🇺🇸 Matt Storms

PBNs can boost rankings. But for how long? Only until Google catches you. And Google’s SpamBrain flags 40 billion spam pages. Every. Single. Day. Think your PBN is invisible? It’s not. Here’s the problem: PBNs aren’t authority. They’re an illusion of it. They violate Google’s spam policies. They strip away trust. They invite penalties. And when a penalty hits? Your traffic doesn’t dip. It disappears. Because SEO isn’t about link quantity. It’s about link quality. Real authority comes from: → Content people want to share → Links you earn, not buy → A reputation you protect, not gamble Shortcuts feel fast. But rebuilding from zero takes years. So before you buy that next PBN link, ask yourself: “Would I still want this link if Google didn’t count it?” If the answer is no… That’s your warning. ♻️ Share this with someone who’s one shady backlink away from disaster. #SEO #techSEO #SEOservices #SEOconsultant #B2BSEO #LocalBusibessGrowth #LocalBusinessMarketking

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Agencies are underrated as hell with AI. 1) Agentic workflows will expand margins significantly 2) As work becomes more decentralized, demand for specialized agencies will grow 3) Agencies will be ground zero for internal AI tools that can ultimately become software products 4) Don’t have to raise money. Can cash flow from day 1 and control your destiny.

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“I think AEO/GEO is a load of crap,” spouted a CMO from a $250mm SaaS company, adding, “if you follow SEO best practices, you’ll be fine.” After I picked up my jaw from the floor, I pondered this purposeful provocation and asked myself, could she be right? Stick with me as I share what I think I know about AEO. Showing up in LLMs has significant business value. Members of the CMO Huddles community report that LLM-generated site traffic converts at 4-6x the rate of traditional Google traffic. These visitors are not your proverbial tire kickers. They’re ready to put you on their short list. So if you haven’t figured out how to track + respond to these visitors appropriately, stop reading this and get on that!  Brands that ranked high in Google searches are more likely to show up in LLMs This makes sense, since these brands tend to have broader digital footprints. But I’ve also read that this only applies to about 50% of LLM searches. So that means that in the other 50% of searches, lesser-ranked brands are finding a way into LLM synopses. And if that is the case, then they must be doing something other than SEO-like activities. [If this logic is faulty, don’t blame an LLM, I’m on my own here.] Yext research agrees with our provocateur CMO This brilliantly timed bombshell dropped into my email this week: “Yext just analyzed 6.8 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and found that 86% actually come from sources brands already control, like websites and listings. Reddit and forums? Just 2% once location and query intent are factored in.” I’ll give you a second to re-read this. Is Yext’s research relevant to AEO + B2B brands? Not sure. Perhaps their CEO, Michael Walrath, will weigh in here. If Yext's research includes B2B brands and complex queries, those of you investing heavily in AEO may want to reconsider. Another reason to hedge on AEO is that it is so damn hard to measure cause and effect right now. Every LLM search delivers unique results. The game is to measure the percentage of times you show up in an LLM query of 23 words on average. Now imagine one word is different each time. My head hurts thinking about the mathematical permutations. Hedging your AEO bet Many of the AEO “best practices” are things you should be doing anyway. Having extensive Q&As on your website is simply being user-friendly. Taking it a step further and having an answer bot like Webless that pulls from your website content is also being customer-centric. Another example is having competitive information (including pricing) on your website. Prospects need that info, and if you don’t provide it, the LLM will source it from somewhere else.  Like most humans, I hate gated content. Turns out, so do LLMs. So that's another example of doing the right thing that also may help with AEO. There's more to cover, but I'm out of space + am counting on my AEO-expert friends to fill in the vast gaps, including the technical stuff (like schema).

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After 15 years in corporate as an SEO, I’ve seen more SEOs fail from corporate politics than from Google updates. Agency folks especially struggle moving in-house because the game is different. My advice after all these years in enterprise SEO: - Take your PTO – I used to believe rankings would collapse if I stepped away. They do not. Burnout ruins judgment far faster than a week offline. - Document everything – Ideas, tests, dips/rises in traffic, even hallway conversations. A minor decision today can resurface months later as a major escalation. - Trust carefully – Collaboration is essential, but I learned not everyone who smiles in meetings is on my side. - Do not overstay – My biggest career growth came when I changed companies every 1-3 years. Staying too long rarely results in a promotion. - Respect cross-team partners – IT, analysts, engineers, and admins have saved me and my projects more times than I can count. They are allies, not support staff. - Detach emotionally – Leadership skepticism about SEO is rarely personal. It is a negotiation about resources and priorities, not a reflection of worth. - Listen first, talk later – In my early years I thought I had to prove I was the expert. Results earned credibility more than my words ever could. - Avoid gossip and SEO fights – I learned many many years ago that my time spent debating was wasting too much energy instead of influencing. Now I document my position and move on. - Guide through questions – Some of my biggest wins came when stakeholders work through to the solution themselves. Questions open doors. - Keep perspective – We are not saving lives. Most urgency is manufactured. SEO is a long game, and patience wins.

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SEO, AIO, GEO, AEO, SXO. If you're confused by all the acronyms, you're not alone. So, how is AI actually impacting SEO? The entire SEO world has gone full alphabet soup. And most of it is consultants trying to rebrand old tactics with shiny new names. But behind the jargon, something real is changing about how people find and trust information online. Traditional SEO was all about gaming Google’s algorithm. Stuff some keywords. Build some links. Optimize your meta tags. Hope the crawler gods smile on you. Now you’re optimizing for bots that remember. Instead of trying to rank #3 for “best CRM software,” you need to be the tool ChatGPT recommends when someone asks “What’s the best CRM for a remote team?” That’s not page rank. That’s answer rank. And it’s a whole different game. Google’s not just crawling your site; they’re watching how people use it. If visitors bounce right away? You lose ground. If they stay, scroll, engage, click, share? You rise. The shift isn’t from SEO to some acronym like SXO or AIO. The shift is from gaming algorithms to being useful. Keyword-stuffed blog posts won’t cut it anymore. AI engines don’t care about keyword density. They care whether your content answers the question. Clearly and authentically. Backlinks still matter, but “build links and pray” isn’t a growth strategy now. With over 60% of Google searches ending in zero clicks, ranking #1 is less valuable than showing up in AI summaries, product roundups, and trusted recommendations. User experience IS SEO now. Not just site speed and mobile-friendliness, but relevance, clarity, helpfulness. If your content feels shallow or salesy, it won’t survive the next generation of search. You used to optimize for an algorithm you could "trick". Now you’re optimizing for AI systems that understand context and meaning. You can’t fake quality anymore. You have to BE quality. But most teams are still chasing keyword charts while their competitors are earning trust signals that will dominate the next decade. If your traffic is dropping even while your rankings hold steady? That's why. Forget the acronyms. Focus on content that helps people. If it’s good, the AI will figure it out. -- Want growth hacks like this that can catapult your business forward?    Sign up to my weekly growth hacks newsletter for easy to implement hacks every Sunday:  <https://lnkd.in/eGMgpwUA>

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At WordCamp US Portland 2025, Danny Sullivan reminded the industry: “Good SEO is good GEO. Or AEO. Or AI SEO. Or LLM SEO. They’re all just SEO.” It was a humorous way of saying: don’t get distracted by new acronyms. The fundamentals haven’t changed. But here’s what I think SEOs should take from this: 1. Old wine, new bottle. These acronyms highlight shifts in where SEO shows up (AI Overviews, vector-driven answers, entity-based retrieval). Execution evolves, but the foundation, relevance, crawlability, intent satisfaction remains. 2. Two lenses for SEO. Timeless SEO: site health, technical hygiene, structured data, and clear content. Adaptive SEO: optimizing so your content is summarized in AI-driven results, not just ranked in blue links. 3. User intent is still the anchor. Whether through keywords, snippets, or LLMs, the ultimate filter hasn’t changed: does your content answer the user’s intent better than alternatives? 4. Why Google repeats this. Because the industry is buzzing with anxiety around GEO/AI SEO. Their message is: don’t chase the acronym. Stay grounded in fundamentals, adapt execution when needed. For me, this reinforces how important it is to: Audit content for answer quality (would this be surfaced in an AI Overview?). Keep investing in structured data to help machines interpret context. Educate stakeholders that the acronym may change, but the principles remain. Question for you: Do you see these new acronyms as valuable distinctions, or just noise that distracts teams from core SEO?

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Most businesses are still approaching AI search the same way they approached SEO five years ago and that’s where the disconnect starts. Traditional SEO is focused on rankings. Keywords, backlinks, page speed, and technical structure designed to help your site appear in search results. It’s still important, but it’s no longer the whole picture. GEO is different. Generative engine optimization isn’t about where you rank. It’s about whether your content is understood, trusted, and reused by AI systems that summarize answers for users before they ever click a link. If your content isn’t structured clearly or doesn’t provide real substance, AI skips it entirely. AEO sits between the two. It helps your content become the direct answer for specific questions through featured snippets, voice search, and People also Ask results. SEO gets you found. AEO helps you get selected. GEO helps you get cited. Going into 2026, businesses need all three working together, not competing with each other. Pages built only for rankings often fail in AI experiences. Content written only for AI summaries often fails to convert real people. The brands pulling ahead understand the difference and build content with intent. They know when to optimize for search visibility, when to optimize for direct answers, and when to structure content so AI can confidently reference it. At Clark & Co, we help businesses move beyond outdated SEO playbooks and build search strategies designed for how discovery actually works today. If you want your content to rank, answer, and show up inside AI experiences, let’s talk.

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My SEO strategy started with a failure, but ultimately earned me $20 million. Here's the full story: I’ve been working with this client for a year. A single website that drives $50M in annual revenue. (Yes, just from that site, he has plenty.) We had early wins. But also dips... thanks to Google updates, AI shifts, and legal messiness. Some weeks were brutal. But they didn’t freak out. They didn’t pressure me. The message was: “Keep going. You’ll find it.” So I tested, and tested, and tested. And after 6 months, we cracked it. I found a way to scale their content using programmatic SEO. Clean of thin content or indexing problems. Here’s the result: 📈 From 111k to 215k daily clicks 💰 Roughly $20M in added revenue... just from SEO The lesson here is always the same: SEO is trust and patience. This client invested in SEO, but more importantly, invested in me. I never received messages like : "What did the AI tool say this week?" "I found these keywords please use them" "How come we lost traffic compared to y'day?" (and it's .5%) And then there’s the other side… The ones who will see "wow, results in 6 months? how come they didn't fire him before lol" The same who are hesitating to invest in SEO… …and expecting overnight results? I think they have a mindset problem. ...And I honestly don't know how they can run a business. If you're a builder, then SEO shouldn't scare you. You shouldn't be scared of testing, failing & testing again. You shouldn't criticize the ones who do. It should be your thing, since you think like a strategist, right? Also no, AI won’t change that. If anything, AI makes it more valuable to have someone who can think clearly, act strategically, and find non-obvious solutions. Because that’s what actually makes you richer. ♻️ REPOST if you’ve stayed patient, tested like hell, and made it work.

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I ranked #1 for a keyword that gets 12,000 searches per month. It generates $23,400 in monthly revenue without a single dollar spent on ads. 💸 The secret? Understanding these 3 types of keyword intent that most e-commerce owners miss: 1️⃣ Informational Intent When someone searches "infrared sauna vs traditional sauna," they're researching. Most stores ignore these terms, but they're goldmines for building trust early in the buyer's journey. 2️⃣ Transactional Intent Searches like "buy four-person sauna online" are ready-to-purchase signals. Your collection pages need specific optimization to capture these buyers (most Shopify stores do this wrong). 3️⃣ Commercial Investigation Intent "Best infrared saunas for home use" signals a buyer who's comparing options. This is where your detailed comparison content needs to shine. After helping e-commerce brands grow their organic traffic, I've found one critical report in Google Analytics that reveals exactly which keywords are actually driving revenue (not just traffic). I break down all three keyword types + the exact Google Analytics report I use in my latest YouTube video. 📺 Comment "SEO GUIDE" below and I'll send you the video link plus my template for finding profitable keywords in your niche. What's your biggest SEO challenge right now? I respond to all comments! #SEO #ecomseo #businessowner #ecommerce

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Click bots are easy, CTR services and phone farms are easy... Signals are hard. You want to move SERPs? You need behaviorally engineered traffic: - Human mimicking bots w/ dwell time & scroll depth - Branded search + click-through campaigns - Geo-targeted clicks with device fingerprinting Google says it uses engagement “sparingly”? The algo leak proved otherwise... Clicks change rankings. And they can be manipulated.

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100k banner impressions can make your CPL cheaper. Not by “brand awareness.” By timing. Here’s the playbook we use in Q4 when content syndication is live: Warm the same TAL / KTA with ~100k display impressions. No broad reach. No spray-and-pray. Sequence matters: Week 0 Warm the audience with banners tied to the exact asset or problem. Week 1–4 Run content syndication against that same list. Capture demand that’s already been primed. Post-engagement Retarget the most engaged users with a webinar invite. What this does: - Lowers hesitation at the point of capture - Improves form completion rates - Compresses CPL without loosening filters What we actually measure: - Lift in branded search - Direct traffic to the asset - Assisted conversions, not just last-click Display doesn’t replace syndication. It makes it work harder. If you want the exact setup we use to layer display on top of syndication without inflating spend, DM me and I’ll walk you through it.

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What happens when you're responsible for SEO on millions of pages? Zach Chahalis, VP of SEO at Apartments.com, shared what enterprise SEO actually looks like when the stakes include rent prices, national media coverage, and keeping Google happy. From sprint-driven workflows to leveraging AI and navigating dev bottlenecks, Zach shares how his team tackles the complex puzzle of enterprise SEO. 🔍 Turning real estate data into newsworthy, location-rich insights ⚙️ Lessons from 75+ site migrations 🧱 Why title tags and schema still matter — even in an AI-first world ✍️ Writing dev tickets that developers want to implement My favorite part? They treat SEO features like product launches — with demos, lookbacks, and kudos for every team involved. If you think #enterpriseSEO is just “more of the same,” this conversation might change your mind. 🚀 What’s your trick for getting devs to prioritize your SEO work? 🎧 Full episode: https://lnkd.in/eaeH2F-9 -- If you enjoyed the conversation, a like or repost means a lot, and helps others find it too! 🙏

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Etsy listings are now bookable directly inside Google’s AI chatbot. Not clicks. Not links. Full checkout. No Etsy visit required. It’s live for signed-in US shoppers using Gemini or Google AI Mode. Some listings, some formats, but the direction is crystal clear. Google doesn’t want to send traffic. Google wants to place the order. This isn't about better SEO. It's about surviving when there's no page to optimize. Etsy confirmed the system skips coupons, gift cards and even the normal checkout UX. Sellers get the money. But lose the moment. Gemini. ChatGPT. Copilot. They're not top-of-funnel tools anymore. They're one-step marketplaces. 💡 What shifts for operators: 🧠 No metadata, no sale If your title, price, variant and return policy aren’t machine-readable, your product doesn’t exist. 📉 Attribution blackout Expect more "where did this sale come from?" moments as platforms handle checkout invisibly. 📬 Support stays with you The chatbot may place the order, but the CS tickets still land in your inbox. 🪙 Pricing gaps widen If your offer isn't competitive inside these platforms, it's not even shown. 🧷 No promo stacking AI checkouts ignore coupons, meaning your entire discount strategy needs a dual setup. Zoom out. This is the Universal Commerce Protocol at work. And Etsy is just the test bed. Now imagine the same flow for bol, Zalando, Amazon, Shopify, all piped into AI interfaces that bypass brand stores entirely. The battleground isn’t traffic anymore. It’s API visibility. #ecommerce #marketplaces #retailtech #DTC #shoppingAI

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Agencies are ruining incrementality testing for everyone else. And they don’t even know it. Here’s what I keep seeing: An agency tells their client they do “gold standard measurement.” They pick a few random regions, turn off spend, run a model, get a number, and call it done. They never post about their methodology publicly. Because once methodology is public, it has to survive real scrutiny. But here’s the part that actually keeps me up at night. It’s not that they’re doing it wrong. It’s what happens AFTER they do it wrong. A marketing leader gets a 5x iROAS on YouTube. They triple spend to $300k/month. MER tanks. And now they walk into every future conversation saying “we tried incrementality testing, it doesn’t work.” Or they run an MMM once as an annual report. No forward testing. No back testing. No iteration. And when the model misses, they say “MMM isn’t accurate.” They didn’t fail at measurement. They failed at the process around measurement. But the methodology takes the blame. This is why I get on demo calls every single week with marketing leaders who say: “We tried incrementality before. It didn’t work.” “We don’t believe in MMM anymore.” They’re not wrong to be skeptical. They just got burned by someone who treated statistical analysis like a checkbox instead of a discipline. An MMM isn’t a report. It’s a system. A holdout test isn’t a one-time read. It’s a confidence interval. An iROAS without an upper and lower bound isn’t a result. It’s a guess. If you’re offering measurement services to clients, you either need to be a data scientist or you need to use tools purpose-built to guide the process end to end. Because “directional” isn’t a flex. It’s a liability. If you disagree, I’d genuinely love to hear how you’re running these tests. This is uncomfortable, but it’s worth talking about.

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