The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

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

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.”

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

Most founders become the bottleneck in their own business. Lloyd Thompson of Virtual DOO on the fractional "operator" who sits between you and your team — and gets you out of the day-to-day.

Jeremy Rivera talks with Lloyd Thompson, founder of Virtual DOO, about fractional operations for busy online business owners: what a Director of Operations actually does, when you need one, how to make operations measurable, a nuanced take on remote vs. return-to-office, and his fix for the AI era — the problem isn't the tools, it's the noise, so simplify.

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 – Intro: from corporate to Virtual DOO
8:06 – What a fractional operator actually does
12:47 – The return-to-office counter-take
16:41 – Operations ROI: what agencies miss
23:51 – The AI-tool trap: simplify the noise
29:20 – E-commerce operations at scale
33:01 – Where to find Lloyd

In this episode
• The "operator" who sits betw
• When to hire a DOO — and the first thing to take off the founder's plate
• Why operations must be made ads
• Remote vs. office: when face-to-face is actually worth the cost
• The tool trap: stop chasing channels

Connect with Lloyd Thompson
Website: https://virtualdoo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin
Book: Nine Ways to Leave the Day-to-Day Operations (Amazon)

️ Unscripted Small Business
More episodes: https://unscriptedsmallbusiness.com
Host Jeremy Rivera: https://jeremyriveraseo.com/about/
Human Certified Content & The SEO Advisory

AI gets a "C+" in everything — but the last 20% is still the human job. Mike Montague (Avenue9) on marketing the Iron Man way: augment yourself, don't automate slop.

Jeremy Rivera sits down with Mike Montague — founder of Avenue9 and host of the Human First AI Marketing Podcast (100k+ subscribers) — for a candid talk on using AI to distill your real story instead of manufacturing more noise. They get into why organic traffic is cratering, how to make your online reputation mirror your real-life work, and why "old-school" moves like direct mail are quietly winning again.

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 – Iron Man, not Terminator: human-first AI
2:10 – Why AI only gets a "C+" (and the human 20%)
4:20 – "Claude Hopping" & the slop problem
7:15 – Making boring niches interesting again
11:00 – One winner, or old-school branding
16:40 – Reputation that mirrors real life
23:00 – "Degenerative engineering": distill, don't generate
26:40 – Direct mail as a superpower
31:40 – Entity optimization & the LLM middle
35:45 – Superintelligence & sci-fi futures
44:30 – What Mike actually does (Avenue9)

In this episode
• Why "just make more AI conte
• The one-winner vs. earn-your-reputation split in AI search
• Turning 100+ interviews intoake
• Jeremy's Raven Tools direct-mail test: 10 letters → 10 links
• Entity optimization as core

Mentioned in this episode: PureAire Monitoring — the oxygen-monitor manufacturer behind Jeremy’s B2B cross-pollination example.

Connect with Mike Montague
Avenue9: https://avenue9.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin
Human First AI Marketing Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@Avenue9ai

️ Unscripted SEO Podcast
Website & more episodes: https
Host Jeremy Rivera: https://jeremyriveraseo.com/about/
Human-certified content for agedcontent.com/

#SEO #AImarketing #HumanFirstA