The SEO industry is entering its most turbulent period yet.
Traffic is declining. AI is absorbing informational queries.
Social platforms now function as search engines. Google is shifting from a gateway to an answer engine.
The result is a sector running in circles – unsure what to measure, what to optimize, or even what SEO is meant to do.
Yet within this turbulence, something clear has emerged.
A single marketing metric that cuts through the noise and signals brand health and future demand.
A metric that marketers and SEOs can align around with confidence.
That metric is share of search.
The old model of being discovered by accident through classic search behavior is disappearing.
AI Overviews answer questions without sending traffic anywhere.
Meta is already rolling out its own AI to answer user queries.
TikTok and YouTube continue to grow as product discovery engines.
It is only a matter of time before LinkedIn becomes a business search engine powered by conversational AI.
We are witnessing a seismic shift. In moments like this, measurement becomes even more important.
Many SEO metrics are losing meaning, but one is rapidly gaining importance.
Share of search is a metric developed by James Hankins and Les Binet.
It is calculated by dividing a brand’s search volume by the total search volume for all brands in its category.
The result shows the proportion of category interest the brand commands.
The value is not in the calculation itself, but in what the metric correlates with.
Studies published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) show that share of search correlates strongly with market share and future buying behavior.
As the IPA notes:
In simple terms, consumers search for brands they are considering, buying, or using.
That makes search behavior one of the clearest available signals of real demand.
Share of search was never designed to be perfect. It does not capture every nuance of how people find information across platforms.
It was built as a practical proxy for brand demand – and right now, practical measurement is exactly what the industry needs.
Dig deeper: Measuring what matters in a post-SEO world
Traffic as a measurement has become almost meaningless.
It has been easy to inflate, manipulate, and misunderstand.
Goodhart’s Law explains why. When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
Traffic was treated as a target for years, and as a result, it stopped being a reliable indicator of anything meaningful.
Now traffic is falling – not because brands are doing anything wrong, but because AI is answering questions before users ever reach a website.
Ironically, this makes traffic more meaningful again, as much of the noise that once inflated it is disappearing.
The bigger advantage, however, belongs to share of search.
It cannot be inflated through content tactics or gamed by chasing trends. It reflects underlying consumer interest.
That is why share of search has become so significant.
It shows whether a brand is being searched for more or less than its competitors.
When share of search rises, brand demand is growing. When it falls, demand is weakening.
If an entire category collapses – as it did with air fryers once most consumers had already bought one – the metric also provides a clear signal that demand for the overall market is shrinking.
There is another advantage. Share of search is a multi-platform metric.
People no longer search in one place.
Product searches may begin on Amazon, TikTok, or Facebook.
Credibility checks often happen on YouTube. Long-form research may still take place on Google.
Discovery is fragmented, and behavior is fluid.
Share of search adapts to this reality. It is platform agnostic.
You can measure it using Google Trends, Ahrefs, Semrush, My Telescope, or any platform that provides reliable volume estimates.
You can track demand across Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, and emerging AI search interfaces.
Where the behavior happens matters less than the signal itself.
If people are looking for your brand, they are demonstrating intent.
This cross-platform visibility is critical because AI search sends little traffic to websites.
ChatGPT, Claude, and other LLMs present answers, snippets, and summaries, but rarely generate click-through.
Links are often buried, inaccessible, or accompanied by friction.
Instead, these systems trigger brand search.
Users encounter a brand in an AI response, then search for it when they want more information.
As a result, share of search becomes the tail-end signal of everything marketing does, including AI exposure.
When share of search rises, marketing is working. When it falls, it is not.
However, the metric needs a champion.
The SEO industry has spent years focused on two types of keywords:
That approach made sense when classic search was the dominant discovery channel. That world is disappearing.
Yet many SEOs continue to cling to outdated deliverables, such as structured data micro-optimization or churning out endless blog posts to influence hypothetical AI citations.
Citations are a distraction.
At best, they are a minor signal in LLM outputs.
At worst, they are a misleading metric that will not stand up to financial scrutiny.
When CFOs start questioning the value of SEO budgets, citations will not hold up as evidence of ROI.
Share of search will.
SEOs who embrace share of search position themselves not as keyword tacticians, but as strategic insights partners.
They become interpreters of demand who help:
This shift changes the role of SEO entirely.
Instead of being judged by how much content they produce, SEOs begin to be valued for how well they understand search behavior and the commercial impact of that behavior.
A well-structured share of search report tells a coherent story:
In the AI era, this narrative becomes essential.
Someone inside the organization must understand how people search, where they search, and what the numbers mean.
SEOs are naturally positioned to fill that role. You have the background and the expertise.
And as AI automates more mechanical SEO tasks, this progression becomes increasingly natural.
Because share of search requires interpretation.
Dig deeper: Why LLM perception drift will be 2026’s key SEO metric
Share of search does not have to be a single top-level number. It can be:
Consider the air fryer category.
Demand collapsed across the market once most consumers had already purchased one.
Within that collapse, however, individual models rose and fell based on their appeal.
Ninja’s latest model, for example, showed spikes and dips that revealed shifts in consumer interest long before sales data arrived.
Share of search acts as early detection for market movement.
SEOs who understand this level of nuance become indispensable. They can:
This is the future skill set – not chasing rankings, but interpreting behavior.
As AI becomes more integrated into search and site optimization, many mechanical SEO tasks will be increasingly automated.
The interpretation of marketing performance, however, cannot be fully automated.
Share of search requires human judgment.
It requires an understanding of context, seasonality, category dynamics, and brand strategy.
That role can and should belong to the SEO professional.
Some agencies may label this function an insights specialist or a data analyst.
Some organizations may house it within marketing.
But the people who understand search behavior most deeply are SEOs.
They are best positioned to interpret what the numbers mean and communicate those insights to leadership teams.
Leadership teams need to understand what is happening with their brand.
Marketing leaders are already discussing share of search, and it is beginning to appear in boardroom conversations.
It is quickly becoming a central indicator of brand strength.
In an AI-driven world where traffic is scarce and visibility is fragmented, the strategic imperative is clear.
Brands need to be searched for. Those that are searched for endure. Those that are not fade.
That is why share of search is not just another metric. It is becoming the metric.
SEOs who embrace it can elevate their role, influence, and strategic value at exactly the moment the industry needs it most.
The advice for SEOs is simple: Learn share of search.
To get started:
You will not become fluent in the metric without using it. Once you do, its applications become clear.
Share of search is the bridge that connects SEO to the broader world of brand.
Take the first step.
As marketing channels and touchpoints multiply rapidly, the way success is measured significantly impacts long-term growth and executive perception.
Click-based attribution – across models like last-click, first-click, linear, and time-decay – remains the default.
But as a standalone measurement strategy, it’s showing its age.
Click metrics now carry disproportionate weight in executive dashboards, and that reliance introduces real limitations.
Click-based models can still reveal valuable insights into digital engagement.
However, when the C-suite bases major budget and strategy decisions solely on clicks, they risk overlooking critical aspects of the customer journey – often the very pieces that matter most.
This article examines:
The goal isn’t to demonize clicks – they still belong in the toolbox. But they should provide context, not serve as the foundation.
Click-based attribution tracks ad clicks and assigns conversion credit to the marketing touchpoints that drove them.
Models like first-click, last-click, linear, time-decay, and data-driven approaches differ only in how they split that credit across the user journey.
Digital ad platforms and many analytics tools default to click-based models because clicks are relatively easy to capture, understand, and report.
They’re deterministic, clean, and simple to interpret at a glance.
That cleanliness, however, can be misleading.
Click-based attribution depends entirely on a user interacting with tracking links or tags.
If a user doesn’t click, or clicks but converts later or elsewhere, the touchpoint may be missed or misattributed.
This approach can work in a simple, linear funnel.
But as customer journeys become multi-device, multi-channel, and increasingly offline, clicks lose context quickly.
Dig deeper: The end of easy PPC attribution – and what to do next
Today’s buyers rarely follow the neat, linear paths that click-based models assume.
Instead, they move across devices, channels, and even offline touchpoints.
Think social media, LLMs like ChatGPT, and brand exposure from video, influencers, or website content.
Many of these interactions never generate a tracked click, yet they play a critical role in shaping perception, intent, and eventual conversion.
For example, a buyer may watch a brand’s video on LinkedIn during their morning commute.
Later, they read a third-party review and skim a few case studies on the brand’s website.
Days later, they type the brand name directly into Google and convert.
In a click-based model, only the final branded search click receives credit.
The video, the review, and the content that built trust remain invisible.
These aren’t minor attribution blind spots – they represent a canyon.
Click-based models place the most weight on the final click.
As a result, they often over-index lower-funnel activity from channels like retargeting ads or branded search.
These channels convert more frequently, but they do not create demand on their own.
For C-level decision-makers, this creates a dangerous bias.
Dashboards light up for retargeting campaigns and branded search, so budgets flow there.
Mid- and upper-funnel investments – brand building, awareness, content, and influencers – are reduced or cut.
Over time, the brand’s long-term growth engine is choked in favor of short-term, easily quantifiable wins.
Dig deeper: Marketing attribution models: The pros and cons
Not all marketing impact shows up as clicks.
A video ad or thought-leadership piece may plant a seed without prompting an immediate click, yet the message can linger.
It may lead to later brand searches or site visits, outcomes that are difficult to capture through click-based measurement.
As a result, brand power, creative messaging, and top-of-funnel reach are underrepresented in click-based models.
Over time, organizations that optimize solely around click-based attribution may unintentionally deprioritize creativity, brand-building, and long-term equity.
We’re moving toward a future where third-party cookies are diminished or gone, privacy rules continue to tighten, and tracking becomes less precise.
Under these conditions, click tracking grows more difficult, less reliable, and increasingly misaligned.
Without stable identifiers, many of the assumptions behind click-based models – “this click belongs to that user” or “this click led to that conversion” – begin to unravel.
Attribution becomes a house of cards built on data that may not hold up as privacy and tracking norms continue to shift.
When click-based reporting dominates, budgets tend to flow toward what looks good – the activities that drive visible revenue and deliver clean, direct ROI.
That often comes at the expense of demand generation efforts that support long-term growth, such as brand campaigns, content, awareness, and other upper-funnel media.
This approach may “work” for a few months or even years.
Over time, however, the pipeline dries up.
Awareness declines, organic reach stagnates, and the brand loses its ability to attract new audiences at scale.
Marketing shifts into a zero-sum exercise focused on extracting conversions from existing demand rather than expanding it.
Without sustained investment in brand equity and demand generation, competitiveness, brand loyalty, and lifetime value (LTV) suffer.
In essence, optimizing for short-term ROAS puts long-term brand health at risk.
When KPIs are click-based:
The result is marketing silos working toward different objectives.
Fragmentation increases.
Ad platforms and tracking tools report click-based conversions, but many of those conversions are self-crediting, particularly within paid media platforms.
When you rely heavily on these numbers without scrutiny or connection to the broader user journey, you risk making high-stakes decisions based on biased data.
If click-based attribution is flawed, how should performance be evaluated?
The short answer is a combination of approaches grounded in real business outcomes.
At a higher level – especially when multiple channels are involved, including online, offline, paid media, organic media, and PR – MMM helps quantify channel-level contribution to sales, revenue, or other business outcomes.
It looks at broad correlations over time using aggregated data rather than user-level clicks.
MMM, supported by machine learning, improved data resolution, and more frequent refresh cycles, has become more accessible and actionable.
It isn’t a replacement for click- or site-based data, but a powerful complement.
Dig deeper: MTA vs. MMM: Which marketing attribution model is right for you?
User-level path analysis still has a place when privacy and tracking allow.
Multi-touch models that consider multiple touchpoints can provide richer insight, but they work best as one input among many rather than a single source of truth.
They offer path visibility, but without incrementality testing or support from MMM, they still risk over-crediting and bias.
Marketing value isn’t confined to a single sale or conversion.
LTV, retention, and long-term value creation matter just as much.
Tying spend to CAC payback, churn, loyalty, and retention creates a measurement framework aligned with long-term business goals.
Incrementality testing measures what marketing actually adds by identifying net-new conversions, revenue, lift, or awareness.
It separates what would have happened anyway from what your efforts truly drove.
This approach isn’t as clean as click tracking and requires more planning and discipline, but it delivers causality.
It allows you to say, with confidence, “This spend generated X% incremental lift.”
Dig deeper: Why incrementality is the only metric that proves marketing’s real impact
Not all impact is transactional.
Upper-funnel signals such as viewability, time-in-view, attention scores, and engagement matter.
Creative resonance, brand recall, and impact often influence later behavior that never appears as a click.
Looking beyond clicks to metrics like creative recall, brand lift, share of voice, sentiment, and qualitative feedback helps anchor measurement to real brand value and audience expectations.
A modern measurement framework isn’t built around one model or metric.
It brings together complementary methods to create a clearer, more balanced view of performance.
The most effective measurement frameworks take a portfolio approach.
MMM, incrementality, multi-touch attribution (when possible), attention metrics, and customer lifecycle metrics work together to triangulate performance from multiple perspectives.
This diversity reduces bias and balances short-term performance with long-term brand health.
It also makes it possible for the C-suite to see more than conversions alone – including impact, growth potential, and sustainable value.
Executives care about revenue, margin, and growth. Not just clicks.
Reframe KPIs around the key metrics that matter, such as:
Package those into dashboards that tell a story:
When dashboards lead with vanity metrics like click volume, CTR, or raw conversion rate, insight is limited. Lead instead with business outcomes.
Build narrative-driven dashboards that connect investment to results, learning, and action.
Lean toward data storytelling instead of data reporting.
That story resonates with executives. It links marketing to business value, not just to marketing activity.
Modern analytics tools – including AI and predictive forecasting – can help:
Use them to simulate scenarios, test assumptions, and support business cases.
These tools aren’t silver bullets. They work best as accelerators for sound strategic thinking.
Changing how performance is measured doesn’t happen automatically.
It requires clear framing, evidence, and a deliberate transition rather than an abrupt overhaul.
Often, executives cling to click-based metrics because they’re easy to understand (“one user clicked, we got a sale”) and seemingly real-time.
They want fast feedback and accountability. Demand creation efforts often feel abstract and hard to justify.
Be prepared to address that directly:
Click-based attribution doesn’t need to be discarded overnight. Instead:
Over time, incentives begin to shift. Media moves beyond clicks, creative focuses on quality and resonance, and analytics emphasizes causality and long-term value.
Executives rarely object to logic – they object to noise.
Frame your case with clarity and use data.
Show examples, run tests, show incremental lift, and then build dashboards that tell a clear story.
Once you prove that a dollar invested in brand or top-of-funnel media delivers compounding value over time, leadership hopefully becomes less attracted to short-term click metrics.
They begin to appreciate marketing as an investment, not a cost center.
Click-based attribution has served marketing teams for years. It offered a clean way to connect conversions to touchpoints.
But the landscape has changed.
For C-level teams, judging performance by clicks alone is like judging a company’s health by heart rate alone. It’s useful, but incomplete.
Modern marketing requires a richer view – one that blends data, causality, business outcomes, and long-term brand building.
As marketing leaders, our job isn’t to chase the next click.
It’s to build brands that last, drive sustained growth, and help leadership see marketing not as a cost, but as a strategic investment.
Every week, new data highlights both the overlap and the divergence between effective organic search techniques across traditional SEO (Google SERPs) and GEO (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, etc.).
It’s a lot to absorb. One week, headlines say traditional SEO tactics work fine for ChatGPT.
The next, you’ll see reports that one platform is elevating Reddit while another is dialing it back.
Given how quickly this landscape shifts, I want to break down the approach, process, and resources my team is using to tackle content in 2026.
This goes far beyond a content calendar.
It’s about combining audience understanding, the interplay of organic platforms, and your brand’s perspective to build a content system that delivers real value.
The emphasis on quality and value in content is good for marketers.
The tenets of E-E-A-T remain central to our approach because they apply to AI search discoverability as much as to traditional SEO.
Producing strong content still depends on a rich understanding of your audience, good fundamental structures, and solid delivery methods – skills that always matter.
Start with your audience.
Approach content like any other product or service:
Approach content like any other product or service:
That said, content that has performed well in Google may not work as effectively for LLM search.
Instead of writing primarily for blue-link SERPs, we now focus on creating content that stands on its own as an authoritative, structured data source, with trust and originality as ranking signals.
That means prioritizing clarity, factual depth, and a consistent brand perspective that AI models can reliably quote.
In an age of mass AI content, original insights, data, and human perspective are key differentiators, so content systems should include a step for “original proof” – data, interviews, or commentary that make the material uniquely trustworthy.
We’re also thinking more about how content gets used in AI experiences, not just how it’s found.
Summaries, bullet points, and explainers that answer layered intent are increasingly valuable.
Incorporating schema, structured data, and a consistent brand voice improves how AI systems read and represent your content.
In short, the goal is to optimize for retrievability and credibility, not just ranking.
The content strategy path I like to prescribe is as follows:
Once your research is conducted, you’ll have what you need to craft content and deploy it in multiple ways.
The linear workflow that persisted for years in traditional SEO, however, must evolve into a modular content engine – one where a single research output fuels multiple media types (articles, YouTube scripts, short-form video, LinkedIn posts, etc.), with platform-native variations all aligned to a central narrative theme.
A few years ago, I would have started with well-known, well-established tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.
While those remain useful for benchmarking, they no longer represent how people discover or consume information as AI search transforms user behavior in real time.
AI search abstracts away keywords – users are asking multi-intent questions, and LLMs are generating synthesized answers.
SEO analysis is now, rather than the main starting point, one piece of the research pie.
It’s still important, but search optimization is now embedded throughout the content process.
The tools below have been important in the past, and my team still leans on them as part of a more holistic approach to content planning.
Surveys are useful but can be expensive when you’re trying to reach audiences outside your CRM.
You can still get strong insights by engaging subject matter experts who share the same professional experiences, challenges, and responsibilities as your target audience.
Slack communities, live or virtual meet-ups, and memberships in organizations like the AMA or ANA can all offer on-the-ground perspectives that support your content mapping.
It’s critical to include intent analysis from AI tools and conversational search data.
Understanding how users phrase questions to AI systems can inform structure and tone.
Not all social media posts are created equal, but understanding your audience includes knowing where your audience likes to engage: X, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, etc. (Not to mention that Reddit citations show up prominently in ChatGPT results.)
Utilize these platforms to gather real-time information on what your audience is discussing and to increase brand mentions, which will send strong signals to ChatGPT and similar tools.
Shift from tracking keyword overlap to evaluating content depth, originality, and entity coverage – where your brand’s expertise can fill gaps or improve on generic AI-summarized answers.
For many years, SEO marketers focused on impressions and clicks, although more advanced practitioners also incorporated down-funnel metrics, such as leads, conversions, pipeline impact, and revenue.
Today, SEOs must expand their KPIs to include brand mentions in:
These are the new indicators of helpfulness and value.
We’ve seen strong successes with AI search visibility that complement our traditional SEO results, but our understanding of best practices continues to evolve with each new round of aggregated data on AI search results and shifting user behavior.
In short, keep a parallel track of what has worked recently and where the trends are heading, since ChatGPT and its competitors are changing user behavior in real time – and with it, the shape of organic discovery across platforms.
This season, Google Search and Shopping Ads are expected to surge past $70 billion in holiday spending. But there’s a hidden flaw in the auction system — one most advertisers don’t realize is costing them money even when competitors aren’t in the game.
BrandPilot calls this the Uncontested Google Ads Problem, and it’s becoming one of the most overlooked sources of wasted ad spend in peak retail season.
During SMX Next, John Beresford, Chief Revenue Officer at BrandPilot, unpacked how a little-known behavioral quirk in Google’s auction logic can cause advertisers to overspend on their own brand terms, their Shopping placements, and even their category keywords — simply because Google doesn’t automatically reduce your CPC when competition disappears.
Instead of paying less when you’re the only bidder, you may be paying the same high rate you’d pay when rivals are active… without realizing it.
It’s a phenomenon happening thousands of times a day across major brands, and many marketers never notice it’s occurring.
In his session, Beresford discussed:
He also shared examples of how advertisers are reclaiming wasted spend and reinvesting it into growth – without sacrificing impression share, traffic, or revenue.
Watch BrandPilot’s session now (for free, no registration required) to learn how to:
If you’re running Google Search or Shopping campaigns this holiday season, you can’t afford to miss this session. Learn how to stop the Google Grinch from stealing your budget — and start turning those savings into real performance gains.
Leon County is stepping into a bold new era of sports—one that secures our reputation as the world’s undisputed Capital of Cross Country. On Saturday, January 10, 2026, our community will open its arms to the world as we welcome the World Athletics Cross Country Championships Tallahassee 26 to Leon County’s Apalachee Regional Park (ARP).
Essentially the Olympics of the sport of cross country, this event marks the very first world championship sporting event ever to be held in Leon County.
When more than 500 elite athletes representing 65 countries arrive to chase world titles, it will mark a milestone over 15 years in the making—and a moment that will define Leon County’s legacy as a destination capable of hosting the world’s most prestigious sports competitions. This moment did not happen overnight. It is the result of vision, persistence, and collaboration that began in 2009 with an idea and a belief: that our community could build a world-class cross-country venue unlike anything in the nation.
Leon County invested in that vision at Apalachee Regional Park, and now the world’s greatest athletes are coming here to make history in our community.
For this championship event, Leon County government’s tourism team, Visit Tallahassee, leveraged the strength of Florida’s global brand: sunshine, blue waters, natural landscapes, and world-renowned attractions.
The world championship course itself is a tribute to Florida’s natural beauty. There will be six custom-designed elements that bring Tallahassee, Leon County and Florida’s identity to life: a replica of our historic Capitol building; a rollercoaster honoring the state’s world-famous attractions; a sand pit representing 100 miles of coastline; a water feature symbolizing Florida’s oceans, springs, lakes, and rivers; Alligator Alley, where runners will navigate alligator-shaped logs carved from fallen trees at Apalachee Regional Park; and a mud section paying homage to the Florida Everglades.
As one of the most important international sporting events to be held in the U.S.A. in 2026, this is Leon County’s chance to put our best foot forward. Thousands of spectators, coaches, officials, and fans will travel from around the world, generating an estimated $4.3 million in economic impact. From hotels and restaurants to attractions, shops, and both large and small businesses, the community will feel the energy and economic lift.
We also want our residents to be at the heart of this moment. We invite everyone to join us for all the action—come see the championship races of the world’s fastest runners and, better yet, put a team together and join the Worlds Fun Run: Florida Edition. Choose the 2K or 4K, and all finishers receive a spectacular medal. For those unable to attend in person, the event will be broadcast in 70 countries worldwide on NBC/Peacock, showcasing Leon County to millions of viewers.
A portion of event proceeds will support Leon County Schools’ cross country and track & field programs, ensuring the next generation of runners benefit from this global stage. When you buy a ticket or register a team, you’re not just watching history—you’re investing in our kids and our local economy.
And there’s more. On Sunday following the World Championships, Tallahassee will host the USA Track & Field Club Cross Country Championships, bringing in hundreds more athletes and teams for a weekend that will further elevate our destination and showcase our capacity to host premier sporting events.
Here’s how to get involved:
January 10, 2026, is our moment. The course is ready. Leon County is ready. And together, we will welcome the world to Leon County.
Learn more about the World Athletics Cross Country Championships Tallahassee 26, purchase tickets, and join the excitement at VisitTallahassee.com/WXC26.
Christian Caban was elected to the Leon County Commission to represent District 2 in 2022 and currently serves as 2025-2026 chairman.
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Send letters to the editor (up to 200 words) or Your Turn columns (about 500 words) to letters@tallahassee.com. Please include your address for verification purposes only, and if you send a Your Turn, also include a photo and 1-2 line bio of yourself. You can also submit anonymous Zing!s at Tallahassee.com/Zing. Submissions are published on a space-available basis. All submissions may be edited for content, clarity and length, and may also be published by any part of the USA TODAY NETWORK
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Leon County is about to enter the World Championship era | Opinion
After more than 15 years in enterprise SEO across six major corporations, I’ve seen more careers derailed by internal politics than by Google updates.
Many SEOs moving from agency to in-house assume that staying current with algorithms and improving rankings will be enough.
In reality, the harder work is navigating the organization and the people within it.
Agency life rewards deliverables and reports. Corporate life runs on relationships, repeatable processes, the right platforms, and visible performance – all carrying equal weight with technical skill.
The following lessons reflect where SEOs can grow, avoid common pitfalls, and build sustainable careers inside complex enterprises.
Landing an SEO role in the corporate world today is less about chasing postings and more about positioning yourself as the obvious choice before you ever apply.
Hiring teams look for someone who connects well, presents a clear professional narrative, and shows measurable impact.
Most resumes submitted through job portals get filtered out by automated systems before a recruiter ever sees them.
Job boards like LinkedIn can be research tools.
When you find a role that fits, look for someone inside the company who can refer you – internal referrals dramatically increase your chances of an interview.
If you’re early in your career, build relationships long before you need them.
Find mentors through ADPList, attend local meetups, and join SEO and AI workshops or virtual conferences.
These touchpoints often matter more than submitting formal applications. In today’s market, your network is your application.
You’re an SEO – use the same skills you apply to websites on your own professional presence.
Start by choosing two “primary keywords” for your career: a job title and an industry.
If you already have experience in a specific vertical, lean into it.
If you don’t, pick an industry you genuinely understand or care about so you can speak to its audience and problems with credibility.
Use LinkedIn as a search engine. Include your soft skills, technical strengths, marketing competencies, and the industry terms hiring managers are scanning for.
Keep unrelated hobbies off your profile unless they support the roles you want.
If you wouldn’t include “yoga enthusiast” on a landing page targeting enterprise SaaS buyers, it shouldn’t be on your LinkedIn unless your goal is to work for a yoga brand.
And learn to talk about yourself clearly. Many SEOs are introverted or default to giving full credit to the team. That’s admirable in the workplace, but interviews require precision about what you led, influenced, or delivered. You can stay humble while still being direct.
Make sure all your touchpoints – resume, LinkedIn, portfolio, GitHub if relevant, personal site – align.
Recruiters and hiring managers will check multiple sources.
Consistency helps them see your strengths quickly and positions you as someone who understands how to present a unified brand.
Resumes today need to be concise, scannable, and impact-driven.
One page is ideal unless you have 10+ years of experience or leadership roles that warrant a second page.
Lead with outcomes instead of responsibilities:
Use action verbs that convey ownership – led, optimized, increased, launched – and tailor each bullet to the role you’re applying for.
Hiring managers want to see how your experience connects to their specific challenges, whether that’s:
List the tools that matter for enterprise SEO, but keep the list purposeful.
A handful of relevant platforms – Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, Semrush, Botify, BrightEdge – shows breadth without turning your resume into an acronym block.
Your summary should point forward. Highlight your:
Make it clear that you think beyond rankings – that you understand SEO’s role in product, content, and business outcomes.
Formatting still matters. Use white space, short bullets, and metric-first phrasing so your biggest wins stand out instantly.
Save the file as your full name. Little details help you look polished in a crowded field.
Leave out:
To build a long-term career in SEO, you have to become a student of how everything connects.
Search isn’t just algorithms or rankings – it’s the intersection of people, technology, and business.
You don’t need to master every discipline, but you do need to understand how they influence one another:
For instance:
You move from executor to strategist when you connect these pillars. That’s when SEO becomes more than optimization – it becomes influence.
Dig deeper: Enterprise SEO is built to bleed – Here’s how to build it right
A career isn’t shaped only by what you know – it’s shaped by how you grow.
In corporate SEO, growth comes from navigating people, priorities, and pace as much as mastering algorithms.
These lessons reflect the choices that determine whether your career moves forward or stalls:
Growth often happens when you change environments, not when you stay in one too long.
After a few years in the same company, it’s easy to get typecast as “the SEO person” instead of a strategic partner.
Organizations anchor you to the role they hired you for, even as your skills expand.
Moving every one to three years exposes you to new leadership styles, challenges, and technologies – all of which sharpen your instincts and broaden your range.
For SEOs, each transition teaches you what actually drives growth and how to earn credibility quickly by aligning teams and delivering impact.
Not every meeting needs your voice.
Early in my career, I believed credibility came from speaking first and often. I later learned that listening is one of the strongest leadership skills.
It reveals what drives decisions, who holds influence, and where priorities truly sit.
For SEOs, understanding the room before jumping in often leads to sharper, more relevant recommendations – and they’re harder for stakeholders to dismiss because you’re grounding them in what the team already values.
The opposite of constant talking isn’t silence – it’s strategy.
Knowing when to speak is an underrated professional skill, especially in large organizations where timing and tone matter as much as insight.
A well-placed comment that bridges teams, clarifies a decision, or protects performance can shift the entire conversation.
Speak with intention, not frequency, and your influence will grow even when your airtime doesn’t.
Results only matter if the right people see them.
Many SEOs assume that hard work will naturally lead to recognition, but visibility is a skill.
Frame your wins in terms leaders care about – revenue impact, efficiency gains, customer experience improvements.
Bring them to leadership reviews, all-hands meetings, and retrospectives so others understand how SEO supports bigger goals.
Build relationships with people who can advocate for you when opportunities arise. Influence isn’t just about execution – it’s about making your impact legible and memorable.
Keep a running log of your work, conversations, and metrics.
I block time every Friday to summarize the week across three areas: meeting outcomes, task updates, and wins.
Some managers want these updates – others don’t.
Either way, they help you track progress and build a record you can reference later.
Tools can help – I’ve used GitHub Issues, simple .txt files, and, more recently, a Chat Agent that compiles my notes into summaries.
These logs save hours when someone asks about a past decision or when you’re updating your resume for a job search.
Whether you share them or keep them for yourself, they create clarity and evidence of your contributions over time.
Meetings can quickly overtake your day.
The most effective SEOs protect time for analysis, writing, and strategic thinking – the work that actually moves projects forward.
Block dedicated focus time, decline meetings where your presence isn’t essential, and suggest asynchronous updates when appropriate.
Protecting your time isn’t selfish. It prevents burnout and keeps you delivering work that matters.
It’s natural to reference past employers, but constant comparison can make you seem resistant to new ideas or unaware of context.
Every organization has its own culture, pace, and priorities.
Share relevant frameworks when they help, but adapt to the environment you’re in.
Your credibility grows when you focus on what works here – not on what worked there.
Dig deeper: The top 5 strategic SEO mistakes enterprises make (and how to avoid them)
No SEO operates in isolation.
In enterprise environments, success depends on engineers who make optimizations possible, analysts who surface insights, and product managers who balance priorities.
Navigating these relationships requires empathy, patience, and strategy.
Often, your ability to guide discussions, document decisions, and build trust matters more than technical skill.
When you collaborate with intention, SEO becomes less about convincing others to care and more about creating shared ownership of the outcome.
Some of the most effective leadership moments come from asking the right questions rather than supplying the answer.
Many of my biggest wins happened when I helped stakeholders arrive at the solution themselves.
When people believe they’ve discovered the path forward, they take greater ownership and champion the outcome.
This is especially powerful in SEO, where teams may be hesitant to adopt recommendations.
Asking questions shifts conversations from resistance to curiosity and reframes SEO as a shared opportunity instead of an external directive.
Influence grows when collaboration feels like discovery, not pressure.
In large organizations, memory fades quickly.
Document ideas, decisions, experiments, and notable conversations so you have a clear record when questions resurface months later.
Documentation turns “I think” into “I know,” strengthening your credibility and protecting your work.
Whether you keep notes in shared documents, project tools, or automation-assisted summaries, the goal is the same – create a defensible trail of how decisions were made and what impact followed.
When leadership asks about traffic shifts or delayed recommendations, your written history becomes both insight and insurance.
Collaboration matters, but discernment protects your momentum.
Not everyone who agrees in a meeting is invested in follow-through.
Politics, shifting priorities, or competing metrics often influence behavior more than logic.
Learn who reliably delivers and who disappears when accountability is needed.
For SEOs, true allies in engineering, product, or analytics can make or break execution.
Align with those who follow through and stay cautious around those who view SEO as competition.
Protect your credibility by choosing collaboration with intention, not assumption.
The engineers, analysts, IT admins, and product managers beside you often carry projects across the finish line.
Early in my career, I made the mistake of treating these partners as support rather than as collaborators. Their expertise is what turns strategy into action.
Treat them as equals who share ownership of outcomes. Involve them early, respect their constraints, and acknowledge their contributions.
When partners feel valued, they become advocates – raising SEO needs in rooms you may not be in.
The strongest SEO wins aren’t solo efforts; they come from relationships built on mutual respect and shared momentum.
Dig deeper: The design thinking approach to enterprise SEO
Sustaining a long-term SEO career requires more than technical skill – it requires balance, boundaries, and emotional resilience.
Constant algorithm changes, shifting priorities, and cross-team dependencies can drain you if you don’t protect your energy.
Mental well-being isn’t a luxury – it’s a strategy for longevity.
When you manage your mindset with the same discipline you apply to a site audit, you gain clarity, patience, and perspective – all qualities that make you more effective.
Early in my career, I worried rankings would collapse the moment I took time off.
They never did – but my judgment did when exhaustion set in.
Burnout distorts perspective, makes you reactive to data, and limits strategic thinking.
Rest isn’t indulgence, it’s maintenance.
Search is a long game measured in quarters, not days.
A week offline is recoverable. Burnout is not.
Protect your energy with the same discipline you protect a site’s uptime.
Much of SEO happens behind the scenes, and visibility doesn’t always follow impact. When someone praises your work, save it.
Short notes from peers, partners, or managers become valuable artifacts during promotion cycles or job searches.
Collecting this feedback isn’t about ego – it’s about building equity and giving yourself a factual record of how you support the business.
Every team has someone whose burnout becomes contagious. Don’t become that person.
Positivity doesn’t mean ignoring problems – it means creating space for solutions.
I once put a direct report on a performance improvement plan after his frustration began affecting morale.
After delivering the notice, I took him to lunch for an honest, empathetic conversation. That moment shifted everything.
His attitude improved, he worked his way off the PIP, and he later became a director at another company.
Compassion doesn’t replace accountability, but it makes growth possible. Leadership is as much about tone as it is about tactics.
In corporate life, meetings multiply faster than progress. Dependencies shift.
Priorities change without warning. Build a cushion into your timelines. If you think something will take a week, plan for 10 days.
For SEOs, many delays sit outside your control – engineering queues, content operations bottlenecks, competing releases.
A buffer protects your credibility and keeps expectations grounded. Underpromise and overdeliver isn’t cliché – it’s survival.
Leadership skepticism about SEO is rarely personal. It’s usually about budgets, bandwidth, or competing bets.
Early in my career, I saw every pushback as a critique of my competence.
Over time, I learned it was part of the negotiation process.
When an initiative is deprioritized, it doesn’t mean your expertise has lost value – it means resources moved elsewhere.
Anchor conversations in business impact, not identity. Influence lasts longer when driven by logic rather than frustration.
There was a time when I wasted energy debating SEO theories or venting about internal politics.
It felt good in the moment but changed nothing. My credibility grew the day I stopped trying to win arguments and started aiming for outcomes.
When disagreements arise, document your position, present the data clearly, and move on.
Rising above gossip doesn’t mean disengagement – it means choosing professionalism over noise.
SEO isn’t emergency medicine, though corporate urgency can make it feel that way.
Most “crises” come from impatience with the slow, cumulative nature of search. Daily fluctuations rarely matter when the trendline is healthy.
Remind stakeholders – and yourself – that meaningful growth takes time.
When pressure for overnight results rises, stay grounded. The long game always wins.
Work can challenge and fulfill you, but it shouldn’t define you.
The most effective professionals invest in relationships and interests outside the company.
Detaching your identity from your job doesn’t weaken your ambition – it stabilizes it.
When your sense of worth isn’t tied to the next quarterly metric, you lead with more confidence and less fear.
Success becomes sustainable when life stays bigger than work.
Dig deeper: SEO’s future isn’t content. It’s governance
Fifteen years in corporate SEO have taught me that technical skill is only half the job.
The other half is navigating people, priorities, and perspective.
Algorithms will evolve, tools will change, and org charts will shift, but your ability to adapt, communicate, and lead determines how far you go.
Success in SEO isn’t about chasing every update or proving you’re the smartest person in the room.
It’s about building trust, creating clarity, and sustaining momentum through both wins and setbacks.
The most impactful SEOs aren’t just tacticians.
They’re translators, connecting data to business strategy, ideas to execution, and people to purpose.
When you recognize that your influence extends beyond rankings, you move from contributor to catalyst.
SEO may begin with optimization, but the real work is shaping how organizations think, act, and grow. That’s the craft worth mastering.
When a TV commercial makes people feel something, it doesn’t just win in the moment – it sparks curiosity, drives searches, and fuels conversions.
That’s why the “Breaking TV Ads Report,” jointly launched by Kinetiq and DAIVID, deserves a spot on every search marketer’s radar.
The monthly report ranks the top-performing new TV ads in the U.S., blending Kinetiq’s real-time TV ad detection with DAIVID’s AI-driven creative analytics to uncover which ads broke through, why they resonated, and what brands can learn from their success.
It’s a powerful reminder that search doesn’t start on Google – it starts in the mind.
As Barney Worfolk-Smith, chief growth officer at DAIVID, recently told me in an email:
The first edition of the “Breaking TV Ads Report” highlighted a commercial that checks every emotional and strategic box: Indeed’s “What If LeBron James’ Skills Were Never Seen?”
The ad traces James’s journey from his early life to his work with the LeBron James Family Foundation, connecting it to Indeed’s “skills-first” hiring message.
It resonated not only because of its star power but because it made viewers feel something authentic.
The ad generated 11% higher intense positive emotion and 7% higher attention than the average U.S. TV ad, per DAIVID’s data.
It was joined in the top 10 by campaigns from TikTok (twice), Subaru, and Taco Bell, with emotional themes centered on family, mentorship, and belonging.
These aren’t just nice stories – they’re search triggers.
When people connect emotionally with a brand message, they’re more likely to act on it – often by turning to Google or YouTube for more information, reviews, or purchase options.
Dig deeper: Brand + performance: The secret to maximizing ad ROI
Back in 2011, Google introduced the concept of “The Zero Moment of Truth.”
But the ZMOT stage in the buying journey – when consumers research a product or service online before making a purchase – was the “new” second step.
The first step remained “stimulus,” and it could be “a TV ad.”
Many search marketers focus on what happens in the second ZMOT stage, because we can measure impressions, clicks, and conversions on mobile and laptop screens.
And we ignore the stimulus step because it is sucking money out of our marketing budgets.
But several studies over the past decade have shown that the impact of TV advertising extends directly into search behavior:
Put simply: when a campaign captures attention on TV, search demand spikes – often within minutes.
For SEO and PPC professionals, this presents a clear opportunity to anticipate and capitalize on those moments.
Several major brands have already proven that when TV storytelling and search strategy work together, both channels perform better.
Apple’s product launches are masterclasses in cross-channel momentum.
Every time a new iPhone ad airs, search volume for terms like “iPhone 17 Pro Max” or “iPhone 17 release date” skyrockets.
Apple’s branded search traffic increases by up to 40% in the days following a major campaign, according to Semrush.
Apple intentionally designs its TV creative to generate questions – not answer them – encouraging viewers to seek out more details online.
That’s where Apple’s search-optimized landing pages, YouTube product videos, and paid search campaigns complete the journey.
Progressive’s long-running “Flo” campaign shows how consistent creative storytelling translates into search intent.
The insurance brand’s TV spots spark curiosity around characters, slogans, and offers – leading to measurable spikes in branded searches such as “Progressive car insurance” and “Flo from Progressive.”
The brand’s media team aligns paid search and display campaigns with national TV flighting schedules, ensuring that when interest peaks, search ads and organic results are ready to capture demand.
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign is another classic case of TV leading to search.
The original “Share a Coke” campaign was launched in Australia in 2011 and involved replacing the Coca-Cola logo on bottles with hundreds of popular first names.
This personalization strategy was a global success, encouraging consumers to find bottles with their names and share them with friends and loved ones, which boosted sales and created emotional connections with the brand.
The latest “Share a Coke” campaign is a global relaunch targeting Gen Z with a focus on digital experiences and authentic, in-person connections.
It features personalized cans, a digital “Memory Maker” tool for creating shareable videos, and a partnership with McDonald’s.
Consumers can find names on bottles or use a QR code to customize bottles – a creative hook that’s sent millions to Google searching “custom Coke” or “share a Coke names.”
The campaign’s success wasn’t just creative; it was data-driven.
By tracking spikes in branded search and social mentions, Coca-Cola refined its targeting and extended the campaign’s life cycle online.
Dig deeper: Hyper-personalization in PPC: Using data to deliver tailored ad experiences
What makes the new “Breaking TV Ads” report particularly valuable is its data-driven framework for measuring creative effectiveness.
Kinetiq’s proprietary ad detection technology identifies every ad that first airs across 210 U.S. DMAs and 15 streaming apps, capturing over a million daily detections.
DAIVID’s AI then evaluates each ad’s emotional response, attention, and brand recall, creating a creative effectiveness score (CES) – a composite metric that mirrors how audiences actually experience content.
In a media landscape increasingly defined by short attention spans and fragmented screens, this data provides a rare window into why certain stories break through – and how that resonance correlates with downstream behaviors like search and site visits.
As Kinetiq CEO Kevin Kohn put it, the partnership “gives marketers a holistic view of the TV and CTV advertising landscape – not just what aired, but why it resonated.”
That’s exactly the kind of insight performance marketers need to connect the dots between creative resonance and measurable outcomes.
Dig deeper: Your ads are dying: How to spot and stop creative fatigue before it tanks performance
In February 2025, Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, revealed that:
So, search marketers can apply the latest findings from the Breaking TV Ads Report in several ways:
Search has long been viewed as a response channel – the final step in a consumer journey. But that view is outdated.
Today’s most successful campaigns use search as a connective tissue between offline inspiration and online action.
Whether it’s a QR code at the end of a TV ad, a YouTube masthead following a primetime spot, or a Google Shopping ad that captures post-broadcast demand – search is the bridge between storytelling and sales.
As more brands invest in connected TV (CTV) and streaming, the line between “brand” and “performance” marketing will continue to blur.
Creative effectiveness data helps close that gap – showing which emotional and visual cues are most likely to drive measurable search and conversion behavior.
Ultimately, reports like “Breaking TV Ads” remind us that the most powerful search strategy begins long before the query.
It begins with attention and emotion, and, increasingly, on the biggest screen in the house.
Dig deeper: How connected TV advertising drives search demand
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