Content and Conversation: Organic Growth Insights from Siege Media

Ross Hudgens sits down with Rand Fishkin, founder of SparkToro and co-author (with Amanda Natividad) of the book Zero Click Marketing, for a frank conversation about why most of the ways marketers measure their work are broken, and what to do instead. Rand explains why he soured on “How did you hear about us?” surveys, including the experiment where 30% of a brand’s customers credited a well-known food personality who had never mentioned it. He makes the case that incrementality testing and correlation modeling are the real path to measuring AI’s impact, and walks through the unanswered questions undermining AI visibility tracking, from guessed-at prompt volume to too few prompt runs and invisible personalization. Show Notes:0:00 – Why self-attribution fails2:26 – The fake influencer experiment6:58 – Incrementality testing for AI11:55 – Correlation modeling with AI16:03 – The prompt volume problem18:44 – Prompt runs and personalization24:31 – Why ChatGPT should sell prompt data27:52 – Why the UK clicks least31:14 – Dark traffic and walled gardens38:24 – Are nonfiction books still worth it?41:47 – Product problem, not marketing problem44:07 – AI for customer research47:43 – The book’s two big takeaways49:06 – Turn off your adsShow Links:Grab Zero Click MarketingRand on LinkedInSparkToroPreorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens Chuck Klosterman interview on the Plain English podcastSubscribe for weekly episodesListen on AppleListen on SpotifyFollow Ross on XFollow Siege Media on XEmail Ross  Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens welcomes Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and CMO of Orbit Media, to unpack the most alarming finding from 13 years of Orbit’s annual content marketing survey: after a decade of 20–28% of marketers reporting strong results, that number crashed to just 14% in 2026. Andy explains why AI use shows zero correlation with performance, why the strategies that have always driven results (original research, influencer collaboration, human editors, keyword research, highly visual content) are being abandoned, and why he’s never once tracked word count despite averaging 2,400 words and 10–12 hours per article. They also get into why great content should look like a social stream, why you shouldn’t fear quoting competitors, and how Goodhart’s Law explains the long-article era.Show Notes:0:00 – Content performance crashed to 14%1:52 – AI is table stakes, not an edge2:58 – What still works (and fewer people do)5:34 – Back to the human basics6:48 – Make content look like a social stream8:16 – Should you quote competitors?10:48 – Article length & Goodhart’s Law14:50 – Why search and conversion must combine16:19 – Pages that emulate a sales call21:15 – Cognitive biases & loss aversion23:15 – Winning the AI recommendation28:01 – Home pages get 15x more AI bot visits29:52 – Put proof points in text33:12 – The future of the website37:16 – Predictions for next year’s studyShow Links:Andy on LinkedInOrbit MediaPreorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross HudgensSubscribe for weekly episodesListen on AppleListen on SpotifyFollow Ross on XFollow Siege Media on XEmail Ross  Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens sits down with Eric Wu, who leads SEO, GEO, and CRO at Ramp, to unpack one of the most experiment-driven search programs in B2B.Eric walks through the test that proved a simple markdown file could change ChatGPT's answers, a $162 "AI-exclusive" demo offer that real prospects asked sales about by name, and why Ramp leaves experiments live for months to track how answer engines shift over time.Show Notes0:00 – The markdown experiment: changing ChatGPT's answer with a $162 offer3:05 – Marketing to agents without hurting the user experience4:37 – Personalized AI content at scale8:24 – Schema tests and why answer engines look like early-2000s search10:17 – Long-running experiments and getting flagged as manipulation12:47 – Prioritizing experiments vs. business outcomes14:42 – Dark search: why AI traffic shows up as direct17:37 – How Ramp found 30–40% of direct traffic is answer engine traffic22:00 – Why Google won't share AI Mode clicks24:15 – The Search Console vs. GA4 flip after October 202525:29 – Why Ramp ranks for the word "yes"28:29 – Ramp's Reddit experiments34:49 – Repurposing blog content on Reddit38:55 – Vendor comparison pages built for procurement42:40 – LLM visibility tracking: vanity metrics vs. what correlates with sales45:15 – Using "How did you hear about us?" to attribute dark trafficShow LinksRamp RateRamp Platform on RedditPreorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross HudgensSubscribe for weekly episodesListen on AppleListen on SpotifyFollow Ross on XFollow Siege Media on XEmail Ross Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Siege Media CEO Ross Hudgens flies solo for a case study episode on Zapier, one of the most cited domains in LLMs and a name almost anyone in B2B or SaaS will recognize from their own citation reports.Drawing from a longer chapter in his upcoming book on GEO with Wiley, Ross breaks down why Zapier shows up in roughly 80% of the bottom-funnel prompts it cares about, and why it ranks fifth among cited domains in B2B, behind only G2, Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit.Ross walks through the pieces behind that visibility: an integration library that lets Zapier write about thousands of tools without competing with them, a deep bench of editorially rigorous "best of" and "versus" articles, digital PR built on survey-driven data studies, and an actively curated Reddit community. He also takes on the big objection, whether citations actually drive business, with Zapier's own numbers: 40% of visitors now find them through LLMs, and 25% of signups are attributed to AI.Get the book to read more about Zapier: https://www.siegemedia.com/geo-bookShow Notes0:00 Why Zapier as a case study 0:36 Zapier's bottom-funnel AI visibility 1:05 Top 20 most cited domains, 5th in B2B 2:02 The integration library advantage 2:56 Best-of listicles and versus articles 4:42 Why versus content drives LLM visibility 5:32 Premium design and editorial standards 6:58 Digital PR and data studies 7:28 Building a Reddit community 9:10 Do citations actually drive pipeline? 10:48 The book and final thoughtsShow LinksPreorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens: https://a.co/d/0a4oRiI5Subscribe for weekly episodes: https://bit.ly/3dBM61fListen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsMFollow Ross on X: https://twitter.com/rosshudgensFollow Siege Media on X: https://twitter.com/siegemediaEmail Ross: [email protected] Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens sits down with Marat Gaziev, VP of SEO & GEO at IGN, for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens to publishing when the 20-year bargain between search engines and content creators (free content in exchange for traffic) quietly falls apart. Marat breaks down Ziff Davis's lawsuit against OpenAI in plain terms: the copyright and trademark-dilution claims, how their properties ended up in the WebText training set, and why the judge dismissed the robots.txt argument with a memorable "lock on the back door while the front door is open" analogy. From there they get into the emerging economics of licensing (RSL, Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace, and whether AI companies can even afford to pay publishers), the shift from driving clicks to driving citations and mentions, and why sponsored content and authentic, authoritative voices may matter more than ever.Show Notes00:00 – Inside Ziff Davis and IGN03:10 – Why Ziff Davis sued OpenAI10:16 – RSL and content marketplaces20:18 – Monetizing in a post-click world26:41 – Are LLMs too naive33:45 – 20 years of SEO history38:34 – Using vector embeddings to match intent45:03 – Rewriting search and SEO51:12 – Personalization in the AI eraShow LinksMarat at LinkedInMarat on XPreorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross HudgensSubscribe for weekly episodesListen on AppleListen on SpotifyFollow Ross on XFollow Siege Media on XEmail Ross Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens welcomes Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine and Smart Bear, to unpack the "multipliers" behind outsized marketing results.  They get into how WP Engine grew affiliates into a channel competitors couldn't touch, why most A/B testing quietly produces nothing, and Jason's core argument that the quality of traffic at the top of your funnel matters more than everything below it combined.  Along the way: exclusivity deals, multi-brand strategy, defining a truly actionable ideal customer, and why showing your product's bad reviews can actually lift sales.  Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:57 The affiliate power curve 03:00 The "magic wand" test  10:19 Affiliates, brand value & AI search 15:12 Defining your ideal customer 22:42 Why your A/B test wins disappear (false positives) 28:27 Why A/B testing fails for SEO 33:49 Traffic quality beats everything else in the funnel 39:04 How to actually get higher-quality traffic 52:22 Why showing bad reviews boosts sales Show Links Jason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncohen/ WP Engine: https://wpengine.com/ Jason's Book "Hidden Multipliers: Jumpstart Growth With Your Existing Budget and Team"A Smart Bear: https://longform.asmartbear.com/jason-cohen/ Preorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens: https://a.co/d/0e5jdspP Subscribe for weekly episodes: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGX... Follow Ross on X: https://x.com/rosshudgens Follow Siege Media on X: https://x.com/siegemedia  Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Josh Blyskal, Special Projects at Profound, returns to the show for a data-rich, in-person conversation with Ross Hudgens about what's actually true in AI search right now, and what's just noise.  Josh makes the case that the industry's obsession with tracking frequency is mostly a distraction (running a prompt 10x a day vs. once barely moves your visibility score) and that the real hard problem is still attribution. He walks through a new model some advanced teams are using, treating agent attention as a proxy for human attention and heavily discounting citations into "clicks,” and shares why ChatGPT referral traffic is up 60% since mid-March, especially for CPG.  From there they get into why GEO is fundamentally a relationship business (the Reddit–Google negotiations, why Claude cites Reddit almost never, and the walled-garden problem), what actually separates slop from signal, and why listicles still do the "caloric work" of teaching a model an industry.  Show Notes 0:00 How often should you track Prompts? 08:14 The new attribution model 14:05 GEO as a relationship business 20:05 What separates slop from signal 26:43 Product pages, versus queries and battle cards 30:21 ChatGPT vs. Claude 34:12 Future-proofing your stack 40:55 Video, social and the language arbitrage 49:18 Imitation vs. creation & where GEO is headed Show Links Josh’s website Josh on LinkedIn Preorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens Subscribe for weekly episodes Listen on Apple Listen on Spotify Follow Ross on X Follow Siege Media on X Email Ross   Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens sits down with JH Scherck, founder of Growth Plays, for a refreshingly contrarian take on AI content. JH argues that with the right context and execution, AI already gets you 85–90% of the way to a strong B2B article, and that the real skill in 2026 is being the person who can take a B+ draft to an A+.  Along the way he flips the industry's favorite critique on its head: was SEO content *ever* good? He makes the case that the bar was always low, and that it took removing humans from the equation for anyone to start caring about sentence construction and quality at all.  Ross and JH also dig into where AI content genuinely works (dev tools, technical docs, location pages) versus where it falls flat, the telltale "it's 3 a.m. and your microservices are failing" intro pattern, why plugging more data sources into your workflow isn't differentiation, whether people will stop browsing websites and just chat with them, the perils nobody's discussing, how your product's history follows you around in LLMs, and why AI turns C players into more prolific C players rather than A players. Show Notes 0:00 Getting 85% There: Where AI Already Beats Most Writers 4:45 The AI Doer vs. the AI Reviewer 8:48 "Was SEO Content Ever Good?" Rethinking the Slop Debate 12:24 What Actually Differentiates Content Now 16:13 Will People Stop Browsing and Just Chat With Your Site? 21:45 The Perilous Side of AI Content Nobody's Discussing 33:07 Maintenance Mode & Why Your History Follows You in LLMs 39:29 Educating Executives & Avoiding the "Slop Cannon" 48:12 Traffic Recovery, Brand Problems & Qualifying Clients Out 53:34 The Truth About ChatGPT Leads & Aggregate Citation Data Show Links Visit Growth Plays Follow JH on LinkedIn Preorder "Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO" by Ross Hudgens Subscribe for weekly episodes Listen on Apple Listen on Spotify Follow Ross on X Follow Siege Media on X Email Ross Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens sits down with Aja Frost, Sr. Director of Global Growth & Paid at HubSpot, to open up the playbook behind one of the most advanced GEO/AEO programs in SaaS. Aja shares how HubSpot has been investing in answer engine optimization since early 2023 and how the company turned a very public blog traffic decline into a "Phoenix from the ashes" story, becoming the single most visible CRM in LLMs. They get tactical on writing for the bot (her "B2B2C" framing and "tofu with a twist" content strategy), why visibility beats citation share as a KPI, how HubSpot tracks prompts down to the feature level, and why audience size barely predicts who gets cited. Aja also breaks down HubSpot's creator and affiliate strategy, the durable (and not-so-durable) ways to earn off-site mentions, a deep dive on doing Reddit authentically, and how she reorganized her 65-person team around products instead of web properties. Show Notes 0:00 – HubSpot's GEO playbook 2:21 – Why AI evaluation predicts purchase intent 03:48 – Becoming the top CRM in LLMs 06:31 – Writing for the bots 11:07 – How HubSpot tracks its prompts 18:16 – Audience size doesn't predict citations 25:15 – Affiliates and valuing a citation 37:30 – The Reddit deep dive 49:27 – Inside HubSpot's reorg   Show Links Aja on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajafrost/ Aja’s website: https://ajafrost.com/ Aja on The HubSpot Marketing blog: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/author/aja-frost AEO Sensor: https://www.hubspot.com/aeo-sensor   Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross Hudgens sits down with Tom Critchlow, founder of AI Search Leaders (the evolution of his SEO MBA community), for a candid conversation about what GEO actually is in 2026 and why nobody has fully cracked it yet.  Tom makes the case that AI search measurement looks far more like brand measurement than classic SEO: less about prompt monitoring and keyword ranking, more about share of model, awareness, and how LLMs describe you (not just whether they cite you).  Along the way they dig into the "yes" stance SEOs need to take with executives, why brand, PR, and product teams, not SEO teams, tend to own the outcomes that move GEO, the real career risk facing SEOs, technical SEO in the age of model distillation, NavBoost and clicks as a trust signal, and the personalized, push-not-pull future of search.   Show Notes 0:00 – Why SEOs can't afford to be defensive 2:35 – How do you measure GEO? 6:24 – Measuring GEO like a brand 15:04 – Who really owns GEO? 23:26 – Technical SEO in the AI age 30:36 – Stop chasing tactics 37:09 – Selling GEO amid uncertainty 41:21 – NavBoost, clicks as trust 51:39 – Personalization, privacy and the future of search   Show Links AI Search Leaders: https://www.searchleaders.ai/   Your Inbox Might be the Next AI Search Signal: https://ipullrank.com/google-personal-intelligence-experiment   Why Every AI Search Platform Is Now Agentic and What That Means for Your Content: https://ipullrank.com/agentic-rag   Subscribe for weekly episodes: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f   Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174   Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM   Follow Ross on X: https://twitter.com/rosshudgens   Follow Siege Media on X: https://twitter.com/siegemedia   Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing