Writing on Content Marketing, SEO, & Agency Growth
The Best AEO Agencies for Growing AI Visibility & Revenue (2026)
Article Summary The best AEO agencies in 2026 are Optimist, Discovered Labs, iPullRank, and First Page Sage, ranked by a practitioner based on published AEO case studies with revenue and pipeline metrics. There are a lot of "best AEO agency" lists out there right now....
B2B SEO Audit Framework: How to Assess Your Organic Visibility & Identify 10x Opportunities
Article Summary A B2B SEO audit's job is to diagnose why an organic program isn't producing pipeline, not catalog crawl errors against a 2018 checklist. Seven dimensions a pipeline-grade audit measures: Pipeline-attribution health, SEO performance, AEO visibility...
GEO is Not “Just SEO”: Understanding Generative Engine Optimization for B2B SaaS
Article Summary Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the additive layer on top of SEO that gets a brand named, recommended, and cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews when buyers ask category questions. Most of GEO is good SEO, but...
Dark Search: How AI Changed SEO and What to Do About It
Article Summary AI assistants now drive buyer discovery a layer above the click, leaving Series A B2B SaaS marketing leaders with flat organic dashboards and rising pipeline they can't explain. This is the Dark Search era and it requires new measurement frameworks,...
How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy that (Still) Works in 2026
Article Summary A content marketing strategy in 2026 is the decision layer that commits to qualified pipeline, treats Google search and AI answer engines as a unified visibility surface, and designs every page to carry a complete problem-to-solution-to-product...
SEO for Startups: How to Build a Search Strategy That Generates Pipeline
Article Summary SEO for startups succeeds when it's run as a sequenced strategy that maps the product to a focused set of topics. It fails when treated as a checklist of on-page, off-page, and technical tasks. The winning approach is a five-step sequence: Mapping...
The SEO Funnel: How to Build a Complete Organic Revenue Engine (SEO + AEO/GEO)
Article Summary An SEO funnel maps organic content to the three stages of the buyer's journey, but most teams build it as a relay of stage-isolated pages. Buyers now self-steer and form shortlists inside AI answer engines, so every page has to run the full...
Conversion Content: How to Build Content That Drives Real Pipeline
Article Summary Conversion content is content built to produce qualified pipeline, not traffic. Whether a piece converts is mostly decided before it's written, by the search intent its topic targets. In 2026 it also has to be visible across both Google and AI answer...
SaaS Growth Strategy: The 2026 Playbook for Building Compounding Pipeline
Article Summary A SaaS growth strategy compounds acquisition, retention, and expansion into pipeline. With median private SaaS growth compressed to 25% and distribution the only durable moat, the 2026 playbook picks one or two motions to compound at the company's...
Content Marketing for SEO and AEO: How to Build One Strategy That Drives Pipeline Across Both
Article Summary Content marketing for SEO and AEO works best as a single integrated strategy. A unified content approach serves both channels across eight implementation areas: entity consistency, narrative clarity, content coverage, cluster architecture, on-page...
SaaS SEO Strategy: How to Build a Complete Organic Growth Engine for B2B SaaS (Updated 2026)
Article Summary SaaS SEO in 2026 means optimizing for two discovery channels at once: Google search and AI answer engines. 94% of B2B buying groups now use large language models during their purchase journey, and AI Overviews reduce organic click-through rates by 61%...
AEO vs GEO vs SEO: What’s Different and What Matters for Your Pipeline
Article Summary AEO and GEO are the same discipline with different names. SEO is the foundation both build on. The real comparison is AEO/GEO vs SEO, and the companies generating pipeline treat them as one integrated strategy, not competing line items. Three acronyms,...
The CORE Framework: Optimist’s Unified SEO + AEO Strategy for B2B Pipeline Growth
Article Summary Optimist’s Complete Organic Revenue Engine (CORE) Framework unifies SEO and AEO (answer engine optimization) into a single, comprehensive strategy for B2B technology and SaaS companies. B2B buyers now research across both traditional search engines...
Metrics for AEO Campaigns: How to Track & Measure AI Visibility and Revenue
Article Summary Three-tiered framework for measuring AEO campaigns: Visibility (leading indicators like Brand Mention Rate), Conversions (tracking LLM Referral Traffic and Conversions, which convert at higher rates than organic search), and Pipeline and Revenue...
The 13 Best B2B SEO Agencies in 2026 for Generating Leads, Pipeline, & Revenue
Article Summary The best B2B SEO agencies in 2026 combine pipeline-focused SEO with answer engine optimization (AEO) capability. Optimist, iPullRank, Seer Interactive, at Stratabeat lead for B2B tech companies that measure success in revenue, not traffic. Most "best...
How to Optimize for AI Search: A Proven Framework for Increasing Mentions & Citations
Article Summary AI search optimization is the practice of making a brand visible, accurately represented, and recommended across AI search platforms — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Claude. Optimist's Complete Organic Revenue Engine (CORE)...
Answer Engine Optimization: The Marketing Leader’s Guide to AEO Strategy
Article Summary Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing content, brand signals, and technical infrastructure so AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews accurately cite and recommend a brand. AEO is not a...
How AI Killed Your Content Strategy — and What to Do Next
All of a sudden, content marketing feels like the wild, wild west. We’ve been watching the sands shift beneath content marketing for almost a decade. As times changed, so have our strategies — but this time, it’s seismic. The SEO-reliant content marketing...
SaaS Content Contenders: 16 of the Best SaaS Content Marketing Agencies in the Business
SaaS content marketing isn’t just about updating your blog once in a while. (At least, strategic content marketing isn’t.) From research, strategy, and ideation to writing, designing, and distribution, there is a ton of work that takes place behind the scenes to...
Content Marketers Are Not OK
Content marketers don’t just perform under pressure. They come alive. They turn confusion into clarity, and transform chaos and doublespeak into brands and movements that fuel sustained growth. So when content professionals tell you they're burned...
Agency Journal: Dispatches from Inner-Workings of a Content Marketing Agency
Blogs Are Dead. Long Live the Blog. Published by Tyler Hakes on April 24, 2025 Content marketing is in an existential crisis. You can feel it. I can feel it. The things that worked consistently for years and decades are now less solid. The playbooks that nearly every...
Hiring a SaaS Content Marketing Agency
Content marketing is a journey. While many startups (and even some agencies) take a "spray and pray" approach to blogging, the truth is that good content marketing requires careful planning, strategic thinking, and plenty of patience. Content isn't created overnight,...
Outsource Content Marketing vs In-House Teams: A Guide for Marketing Leaders
You’re in the hot seat. Perhaps you’re a founder who needs to impress investors with organic growth. Perhaps you’re a newly hired marketing director assigned to create organic growth. Or maybe you’re somewhere in between. The point is… You need to obtain...
SaaS Inbound Marketing: How to Build Your Organic Growth Engine
No matter where your company exists in the SaaS space, most marketing and business leaders share a common goal: to get more people discovering and signing up for their services. Ideally, without paying an arm and a leg for traffic that may or may not even...
SaaS Content Marketing Examples: 4 Successful Stories to Learn From
Picking just a few companies to present them as good SaaS content marketing examples was not an easy task. There are so many good examples out there, that this list could go on forever, but for now, let’s focus on 4 companies that really stand out....
How We Helped HelloSign Scale Their Traffic 1,308%
Optimist is a full-service SaaS content marketing agency and this case study is based on the content marketing strategy we executed with HelloSign’s team from 2017 to 2021. It was a frigid cold day in Des Moines on January 28, 2019. Like most January days, I was...
How to Measure & Track Content Marketing KPIs Without Getting Distracted
Bryan shares his real-life experience in building a successful business and the content marketing KPIs that he uses to stay focused on the metrics that matter. Blanketed by darkness in the eerie solitude of a desolate Oakland Coliseum, Athletics General Manager Billy...
How We Grew a SaaS Company’s Leads by 571% in 5 Months
A while back, a SaaS client approached us about their content marketing and lead generation strategy. They recently launched their blog and already written some great content, but they weren’t getting any traffic. They’d discovered that great content isn’t...
Strategic Content Marketing: A Recipe for Growth
Content marketing without a strategy is a lot like throwing spaghetti at a wall. (Stay with me here.) When you're cooking spaghetti, one way to tell if it's done is--supposedly--to simply fling the noodles at the wall. If the pasta doesn’t stick, it's said to need...
Content Marketing in 2021: The Low-Hanging Fruit Checklist
I’m going to pretend that I found myself running a SaaS company when I woke up this morning. Our goal in 2021 is to grow, hit slightly-ambitious targets, and put the wrecking ball that was 2020 far behind me. My constraints are that I have: A small budget. Maybe 1-2...
The Only B2B Lead Gen Strategy that Matters for Technology Companies Right Now
There’s a paradox of opportunity happening right now for B2B technology companies. Many teams are being forced to cut back on marketing and lead generation efforts due to uncertainty. According to a survey from the B2B Marketing Zone, more than 60% of marketers expect...
Introducing Top of the Funnel
For a long time, the Optimist team has been looking for ways to share knowledge and help connect those in our network and our expanded universe with opportunities for growth (and money). The idea is nearly as old as our agency itself. Like most teams, we've gotten...
The Anatomy of a $1 Million B2B Case Study
Case studies are a key component for helping most companies generate business. The truth is, though, that most case studies out there fail to deliver those leads. The reason for this? Many of them are just a short synopsis with a few screenshots, some data, and the...
The Framework We Used to Generate $1.5MM in Sales Opportunities in Our First Year
One year ago, we launched Optimist. The vision was pretty straight-forward: A full-service content marketing agency that works with clients on a monthly retainer. Our goal is to grow it to $1.5 million annual run rate in 2018. In our first year, we made a pretty big...
How Intercom Built a $50MM ARR Empire Using Strategic Content Marketing and SEO
When it comes to building a startup, growth is king. Close second? Recurring revenue. Especially in the world of SaaS companies, having a steady stream of monthly and annual revenue is the hallmark of success. So, imagine building a business and scaling it to $50MM...
Content Marketing Secrets from Buffer’s Rise to 4 Million Users (And Beyond)
If you’ve been on Twitter at all in the last half decade, then you’ve likely heard of Buffer. The social media sharing and scheduling app has been a catalyst for a new paradigm in social media marketing. It allows users to find content or schedule messages to be...
The No-BS Guide to Crushing it at Search
Fair warning. This post is probably going to piss some people off. Here's why: SEO can be complicated as hell. There are a billion on-page and off-page factors. The algorithm is constantly changing. And everyone is jockeying for a little leg-up over their...
Let’s Talk About “Growth Hacking”
“Grow or die.” “Growth is all that matters.” “Growth, growth, growth, growth.” Everyone loves growth. I get it. But most people seem confused about how growth actually works. When you’re building a company, it can feel like you’re just one brilliant idea away from...
Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is tough. Often, companies think that it seems like the easiest strategy for growth. After all, all you have to do is write stuff and post it on your website--right? Of course, that’s an incredible simplification. Much, much more work and thought...
How to Craft Insightful User Personas for Content Marketing
All great content marketing has one thing in common. It speaks to a specific audience. It addresses their needs. It solves their problems. In order to accomplish this, we need to first understand our prospective buyer and the dimensions that make them unique. We need...
Everything You Should Know Before Hiring a Content Marketing Agency
Hiring a content marketing agency can be scary as hell. I know because I’ve been on the other side of the table. I’ve been the one talking to agencies, holding a bag of money, trying to decide where to place my bet. It was nerve racking. Every agency promised me the...
The ROI of SEO: How to Calculate the Value of Organic Search Traffic
Imagine that you're thinking about hiring a marketing agency. Assuming that you don't have infinite money and you're actually looking to make a smart decision, you'll probably want to know a lot about what the agency will offer. In particular, you probably have two...
A Tactical Guide to Aligning Your Content Marketing Strategy With Your Real Business Goals
Too many people simply “do content marketing.” There’s no strategy behind it. It’s not tied into the business in any real sense. It's just an item on the to-do list that they keep doing each and every week, without ever getting much from it. And if that’s what you’re...
We Can’t All Be Storytellers
Many companies invest thousands of dollars in creating incredible content for their website, blog, or social media accounts. They labor over the words and images, adding in detail and testing headlines. But they never see results. It just keeps costing them money....
How We Scaled a Startup from 0 Organic Traffic to 100,000 Visitors/Mo (In About One Year)
A few years ago, I was tapped for a startup content marketing opportunity that quite literally changed my life. This is the story... My friends at College Raptor had just raised a Series A round for their incredible college matching technology. And the CEO asked me to...