The Edward Show

E1182: AEO companies keep presenting old SEO tactics as if AI search invented them.
Harpreet Singh joins me to break down what is actually different about AEO/GEO, what is simply traditional SEO with new terminology, and where companies are wasting time because they do not understand the history of search.
We start with the tactics now getting promoted on AI search conference stages: keywords in URLs, FAQs, meta descriptions, paragraphs, press releases, solution pages, listicles, and other concepts SEOs have used for years. Harpreet explains why removing the historical context around these tactics leads companies to overuse them and damage their search strategy.
Then we get into what is genuinely changing.
Harpreet walks through how he analyzes query fan-out, including ChatGPT searches that use site: operators to pull information from Gartner, G2, Capterra, and other third-party sources. For some brands, optimizing those profiles matters more than publishing another page on their own site.
We also talk about how difficult competitive AI visibility becomes when an LLM already associates established brands with a category. If a company spent 10 years being known as a mid-market product and suddenly wants to become an enterprise brand, changing a few pages will not rewrite that positioning. The company needs consistent signals across its own site, third-party profiles, reviews, media, creators, press, and search results.
In this episode:
- Why Harpreet says AEO companies are selling 2016 SEO
- Old SEO tactics getting repackaged as new AI search tactics
- Why SEO remains the foundation of AI visibility
- What query fan-out actually changes about keyword research
- Why Gartner, G2, Capterra, Reddit, YouTube, and other third-party sources matter
- How to optimize third-party profiles for the positioning you want LLMs to understand
- Why industry pages matter more as AI results become personalized
- How Harpreet tracks prompts like keywords instead of tracking endless prompt variations
- Why he ignores top-of-funnel AI citations that do not connect to revenue
- How to attack hyper-competitive terms such as "best email marketing software"
- Why solution pages and listicles still matter
- How reviews, press releases, influencers, and outside websites create consensus around a brand
- Why moving a brand from mid-market to enterprise creates an AI visibility problem
- How New Balance can outrank Nike and Adidas with basic category-page SEO
- Why enterprise SEO is often much worse than people assume
- Why creator-led AEO still has an attribution problem
- The simple "How did you hear about us?" field Harpreet uses to track AI-driven customers
- Why cheap press releases still influence AI answers
- Why AI search optimization remains a game of Whac-A-Mole
- Why search optimization does not disappear even if AI companies build their own indexes
The biggest point: AI search changes the surfaces and the retrieval process, but it does not erase the fundamentals. Relevance, authority, positioning, third-party validation, keyword targeting, internal linking, and strong pages still determine what gets found and trusted.
Harpreet Singh joins me for a 90-minute breakdown of what serious AI search optimization looks like once you strip away the new labels.
⭐️ Harpreet Singh's Personal Site - https://harpsdigital.com  
⭐️ Harpreet on X - https://x.com/harpreetchatha_ 
⭐️ Harpreet's Newsletter - https://seoespresso.com 
⭐️ Harpreet on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/harpreetsingh8/ 
⭐️ Harpreet on TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@seoharp 
⭐️ Harpreet on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@harpsdigital  
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 AEO and GEO Repackaging
01:27 Conference Speaker Concerns
04:14 Misleading Studies and Statistics
07:02 Debating AEO Tactics
08:47 Business Expansion Beyond AEO
10:57 Current AEO Sprint Work
13:24 Press Releases and Parasite SEO
15:41 Versus Pages Strategy
17:06 Industry Pages and Personalization
19:28 Query Fan Out Analysis
23:34 Profile Optimization Tactics
25:37 Award Winning Strategies
26:37 Brand Reviews Domain Tactic
28:13 Small Business Advantages
29:38 Tools and Tech Stack
30:34 Prompt Tracking Strategy
32:23 Hyper Competitive Keywords Approach
39:40 Brand Repositioning Challenges
43:26 AI Has Picked Winners
46:00 New Balance SEO Example
48:53 Fixing Page Copy
49:29 Internal Links Win
50:35 Enterprise SEO Fails
54:28 Why Copy Moves Rankings
56:29 Small Brands Need More
58:54 What AEO Talks Miss
01:00:34 Creator Led AEO ROI
01:07:27 Attribution Workarounds
01:09:10 Reputation and Affiliates
01:13:48 Small Business AEO Playbook
01:16:40 Press Releases Game AI
01:28:09 Why SEO Never Dies
01:29:41 Wrap Up and Where to Find
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1181: I break down six SEO habits that marketers and site owners use to grow traffic without chasing a new tactic every week.
These came from a popular SEO Growth subreddit thread where people shared the habits that made the biggest difference for them. I go through the best responses, explain why they work, and show you how to take each one further.
In this episode:
- Export Google Search Console data every month and study what Google tells you. Look at which queries generate impressions, where your pages rank, which pages get clicks, and where the gaps are.
- Separate keywords into covered and uncovered opportunities. Covered keywords tell you which existing pages deserve updates. Uncovered keywords tell you what new pages to create. This also reduces unnecessary overlap between pages targeting similar searches.
- Refresh old content instead of constantly publishing new pages. Update outdated information, tighten search intent above the fold, remove fluff, improve what comes next, and add relevant queries your page already ranks for.
- Build backlinks every single week. Consistent link acquisition compounds. Journalist outreach, partnerships, link outreach, and other repeatable methods beat doing one huge link-building push every six months.
- Use Google Search Console to find queries you rank for but never intentionally targeted. If a page sits on page two for a relevant search, add a section or paragraph that directly addresses that query. Google already sees the page as relevant. Give it a stronger reason to rank higher.
- Study search results constantly. When you search Google, look at why certain pages rank above others. When you use ChatGPT or Claude, study which sources they cite and why. Over time, patterns become obvious.
I also cover:
- Why informational content keeps losing clicks even when impressions stay strong
- How to spot pages that need an update
- Why broken links and fading pages deserve regular attention
- Why giving companies free SEO recommendations sometimes turns into paid work
- How partnerships create recurring backlink opportunities
- Why learning directly from SERPs beats blindly trusting tool scores
⭐️ The Reddit Thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/seogrowth/comments/1wh0yvq/whats_one_seo_habit_that_has_made_the_biggest/ 
⭐️ Ep 787 - The #1 SEO Hack: Why Content Refreshes Beat New Content - https://youtu.be/UKvGmqzIxg4 
⭐️ Ep 1104 - The 1-Hour SEO Update That Makes Your Best Pages Rank for More Keywords - https://youtu.be/GmsAuotHGso 
⭐️ Ep 1160 - How To Get Free Backlinks in 2026 (Methods That Actually Work) - https://youtu.be/U-5VL9o9RGQ 
⭐️ Ep 1173 - The Internal Linking Trick That Uses Topical Authority You Already Have - https://youtu.be/2dPc80Z_DZk 
⭐️ AI SEO/GEO/AEO: How to Get Shown in LLMs in 2026 - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/ai-seo-geo-aeo-get-shown-llms-2026/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Biggest SEO Habit
00:16 Monthly GSC Review
01:14 Covered vs Uncovered Keywords
01:45 Content Refresh Checklist
03:22 Weekly Backlink Outreach
04:40 Query Tweaks to Rank
05:27 Learn From Other Sites
07:37 Consistency and Internal Links
08:21 Partnership Link Exchanges
09:08 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #performancemarketing

E1180: Google's September 2026 spam update is rolling out, and this one looks very different from the last few.
The update started September 24 and is registering a 9.4/10 on Semrush's volatility tracker. Google Search Advocate John Mueller also confirmed that this spam update is expected to take longer than recent spam updates, with volatility potentially continuing for roughly two weeks.
At the same time, a Google research paper about a system called SAFE started circulating across the SEO industry.
SAFE stands for Scaled Abuse Forensic Examiner. Google describes it as an AI-driven anti-abuse system built to identify synthetic threats that traditional classifiers and manual review struggle to catch.
The timing raises an obvious question: is SAFE connected to the September spam update?
Google has not confirmed that.
But the paper shows how far Google's anti-spam systems have moved beyond simply asking whether a page "looks AI-generated."
I break down:
- What Google's September 2026 spam update is
- How this rollout is taking longer than recent spam updates
- What I'm seeing across two very different websites
- Why one bottom-of-funnel SaaS site dropped and quickly recovered
- Why a top-of-funnel content site is still experiencing volatility
- How Google's SAFE analyzes content, behavior, infrastructure, timing, and relationships between content producers
- Why multimodal semantic embeddings matter
- How Google is using specialized AI agents to investigate synthetic abuse
- Why SAFE appears designed to catch new forms of spam that traditional classifiers miss
- How this relates to Google's other 2026 AI spam detection research
- Why some SEOs think the September update is catching spam missed by the August update
- What SEOs are reporting across X and Reddit
- Why thin programmatic SEO pages may be especially exposed
- What to do if your Google Search Console data suddenly becomes volatile
- Why I would wait for the rollout to finish before making drastic changes
- The two things I would still check immediately on your most important pages
- How bottom-of-funnel SEO tends to remain more stable through major updates
The biggest point: do not panic and start rebuilding your site because rankings move during the rollout. Wait until the rollout ends.
Always check whether your important pages are tightly relevant to the query. Make sure the keyword appears in the title, URL, H1, and opening sentence. Then make sure the page answers search intent immediately.
Google's spam systems are getting more sophisticated. SAFE shows that Google is looking at far more than individual pages. It can analyze coordinated behavior, infrastructure, semantic patterns, content relationships, and signals across larger abuse networks.
The September spam update is still rolling out, so we do not have the full picture yet.
I'll continue covering what changes as more data comes in.
⭐️ SE Roundtable: Google September 2026 Spam Update - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-september-2026-spam-update-42163.html 
⭐️ SEMrush Volatility Tracker - https://www.semrush.com/sensor/ 
⭐️ Search Engine Journal - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-has-deployed-a-new-ai-spam-detector-called-safe/590918/ 
⭐️ Google's SAFE Research Paper (PDF) - https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-research2023-media/pubtools/1039292.pdf 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz on 𝕏 (update rollout discussion) - https://x.com/rustybrick/status/2103161355561766957 
⭐️ 2026 September spam update on Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1wp6ml7/google_search_central_on_x_today_we_released_the/ 
⭐️ Ep 1083 - Google's New AI Spam Detector Could Wipe Out Entire SEO Networks - https://youtu.be/I78IQS99EwU 
⭐️ Ep 1153 - Google Can Detect Your AI Content. Here's What Happens Next. - https://youtu.be/G0qcfknUCcU 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 September Spam Update Hits Hard
00:34 What Spam Updates Mean
01:24 How This Rollout Is Longer
02:16 Real Site Volatility Examples
03:18 SAFE Paper Goes Viral
05:00 How SAFE Detects Abuse
07:33 SAFE Technical Foundations
10:01 SEO Community Reactions
11:57 What To Do If Hit
12:31 Bottom of Funnel SEO Stability
13:56 Final Sign-Off
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #googlespamupdate #searchmarketing

E1179: PBNs still work in 2026, and Kalin Karakehayov has the numbers to back up why he thinks they remain one of the most underrated strategies in SEO.
I'm joined by Kalin Karakehayov, Charles Floate, and David Quaid for a deep discussion on black hat SEO, private blog networks, aged domains, backlinks, AI search, parasite SEO, and where search is heading next.
Kalin owns more than 200,000 domains and operates a PBN of roughly 30,000 websites. He explains why PBNs have become easier to operate than they were a decade ago, why his network doesn't need organic traffic to pass value, and how he evaluates domains based on strength, relevance, history, and geography.
Charles and David push the discussion further into how agencies could build private networks of their own, why backlinks remain fundamental to ranking, and why so many SEOs have moved away from link building even though links still drive results.
Then the conversation moves into AI search.
Kalin explains his research into Common Crawl and harmonic centrality, a link metric based on proximity across the web rather than the traditional PageRank model. He lays out a theory for using domains with high harmonic centrality to increase crawling and potentially increase the chances of websites entering AI training data.
Charles explains how Common Crawl data can also be reverse engineered to find valuable domains and connections between websites, and the group discusses what this means for GEO, AI citations, brand associations, and the future value of aged domains.
We also get into:
- Why Kalin believes PBNs are underrated in 2026
- How a 30,000-site PBN works without ranking the individual sites
- PBNs vs. public link farms
- Why private networks are harder for Google to identify
- Why backlinks without traffic still pass value
- How Kalin evaluates aged and expired domains
- Exact-match domains and partial-match domains
- Why valuable domains keep getting more expensive
- PageRank vs. harmonic centrality
- Common Crawl and AI training data
- How domains could influence AI visibility
- Charles' approach to reverse engineering Common Crawl
- The danger of negative SEO in AI search
- Why the internet increasingly becomes a fight for digital territory
- The ultra-high-quality vs. ultra-low-quality content strategy
- Why Kalin thinks websites stuck in the middle face the biggest problem
- How Charles chooses between Google, YouTube, AI search, and other channels
- Using parasite SEO to test markets before investing heavily
- How Charles would approach a new website with a limited budget
- Building the entire core of a site before launch
- When to start building links
- Why SEO risk isn't as simple as "white hat" vs. "black hat"
- Why Charles focuses on ROI instead of labels
This is a wide-ranging conversation about what actually works in SEO, how black hat SEOs think about risk and assets, and how those strategies are evolving as search expands beyond Google into AI.
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Karakehayov 
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karakehayov 
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kalin.karakehayov/ 
⭐️ Kalin Karakehayov on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/karakehayov 
⭐️ SEO.Domains (domains and backlinks) - https://seo.domains 
⭐️ GigaLinks (AI SEO and citations) - https://gigalinks.com 
⭐️ SEO.BO (SEO agency) - https://seo.bo 
⭐️ I Grow Younger - https://i.gy 
⭐️ I Grow Younger on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@growyounger 
⭐️ Charles Floate's community - https://seo.stream 
⭐️ Charles Floate on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Charles_SEO 
⭐️ Charles Floate on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfloate/ 
⭐️ Charles Floate on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesFloate 
⭐️ Charles Floate on Facebook - https://facebook.com/thecharlesfloate  
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/ 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Meet The Panel
00:39 Are PBNs Underrated
02:04 PBN Risks And Footprints
04:25 Shared PBNs And EMDs
07:24 Zero Traffic PBN Math
10:40 Buying And Assessing Domains
12:38 Backlinks Culture Wars
16:34 AI Search Makes Domains Pricier
19:28 Harmonic Centrality For LLMs
22:35 Testing Common Crawl Strategies
27:44 Token Engineering And Negative SEO
31:20 Economics Of Link Inflation
34:28 Stop Debating Start Building
41:03 Territory Mindset And AI Agents
44:21 Search Opportunity And Click Economics
46:38 Cheap Sites With AI
47:29 Budget Question Reframed
47:48 Ultra High vs Low
50:43 Channel First Planning
54:10 MVP Zero To 100
56:26 Build To Exit
58:26 Career Moves And Networking
01:00:59 Comfort Zone Duality
01:04:51 Safe But Dangerous
01:10:31 Hedging With Parasites
01:12:09 Sell Links As Hedge
01:18:44 Scale Like A Commodity
01:21:36 Minimum Viable SEO
01:23:41 Where To Find Them
01:25:47 Podcast Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#blackhatseo #searchengineoptimization #privateblognetwork #seo

E1177: Ross Hudgens of Siege Media breaks down the page type driving the most AI search traffic across his clients: versus pages.
Ross says Siege Media's correlation analysis found that clients with the most AI traffic also had the most comparison and versus content. We get into why these pages perform so well across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google, and traditional search, how to structure them, and why most companies still execute them poorly.
We also go deep on branded subreddits, Reddit SEO, AI search measurement, link building, digital PR, keyword research, content refreshes, publisher traffic declines, and how SEO strategy is changing as more searches end without a click.
In this episode:
- Why versus pages are driving so much AI search traffic
- Why comparison pages belong on landing pages instead of blogs
- Where to put comparison tables
- How to write versus pages without turning them into templated SEO garbage
- How to choose which competitors deserve comparison pages
- Why three-way comparisons sometimes work
- How versus pages support sales teams beyond SEO
- Why companies struggle to publish honest competitor comparisons
- Using YouTube influencers when a brand refuses to publish comparison content itself
- Why branded subreddits matter for SEO, reputation management, and LLM visibility
- When a company has enough branded search demand to justify its own subreddit
- How little traction a branded subreddit needs before it starts ranking
- Why Reddit still matters even as its AI citation share changes
- Repurposing existing website content onto Reddit
- Using branded communities to rank for review and reputation queries
- Why Siege Media does less manual link building than it did years ago
- Where link-building budget is moving instead
- Why fewer niche bloggers exist today
- The growing role of LinkedIn, YouTube, influencers, and UGC in search
- Why backlinks still matter even as the open web shrinks
- How Siege Media approaches digital PR differently today
- Using proprietary data across multiple existing ranking pages
- Why recurring annual and quarterly data studies compound over time
- How publishers need to rethink monetization as AI takes top-of-funnel clicks
- Why publishers still hold valuable influence inside LLM answers
- The problem with treating Perplexity like it has the same importance as ChatGPT
- How Ross measures AI search and GEO performance
- Why "How did you hear about us?" remains one of the strongest attribution questions
- The AI search tracking tools Siege Media uses
- How third-party citations influence LLM visibility
- Why generic "best overall" positioning often fails
- How LLMs categorize brands into specific use cases
- Siege Media's KOB keyword research framework
- How Ross now adds LLM visibility into keyword prioritization
- How to decide whether a keyword deserves a new page
- Why top-of-funnel informational SEO keeps getting harder
- The types of informational content that still defend their clicks from AI
Ross has spent more than 14 years building Siege Media and working across SEO, content marketing, link building, digital PR, and now AI search.
This conversation gets into what Siege Media is doing more of in 2026, what it has reduced, and where Ross thinks search is moving next.
⭐️ Ross Hudgens on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosshudgens/ 
⭐️ Ross Hudgens on 𝕏 - https://x.com/RossHudgens 
⭐️ Ross Hudgens' book, Generative Engine Optimization: The Definitive Guide to AI SEO - https://www.amazon.com/Generative-Engine-Optimizations-Ross-Hudgens/dp/1394439806 
⭐️ Siege Media Book page - https://www.siegemedia.com/geo-book 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Meet Ross Hudgens
00:30 Siege Media Origin Story
00:56 Versus Pages Win AI
07:07 Comparison Page Blueprint
09:54 Avoid Templated Comparisons
13:33 Branded Subreddit SEO
15:48 Republishing Content on Reddit
25:05 Less Manual Link Building
26:48 LinkedIn and Social Signals
33:58 Digital PR Data Strategy
40:27 Publisher Survival in AI Era
44:33 Measure GEO and AI Traffic
46:54 AI Long Tail Traffic
48:03 Tools For Measuring
48:27 Citation Share Strategy
50:16 New Client Audit
51:02 Common SEO Mistakes
53:23 Versus Pages Limits
54:05 KOB Keyword Framework
55:46 LLM Visibility Signals
57:52 New Page Or Update
01:00:54 Rank Position Eight To One
01:02:10 AI Content UX Fails
01:05:24 When To Refresh Content
01:09:00 Reddit And Offsite SEO
01:14:49 Site Structure Mapping
01:17:01 CRO Is GEO
01:18:36 Prompt Tracking Mistakes
01:20:05 Influencing LLM Answers
01:21:35 AI Slop Sites Fade
01:24:38 Hallucination Story
01:29:17 Using AI As Partner
01:30:23 Schema And LLMs Txt
01:33:32 Quick Wins And Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo