I grew up on dial-up internet in the ’90s and early 2000s. I surfed Geocities sites and Myspace pages and when I wanted to listen to music, I would start downloading a song before bed and wake up hoping that it wasn’t a virus. Somehow, it feels like the internet has gotten worse since then.
Browsing the internet these days, we’re constantly being inundated with sponsored content, AI slop, and sponsored AI slop content. And as an SEO, it’s hard not to feel like this community has a share of the blame (see: The Verge’s “The People Who Ruined the Internet“). SEOs can’t take all the blame for AI slop or the enshittification of search engines, but we can take the responsibility for every piece of content that’s been created with the primary goal of ranking in search engines or being sourced by LLMs.
Part of my goal with Search Dog is to bring back into focus the human element of SEO. To show that you can build a website and write content for real human audiences and still have it rank well in search engines and still be cited by AI without adding to the steaming pile of slop.
My approach isn’t that complicated and its definitely not novel or groundbreaking. It’s just good SEO.
Here’s Search Dog’s approach to SEO in 2026:
- Focus on KPIs that matter
- Create content for humans
- Work the full funnel
- Integrate organic and paid search
- Be known on and offline
Focus on KPIs that matter
The KPI framework I use starts with revenue and works backward: revenue, sales-qualified leads, marketing-qualified leads, and then lead volume. Every tactic should either directly or indirectly tie back to driving leads.
For example, this article won’t rank so no one is going to come from Google to this page and convert. But, it is strengthening topical signals for this new domain that can help my homepage rank for lead-driving keywords and is helping potential clients decide if they want to work with me or not.
In order to connect marketing efforts to sales, marketing teams and sales teams need to actually talk to each other. I know that’s easier said than done at a lot of companies, but if marketing is optimizing for form fills and sales is disqualifying 80% of those leads, that’s a problem the marketing data alone won’t surface. Without an open line of communication, your SEOs will continue putting time and resources toward optimizing for leads that are ending up in the trash. By integrating the teams from the start, you can hopefully avoid mistargeting by 80%.
I’ll be honest about one limitation here: getting to real revenue data isn’t always possible. Sales cycles can be long, attribution is messy, and some organizations just don’t have the infrastructure to connect organic traffic to closed deals yet. That’s fine. The goal is to get as far down the chain as you can. If revenue isn’t accessible, work with SQLs. If SQLs aren’t tracked, work with MQLs. Just don’t stop at traffic and call it a day.
To be clear, when I do reporting, along with lead data, I also track the metrics that lead up to those numbers — clicks, impressions, CTR, sessions, LLM referrals, etc. Don’t get me started on keyword rankings though.
Create helpful content for humans
When you’re about to create a new piece of content, ask yourself a couple of questions: Why does this need to exist? Am I the right person to write this?
When you’re done creating a piece of content, ask yourself a couple of questions: Is this helpful for humans? Could AI easily replicate exactly what I just wrote?
Using AI in the content creation process isn’t the problem. I use it. I’m a one-person shop and my dog doesn’t know how to read well enough to proof. I use it for ideation, for outlining, for therapy (absolutely joking). The problem is when AI becomes the expertise behind the content rather than a tool that helps communicate expertise that already exists. A piece of content should reflect real knowledge, real experience, and real perspective.
Here’s a useful gut check before publishing anything: could someone else produce an essentially identical piece by spending 20 minutes with ChatGPT? If yes, the content isn’t showcasing enough of a unique POV. That doesn’t mean it’s bad writing. It means it’s not differentiated enough to earn attention or authority in an internet full of content that was produced exactly that way.
Google uses its E-E-A-T framework to judge whether a piece of content is helpful and I recommend comparing anything you’re writing against it. E-E-A-T stands for:
- Experience – Does the piece showcase actual lived experience?
- Expertise – Does the piece showcase knowledge and skill?
- Authoritativeness – Are you and your brand recognized as reputable and credible sources by others in the industry?
- Trustworthiness – Is your website secure? Is your information accurate? Is the author clearly identified?
On the surface, none of this is complicated. But it takes time and effort and it means that creating content is more than just throwing a prompt into ChatGPT. That’s why this post starts with examples of my real-life experience with the internet that segued into my real perspective of the state of the internet today. That’s why I have an author bio that links to my LinkedIn page that connects the version of me on this website to the version of me with a relevant work history. That’s why I have an SSL certificate. That’s why I have testimonials on my homepage. It all adds up.
Work the full funnel
Most SEO strategies focus too much on the top of the funnel. The content opportunities there have historically been more prevalent since search volume is higher and, from a marketing perspective, increasing awareness is an obvious step one to increasing leads. It makes less sense now that AI is answering a large share of informational queries directly and most searches don’t result in a click.
I still think top-of-funnel content has value, but its job has shifted. It’s less about driving traffic and more about building brand presence and contributing to the citation pool that AI systems draw from. The expectation that a blog post about a broad informational topic will generate meaningful organic traffic in 2026 is optimistic.
Where I focus most of my attention is the middle and bottom of the funnel. Mid-funnel content, comparisons, detailed service explanations, case studies, and FAQs tied to specific pain points, is where human expertise and brand differentiation matter most. AI can answer “what is a hot dog.” It struggles to credibly answer “why should I choose this hot dog brand over that hot dog brand.”
Bottom-of-funnel is where it all has to close: landing pages with clear conversion paths, external social proof that builds confidence, and UX that doesn’t get in the way. Traffic without conversions is just a vanity metric for B2B lead gen sites.
The goal of SEO, the way I practice it, isn’t rankings. It’s building a long-term, sustainable organic presence that earns trust, drives qualified traffic, and supports real business outcomes at every stage of the buyer journey.
Integrate organic and paid search
If you’re still running your SEO in a vacuum in 2026, you’re fighting a tough battle with a hand tied behind your back. AI Overviews are taking the top off your content funnel, while more and more SERP real estate is going to sponsored listings and rich features. But the case for integrating paid search goes beyond just filling visibility gaps.
I’m not a paid media consultant, but I’ve spent years running Google Ads campaigns for lead gen and e-commerce clients. That experience shapes how I think about the relationship between organic and paid. They’re complementary channels, and when they’re actually talking to each other, they make both sides more effective.
The most underutilized advantage of running SEO and PPC together is data sharing. PPC tells you within days or weeks which keywords are converting. SEO can take months to show the same results. If those channels are operating in silos, you may be throwing time and money down the drain. The search terms that are driving paid conversions should be contributing your content strategy and on-page optimizations on the organic side.
It works the other way too. Organic data can surface long-tail keyword targeting opportunities that are cheaper and less competitive, terms that are worth testing in paid. You can also use the page titles and meta descriptions from well-performing pages when writing ad copy.
The other thing I pay attention to is timing. SEO is slow by nature. When a client is launching a new service, entering a new market, or promoting a seasonal product, paid search should lead while SEO catches up. Once organic rankings start to take hold, budget can be reallocated rather than simply cut, shifting toward remarketing, brand protection, or new keyword tests rather than just turning off spend.
Speaking of brand protection: if you rank organically for your brand name and you’re not running a brand campaign, a competitor can bid on that term and appear above you. Brand campaigns are typically the most efficient spend in a Google Ads account. They’re cheap, they convert well, and they ensure you control the message when someone is actively searching for you by name.
None of this requires a massive paid budget. It requires the two channels to actually share data and strategy, which most businesses aren’t doing.
Be known on and offline
Just as the success of your SEO campaigns can be dependent on how well they are integrated with your paid search campaigns, the success of your search marketing efforts as a whole depends on what you’re doing as a brand, both digitally and in the real world.
At the core of all the SEO best practices, helpful content guidelines, and AIO/AEO/GEO toolkits, is the fact that search engines and LLMs want to show results from sources that are well-known, trusted in relation to whatever topic, service, product is being searched or asked about. The best way to do that is to be talked about in relation to your topic, service, product.
Offline PR matters more to SEO than most people realize. Getting quoted in a trade publication, speaking at an industry event, or landing coverage in a local news outlet builds brand signals that eventually find their way online, whether through articles that reference you, journalists who link back, or simply the accumulated equity of your brand name being mentioned across credible sites over time. Those signals contribute to how AI systems and search engines perceive what your brand is and whether it belongs in the conversation on a given topic.
On the digital side, the idea around links and mentions is shifting. LLMs don’t need links to understand brands. They rely on language, context, frequency, and entity recognition to decide which brands belong in an answer. That doesn’t make links irrelevant, but it does mean that a brand mention in a relevant article, a podcast appearance, or a discussion thread carries more weight than it used to, even without an accompanying link.
If your brand is consistently mentioned in the right contexts across publications, social platforms, and industry conversations, LLMs start to recognize it as a known entity in that space. Getting there means talking about AI visibility at the brand level, not just the SEO-level.
Digital PR, social media, and content distribution all feed into the same entity-building work that drives search visibility. When your brand earns a mention in a relevant publication, gets referenced in a Reddit thread, or shows up consistently across LinkedIn and YouTube, those signals accumulate. Search engines and LLMs are building a picture of what your brand is and what it knows, and that picture is drawn from everywhere your brand shows up, not just your website.
Social platforms are also worth taking seriously as discovery channels in their own right. A growing segment of users, younger audiences especially, are going to TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn first when they’re researching a product, looking for a recommendation, or trying to understand a topic. That behavior isn’t replacing Google search so much as layering on top of it. A brand with consistent presence across multiple platforms isn’t just doing social media. It’s building the kind of cross-channel recognition that makes search engines and AI systems more likely to surface it when it matters.
Let’s put it to work
These aren’t principles I arrived at overnight. They’re the product of more than a decade of running SEO for e-commerce brands, lead gen businesses, and everything in between. The details change but the fundamentals don’t.
If your SEO feels like it’s spinning its wheels, or you’re not sure what you’re actually getting for what you’re spending, that’s worth a conversation. Search Dog Consulting works with business owners who want SEO that connects to real business outcomes, not just a report full of green arrows every month.
No retainer commitments to start. Just a straightforward conversation about where you are, where you want to go, and whether I’m the right person to help you get there.
