https://page2pod.com - Clicks are disappearing. Derek Hobson makes the case that direct traffic is the AI search signal most teams aren't measuring.

Derek Hobson — SEO strategist, writer behind SEO Humorist, and former Senior Director of SEO and AI Search at Brainlabs — argues that when organic clicks shrink, the proof of impact moves elsewhere: direct sessions, log files, and query fan-out data. On several of his accounts, direct and organic tracked in parallel for years until direct broke upward right as clicks fell and impressions climbed. His read: people research a brand inside an LLM, then go straight to the site. He can't prove it yet, and he says so out loud to clients — but directionally, it's the number he'd watch.

The second argument is organizational. Off-page SEO can't sit in an optional package anymore now that answer engines scrape, aggregate, and synthesize third-party sources. That means SEO, paid, PR, and social have to actually talk to each other — and most companies are still built around separate teams, separate budgets, and separate reporting.

Jon Clark and Joe DeVita also get into automating reporting with Apps Script, why LLM referral numbers in analytics are almost certainly wrong, and why Derek thinks every SEO should investigate a win as aggressively as a loss.

📊 In This Episode

- Is direct traffic the AI search signal most teams are ignoring?

- Who actually owns the direct channel — and why nobody claims it

- Why off-page SEO stopped being an optional line item

- Query fan-out and grounding queries: what the Gemini API and Microsoft Clarity now expose

- Why LLM referral traffic looks impossibly small in analytics

- Building a paid-and-organic gap analysis that starts real cross-team conversations

- Automating monthly data pulls with Apps Script and pattern-matching keywords with embeddings

- Investigating positive results the same way you'd investigate a drop

A practical look at what "proving the work" looks like when the click is no longer the unit of measurement.

Subscribe for new Page 2 Podcast episodes with the practitioners actually doing this work.

Comment: who owns direct traffic at your company — and have you seen the same uptick Derek describes?

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast

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Follow Jon Clark

✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark

✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

Find Derek Hobson

✅ SEO Humorist → https://seohumorist.com

✅ Derek Hobson on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/dereknhobson/

✅ Derek Hobson on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@seohumorist

✅ Derek Hobson on Reddit → https://www.reddit.com/user/SEO_Humorist/

✅ Derek Hobson on Instagram → https://instagram.com/seohumorist✅ Derek Hobson on Bluesky → https://bsky.app/profile/seohumorist.bsky.social✅ Derek Hobson on X → https://x.com/Seo_humorist✅ Derek Hobson on TikTok → https://tiktok.com/@seohumorist

https://page2pod.com - Sophie Brannon bans new hires from touching AI for three months. Here's how an SEO agency builds AI workflows without losing the thinking underneath them.

Sophie Brannon is co-founder and director of StudioHawk US, the Atlanta arm of the global SEO agency, which she launched from scratch and grew to $1.4M in its first nine months. Her position: AI is genuinely compressing agency delivery timelines — content briefs, IA mapping, and audits that took weeks now take days — but a junior who reaches for ChatGPT before they understand the work never develops the strategic judgment that becomes their actual job. So new StudioHawk hires do everything manually for their first three months, then earn access back.

She also lays out the commercial side nobody's solved yet: token budgets replacing headcount budgets, the possibility of agencies pricing retainers on estimated token usage instead of hours, and why AI visibility means very little until you can tie it to traffic and revenue — across roughly 100 brands StudioHawk surveyed, AI search accounted for about 0.07% of total revenue.

Jon Clark and Joe DeVita dig into the agency mechanics too: why StudioHawk runs direct-to-specialist with no account managers, why they refuse long-term contracts, how link costs get absorbed while digital PR runs on a points-based money-back guarantee, and what Sophie still won't hand to a model.

🤖 In This Episode

- Why new hires are banned from using AI for their first three months

- What do clients actually ask about AI search — and how to answer without jargon

- The AI search tracking stack: GA4 AI organic, Peak, SEMrush AI, Ahrefs Rank Tracker

- Which AI search metrics matter: visibility, citations, mentions, and the revenue line underneath them

- Digital PR's points system — a link is 1 point, an unlinked mention is 0.5, with a pro-rata money-back guarantee

- Will agencies charge clients based on token usage instead of hours?

- Automated content briefs and IA structure mapping built with n8n and Claude

- The three things Sophie won't automate: strategy, creative, and client comms

A rare look at the operating decisions behind an SEO agency scaling in the AI era, from someone 18 months into building one.

👉 Subscribe for new episodes with the practitioners actually doing this work: https://www.youtube.com/@thepage2podcast922

💬 Would you ban your junior hires from using AI for their first three months — or is that training them for a world that no longer exists? Tell us in the comments.

Find Sophie Brannon

✅ Sophie Brannon on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-brannon-081bb294/

✅ Sophie Brannon on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/sophiebrannon_seo/

✅ StudioHawk US → https://studiohawk.com

✅ Sophie Brannon's Personal Website → http://sophiebrannon.com

####

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

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Follow Jon Clark

✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark

✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

https://page2pod.com - Content strategy that moves rankings: Angela Skane took her blog from page 3 to page 1 by optimizing what she already had — not publishing more.

Angela Skane is SEO & Content Strategy Manager at Newfold Digital, where she leads global content strategy for Network Solutions and a portfolio of brands serving small business owners. Fresh off her first SEO Week stage talk, she brings a framework most search teams never look at: the way TikTok Shop creators hook, hold, and convert an audience in under 60 seconds.

Her argument is that attention is earned moment by moment, in an article the same way it is in a video. Every page needs a job. Every section has to keep the reader moving. And a page that technically ranks can still fail if it doesn't speak to the person actually making the decision. Along the way: why traditional demographic personas are too thin, why environmental data about your audience changes how you frame every problem, and why her team allows zero AI-generated content on the blog while using AI heavily for research and synthesis.

🎧 In This Episode

- The four-phase creator arc — hook, name your audience, appeal to emotion, close the action

- Layering psychological triggers by journey stage instead of picking one and running it all year

- What does a "job" for a page actually look like, and how do you tell when a page isn't doing it?

- Page 3 to page 1 in 18 months by optimizing existing content over publishing volume

- Environmental-data personas: small business failure rates, cost pressures, and what else is on the buyer's mind

- Do 3,000-word guides still work? Her top-converting article says yes

- Where AI belongs in the workflow — research and data synthesis, never the paragraph

If your content is ranking but not converting, this one is about the gap between the two.

Subscribe for new practitioner interviews on SEO and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) every week.

Angela says to name your audience explicitly in the copy. Have you tried it — and did engagement actually move? Tell us in the comments.

⏱️ Chapters

0:00 Intro: Attention Is Earned2:08 Meet Angela Skane3:36 What Is Newfold Digital?5:46 From Data Journalism to SEO7:18 Why TikTok Shop Caught Her Eye9:14 The Four-Phase Creator Framework11:40 Applying TikTok Signals to Articles15:07 Which Emotion Fits Which Stage?19:55 Every Page Needs a Job23:03 Are Traditional Personas Still Useful?28:16 How Do You Diagnose a Weak Page?31:09 Do 3,000-Word Guides Still Work?36:39 Should AI Write Your Blog Content?39:28 SEO Pods, Briefs, and Research40:59 How Do You Report Content Value?44:19 How the Teams Actually Collaborate47:11 Rapid-Fire Round

Connect with Angela

✅ Angela Skane on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaskane/

✅ Network Solutions → https://www.networksolutions.com

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast

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Follow Jon Clark

✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark

✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

🛠️ Tools & Resources

- TikTok Shop → https://shop.tiktok.com - 2739 — the TikTok Shop coaching community Angela learned the framework → https://www.tiktok.com/discover/2739-membership?lang=en - Dustin Davis — creator who breaks down TikTok content through a psychology lens - Angela's article on the eight human desires in psychology → https://searchengineland.com/persuasive-content-human-psychology-478824 - "What to do after you buy a domain name" — her top-converting article (3,000+ words) → https://www.networksolutions.com/blog/bought-domain-now-what/

https://page2pod.com - JavaScript isn't breaking your SEO — rendering is. Merj R&D Director Giacomo Zecchini on what Google and AI crawlers actually see.

Giacomo Zecchini has spent years injecting tracking beacons into Google's rendering service to replace industry folklore with data. His research with Vercel found that virtually every indexable page crawled by Googlebot gets rendered — so the "rendering budget" most SEOs plan around doesn't behave the way the industry assumes. The real failures live in implementation: APIs timing out mid-render, lazy-loaded content that never fires under Google's viewport expansion, and hero images that shove main content thousands of pixels down the page.

Do AI crawlers render JavaScript? Some can — but none do it consistently. Giacomo's testing shows bots like ClaudeBot, Mistral, and DuckAssistBot sometimes render and sometimes fetch raw HTML using the same user agent, which is why Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) starts with content that survives a no-render fetch. He also makes the case for serving Markdown to bots via the Accept HTTP header (a web standard) instead of .md URLs, and shows how one swapped ARIA label made ChatGPT's agent click Cancel instead of Save — turning accessibility into an agentic-web requirement, not a nice-to-have.

⚙️ In This Episode

• Why "JavaScript problems" are really rendering and implementation problems
• The rendering budget myth, tested against live Googlebot data
• How does Google's viewport expansion handle lazy loading and infinite scroll?
• Auditing rendering backwards: from rendered page to rendering tree
• Which AI crawlers actually render JavaScript — and why it changes per fetch
• Serving Markdown via the Accept header vs. .md URLs vs. llms.txt
• Why bad ARIA labels make AI agents take the wrong action on your site

A masterclass in the infrastructure layer of search visibility — what machines can actually access, interpret, and act on.

Subscribe for practitioner-level SEO, AEO, and GEO conversations every week.

💬 Giacomo serves Markdown to any bot that asks for it — Google's advice notwithstanding. Would you serve Markdown to AI crawlers on a client site, or is HTML-only still the right call? Tell us in the comments.

Connect with Giacomo Zecchini✅ Follow Giacomo Zecchini on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gzecchini/✅ Follow Giacomo Zecchini on X / Twitter: https://x.com/giacomozecchini✅ Follow Giacomo Zecchini on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/giacomozecchini.bsky.social✅ Follow Giacomo Zecchini on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@giacomozecchini✅ Follow Giacomo Zecchini on SpeakerDeck: https://speakerdeck.com/giacomozecchini✅ Follow Giacomo Zecchini on SlideShare: https://www.slideshare.net/giacomozecchini✅ Giacomo Zecchini's Personal Website: https://giacomozecchini.com

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast✅ Page 2 Podcast on Youtube → https://www.youtube.com/@thepage2podcast922✅ Page 2 Podcast on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/company/page2podcast✅ Page 2 Podcast on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/ThePage2Podcast/✅ Page 2 Podcast on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/page2pod✅ Page 2 Podcast on Tiktok → https://www.tiktok.com/@jonleeclarkFollow Jon Clark✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

🛠️ Tools & Resources Mentioned• Merj Official Site: https://merj.com• Google JS Rendering Capabilities Research with Vercel: https://vercel.com/blog/how-google-handles-javascript-throughout-the-indexing-process• AI Cralwer's Accept Language Research: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/merj-com_this-is-something-most-multilingual-sites-activity-7434943896385822720-T2u1• Merj's take on serving Markdown Files: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/merj-com_ai-agents-are-reading-your-site-right-now-activity-7466111771209142272-3xEy

https://page2pod.com - In this episode Marcos Ciarrocchi, co-founder of Graphite, breaks down why Graphite believes that 95% of SEO work is often waste and why the real leverage comes from identifying the small percentage of initiatives that actually drive growth. The conversation dives deep into how SEO strategy is shifting from keyword-first thinking to topic-first systems built around search intent, topical authority, AI prompts, and answer engine visibility.The discussion also explores how AEO and SEO may not be separate disciplines, but two versions of the same strategic question: what does the user want, and are you the best answer?🤖 In This Episode• Why Graphite believes 95% of SEO work does not drive meaningful impact• How Marcos defines a “topic” as a cluster of intent, not just keywords• Why topic graphs are living systems that change as search behavior evolves• How AI prompts, question clusters, and query fan-outs connect to traditional SEO and content marketing • The role of topical authority in deciding what content a site can realistically rank for• Why smaller sites may need to target more specific topic variants before expanding• How internal linking helps redistribute authority across large websites• Why content structure, FAQs, headings, and direct answers matter for AI citations• How RAG, citations, off-site reputation, and digital PR influence AEO visibility• Why consistency across owned and earned channels is critical for AI searchThis episode is packed with practical SEO strategy insight for marketers, SEOs, and growth teams trying to understand how search strategy should evolve in the age of AI answer engines.Subscribe to the Page 2 Podcast for more conversations with the people shaping the future of SEO, AEO, and digital visibility.What do you think matters more for AI search visibility right now: owned content, citations, or off-site reputation? Drop your thoughts in the comments.🛠️ Tools & Resources Mentioned• Marcos Ciarrocchi on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcosciarrocchi/• Graphite - https://graphite.io• Graphite’s 2026 Topical Authority Study - https://graphite.io/five-percent/topical-authority-white-paper• Graphite’s AEO Guide - https://graphite.io/five-percent/aeo-is-the-new-seo• Graphite’s Entity Position Tracking Guide - https://graphite.io/five-percent/how-to-track-entity-position-in-aiFollow the Page 2 Podcast✅ Page 2 Podcast on Youtube → https://www.youtube.com/@thepage2podcast922✅ Page 2 Podcast on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/company/page2podcast✅ Page 2 Podcast on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/ThePage2Podcast/Follow Jon Clark✅ Jon Clark on Bluesky → https://bsky.app/profile/jonclark.co✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/ppcmarketing/### Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.comAbout Moving Traffic MediaMoving Traffic Media is a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO, answer engine optimization, generative engine optimization, and performance media. In plain English: Moving Traffic Media helps brands show up in traditional search and in AI Answers. And they back that up with everything around it, from paid media and social to web development built for how AI agents actually browse. Moving Traffic Media was co-founded by Jon Clark and Joe DeVita and is headquartered in New York, with a second office in Miami. So if your brand isn't showing up in AI answers the way it should, contact Moving Traffic Media at: https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com.

⁠https://page2pod.com⁠ - While we're between seasons, we're revisiting some of the most impactful conversations we've had on The Page 2 Podcast.

In this episode of Page 2 Podcast, Jon Clark and Joe DeVita sit down with Duane Forrester, founder and CEO of UnboundAnswers.com and a longtime search industry leader who helped launch Bing Webmaster Tools and Schema.org.

Duane shares his perspective on the future of search optimization, the rise of AI-driven visibility, and why the best SEOs may need to think less like button-pushers and more like managers of intelligent systems.

From structured data and LLM verification layers to chunking, semantic overlap, semantic density, query fan out, and the debate over GEO vs. AIO vs. SEO, this conversation digs into what actually matters for brands trying to remain discoverable in an AI-first search environment.

🤖 In This Episode

• Why Duane believes AI has fractured search, not killed it
• How structured data and Schema.org may influence LLM understanding
• Why “GEO vs. AIO vs. SEO” may be a distraction from the real work
• What semantic overlap and semantic density mean for content strategy
• How chunking can help content become more useful to AI systems and humans
• Why content creators may be better positioned for AI search than they think
• How people management skills apply to working with AI tools like ChatGPT
• Why search optimization may still have decades of relevance ahead
• What Google AI Overviews could mean for organic traffic, paid ads, and click quality
• Duane’s prediction for AI-generated ads inside future search experiences

This episode is a must-watch for SEOs, content strategists, marketers, founders, and agencies trying to understand how AI search is changing visibility, trust, and optimization.

Subscribe to Page 2 Podcast for more conversations with the people shaping the future of SEO, AI, search, and digital marketing.

What do you think: should we still call this SEO, or is AI search creating a completely new discipline? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast
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Follow Jon Clark
✅ Jon Clark on Bluesky → https://bsky.app/profile/jonclark.co
✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/ppcmarketing/

https://page2pod.com - While we're between seasons, we're revisiting some of the most impactful conversations we've had on The Page 2 Podcast. This episode with Kevin Indig originally aired in 2025, but many of the topics are even more relevant today. We'll be back soon with brand-new episodes. Enjoy the conversation.

Are Google AI Overviews killing organic search traffic?

Learn how SEO strategy must shift when visibility no longer guarantees clicks.In this discussion with SEO advisor Kevin Indig, we break down the changing search landscape.

If you are an SEO professional or site owner, this conversation clarifies why visibility is losing its direct correlation with traffic. We examine how the rise of AI-generated search results alters user behavior and why traditional ranking metrics are becoming less reliable indicators of success.

🤖 In This Episode

• Why Google AI Overviews are reshaping ecommerce search results
• How product grids, image carousels, forums, and Reddit visibility are changing in the SERP
• What brands should do now to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday SEO
• Why ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot rely on different citation sources
• How YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Wikipedia influence AI search visibility
• Why simple content structure, FAQs, summaries, and key takeaways matter for both users and AI systems
• When Core Web Vitals and page speed matter most for SEO performance
• What Kevin’s AI Overview usability study revealed about clicks, trust, and user behavior
• Why rankings still matter even as organic clicks decline
• How SEO teams should rethink KPIs, share of voice, brand recall, and influence-driven measurement
• Why mentions, sentiment, and digital PR may matter more than traditional link volume
• Kevin’s prediction for Google Search, AI Mode, and the future of AI-first search experiences

This episode is packed with practical insights for SEOs, content marketers, ecommerce teams, and digital leaders trying to navigate the next era of organic search.

What do you think will matter more in the future of SEO: rankings, citations, mentions, or brand trust? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

✅ Subscribe to the Page 2 Podcast for more expert conversations on SEO, marketing, and growth (https://open.spotify.com/show/4mMTmBqGA8VpGGL7ItUtGk?si=i_1e0LnzR2OLUSXjMip-uQ).Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media (https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com)🔗 Resources & Links Mentioned in This Episode• Kevin Indig on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinindig/)• Growth Memo Newsletter (https://www.kevin-indig.com/newsletter/)• AI Overviews Usability Study (https://www.kevin-indig.com/ai-overviews-usability-study)• Google E-commerce SERP Features 2025 vs. 2024 (https://www.growth-memo.com/p/google-e-commerce-serp-features-2025)• LLMs and Content Structure (https://www.growth-memo.com/p/what-content-works-well-in-llms)• Measurement Shifts (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevinindig_the-new-normal-activity-7361369910809092096-sygI)Follow the Page 2 Podcast• Page 2 Podcast on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/@thepage2podcast922)• Page 2 Podcast on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/company/page2podcast)• Page 2 Podcast on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ThePage2Podcast/)Follow Jon Clark• Jon Clark on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/jonclark.co)• Jon Clark on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ppcmarketing/)