James Dooley interviews Dan Petravich on how AI is changing link building for SEO. Dan explains why most outreach fails because links get forced into finished content, then shares how he trained machine learning models to predict natural link placement and detect obvious paid links. They cover unlinked brand mentions, why Gemini sometimes auto-links known entities, and why brand authority and knowledge graph presence now sit at the centre of modern link building strategy.

James Dooley speaks with Dan Petravvic about AI SEO and what it takes to rank in AI overviews and LLM driven search. Dan explains why SEO and GEO are not the same, why “generative engine optimisation” is a misleading label, and why AI SEO is the most practical framing for the industry. The conversation breaks down selection rate optimisation, model bias, and how tools like Treewalker.ai probe probabilistic outputs to find weak confidence points in brand understanding. Dan also explains why traditional SEO still matters because LLMs pull from top search results, why brand familiarity often beats technical hacks, and how user behaviour signals and multi channel marketing build the kind of notability models trust. The episode finishes with practical ideas around branded queries, persona based prompting, and Microsoft’s UserLM approach to simulating realistic user journeys.

In this discussion, James Dooley and Kazra Dash break down why speed to lead is one of the biggest factors in converting enquiries into paying customers. They explain how slow response times cause lead drop off, even when traffic and lead volume are strong. Using GoHighLevel CRM as the example, they walk through automated follow ups, workflows, email, SMS and WhatsApp responses that instantly engage prospects. Real world use cases show how acting within minutes improves contact rates, warms leads, and significantly increases conversion rates for lead generation and commission based business models.