About the guest

Rob Bonham is an SEO with about two decades of experience spanning local, e-commerce, SaaS, and home-services clients. Today he advises several startups on SEO and works as a fractional SEO manager and director for a handful of agencies. You can reach him on LinkedIn.

What we cover

• Why the “agentic age” feels like the pre-Panda/Penguin wild west — and what that means for strategy
• Why publishing AI content at volume backfires on user signals, rankings, and client trust
• Measuring SEO in a post-attribution world where GSC and LLM data are unreliable
• Link building reborn: unlinked mentions, third-party visibility, and partner links
• Going independent: contracts, pricing, and filtering out tire-kickers

Episode highlights

Rob's throughline is that SEOs are now “stewards of the AI.” On the Unscripted SEO Podcast, he and Jeremy Rivera trace how AI has automated the low-level work — title tags, meta descriptions, on-page fixes — so the real job shifts to strategy and judgment. The freedom is real; so is the responsibility.

Which is why volume is not a strategy. Just because you can publish 100 city-specific pages for a concrete contractor doesn't mean you should. When the user signals aren't there, Google devalues the content — a reality Jeremy underscores with his own post on why Google Search Console data isn't reliable. Look like a hero for a few months, then watch the site dive.

In a post-attribution world, Rob argues you win by telling the right story with the data you do have — branded-search lift, conversion correlation, the “game of sums.” And he makes the case that link building is an easier sell than ever when reframed as footprint: unlinked mentions, third-party visibility, and legitimate partner and supplier links.

The back half gets practical. Rob and Jeremy Rivera dig into going independent — setting expectations to avoid scope creep, pricing with conviction (a higher price can itself signal quality), filtering tire-kickers with a small paid audit, and surviving enterprise red tape and net-60 terms.

Connect with Rob Bonham

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robbonham

(Rob points people to LinkedIn — he's “tied at the hip” with it — rather than a website.)

About the show

The Unscripted SEO Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Rivera and features candid, unscripted conversations with SEO practitioners, agency owners, and marketing leaders. New episodes drop weekly at unscriptedseo.com.

Most SEOs are defending a job that no longer exists. Zak Ali () — General Manager of Finder US ( and one of the rare practitioners who took SEO from the terminal to the executive suite — argues the discipline didn't shrink, it got absorbed. In this episode he and host Jeremy Rivera () get into "search everywhere optimization," why he dissolved Finder's dedicated SEO team, and why retention — not rankings — should be every SEO's core KPI.

Zak started in search in 2015, co-founding the news blog Rant and growing it to ~100,000 readers before joining Finder in 2018 as a publisher, then head of growth, and now GM of the U.S. business — owning organic, paid, email, CRM, and sales.

In this episode:
- Why LLMs turned search engine optimization into search everywhere optimization (a nod to AJ Kohn's "surface optimization" (https://www.infinitevisibilitygroup.com/posts/surface-optimization/))
- The two types of SEOs left: technical SEOs, and SEOs who haven't realized their job is now digital PR and branding
- Why Zak killed the SEO team and rebuilt it as a generalist growth org
- Retention as an SEO KPI — "the traffic you have today is as cheap as it's going to be"
- How AI is putting the customer first again (and why "slop" predates LLMs)
- YMYL trust signals, editorial independence, and the regulatory "back door" to search
- Google News (be first) vs. Google Discover (entity optimization, and ephemeral traffic)
- The terminal-native stack: Ahrefs MCP, Claude Code (https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code), DataForSEO (https://dataforseo.com), building your own LLM tracker, and a "second brain" in Obsidian (https://obsidian.md)
- Information gain and anecdotes — why LLMs can't have experiences (with the obligatory Darmok and Jalad reference)

Chapters:
- (00:00) Meet Zak Ali — Rant, Finder, and Finder Rewards
- (02:55) SEO within LLMs: search everywhere / surface optimization
- (05:26) Selling SEO's value to the executive suite
- (08:02) How AI puts the customer first again
- (09:17) Which pre-LLM SEO strategies survived
- (10:50) "AI is the steroids SEOs needed" & the Helpful Content Update as a correction
- (13:13) Is AI traffic its own channel — or a piece of the puzzle?
- (14:51) Regulated/YMYL industries and trust signals
- (18:21) Google News vs. Google Discover
- (22:06) Retention as the real KPI — and killing the SEO team
- (24:27) Paid vs. organic, and systems thinking
- (26:45) Tools he loves right now
- (28:29) Open-source SEO, MCP, and living in the Claude Code terminal
- (29:27) Second brains, "publisher" agents, and AI org charts
- (34:49) The question for the next guest: is the faceless brand dead?
- (40:44) Rebranding SEO → "search everywhere optimization"

Notable quotes:

▎ "There are two types of SEOs that exist today. There are the technical SEOs, and there are SEOs who haven't realized yet that their job is digital PR and branding." — Zak Ali

▎ "The traffic you have today is as cheap as it's going to be. It's only going to get more expensive. Retention should be a core KPI of every SEO." — Zak Ali

▎ "What AI is doing is actually allowing us to put the customer first again." — Zak Ali

Most SEOs treat link building like a chore. Kristiyan Yankov built a whole agency on it. He’s the founder of Above Apex, a link-building agency niched hard on SaaS — and in this conversation with host Jeremy Rivera he lays out one of the sharpest, most practical models we’ve heard for building links (and brand mentions) in the AI era.

Kristiyan freelanced since high school, went through “generalist hell,” and niched down after Alex Hormozi’s “one avatar, one ICP, one service” clicked. Now he runs SaaS link campaigns full-time — and he’s refreshingly blunt about what actually works.

• Why SaaS is a richer link-building field than local — 5–10 viable strategies vs. a narrow local playbook
• The real bottleneck isn’t knowledge, it’s bandwidth — why teams need a dedicated partner they don’t have to micromanage
• Two pricing models: per-link vs. fixed, month-to-month (and why no lock-in drives lifetime value)
• How to actually evaluate a link opportunity — 5–10 metrics, not just DR: “if it makes sense to me, it makes sense to Google”
• The two best SaaS strategies: listicles/roundups (40%+ carry traffic and feed AI Overviews) and reverse expert-quote outreach (they’ve earned BBC links this way)
• Anchor velocity, Penguin, and why spammy links get disregarded, not penalized (his read of the Google leak)
• Timeline to impact (~30–60 days for well-run sites), the SMB sandbox, and the best DIY strategy for bootstrapped founders: three listicle “buckets”
• The big-picture take: AI search is an extension of the fundamentals, not a replacement — and more than half of AI citations trace back to UGC platforms

• (00:00) Meet Kristiyan Yankov — from “generalist hell” to SaaS link building
• (02:56) Why SaaS is a richer link-building field than local
• (07:07) The #1 hurdle: bandwidth (and the case for a dedicated partner)
• (08:37) Pricing — per-link vs. fixed, month-to-month, no lock-in
• (12:34) Has AI/LLM demand made link-building budgets an easier sell?
• (17:03) How to evaluate a link: “Google isn’t more stupid than me”
• (19:59) Is Bing / alternate-engine link behavior worth chasing?
• (22:31) The top two SaaS strategies: listicles & expert quotes
• (27:03) Anchor velocity, Penguin & spam devaluation
• (30:54) Timeline — when link building shows measurable impact
• (32:12) Advice for SMBs & the sandbox effect
• (35:15) The best DIY strategy: three listicle buckets
• (37:08) Where to find Kristiyan

“You shouldn’t trust anyone. You should verify — especially in our industry.” — Kristiyan Yankov“If I look at a link building opportunity and it makes sense to me, it would be the same for Google — because Google is definitely not more stupid than me.” — Kristiyan Yankov“The fundamentals aren’t going to disappear. When the hype is over, my team can still provide everything we do today.” — Kristiyan Yankov

• Above Apex — Kristiyan’s SaaS link-building agency (he’s active on LinkedIn 5–6 days a week)
• Go deeper on the mechanics in SEO Arcade’s complete guide to link building & authority
• Kristiyan & Jeremy both count guesting as link fuel — that’s the idea behind podc...

Unlock the secrets of effective branding with Benjamin Behrooz! In this episode, we dive deep into the importance of empathy in business and how it can transform your client relationships. Discover how to scale your business while maintaining authenticity and learn about innovative marketing strategies that work in today's competitive landscape. Key takeaways:

• The role of empathy in understanding customer pain points.
• How to balance scale and authenticity in marketing.
• Strategies for home service businesses to thrive in a saturated market.
• The impact of AI on marketing and customer engagement.
• Tips for leveraging community involvement to enhance brand visibility.

Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 00:16 Meet Benjamin Behrooz 00:58 The importance of empathy in business 01:28 Solving client pain points 03:16 Balancing scale and authenticity 05:39 Common pitfalls in business planning 08:09 Marketing strategies for home services 10:22 The future of blue-collar work 12:10 The impact of AI on marketing 15:45 Unique implementations of AI 19:45 The silver lining of AI adoption 24:20 Community involvement and brand visibility 31:22 The biggest mistake brands make 32:13 How to connect with Benjamin What's your biggest challenge with branding? Drop it in the comments! Subscribe for more insights on effective marketing strategies and branding tips!

Alyssa Evans started school as an art major and finished with a science degree — and that creative-plus-analytical split is exactly how she runs Grow Your Strategy. In this episode she makes the case that the funnel is the wrong mental model entirely, and that what replaces it is a content ladder.

Alyssa is a growth strategist working mostly with fintech, real estate tech, and SaaS companies — including investors raising money for syndications and adjacent plays like storage units and ATM investing. Her first month with any client is spent auditing rather than executing, because until you know a founder's archetype and comfort level, you're guessing. She's blunt about what's failing right now: the last eight months of her work have included cleaning up websites wrecked by auto-generated content.

• Why the first month of any engagement should be auditing, not acting — and how client archetypes change the plan
• The content ladder — showing up at the most basic question in your niche and every rung of complexity above it
• Auto-blogging is a liability: what Alyssa is seeing as she repairs AI-content damage
• Why LLMs favor content updated in the last three months — and what that means for your archive
• Cross-team collaboration as a speed advantage — what product and sales know that marketing doesn't
• Building feedback loops that don't backfire — where Slack and Reddit communities burn brands, and what works instead
• Community as its own marketing channel — word of mouth 2.0, and "growing in public"
• Why link building is becoming networking — non-competitor partnerships, cross-promotion, and podcasts as an authority engine

• [MM:SS] — Meet Alyssa Evans: continuous improvement as a operating principle
• [MM:SS] — From art major to growth strategist
• [MM:SS] — The power of cross-team collaboration
• [MM:SS] — First-month friction: auditing before acting
• [MM:SS] — Finding the niche: fintech, real estate tech & SaaS
• [MM:SS] — SaaS's moving target: the release/marketing/satisfaction cycle
• [MM:SS] — Customer feedback loops that actually work
• [MM:SS] — Community as a marketing channel
• [MM:SS] — AI, GEO, and the content ladder
• [MM:SS] — Top of funnel is dead; go deeper
• [MM:SS] — Link building in the age of AI
• [MM:SS] — Where to find Alyssa

"You need to make sure that you're found at that base level and working their way up — think of it as a content ladder."
— Alyssa Evans"If you really start to talk to your customer like they're building the product with you, you will just be much more successful."
— Alyssa Evans"Everyone will have an opinion, and they are valid in their world — but you have to stand your ground, and then the data will come later."
— Alyssa Evans

• Grow Your Strategy — Alyssa's strategy and content company
• Alyssa Evans on LinkedIn · @growyourstrategy on Instagram
• On repairing AI-generated content damage — human-certified, expert-sourced content
• On earning authority off-site — the

Gert Mellak has been doing SEO for 20 years from Madrid, and he came on to tell Jeremy that the number at the bottom of every SEO spreadsheet is fiction. Search Console impressions? "Lots of bots produce impressions. All crap." Search volume as a metric on its own? Close to worthless. And the ROI on SEO, he argues, is not measurable unless you stack a hundred and fifty assumptions on top of data that is flawed at every source.

Jeremy brought him a live case - a query showing 10 searches a month in the tools and 1,100 impressions in Search Console - and Gert's answer explains it. It is the same problem Jeremy documented in Google Search Console data is not accurate, arriving from the other direction.

Gert also walks through his Search Everywhere Optimization Pyramid from Search Engine Land, the "do SEO but search engines don't exist" thought experiment behind it, the high-intent metric he uses instead of rankings, and the client who deleted 80% of their content and started ranking again. More of his writing is at gertmellak.com, and his consulting work is at AI SEO consulting.

Read the full recap and transcript on The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast.

Stephanie Long, founder and CEO of Mrs. SEO, has been doing SEO for almost two decades, and her verdict on AI is blunt: it did not replace the fundamentals, it raised the price of skipping them. "SEO is like the batter to your AI. You have to have it together or you're going to fail."

She joins Jeremy Rivera to explain why she built Junction Jack, a human-vetted SEO marketplace aimed squarely at the gig platforms whose "vetted" section turns out to mean vetted by AI. "None of mine are vetted by AI. It is me, or I know them."

Along the way: the broken links AI cites that were never real, the freelancer-versus-agency shift and why clients now want to talk to the owner, a San Francisco IVF clinic that took a year to earn the machines' trust, link building you can actually explain to a nervous client, and whether Google's Helpful Content Update was ever really about helping readers.

More episodes at Unscripted SEO.

• Why a $20/mo chatbot is not an SEO strategy, and why owners keep believing it is, because they cannot "see" SEO the way they can see an ad.
• Freelancer vs. agency vs. in-house. Stephanie's newest client had never spoken to anyone but an account executive who could not read the reports either.
• LLMs have no opinions, and now they lie. Not hallucination. Choosing to lie, unless a second model is set up to watch.
• Trust but verify. She clicked every link in one AI answer and every one was broken. Then mine your own 404s for the pages ChatGPT invented and build them.
• "SEO is the batter to your AI." The traditional fundamentals are the base layer, and entry-level on its own no longer clears the bar.
• Content spinners in 2008, LLMs now. Twenty city pages for a realtor then, hundreds of thousands of pages today. Same move, expanded.
• Getting niche enough to earn trust. A San Francisco IVF clinic took over a year to surface in the chat tools, fixed with real success-rate data and hyper-local FAQs.
• Link building you can explain in one sentence. Two-way Q&As instead of guest-post begging, roundup quotes turned into graphics, and asking for "attribution" instead of a "link."
• New scams to sift through. An agency that bought bad backlinks and, it turned out, bought fake traffic on top of them.
• Junction Jack. Fiverr and Upwork's fine print says "vetted by AI." Hers says vetted by a human.

• (00:00) Meet Stephanie Long, and why SEO is a black hole
• (04:10) Why owners still think $20 a month will do their SEO
• (05:53) Freelancer, agency, or in-house: who actually talks to the client
• (09:18) LLMs have no opinions, and now they lie
• (10:51) Trust but verify: broken links and imagineered 404s
• (13:52) "SEO is the batter to your AI"
• (14:18) Content spinners in 2008, LLMs now
• (17:01) Is Google intentionally killing the publisher deal?
• (22:42) The IVF clinic: getting niche enough to earn AI's trust
• (25:51) You have to actually talk to your client now
• (27:35) Why clients are finally interested in SEO
• (31:14) Link building you can explain in one sentence
• (36:07) Bought backlinks, bought traffic, and who gets hurt
• (37:15) Junction Jac...

Ben Wills ran the same hotel-recommendation prompt over and over and changed exactly one word in it: the car he was flying to Los Angeles to pick up. Honda Civic, BMW, Ferrari. The hotels moved with the car, and they moved across every ChatGPT model and every level of thinking he tried.

Ben started in SEO in 2001 at KeywordRanking alongside Andy Beal and Garrett French, co-founded the link building company ontolo with Garrett, then disappeared into 13 or 14 years of pure engineering. Large-scale crawlers and scrapers written in C by hand. Embedded firmware for an ESP32 inside high-end audio equipment. He is back in marketing now, building AI search visibility tooling at OppAlerts, and his argument is that LLMs finally hand SEOs the thing search engines never did: a fast, direct, testable feedback loop.

• The one-word experiment: hold the prompt constant, swap the car, and watch the hotel tier move with it
• Why you can test an LLM but never could test a search engine: no waiting for the index, no personalization to strip out
• The persona is a ranking factor: 100 industries, 10 personas each, 1,100 personas across the July analysis
• Backlinks, ranking strength and LLM visibility: a decent correlation, with a full page of caveats in front of it
• How Ben actually uses a correlation: as the anecdotal evidence that tells you which experiment to run
• Isolating the model: thinking off, fan-out off, then turn each one up a step at a time
• AI slop as an accountability question: producer standards versus consumer appetite, and whether his own reports qualify
• Inside OppAlerts: historical PageRank from Common Crawl, news-specific link gap analysis, 20,000+ taxonomy categories
• The Yandex source leak: a week in a Slack channel with Mike King and Russ Jones, and what the category vectors showed

• (00:00) Getting back into the industry after 13 years of engineering
• (01:32) AI is taking your tasks, not your job
• (02:58) The one-word experiment: Honda Civic, BMW, Ferrari
• (05:42) Why you can test an LLM but never could test a search engine
• (06:39) Twiddlers, patents and the black box
• (08:22) Ann Smarty, fan-out queries and the return of search principles
• (10:23) 100 industries and 1,100 personas: the July correlation study
• (12:45) Correlation is not causation, and Ben's own asterisks
• (14:29) Isolating the model: thinking levels off, fan-out off
• (16:25) Engineer brain vs. marketer brain vs. business brain
• (20:49) AI slop and where the accountability sits
• (25:03) KeywordRanking, ontolo, pure C crawlers and ESP32 firmware
• (27:46) news.oppalerts.com and building marketing tools
• (29:32) Historical PageRank, contact data and campaign personas
• (31:30) News link gap analysis and 20,000 taxonomy categories
• (33:36) Vectors, the Yandex leak and CatBoost
• (37:01) Homework: go build a search engine
• (38:46) Where to find Ben Wills