For years, you’ve probably heard people say that you should be using video in your marketing. It makes sense. After all, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. If you don’t have a YouTube strategy, you’re missing out on a ton of traffic and a massive opportunity to promote your brand. While creating video content is cheaper and easier than ever, it can still be intimidating if you’re unfamiliar with the medium or if you’re a perfectionist like me. If you’re ready to unlock the power of video marketing, keep reading because this episode is going to be a masterclass from a true expert. Sunny Lenarduzzi has been called a master marketer by Entrepreneur.com. She’s helped brands like Hootsuite develop winning social media and video strategies and she runs her highly successful YouTube channel, which has amassed over 260,000 followers and has been praised by Forbes. From scripting to why you need a loyal community of fans, Sunny will be revealing tried and tested techniques to help you leverage video to its maximum potential.
The Strategies and Techniques Behind Viral Videos with Jamie Salvatori
Today we’re talking to Jamie Salvatori, an expert in viral videos. He’s the founder of Vat19.com, which is an eCommerce store featuring unique and quirky gifts, toys, candy, and curiously awesome oddities. Its YouTube channel currently boasts 3.5 million subscribers and nearly 3 billion video views. We discuss his views on marketing, and how to “try everything” in order to get your video seen.
How to Speak to Sell with Majeed Mogharreban
Authority isn’t just what you know. It’s what people remember, repeat, and act on after you leave the stage, the screen, or the scroll. The difference often comes down to story, positioning, and a clear next step that doesn’t feel like a hard sell.
My guest on today’s show is Majeed Mogharreban, a world-renowned speaking coach and the creator of Expert Speaker. He helps entrepreneurs and experts turn speaking into a smart business strategy, not a once-in-a-while keynote fee. His work blends performance, persuasion, and a sharp understanding of how attention actually works.
In this conversation, we break down how to become really memorable on stage, including Majeed’s “feel, know, do” framework and his “Pain Island to Pleasure Island” model for building a talk that moves people. We also explore how to weave proof into your stories without bragging and why “speech to conversation to offer” can outperform the old-school pitch. Plus, we get into a surprisingly useful topic: how to turn haters and controversy into momentum without losing your composure.
This episode will sharpen your message, strengthen your presence, and help your next talk create real demand. So without any further ado, on with the show.
The Case Against Psychology Hacks with Billy Broas
Marketing gets weird when it forgets there’s a person on the other side of the screen. The internet makes it easy to chase clicks, triggers, and tactics—and just as easy to lose the plot: real persuasion isn’t a hack, it’s a clear, defensible case.
My guest on today’s show is Billy Broas, author of Simple Marketing for Smart People and creator of The Five Lightbulbs framework. He helps technical founders turn complex products into clear, persuasive arguments, and his new manifesto, Marketing Is an Argument, challenges the psychology-first playbook in favor of belief-building that actually holds up.
In our conversation, we define what a manifesto is and why Billy wrote one. We contrast “what works” marketing with marketing built on human dignity. He explains what it means to “re-enchant the transaction.” We also break down the upstream/downstream approach to messaging. Billy walks through the Five Lightbulbs as a practical framework and a belief-building system. And we talk about why content works best as proof, not noise. You’ll also hear how syllogisms reveal weak logic, sharpen claims, and align teams around one clear message.
If you want marketing that earns trust, sharpens conviction, and converts without the cringe, this conversation gives you the blueprint. So, without any further ado, on with the show!
Cutting-Edge AEO Strategies with Patrick Stox
Search is still search—until it isn’t. The moment answers show up without the click, the job shifts from “rank for keywords” to “earn the mention.”
My guest on today’s show is Patrick Stox, Product Advisor, Technical SEO, and Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Patrick lives and breathes SEO, with a particular fascination for how systems really work—and the strange, edge-case problems most people never notice.
He contributed to the Ahrefs SEO Book for Beginners, served as Technical Review Editor for my book The Art of SEO (4th edition), and was lead author for the SEO chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac.
In our conversation, we break down what AI Overviews and AI-mode search are doing to click-through rates, and why “information gain” is the only real moat. We talk about how Ahrefs is building toward real-time site auditing and push-button fixes with Edge SEO, plus the unsexy technical moves that protect performance. Patrick also explains why data studies and comparison pages are winning right now, how Brand Radar actually works, and what it means to manage your reputation across the whole internet—not just your website.
If you want a smarter, more defensible search strategy for 2026, this episode is a great place to start. So, without any further ado, on with the show!
Trust is a Growth Strategy with Dov Gordon
Growth doesn’t slow because expertise disappears. It slows when trust erodes. As markets get louder and attention gets harder to earn, partnerships only work when credibility and follow-through are rock solid.
My guest on today’s show is Dov Gordon, founder of JVGrow.co, back for another conversation. Dov has spent the past fifteen years helping established entrepreneurs grow through joint ventures that actually work. He built his network after seeing how often partnerships fail, through misalignment, poor execution, or inflated promises. JVGrow is now a tightly curated community for experienced thought leaders (myself included) who have proven offers and active funnels.
In this episode, we focus on what still drives growth, and what no longer does. We talk about why broad messaging underperforms and why narrow positioning builds trust faster. Dov explains how joint ventures evolve when audiences are skeptical and overwhelmed. We explore where information stops being useful, where mastery begins, how AI fits into the picture, and why human judgment still shapes meaningful outcomes.
This conversation brings clarity to partnership strategy, sharpens how value is framed, and shows how to grow without relying on tactics that stopped working years ago.
KPIs for AEO with Duane Forrester
Discovery has evolved. We moved from directories to links, then to intent signals. Now, AI systems sit between your content and your audience—deciding what gets retrieved, summarized, cited, or ignored before a human ever sees it.
My guest today, Duane Forrester, has lived every phase of that shift from both sides. He helped build the platforms at Microsoft Bing that shaped modern discovery, then advised hundreds of organizations on how visibility actually works. As the former Senior Product Marketing Manager who led Bing Webmaster Tools and helped bring Schema.org to life, Duane now focuses on one core problem: how brands stay visible when machines—not people—are the first audience.
In this conversation, we unpack his framework for a new set of KPIs built specifically for the AI era. Metrics designed for a world where ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude control the gates. Duane walks through the tools he’s bootstrapped to track chunk retrieval frequency, embedding relevance, and citation rates—signals most SEO platforms don’t even attempt to measure.
We also explore why so many businesses never appear in AI-generated answers, the mental models Duane uses to ship meaningful work without getting stuck in his own head, and why asking fewer, better questions beats chasing every platform update.
This episode cuts through the noise and gives you frameworks for measuring what actually matters in the machine layer. So, without further ado, on with the show!
Intentional Marketing in the AI Era with Stephan Spencer
In a digital world increasingly dominated by AI, understanding how to approach marketing with both strategic intelligence and ethical integrity has never been more crucial. This special episode features a conversation originally hosted by Gert Mellak on his SEO Leverage podcast.
Our discussion explores the power of intentionality in marketing and how it creates energy that attracts the right opportunities. We examine the challenges of working with billion-dollar brands versus nimble startups, and why I prefer collaborating with hungry companies open to innovation.
Our discussion explores cross-channel strategies that boost search rankings through social media. I explain how Google’s approach to link penalties has evolved over time, and we dive into ethical concerns around AI-generated content and its implications. I share my thoughts on the “Dead Internet Theory” where originality fades away and online discourse is mostly bots. You’ll also learn about writing for three distinct audiences to maximize your content’s impact.
You’ll discover how intentional marketing creates a powerful edge in this new era. Now, without further ado, on with the show!
SEO in an AI World with Stephan Spencer
Search is evolving fast—but relevance still wins. In this special rebroadcast of a conversation I had with Samantha Riley on her show, Influence by Design, I unpack what SEO really looks like in an era dominated by AI-generated answers.
Google’s AI Overviews are grabbing headlines—but behind the scenes, they’re generating something else: considerable misinformation. From fabricated stats to dangerously inaccurate medical and financial advice, these tools raise real concerns for users and marketers alike.
We explore why SEO remains not only relevant but essential. I explain how experience-driven content and real-world authority still outrank machine-made fluff, and how businesses can stay visible by leaning into what AI can’t replicate: lived experience, proven results, and human credibility.
We also dive into how to build a website that isn’t just a passive brochure, but a conversion engine. From irresistible lead magnets like my SEO BS Detector to pages focused on tangible results rather than praise, we outline what actually moves the needle with both visitors and Google. You’ll also hear how to avoid being misled by slick-talking SEO “experts” and focus on the metrics that truly matter.
If you’re ready to build lasting digital authority—and stop building your house on rented land—this episode is your blueprint. So without any further ado, on with the show!
Reverse Engineering Google Algorithms with Ryan Jones
According to today’s guest, most SEOs are still optimizing like it’s 2005—counting keywords, stacking H2 tags, obsessing over density metrics that search engines haven’t cared about in years. But the truth is, Google and AI don’t work that way anymore. They think in vectors, not words.
My guest for this episode is Ryan Jones, who runs the SEO practice at Razorfish and created the semantic SEO tool SERPrecon, which evaluates websites the way search engines actually work. Ryan dove deep into the Yandex and Google source code leaks and used that knowledge to build a tool that evaluates websites using the same technologies that are powering modern search.
In our conversation, we discussed why the SEO industry must evolve beyond lexical tactics and embrace semantic relevance. Ryan breaks down vector space, third-party consensus for Google knowledge panels, and how to reverse-engineer Google AI Overview citations using passage BERT. He shares his Reddit strategy, explains the flaws in traditional keyword optimization, and demonstrates how SERPrecon scores title tags using Yandex’s exact logic from their source code leak.
Stay tuned, and you’ll shift how you think about SEO, giving you a competitive edge in an AI-driven search world. So, without any further ado, on with the show!
The New eCommerce with Pinny Gniwisch
Data is your compass in e-commerce—but only if you know how to read it. Pinny Gniwisch, my guest on today’s show, spent over a decade building Ice.com into a revolutionary force in online jewelry sales. As founder and EVP of Business Development, he helped transform how consumers buy jewelry and shaped the evolution of modern ecommerce itself. He’s served on the board of Shop.org, consulted for Cirque du Soleil, and currently leads business strategy at Delmar International.
In our conversation, Pinny shares the real story behind Ice.com’s journey from dot-com bubble survivor to 75-million-dollar success. We discuss his transition from rabbi to internet marketer and what those worlds have in common. He explains why listening to data beats following trends, how his team turned around a failing product launch in 24 hours by examining impression metrics, and why gut instinct remains as critical as artificial intelligence.
Pinchas breaks down the difference between customer acquisition and customer retention, why influencer culture burns out, and how Kabbalah principles apply directly to business decisions. We explore the concept of business as a spiritual practice, the dangers of the slippery slope in deception, and why humility creates space for that still-small voice that guides the best decisions. So without any further ado, on with the show!
10X SEO Growth: A Case Study with Keith McMaster
Your website should work harder than your sales team. Keith McMaster, my guest on today’s show, is the CEO and founder of Firefly Legal, who brings a high-performance mindset from years of football coaching into business strategy. He specializes in building disciplined systems that help organizations operate with clarity and perform at championship levels.
In this case study, we break down how my team at Netconcepts transformed fireflylegal.com from an outdated legacy site that generated one or two leads per month to an SEO and conversion machine that now brings in a client per day. We discuss why Keith volunteered for a website hotseat critique during one of my training sessions for Jay Abraham’s clients, the strategic recommendations I provided for SEO, content, and design, and how implementing those changes led to an 850% increase in top-three keyword rankings in under two years.
Keith shares his experience working with my team alongside Studio1 Design to create a results page featuring AI-powered case studies instead of generic testimonials. We explore how location-specific service pages eliminated the need for physical offices in 18 cities, how a lead magnet featuring AI prompts successfully converts attorneys into clients, and the technical SEO work that now has prospects finding Firefly through ChatGPT instead of Google.
So without any further ado, on with the show!
A Case Study On Personal Branding with Stephan Spencer and Greg Merrilees
Your personal brand is the only asset you’ll carry from cradle to grave. Sell your company, and the brand goes with it. But your name? That stays with you forever.
Greg Merrilees, my guest on today’s show, is the founder of Studio1 Design, a conversion-focused web design agency I’ve collaborated with for over a decade on multiple client projects and my own digital properties.
In our conversation, we deconstruct the complete evolution of my personal brand websites—from my 1995 agency site through multiple redesigns of stephanspencer.com, my two podcast sites, and beyond. We examine when to create separate brand properties versus consolidating under one domain. We explore how to showcase authority without creating decision paralysis. Greg breaks down why your FAQ section–rather than answering industry basics– should instead obliterate hiring objections. We discuss the strategic placement of social proof that shifts contextually across pages: client logos on your results page, media outlets on your press page, speaking venues on your speaking page. And we reveal how timeline-based storytelling on about pages builds the kind of authentic connection that AI simply can’t replicate.
This case study gives you the blueprint for building authority that survives algorithm changes, platform shifts, and the rise of AI agents making decisions about who to recommend. So, without any further ado, on with the show!
AI and SEO: This Is What You Need to Know! with Mark Williams-Cook
Search engines are reinventing themselves, and what’s coming will fundamentally change how brands get discovered online. Mark Williams-Cook, my guest on today’s show, is the director at Candour and founder of AlsoAsked, an intent research tool. Mark has spent 22 years in SEO—from agency director to affiliate marketer to SaaS founder—which gives him an unusually clear view of where the industry is actually heading.
In our conversation, we explore how AI agents are replacing traditional search behavior and why companies like OpenAI and Perplexity are racing to launch new browsers. Mark explains what happens when the user interaction data that powers Google’s rankings simply disappears. He shares his agency’s pivot toward building multi-site brand presence rather than obsessing over keyword rankings.
We discuss why he’s skeptical of prompt-tracking tools and break down the difference between pre-training and post-training in language models. Mark cites MIT research showing ChatGPT users experiencing brain atrophy, the hidden costs of AI convenience, and why understanding what base models think about your brand matters more than chasing individual prompt results. So without any further ado, on with the show!
What AI Really Thinks of Your Brand with Dan Petrovic
SEO isn’t dead—it’s evolving. And understanding how AI models think about your brand is quickly becoming just as important as what you rank for in traditional search.
My guest today, Dan Petrovic, is the managing director of DEJAN, a machine learning specialist, and one of the most forward-thinking voices in modern SEO. Dan has been pushing the boundaries of the field for decades—and famously predicted back in 2013 that we’d be chatting with Google by 2023. He wasn’t wrong.
In this conversation, Dan breaks down the mechanics of AI visibility, including what he calls primary bias—the internal leanings models hold about brands before a single search result appears. Dan demystifies the difference between model memory and grounded search results, and why that distinction matters more than most marketers realize. He explains how geographic signals can undermine your global AI visibility, and how one client fixed the issue with a simple address change. We also dig into practical tools—including TreeWalker and AIRank—that expose how models actually perceive your brand.
If you’ve been optimizing for search engines, this episode shows you how to optimize for the AI systems now standing between your content and your audience.
