PodcastsBusinessThe Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

Jeremy Rivera
The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast
Latest episode

171 episodes

  • The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

    Why Ranking #1 Isn't Enough Anymore — Christopher Gimmer (Snappa & GoodMetrics)

    09/07/2026 | 39 mins.
    Christopher Gimmer bootstrapped Snappa to ~$10K/month off the back of a single blog post — and now he's rebuilding it AI-first while launching GoodMetrics, a cookieless alternative to Google Analytics. In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Christopher and host Jeremy Rivera get honest about what actually still works for bootstrapped SaaS founders as AI Overviews and paid placements quietly eat organic clicks.

    We get into why "ranking #1" no longer means the #1 click, how Snappa is moving from drag-and-drop to an AI-first design editor, why GoodMetrics ditched cookies (and shipped an MCP server so you can query analytics through Claude or ChatGPT), the strange new problem of "agent traffic," and why genuinely useful tools now earn links that walls of text never will.

    If you're a founder, marketer, or SEO trying to figure out the post-AI-Overviews playbook, this one's for you.

    ⏱️ CHAPTERS
    00:00 From finance to bootstrapped SaaS — meet Christopher Gimmer
    02:31 Snappa: graphic design for non-designers
    04:01 The viral "free stock photos" post that built the distribution
    06:46 Overhauling Snappa into an AI-first design editor
    10:19 AI Overviews & paid placements eating organic clicks
    12:53 GoodMetrics: a cookieless alternative to Google Analytics
    18:34 "Agent traffic" — what counts as a visitor now?
    22:50 Content strategy: docs, landing pages & tools over blog posts
    25:26 SEO in the middle of the Venn diagram (everything feeds the LLM)
    28:42 Link building today: distance to seed & SaaS as authority sites
    33:50 A question for the next guest: life beyond the content playbook
    38:25 Where to find Christopher, Snappa & GoodMetrics

    CONNECT WITH CHRISTOPHER GIMMER
    Snappa (AI-first graphic design): https://snappa.com/
    GoodMetrics (cookieless analytics): https://goodmetrics.io/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgimmer/
    X: @CGimmer

    ️ THE UNSCRIPTED PODCAST NETWORK
    Unscripted SEO: https://unscriptedseo.com/
    More from host Jeremy Rivera: https://jeremyriveraseo.com/about/
    SEO tools, guides & the keyword forecasting tool: https://seoarcade.com/
  • The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

    GEO Research Google Doesn't Want You to See: Entities, Coherence & Prompt Poisoning

    09/07/2026 | 1h 6 mins.
    You don't rank pages anymore — you rank entities. That single shift, Federico Fancinelli argues, is why AI search quietly favors established brands over the small players everyone hoped it would lift.

    Federico is the founder of GeoSonar, an AI-search visibility platform born from a two-year GEO research lab. In this episode he shares what the research actually found: entity strength lives across three layers — infrastructure, narrative, and authority — unified by "coherence" across every channel you own. Say one thing on your site and another on LinkedIn, and the LLMs penalize the discrepancy.

    We also get into the stuff you won't hear from Google: why their advice on ranking can't be trusted ("imagine Google as a bank manager…"), how every LLM searches and reasons differently, the move from prompt quantity to strategic prompt categories, and the accidental discovery of "prompt poisoning" — nudging a brand-new brand's grounding just by how you prompt. Federico closes on a hopeful note: even the small can compete if infrastructure, narrative, and authority are coherent — and SEO isn't dead, it just lives *inside* GEO.

    Guest: Federico Fancinelli, GeoSonar — https://geosonar.ai/en · Research lab: https://lab.geosonar.ai/ · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federico-fancinelli/

    Show notes: https://unscriptedseo.com/you-dont-rank-pages-anymore-you-rank-entities-federico-fancinelli-on-geosonars-geo-research/ · SEO tactics: https://seoarcade.com/seo-tactic-library/

    Hosted by Jeremy Rivera on the Unscripted SEO Podcast.
  • The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

    Use AI to Kill the SEO agency Pre-Work, Not the Thinking | Erika Braeger, Tenspeed

    06/07/2026 | 27 mins.
    AI didn't kill SEO — it raised the stakes on the fundamentals. Erika Braeger of Tenspeed on using AI to kill the pre-work (not the thinking), writing humans-first-but-machine-readable, and what AI actually cites at the B2B evaluation stage.

    Erika Braeger is Manager of Organic Growth Strategy at Tenspeed, a B2B SaaS content agency (organic, AEO, digital PR, design). A former teacher, she leads by building her team's confidence and stripping the busywork out of their day. Host: Jeremy Rivera.

    ⏱️ CHAPTERS
    0:00 – Intro
    1:30 – Building team confidence (the teacher's method)
    3:58 – Innovation: killing the pre-work with Claude skills
    5:45 – The new value of SEO & the LLM layer over everything
    9:58 – Human-based content, SME briefs & the expert-review layer
    16:44 – From a family food blog to B2B SaaS
    22:13 – The red line: never rush a website migration
    24:48 – Superintelligence? Still running QA
    27:36 – Tenspeed's research: what AI actually cites

    IN THIS EPISODE
    • Managing a strategy team by building confidence
    • Using AI to remove pre-work, not the thinking
    • Writing for humans first — but machine-readable
    • Website migration red flags to avoid
    • What AI cites at the B2B evaluation stage

    CONNECT WITH ERIKA
    Company: https://tenspeed.io
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikabraeger/
    Research — What AI Actually Cites for B2B Evaluation-Stage Prompts

    ️ THE PODCAST
    More SEO interviews: https://unscriptedseo.com
    Host: https://jeremyriveraseo.com
    SEO tools & guides: https://seoarcade.com

    #SEO #AEO #AISearch #ContentMarketing #B2BSaaS
  • The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

    Robert Spinrad on why good SEO is good AI visibility

    03/07/2026 | 35 mins.
    Most agencies are still figuring out what to say about AI. Robert Spinrad from SEOM Interactive already has an answer — and it’s not what you’d expect.

    Robert is the Associate Director of SEO at SEOM Interactive, a Philadelphia-area digital marketing agency operating since 2008. He joined the team straight out of Temple University in 2015 and has grown into a leadership role running the SEO function across a 40-person team.

    In this episode, Jeremy Rivera and Robert get into the reframe that’s been driving strategy at SEOM: it’s no longer about learning AI tools — it’s about proving to LLMs that your clients are trustworthy enough to surface. They also cover why reviews have become multi-platform infrastructure, how digital PR with real owner quotes is pulling ahead, and the phrase Robert coined that’s going into Jeremy’s client deck: “humble experts.”
  • The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

    How AI Turns SEOs Into the Orchestrators of Digital Marketing | Adrian Nikolov, Haide Digital

    02/07/2026 | 50 mins.
    Jeremy Rivera sits down with Adrian Nikolov, founder of Haide Digital, for an unscripted conversation about what SEO becomes when AI stops being a threat and starts being the engine. "Haide" means "let's go" in Bulgarian — and Adrian's whole philosophy is built on it: publish, break stuff, read the data, feed it back, improve.

    With 18 years in SEO and digital marketing, Adrian breaks down "Organic Growth Engineering" — his blend of SEO, GEO, and AI automation — and how his team builds self-healing topical authority systems that get smarter than the humans running them. Jeremy and Adrian go deep on why "just blogging" is dead, how to actually funnel cold traffic instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall, and why authority is the new PageRank.

    They also get into the messy realities: prompt tracking as sticking your finger in the wind, why LLM referral traffic can look great and convert terribly, and how to reverse-engineer AI citations by just asking the model why it surfaced a source.

    Whether you run an agency, a SaaS brand, or your own site, this one is about flipping the script — from fighting Google's black box to feeding the LLMs the answers they're begging for.

    ⏱️ In this episode:
    • Why AI won't take SEO jobs — it makes SEOs the orchestrators
    • Building your own tools and becoming the developer
    • Self-healing topical authority systems explained
    • Search Everywhere Optimization vs. blog-only strategy
    • Top / mid / bottom of funnel — and building sticky content
    • Signal interception (news-jacking) automation across social
    • The truth about prompt tracking and LLM citation data
    • Microsoft Clarity, sentiment analysis, and authority as the new PageRank
    • How to get cited in AI (you may not even need links)
    • Agentic shopping and training your "least trustworthy rep" (Claude, GPT, Gemini)

    Connect with Adrian Nikolov:
    Website: https://haide.digital/
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-nikolov/
    Newsletter: "Search Engineered" (on LinkedIn)

    ️ More from Unscripted SEO:
    Explore the full archive of interviews at https://unscriptedseo.com

    Like & subscribe if you caught this on YouTube — spread the signal.

    #SEO #AISEO #GEO #SearchEverywhereOptimization #DigitalMarketing
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About The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast
Hosted by Jeremy Rivera: A 17 year career expert in the SEO industry and his cohost Keith Bresee. Get insights, action items and anecdotes from experts like Lilyray, Kevin Indig, Rand Fishkin, Matt Mellinger and more in the SEO industry, who are not only well-respected, but have really interesting stories to share. 100% unscripted, 100% unrehearsed, 100% unedited, and 100% real. Guaranteed to provide those golden nugget lightbulb moments.
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