With AI-generated answers intercepting more and more queries, the focus shifts from volumes and keywords to targeted pages, search intent, and concrete results
SEO is not what it was two years ago (or even a few months ago, to be honest!).
AI Overviews occupy the top of the SERPs, ChatGPT and other LLMs intercept questions that used to end up on Google, and more and more users get their answers without ever clicking through to a website. For those who work on the web, organic traffic is being redrawn, and anyone who hasn’t noticed yet will probably see it in their data over the coming months.
In this episode of SEO Confidential I bring to the stage one of the most lucid and practical voices on the international scene.
I’m talking about Edward Sturm. An SEO consultant for global companies such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, ADP and Time Inc., Edward builds targeted strategies where every page has a precise purpose: qualified traffic, real conversions, measurable results.
He is also co-founder and Marketing Director of Reverb, a remote communication tool with over a million users: a rare perspective, because he understands SEO but also knows what it means to build a product and an audience from scratch.
Today we tackle with him the most important questions entrepreneurs like you are asking right now: how does an SEO strategy adapt when search engines become answer engines? Does it still make sense to rely on supporting content to rank for difficult keywords? And above all: is there still room for those who want to do SEO without a multinational’s budget?
Spoiler: Edward has a clear-cut answer. And it will probably surprise you.
Enjoy the read!
“To defend against Negative GEO attacks, you have to drown out the negative information with a large amount of positive, verified content”
Your strategy is based on creating many pages targeting simple queries in order to transfer authority to a main page. But doesn’t this approach risk generating “supporting” content of little real value? How do you avoid ending up with pages written purely for SEO?
The risk only exists when the content isn’t genuinely useful or becomes excessively long and full of “SEO junk”. To avoid it, the starting point has to be different: create short answers, around 120 words, written in an authentic voice and based on real knowledge, not on filler designed for search engines.
As the pages start to rank, they can be enriched progressively. At this stage it’s also useful to add a TL;DR at the top of the page, in the part visible without scrolling (short for “Too Long; Didn’t Read”, a very brief summary that delivers the main answer right away without having to read the whole text, Ed.), so as to provide a clear answer immediately and satisfy the search intent straight away.
This approach fits together with the Compact Keywords strategy, which focuses on concise, conversion-oriented SEO landing pages targeting bottom-of-funnel keywords. These keywords often have low competition. When you do want to compete on a more difficult query, supporting pages serve to transfer authority to a main landing page, while still keeping the content useful and relevant for the user.
You talk about the possibility of ranking for highly competitive keywords even without backlinks, using content on simpler queries and internal linking. In concrete terms: how many pages does it really take to make this strategy work? How long before you start seeing results? And in which cases does it stop working?
You can start with a concrete base: about 10 pages. The idea is to publish one a day, always keeping content quality high. You don’t need to produce huge volumes, but to build useful, targeted answers that are consistent with one another.
Timing depends a lot on the site’s existing authority. If the domain has a good foundation, the first results can arrive within one or two months. The advantage is that you’re working on low-competition queries, which are easier to intercept and to rank for quickly.
In my opinion it really is possible to rank without backlinks: here I explore the topic in more depth.
Edward, you say that most technical SEO matters little and that covering the bare minimum is enough. Isn’t that a risky message for businesses? Where is the line between “simplifying” and doing superficial SEO that doesn’t hold up over time?
I think it’s risky for established companies that have accumulated a lot of “bloat”, meaning useless or redundant elements. The best technical SEO is very simple and has very little bloat.
The problem is that many companies, in trying to do the wrong kind of SEO, end up adding unnecessary complexity. Over time this weighs the site down and makes it harder for search engines to crawl and prioritize content.
Technical bloat also worsens the user experience: clunkier navigation, complex architectures, bugs and other issues. If it’s a new site, it’s better to focus on the fundamentals first, then on content and keywords, rather than on technical SEO. The results will be decidedly better.
You argue that top-of-funnel content is often a waste of time and that the focus should be on the bottom of the funnel. But doesn’t that mean giving up visibility and long-term brand building? How do you really balance the two?
Top-of-funnel doesn’t convert. Brand building at the top of the funnel is more effective on social media, because it lets you reach a wide audience and stick in people’s minds more easily. The blog section of the site can be used to publish company updates, industry commentary, awards received and similar content.
For the site’s SEO, in my view it’s best to focus mainly on conversion-oriented landing pages. Those are the ones that bring in customers, users and leads who are already interested. They’re also easier to rank, because at the bottom of the funnel there are fewer competitors and therefore less competitive keywords. They also require less content per page, because those who arrive already have very strong intent.
With the integration of AI into Google Search Console it becomes much easier to spot certain opportunities already present in the data. But doesn’t this risk pushing everyone to work on the same areas, quickly making these strategies overused?
I don’t think that risk exists. The AI in Google Search Console doesn’t show you opportunities that are “the same for everyone”, but only the queries your site is already visible for.
In practice, you work on what is already working. And from there you can intervene in a targeted way:
- strengthening these keywords in the most important parts of your pages;
- adding specific sections to cover them better;
- creating new pages when dedicated content is missing.
Here I’ve put together a series of AI prompts for Google Search Console to start from, useful for spotting opportunities on keywords you already rank for that only need a small push to improve results.
Edward, you propose using AI to find journalists and earn articles with links. In practice: does this strategy really work for every company, or only for those with something interesting to tell? And when does it become spam?
This strategy works for every company. Every company has an interesting angle it can leverage to gain media visibility. The problem is that many people don’t know how to identify those angles, nor how to find the journalists who are genuinely interested.
I’ve created a complete guide, with all the prompts, for devising interesting news stories and pitching them to the most relevant journalists, avoiding indiscriminately contacting people who aren’t interested.
Today it seems easier to get coverage in local or niche publications. But if more and more companies adopt this approach, isn’t there a risk of lowering the quality of the content being published? And in that case, do these links still carry the same SEO value?
The reality is that most people won’t adopt this approach. If everyone — truly everyone — did it, then it would stop working. In practice, though, very few will.
And I say this sincerely: the market is still wide open. It would be a mistake to underestimate this opportunity.
In this system, AI can take unverified content — even false or manipulated — and turn it into credible answers. How real is the risk today for a company of suffering reputational damage without even realizing it? And above all, how does a brand really defend itself against Negative GEO attacks?
My system doesn’t encourage the use of false information or manipulated content. On the contrary, everything must be carefully verified before publication, because AI can generate errors or incorrect information. Ignoring this means exposing yourself to concrete risks. In the long run, companies that don’t check what they publish end up losing credibility and results.
To defend against Negative GEO attacks, you have to communicate every positive result strongly and continuously: you have to drown out the negative information with a large amount of positive, verified content.
Driving lots of visits matters less and less, while being one of the very few answers chosen by AI matters more and more. Doesn’t this risk making companies increasingly dependent on platforms they don’t control — platforms that bring customers today but that tomorrow could keep all the value for themselves without passing it on to websites?
If you think about it, it has always been this way. Even email clients can end up sending your emails to the spam folder.
The best SEO is a mix of diversified marketing, because you also need brand searches to make Google understand that yours is a real brand.
Doing marketing intelligently, in a way that generates real clicks, allows you to obtain:
- high-intent traffic;
- rankings;
- citations in AI answers;
- customers;
- users;
- already-interested leads coming in directly.
If Google still matters far more than ChatGPT and the other LLMs, the risk is that many companies are chasing artificial intelligence out of fashion, while still neglecting the channel that actually brings in most of their customers. Aren’t we creating a confused rush toward AI that, in many cases, only ends up producing mediocre content, losing authority, and disappearing both from Google and from AI answers?
Focusing on optimizing for AI is completely wrong.
The most effective approach is different: create conversion-oriented SEO landing pages, not simple blog articles, backed by marketing activities capable of generating genuinely qualified clicks.
This way you get concrete results on Google, in terms of traffic and customers, and at the same time you increase the likelihood of being cited by AIs as well, when they intercept users who are already ready to buy.
AI Overviews are draining traffic away from evergreen content and Google keeps rewarding news above all. Aren’t we heading toward a web where chasing the story of the moment pays off more and more, while genuinely useful content built to last gets sacrificed?
News publishers have lost 50% of their organic traffic over the past two years. To compensate, many are relying more and more on Google Discover, which is however far less stable. The result is plain to see: niche publishers are going through a difficult phase.
Continuing to publish news content can still make sense, but it’s not enough.
You need to truly leverage the authority built up in your sector, turning it into something concrete and monetizable. In practice, publishing content isn’t enough: you need to pair it with a product tied to your niche, such as a piece of software, a tool, or a specific service.
At that point, you create SEO landing pages designed to convert — pages built to intercept users with a precise need and lead them to use or buy that product. That way the traffic doesn’t remain an end in itself, but brings in real customers.
This way you reduce your dependence on advertising and affiliate revenue, which pay less these days, and you build a more solid revenue stream, one that over time can even surpass the previous one.
This is one of the best times ever to do SEO, provided you know what you’re doing.
Do less, do it better: the SEO that actually converts
Edward Sturm leaves us with a message worth printing out and sticking above your monitor: you don’t need to do more, you need to do the right things.
Less generic content, less technical obsession, less chasing every AI novelty as if it were a matter of life or death. And instead: targeted pages, precise search intent, landing pages that bring in customers rather than visitors who arrive, read, and vanish without leaving anything behind.
What emerges most strongly from this conversation is the quality of the insights Edward brings to the table: focused on concreteness, rooted in hands-on experience with complex projects, far removed from the rhetoric that so often surrounds the SEO world.
At a time when everyone seems disoriented — between AI Overviews eroding traffic, LLMs intercepting questions, and algorithms changing constantly — this clarity is more valuable than any sophisticated tactic.
SEO has simply become more selective. It rewards those who have something concrete to say, those who know how to turn traffic into real results, those who build pages designed for both people and crawlers.
Next week SEO Confidential returns with another great international guest.
Don’t miss it!
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