags and buying 1000 exact match anchor backlinks"...it tells me these folks were NEVER ACTUALLY DOING HIGH QUALITY, REAL SEO!
And now that they are forced to do better, real, impactful SEO that isn't gaming the system, it feels new to them, and thus they claim it is an entirely different practice now, hence the 900 new acronyms summarizing the same tactics that have existed for years.
Yet 10 years ago, I was doing the same SEO as I am doing now. I am building the same links for clients we built 9 years ago when starting uSERP
@jwbobbink hit the nail on the head here. Really important post he made.
SEO is not dead. LAZY SEO is dead.
In any high value, high money niche, please go find me a single brand that shows up for the most important prompts who has zero traditional Google/Bing search presence. It does not exist.
Sorry, but you are not going to get recommended by ChatGPT for "best data warehouse software" without having insanely great SEO and thus organic presence across the web.
AKA, you need to be doing incredible SEO to fully reach your target market with AI search.
Cheers 🫡
Check out his full post here: lnkd.in/p/enjEWDai
Most who claim GEO is taking over and SEO is dead have simply been doing terrible SEO for ages.
When asked what they do that is entirely GEO specific, they say things like "structure content X way, etc" and "SEO was about meta tags and buying 1000 exact match anchor backlinks"...it tells me these folks were NEVER ACTUALLY DOING HIGH QUALITY, REAL SEO!
And now that they are forced to do better, real, impactful SEO that isn't gaming the system, it feels new to them, and thus they claim it is an entirely different practice now, hence the 900 new acronyms summarizing the same tactics that have existed for years.
Yet 10 years ago, I was doing the same SEO as I am doing now. I am building the same links for clients we built 9 years ago when starting uSERP
@jwbobbink hit the nail on the head here. Really important post he made.
SEO is not dead. LAZY SEO is dead.
In any high value, high money niche, please go find me a single brand that shows up for the most important prompts who has zero traditional Google/Bing search presence. It does not exist.
Sorry, but you are not going to get recommended by ChatGPT for "best data warehouse software" without having insanely great SEO and thus organic presence across the web.
AKA, you need to be doing incredible SEO to fully reach your target market with AI search.
Cheers 🫡
Check out his full post here: lnkd.in/p/enjEWDai
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If you want to waste your time, do this!
If you are a startup founder and want to boost your website's SEO, submit it to these high DA sites:
1. Google Chrome Store
2. Crunchbase
3. Viral Marketing Lab
4. Trustpilot
5. Github
6. G2/Capterra
7. Foursquare
8. TrustMRR
9. About me
10. Pexels
11. Flickr
12. Hackernoon
13. ngly
15. Site123
16. BookLikes
17. Devpost
18. Gifyu
17. Gab
18. Imgur
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🚨BIG SEO NEWS: Ahrefs is changing the way they calculate Domain Rating (DR)!!!
Key Changes:
👉 Subdomains will now have entirely separate DR from the main domain
👉 DR score is still link-based, but organic traffic is now a factor too
👉 SPAM labels on domains heavily domain
👉 The number of sites with a DR4 score is 50% the number with a DR3 score
👉 A small pool of domains will now influence the DR of other sites more
👉 DR4 more strongly correlates with top 3 and top 10 Google rankings
Buckle up, this is interesting. Ahrefs & Glen Allsopp said the following:
"This fourth iteration (DR4) includes two significant updates: a smaller, higher-quality pool of domains that can impact DR and, by popular request, ratings for individual subdomains.
It's still calculated from links, but we're now putting more weight on those from sites (and their individual subdomains) that we estimate to have organic search traffic.
In our testing, DR4 shows a stronger correlation with Google ranking positions across all hosts and subdomains than our current model (DR3)."
I think these changes are phenomenal. It has been too easy to game DR lately, and DR was starting to become a mediocre metric when viewed in a silo without factors like spam, traffic, brand, and subdomain usage.
What are your thoughts on the changes?
You can test it here: detailed.com/dr-v4/
Key Changes:
👉 Subdomains will now have entirely separate DR from the main domain
👉 DR score is still link-based, but organic traffic is now a factor too
👉 SPAM labels on domains heavily domain
👉 The number of sites with a DR4 score is 50% the number with a DR3 score
👉 A small pool of domains will now influence the DR of other sites more
👉 DR4 more strongly correlates with top 3 and top 10 Google rankings
Buckle up, this is interesting. Ahrefs & Glen Allsopp said the following:
"This fourth iteration (DR4) includes two significant updates: a smaller, higher-quality pool of domains that can impact DR and, by popular request, ratings for individual subdomains.
It's still calculated from links, but we're now putting more weight on those from sites (and their individual subdomains) that we estimate to have organic search traffic.
In our testing, DR4 shows a stronger correlation with Google ranking positions across all hosts and subdomains than our current model (DR3)."
I think these changes are phenomenal. It has been too easy to game DR lately, and DR was starting to become a mediocre metric when viewed in a silo without factors like spam, traffic, brand, and subdomain usage.
What are your thoughts on the changes?
You can test it here: detailed.com/dr-v4/
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50% of folks are stoked about the election results, 50% are pissed.
100% of them will be pissed in 10 years because none of it actually matters and the only thing that does is providing for your family and fostering a great local community.
100% of them will be pissed in 10 years because none of it actually matters and the only thing that does is providing for your family and fostering a great local community.
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So much of the SEO vs GEO debate is people describing the downstream benefits of SEO without realizing it 😆
Traditional SEO goes far beyond "ranking" for a keyword. That's a first-order benefit...
Rank well for X term, capture demand for that term, repeat. Sure. But that’s hat showing up organically actually does for your business.
The more you show up for something, the more people associate you with it. Thus, the more likely they are to reference you when talking about that subject. Then, the more likely they are to conduct branded search.
People writing articles about your subject search for stuff too! They need sources, examples, data, companies to reference and talk about. When you keep showing up, you become the source they cite, the brand they mention, the example they use, the company in their VS or listicle, etc etc.
When you don’t show up...what do you think happens? Nothing. Build it and they will come is not a real thing. And thus the proverbial rich get richer.
The longer you rank well across your niche, the more naturally occurring backlinks and mentions you get. I see it daily across my own agency and 60+ clients. If you rank well, you naturally start getting 5-10x more links. Those links and mentions introduce you to more people, more sites, more context networks, which now also associate you with that topic.
Some of those people write articles. Some host podcasts. Some post on social, get interviewed, recommend companies to their peers, etc.
You’re now being brought into conversations by people you’ve never spoken to, because you kept showing up when they were learning about your space.
SEO and branding, just like SEO and GEO, are heavily heavily intertwined. And it keeps spreading wayyyy beyond the original search that introduced someone to you.
Second, third, fortieth-order benefits of ranking well organically. You don’t see all of this in a report showing how much traffic a keyword sent you last month, lol.
And all of this plays directly into GEO.
GEO is about getting AI to associate your brand with your core product/service as one of the best options. You want to be on that shortlist of brands synonymous with what you sell.
So how do you build that association across the internet?
Getting found repeatedly for relevant topics, becoming a source people reference, earning links and mentions, being discussed in the context of your core offering. Over and over, across 100s or 1000s of different websites and conversations. It's a number game, at scale, to be everywhere.
Traditional SEO helps accomplish much of this. Even when the person finding you isn’t a buyer. That person might be writing the article your next buyer, or an answer engine, uses to evaluate you.
Saying "GEO stops looking like SEO" here is a misunderstanding of what SEO actually does beyond getting traffic for X term.
You’re describing the downstream benefits of SEO, then acting like SEO has nothing to do with them lol.
🫡
Traditional SEO goes far beyond "ranking" for a keyword. That's a first-order benefit...
Rank well for X term, capture demand for that term, repeat. Sure. But that’s hat showing up organically actually does for your business.
The more you show up for something, the more people associate you with it. Thus, the more likely they are to reference you when talking about that subject. Then, the more likely they are to conduct branded search.
People writing articles about your subject search for stuff too! They need sources, examples, data, companies to reference and talk about. When you keep showing up, you become the source they cite, the brand they mention, the example they use, the company in their VS or listicle, etc etc.
When you don’t show up...what do you think happens? Nothing. Build it and they will come is not a real thing. And thus the proverbial rich get richer.
The longer you rank well across your niche, the more naturally occurring backlinks and mentions you get. I see it daily across my own agency and 60+ clients. If you rank well, you naturally start getting 5-10x more links. Those links and mentions introduce you to more people, more sites, more context networks, which now also associate you with that topic.
Some of those people write articles. Some host podcasts. Some post on social, get interviewed, recommend companies to their peers, etc.
You’re now being brought into conversations by people you’ve never spoken to, because you kept showing up when they were learning about your space.
SEO and branding, just like SEO and GEO, are heavily heavily intertwined. And it keeps spreading wayyyy beyond the original search that introduced someone to you.
Second, third, fortieth-order benefits of ranking well organically. You don’t see all of this in a report showing how much traffic a keyword sent you last month, lol.
And all of this plays directly into GEO.
GEO is about getting AI to associate your brand with your core product/service as one of the best options. You want to be on that shortlist of brands synonymous with what you sell.
So how do you build that association across the internet?
Getting found repeatedly for relevant topics, becoming a source people reference, earning links and mentions, being discussed in the context of your core offering. Over and over, across 100s or 1000s of different websites and conversations. It's a number game, at scale, to be everywhere.
Traditional SEO helps accomplish much of this. Even when the person finding you isn’t a buyer. That person might be writing the article your next buyer, or an answer engine, uses to evaluate you.
Saying "GEO stops looking like SEO" here is a misunderstanding of what SEO actually does beyond getting traffic for X term.
You’re describing the downstream benefits of SEO, then acting like SEO has nothing to do with them lol.
🫡
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#1 B2B sales tip I can offer that will help you stop wasting time on shit prospects:
1. Record every sales call + email
2. Tell Claude which leads closed or not
3. Sort the results by the questions prospects ask
You'll get very good at instantly knowing within a single email or call who will close or not based on the types of questions they ask.
What questions they ask tells me immediately if the prospect is going to buy or not.
1. Record every sales call + email
2. Tell Claude which leads closed or not
3. Sort the results by the questions prospects ask
You'll get very good at instantly knowing within a single email or call who will close or not based on the types of questions they ask.
What questions they ask tells me immediately if the prospect is going to buy or not.
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Insane news about Adam and his family. Hard to fathom, chilling and shell shocking. Such a great guy. May they rest in peace.
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GEO is about one thing: How do you get AI to undoubtedly associate your brand with your core product/service.
Answer engines all now have pre-existing brands in mind associated with given topics, services, solutions. They literally generate pre-determined lists of brands that are synonymous with a topic, then validate that through many sources.
I,e: if your prompts are "top project management software" related, answer engines already have a predetermined list of companies, (just like you do in your head right now!!), they deem the best in class solutions for this.
No amount of chunking, heading optimization, and LLMs txt files is going to create that entity level association.
The tricky part here is that you can’t actually only rely on “citations” and “sources” used by answer engines to determine what to do next.
Source lists are not giving you the entire story.
This is easily proved by the fact that ChatGPT now lists, at least in most B2B spaces, mostly source citations from the actual brands it recommends.
But, that’s circular reasoning, and would be impossible, the original short-list MUST come from somewhere. Meaning ChatGPT is building those entity associations somewhere, above and beyond your own website too.
The biggest levers you can pull in GEO must attack this problem from many angles. Your brand must become synonymous with your core offering across the internet, in a positive light.
1. Rank well in organic traditional search for your most valuable key terms at every stage of the funnel. Yes, top of the funnel actually does matter, because topical authority and being “everywhere” on a given subject is important to building this association, despite the fact that it will get you almost no tangible traffic.
Good news? Traffic ain’t the game anymore, so why are you worried about it.
If you spin up a new site and only push BOFU pages in any competitive space. Good luck lol. I'll see you in 45 years when you finally reach page 3. You need supporting content, topical authority, etc. You need to rank well across as many topics in your niche at all funnel stages, and particularly at the BOFU, which unironically requires TOFU/MOFU content too.
2. Get links and thus brand mentions on relevant content in your space. Listicles, roundups, sure. But also any and all topics and articles in your space, not just roundups. You want to be linked and mentioned anywhere you can on other trusted, big websites, wherever the context relates highly to your product/service/brand/solution.
3. Customer proof and trust. Reviews, rankings, awards, etc. You need good reviews. You need people talking about you online in association with your main function as a business, repeatedly, tons of times, across the entire web.
4. PR, press, podcasts. Again, be in as many conversations about your core offering that you can.
Getting the picture? GEO is really about being everywhere and anywhere your core niche is being discussed.
🫡
Answer engines all now have pre-existing brands in mind associated with given topics, services, solutions. They literally generate pre-determined lists of brands that are synonymous with a topic, then validate that through many sources.
I,e: if your prompts are "top project management software" related, answer engines already have a predetermined list of companies, (just like you do in your head right now!!), they deem the best in class solutions for this.
No amount of chunking, heading optimization, and LLMs txt files is going to create that entity level association.
The tricky part here is that you can’t actually only rely on “citations” and “sources” used by answer engines to determine what to do next.
Source lists are not giving you the entire story.
This is easily proved by the fact that ChatGPT now lists, at least in most B2B spaces, mostly source citations from the actual brands it recommends.
But, that’s circular reasoning, and would be impossible, the original short-list MUST come from somewhere. Meaning ChatGPT is building those entity associations somewhere, above and beyond your own website too.
The biggest levers you can pull in GEO must attack this problem from many angles. Your brand must become synonymous with your core offering across the internet, in a positive light.
1. Rank well in organic traditional search for your most valuable key terms at every stage of the funnel. Yes, top of the funnel actually does matter, because topical authority and being “everywhere” on a given subject is important to building this association, despite the fact that it will get you almost no tangible traffic.
Good news? Traffic ain’t the game anymore, so why are you worried about it.
If you spin up a new site and only push BOFU pages in any competitive space. Good luck lol. I'll see you in 45 years when you finally reach page 3. You need supporting content, topical authority, etc. You need to rank well across as many topics in your niche at all funnel stages, and particularly at the BOFU, which unironically requires TOFU/MOFU content too.
2. Get links and thus brand mentions on relevant content in your space. Listicles, roundups, sure. But also any and all topics and articles in your space, not just roundups. You want to be linked and mentioned anywhere you can on other trusted, big websites, wherever the context relates highly to your product/service/brand/solution.
3. Customer proof and trust. Reviews, rankings, awards, etc. You need good reviews. You need people talking about you online in association with your main function as a business, repeatedly, tons of times, across the entire web.
4. PR, press, podcasts. Again, be in as many conversations about your core offering that you can.
Getting the picture? GEO is really about being everywhere and anywhere your core niche is being discussed.
🫡
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If you're in B2B, RIGHT NOW is the best time of the year to land more sales.
Everyone is finalizing budget for Q1. Many have a budget surplus to spend asap.
STOP BEING FANCY and just ask if they're in market for your services.
New client starting Nov 1 now, btw.
Everyone is finalizing budget for Q1. Many have a budget surplus to spend asap.
STOP BEING FANCY and just ask if they're in market for your services.
New client starting Nov 1 now, btw.
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If you aren't keeping a list of every fucking lead you've ever talked to in any positive way, and hitting them up RIGHT NOW with a simple message like this, what are you even doing?
Be so confident in your service quality that you just ask for the sale.
Be so confident in your service quality that you just ask for the sale.
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If you want to sell more in B2B, be less formal. Has worked for me. Stop sending claude slop decks. Stop sending polished emails. Break their frame.
Can't tell you how many people have said something along the lines of "really refreshing that you guys did actual analysis and not an ai slop deck"
Literally a basic ass word doc of screenshots and rambling notes + what this would cost to do...10-20k/mo deals from this consistently.
Can't tell you how many people have said something along the lines of "really refreshing that you guys did actual analysis and not an ai slop deck"
Literally a basic ass word doc of screenshots and rambling notes + what this would cost to do...10-20k/mo deals from this consistently.
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Doing manual work where someone can tell you actually put human effort into and cared about the substance of the info more than trying to make a pile of horse shit look fancy >
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"But why can't you just make good work look fancy too?"
Cause everyone does it. You will be a generic looking proposal in a sea of 10 others. Congrats, now price is the only differentiator.
Impossible to convince people you are better. EASY to show them you are DIFFERENT.
Cause everyone does it. You will be a generic looking proposal in a sea of 10 others. Congrats, now price is the only differentiator.
Impossible to convince people you are better. EASY to show them you are DIFFERENT.
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LinkedIn can be a very cringe platform, but it's driven millions of dollars per year in directly attributable revenue for my agency.
When you have a presence and share actual expertise, sales cycles are a fraction of the length of traditional inbound leads.
I simply message people who engage and literally ask the following:
"Saw you engaged with the post about X. Let me know if it makes sense to connect on that, would love to support there if you guys need it."
A typical in-market lead who's followed me on LinkedIn will sign in 14 days or less. There is almost never a proposal process, never a deck to be created, just a conversation.
When you have a presence and share actual expertise, sales cycles are a fraction of the length of traditional inbound leads.
I simply message people who engage and literally ask the following:
"Saw you engaged with the post about X. Let me know if it makes sense to connect on that, would love to support there if you guys need it."
A typical in-market lead who's followed me on LinkedIn will sign in 14 days or less. There is almost never a proposal process, never a deck to be created, just a conversation.
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Linkedin added a "seems like AI slop" button yet there are more slop replies than ever before. Love it.
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10 GEO hills I will gladly die on:
1. Citations are a vanity metric, ChatGPT recommending your brand as a solution is what you actually want
2. “Brand mentions” are not “the new backlinks” because 99% of brand mentions contain a link anyways, you are just doing a form of off-page SEO that’s existed for ages
3. The prompts you decide to track only scratches the surface of your total addressable market
4. Ranking better in traditional search is fundamental to AI visibility
5. To maximize AI visibility, brand association is everything, your brand must be unanimously synonymous across the web with your core service/product/function (in a positive way!)
6. Reading broad ai visibility studies on generic everyday user prompts and applying the findings blindly without looking at what YOUR industry prompts are showing is a great way to drive zero pipeline
7. Treating self-reported attribution as gospel truth is a great way to make bad marketing decisions
8. GEO is a bottom of the funnel game, but you need informational content to build the brand-to-topic associations required to be recommended at the bottom of the funnel
9. Listicles and Reddit aren’t dead if you aren’t a low-effort spammer
10. AI content isn’t inherently bad, but you’re probably spending more time, money, and effort reviewing and editing it than just paying a legit writer
Cheers 😌✌️
1. Citations are a vanity metric, ChatGPT recommending your brand as a solution is what you actually want
2. “Brand mentions” are not “the new backlinks” because 99% of brand mentions contain a link anyways, you are just doing a form of off-page SEO that’s existed for ages
3. The prompts you decide to track only scratches the surface of your total addressable market
4. Ranking better in traditional search is fundamental to AI visibility
5. To maximize AI visibility, brand association is everything, your brand must be unanimously synonymous across the web with your core service/product/function (in a positive way!)
6. Reading broad ai visibility studies on generic everyday user prompts and applying the findings blindly without looking at what YOUR industry prompts are showing is a great way to drive zero pipeline
7. Treating self-reported attribution as gospel truth is a great way to make bad marketing decisions
8. GEO is a bottom of the funnel game, but you need informational content to build the brand-to-topic associations required to be recommended at the bottom of the funnel
9. Listicles and Reddit aren’t dead if you aren’t a low-effort spammer
10. AI content isn’t inherently bad, but you’re probably spending more time, money, and effort reviewing and editing it than just paying a legit writer
Cheers 😌✌️
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"brand mentions are the new backlinks"
The data disagrees.
In ChatGPT’s GPT-5.6 model update, product page citations increased 119% in daily retrievals and listicles decreased 9.8%.
In almost every case where a product page is retrieved to provide a recommended solution, he brand it mentions, rather than a third party.
I am seeing this in practice across 60+ clients of ours, too (screenshot example).
First off, brand mentions are, in 99% of cases, just a type of backlink -- unless it's an unlinked mention.
There is a ton of hype around "brand mentions." The general consensus definition seems to be:
Your brand is mentioned, and 99% of the time, linked to, in a contextually relevant article with a blurb about how your brand is a solution for that.
If you've been building real, legit, actually good links for the last 10 years...you have built these links...and thus you've already been building brand mentions, congrats!
The small change / lever pull here is looking at at brand mentions from cited domains. Looking at your valuable prompts, seeing what shows up, and getting a brand mention on those source pages.
However, the data is starting to trend the opposite way.
The vast majority of citations in most niches for prompts that deliver the user a recommendation come from the brand ChatGPT is recommending now, not a third party site.
In other words...roundups, listicles, industry spotlights where a brand mention is a great plug for your brand....are becoming LESS cited by the day in favor of AI looking at the brand itself and citing it.
That is a pretty massive change in how you should be thinking about GEO, especially at the bottom of the funnel.
For the last ~year, one of the easiest strategies for getting mentioned in AI search was pretty simple (and thus abused to no end): find the listicles ranking for your core terms and get your brand mentioned in them. easy peasy.
Not anymore.
ChatGPT literally is building a short vetted list of brands they associate with a category, bypassing all that.
So, what does that mean? How does your strategy change moving forward?
It means that getting your own brand to rank better, perform better in traditional search via ranking your OWN landing pages, and getting more well known as a brand associated with a core service/offering/solution, is critical!
The data disagrees.
In ChatGPT’s GPT-5.6 model update, product page citations increased 119% in daily retrievals and listicles decreased 9.8%.
In almost every case where a product page is retrieved to provide a recommended solution, he brand it mentions, rather than a third party.
I am seeing this in practice across 60+ clients of ours, too (screenshot example).
First off, brand mentions are, in 99% of cases, just a type of backlink -- unless it's an unlinked mention.
There is a ton of hype around "brand mentions." The general consensus definition seems to be:
Your brand is mentioned, and 99% of the time, linked to, in a contextually relevant article with a blurb about how your brand is a solution for that.
If you've been building real, legit, actually good links for the last 10 years...you have built these links...and thus you've already been building brand mentions, congrats!
The small change / lever pull here is looking at at brand mentions from cited domains. Looking at your valuable prompts, seeing what shows up, and getting a brand mention on those source pages.
However, the data is starting to trend the opposite way.
The vast majority of citations in most niches for prompts that deliver the user a recommendation come from the brand ChatGPT is recommending now, not a third party site.
In other words...roundups, listicles, industry spotlights where a brand mention is a great plug for your brand....are becoming LESS cited by the day in favor of AI looking at the brand itself and citing it.
That is a pretty massive change in how you should be thinking about GEO, especially at the bottom of the funnel.
For the last ~year, one of the easiest strategies for getting mentioned in AI search was pretty simple (and thus abused to no end): find the listicles ranking for your core terms and get your brand mentioned in them. easy peasy.
Not anymore.
ChatGPT literally is building a short vetted list of brands they associate with a category, bypassing all that.
So, what does that mean? How does your strategy change moving forward?
It means that getting your own brand to rank better, perform better in traditional search via ranking your OWN landing pages, and getting more well known as a brand associated with a core service/offering/solution, is critical!
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