Tough Questions CEOs are Asking About AI SEO (and How To Answer Them) w/ Gaetano DiNardi

episode

Previously titled “SEO in the AI Era: How We Should Rethink Performance” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026

Content and Conversation: Organic Growth Insights from Siege Media not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

recent transcribed audio

Transrapid, Flugtaxis, Hyperloop – Warum es neuartige Verkehrstechnik so schwer hat 28 min · 22 Sep 2026 · Das Wissen | SWR

September 21, 2026: FAA Resolves Air Traffic Outage, Paramount Reaches Settlement, More 7 min · 22 Sep 2026 · Bloomberg News Now

Los 3 Casos Más Extraños de Relatos de la Noche 43 min · 22 Sep 2026 · Relatos de la Noche

Many Questions Answered In Habs OT Win! | The Sick Podcast with Tony Marinaro September 21 2026 1h 0m · 22 Sep 2026 · The Sick Podcast with Tony Marinaro / Le Sick Podcast avec Tony Marinaro

What will it cost to live longer? 17 min · 22 Sep 2026 · ABC Business Daily

NPR News: 09-21-2026 11PM EDT 5 min · 22 Sep 2026 · NPR News Now

Report any issue

Source

Recorded01 Dec 2025

Publisherfeeds.simplecast.com ↗

Handlerec:13808051

Show notes

Ross welcomes Gaetano DiNardi, growth advisor and B2B SaaS strategist, to unpack the brutal questions CEOs are suddenly firing at their SEO teams in the AI era: traffic is flat or down, attribution is messy, LLM dashboards look scary, and everyone wants to know if SEO is still “working.” They dig into why traffic is no longer the primary health metric, how AI Overviews and LLMs are breaking the old “rank → CTR → traffic → leads → revenue” equation, and why CMOs should obsess less over sessions and more over demo requests, pipeline, deal size, and overall organic channel performance. Gaetano shares how he’s reframing SEO for mid-market B2B SaaS: shifting from decaying top-of-funnel content to bottom-of-funnel “money pages,” optimizing for LLM citations and “money prompts,” and using concepts like “crash-the-party” comparison pages to win high-intent demand across both Google and AI platforms. They also break down why LLM prompt tracking is the new rank tracking (with all the same pitfalls), how AI platform traffic actually converts compared to Google, what “dark funnel SEO” looks like in practice, and why Gaetano thinks classic TOFU SEO might effectively go to zero while brand, data studies, and opinionated thought leadership pick up the slack. Show Notes0:08 – Gaetano returns & why last year’s SEO playbook no longer works1:17 – CEOs’ top question: “Traffic is down… is SEO still working?”2:17 – Why B2B SaaS is feeling the decline hardest3:16 – The old rank → CTR → traffic → revenue model is broken5:46 – Top-of-funnel content is collapsing (and why TOFU is “dead-ish”)6:13 – The shift to bottom-funnel: BOFU keywords, low volume, high intent7:11 – Flat traffic + rising revenue: the new SEO success story8:01 – What LLMs cite: comparisons, “best X” lists, crash-the-party pages8:38 – Crash-the-party SEO explained in 15 seconds13:21 – LLM prompt dashboards are misleading your executives15:53 – Branded vs. non-branded LLM prompts: why you MUST separate them18:06 – Build a tight list of “money prompts,” not 500 random ones20:06 – Why AI platforms show higher conversion rates than Google22:10 – Dark-funnel behavior: LLM → Google → homepage → convert 24:08 – Google leads have FAR larger deal sizes than AI leads27:35 – SEO attribution is officially “cooked” in the AI era29:27 – Traffic flat, pipeline up 3×: examples from real clients31:25 – Use top-10 stability to prove AI Overviews stole your clicks34:47 – Search is becoming BOFU-first — what that means35:34 – LLM citations as the new leading indicator for SEO39:00 – Exploding topics = more LLM citations due to low consensus41:22 – Engagement validates information gain (why POV content wins)47:20 – What happens to TOFU SEO? (Short answer: it shrinks massively) 48:49 – Why TOFU may survive only for authority, clustering, and links Gaetano on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/officialg/ Tough Questions CEOs Are Asking About AI SEO: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T_IQXUCXBQtFcLekVFwqv23y8ViuRFJKBIRtn4wcImQ/edit?usp=sharing Does traffic from AI platforms convert “better” than Google search traffic?: https://marketingadvice.substack.com/p/869517ce-4629-429f-addd-518d9342cdff CMOs are frantically asking “what’s our Reddit strategy?: https://marketingadvice.substack.com/p/cmos-are-frantically-asking-whats LLM prompt tracking is the new rank tracking: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/officialg_llm-prompt-monitoring-is-quickly-becoming-activity-737 7069814458097664-KLyi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAj OemoBsmGgXOOcFpcwGVG1B7IlDCvf8io Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related