Jeremy says: “My number one SEO tip is really focusing on what I call a ‘Topic Taker’ strategy, and so it's really a blend of an on and off page combination.

That's something I actually shared with Wix's enterprise customers a few years back, and we found that it really still works today – and actually works even better in the current landscape of traditional SEO plus AI-driven search models and LLMs. It’s something that we use for ourselves, and we use for our clients as well.

Really, the premise of the strategy is finding what your core keywords are and really owning the SERP, beyond your listings on your own site. It's really going beyond the owned content on your own site and how can you expand that in search results.

For example, looking and seeing: Are there directories listed there? Are there narratives you can control from a content perspective on third-party sites? Are your search results showing anything around forums and discussions? For example, LinkedIn posts are resurfacing on key search results now, as well as Reddit threads and YouTube videos.

There's a lot of stuff you can do here from a SERP strategy perspective, where we're looking to see how we monopolise a given SERP and how we show up more than one time with our own brand – so, how we can control that narrative long term.

The strategy there is going after both on-page – so the content that you own on your own site; obviously, creating a good quality article or if it’s a landing page for a given SERP, and making sure that you have your own content there that's really good.

Then, also, looking beyond that and saying, are there directories showing up that I can get listed on? Are there LinkedIn articles I can create and write on this subject and get those ranked for that given search result? Are there Reddit threads here that we can dominate as well? Then looking at an off-page strategy too, of what sort of industry publications are covering the subject. How do we get involved with those and control the narrative?

That's how you dominate some of these individual SERP results, so that you can show up more than one time.”

You mentioned the phrase ‘control the narrative’ a couple of times. I love that. I'd certainly like to get back into that in terms of how you go about doing that.

But something else you mentioned to me beforehand was talking about how this can also drive massive pipeline for your own business. I think a lot of SEOs struggle to measure success, don't they?

I mean, they struggle to get traffic to begin with, in the world of AI search, but when traffic arrives, how do you actually measure the impact that traffic has? How do you measure the impact? How do you know that it's created that pipeline?

“Absolutely. One of the things we typically look at here is an approach that's multifaceted. We're looking and seeing: What is any self-reported attribution that we can collect from folks that come in the funnel? This could be from as soon as a lead magnet. We want to have attribution reported at both the early stages of the funnel, all the way down to the end conversion, of why someone came in the door.

So, we can attribute this, basically, with self-reported attribution. If it's more of a narrative-based control campaign – for example, as a link building agency ourselves, we have done posts and collaborations on Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and these areas.

We work directly closely with them to attribute success there, for what traffic's coming in, creating UTM links and things of that nature, so we can track direct metrics around some of the efforts that we do.

There are a lot of ways you can structure it from a pipeline perspective, to get a really good idea of: Are these leads coming in directly from that? Where did they originate? How did they actually hear about you in the first place?

One of the most interesting things that we've seen, doing this for ourselves, like I mentioned, we did what I would call ‘narrative control-based’ articles for ourselves (for uSERP) on Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land. We essentially wrote articles around: How do you vet link building agencies? How do you discuss with them? What are some key questions you should ask? What are the red flags you should look out for? How do you just go about finding one that knows what they're doing in the space?

Our article was touching on all of that, and really controlling the narrative of what people should be discussing with a given link building agency before hiring them. We found that, upon publishing those, those ranked within a matter of days of publishing because of the strength of a brand like Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land.

We were able to capture traffic at the bottom of the funnel, for keywords that brands are bidding thousands of dollars per month in the cost-per-click they're paying, and thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a month in links for themselves, to try to rank for those with landing pages. We found direct attribution is really strong there, where a lot of folks that came in the door just immediately said, ‘Hey, I saw your guys' articles on Search Engine Land/Search Engine Journal. They were really interesting. Wanted to reach out and talk to you guys and see if it was a good fit.’

There are a lot of unique ways you can measure this from a pipeline perspective. What we've seen is that a lot of folks reading these articles and finding them will reach out directly, and even acknowledge that this is where they found you. We've been able to attribute a little bit north of 500k in revenue directly to these articles that we've produced for ourselves directly.”

Brilliant, okay. Many questions I could ask as a follow up to that.

Let's go with the fact that you talk about publishing content on third-party websites. Is it less important to rank content on your own site nowadays?

“Yeah, it's a great question. I think, really, ranking content on your own site is just one piece of the puzzle these days. There are so many unique SERP features that are showing up; there are so many ways that you can capture more than one position on search results.

That's really the goal of the strategy at large. We definitely want to consolidate and have our own landing page on site, where we're trying to rank for our best quality terms there, that are ideally middle or bottom-of-the-funnel.

For example, for us, we want to rank for ‘link building services’ or ‘link building agency’, and we've got our own great landing page that ranks for that, but we also want to look and see what else is ranking in that search result. Is it directories? Is it Reddit, LinkedIn, or YouTube threads showing up? Things of that nature.

Then, also, can we leverage the strength and quality of other good sites out there to really shape that narrative and just talk about that subject as a whole? So that our brand – whether it's your personal brand, whether it's your company brand – is just guiding the conversation on that.

Having content on your own site is really one core aspect, but you can just go so much further these days. There are a lot of other ways that you can capture more search traffic from a single given search result, and show up more times, so that we're building brand affinity along the way. We're showing up for multiple touch points when folks are reading – whether it's more of an informational piece that they're reading, all the way down to something like a conversion-based landing page on your site.”

You touched upon YouTube threads there. You also talked about LinkedIn posts earlier on as well, and you're seeing that showing up more in the conventional Google SERP, I think.

What kind of searches are throwing up those types of results?

“I'm seeing it across the board from top-of-the-funnel all the way down to the very bottom of the funnel.

For example, I've seen LinkedIn posts that are showing up. One thing that's changed on LinkedIn is that their distribution has gone from just on LinkedIn to actually showing up on search results, and being part of AI overviews, citations, and LLMs. What we're seeing from a LinkedIn specific perspective is that they're showing up for more broad informational stuff.

If someone wrote an article – or even just a basic post on LinkedIn – around, ‘Hey, here are some of the best local SEO tools that I’ve found,’ we've seen those ranked directly for just a basic Google search around ‘best local SEO tool’s. Then we've seen it even move further to the bottom of the funnel.

This might still be ranking, depending on when you're listening to this podcast, but if you search on Google for ‘link building agency’, a post from my LinkedIn personally ranks for that, in the box of threads for Reddit, LinkedIn, and some posts from YouTube. We're seeing that span across. Like I mentioned, LinkedIn used to just be its own channel that you would focus on, whereas now we're seeing that bleed into traditional search results as well.”

You say you're wondering if that post may still be ranking at some point in the future.

Is there any particular length of time that you can imagine that a social post would actually be incorporated within a conventional SERP? Do they have a shorter lifespan?

“Yeah, it's a great question. From what I've seen, they typically rank for at least four or five months, if not a bit longer.

The post that's currently referenced – that I've seen repeatable on search results for, in our case targeting link building agency – I've seen that post from my personal LinkedIn, which was originally published sometime in late 2025, and is still ranking for that keyword. So, there's pretty good longevity there, even though LinkedIn is, of course, a platform that rewards freshness and posts every day. I'm finding that there are more evergreen posts there that tend to stick around in search results, which is really interesting. I think there's a lot of potential there, too.

I've seen this across the board, in a few different industries, too, where folks are creating more long form LinkedIn articles, and those are sticking in rankings for at least four, five, or six months even.”

When you talk about controlling the narrative, obviously you mentioned YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn and other platforms as well.

Is it ever worthwhile publishing the same piece, essentially, on all these different platforms or would you always publish a different type of content – a different length, maybe, and a completely different take – to attempt to rank for the same keyword phrase on a different platform?

“Typically, we like to do a little bit of a mix there and ensure that we're not doing anything that's too heavy on a duplicate content standpoint, where we're just repeating the same message.

What we like to do there is take another unique angle on it. For example, articles that we did on Search Engine Journal were around a buyer's guide for folks who were shopping for link building agencies, and then for Search Engine Land, we wrote a similar article, with a similar premise. The idea was, of course, we want to drive bottom-of-the-funnel leads, but that article was focused a little bit more around: what are some ways that you can look at link building agencies from an AI perspective?

There are a lot of unique angles that we prefer to take on these, and if you're doing this strategy at scale, it's really about crafting unique angles that still fit within search intent. So, looking and seeing: What sort of pages are ranking already, from a search perspective, for your keyword? What sort of different topics or narratives are being pushed there? Then, creating those at scale on your own.

So, making sure that each individual narrative-based article that you publish there (whether it's on different sites, externally, or your own) takes a unique angle and topic that may already show overlap in search intent (so that you have a good idea that this is going to rank well when you actually go to write it and publish it), but that's unique enough to where you're not competing with yourself, so to speak, on a bunch of different articles.”

You've mentioned bottom-of-funnel quite a few times there as well.

Is that where the key opportunity is nowadays, or is it still worth an SEO's time to also produce content for the top and middle as well?

“Yeah, I think a lot of the best efforts tend to be around middle to bottom-of-the-funnel – really, just because a lot of the SERP features that are showing for stuff that's more top-of-the-funnel tends to eat up your CTR really quick. Even though top-of-the-funnel terms might have high volumes of traffic potential, a lot of your CTR is just swallowed up by SERP features.

AI overviews are going to do a pretty good job at explaining those things that are very top-of-the-funnel, very broad-based, but we see a lot of those SERP features disappear when you go further down the funnel, and we see click-through rates actually increase significantly.

That's really where we've focused a lot of our time and effort, in that middle and bottom-of-the-funnel, where it's more comparison stage-based, and it's maybe more ranking various different solutions in a given space – or it's even, like I mentioned, some of those narrative control pieces, where the keyword term is super bottom-of-the-funnel.

Maybe it's around the ‘best services for XYZ niche,’ or whatever it is, and your article there is like a buyer's guide, in that case, where it's straddling that line of middle and bottom-of-the-funnel, your CTR is going to be much higher, and it's going to lead to a lot of good quality conversions.”

You also talk about how leveraging paid off-page strategies can still work. What do you mean by that?

“I think a lot of folks, when they hear ‘link building’ and they hear ‘paid’ thrown in the mix, they get a little bit wary. It's been that way in SEO for a while, where there's a negative connotation built around paid link building.

However, I think approaching it from more of a native advertising perspective is really the way to look at it, in that there are a lot of good quality publications in any given niche and any given space that are considered very authoritative in your niche.

Whether you're in something like commercial real estate development or something all the way on the other end, like a SaaS company, there are a lot of different publications in your area that focus and have niche expertise – and a lot of these are not necessarily going to be open to just naturally linking back to you. They're not going to typically be open to you just writing an article for them.

It's really about developing a brand and native advertising relationship with these types of providers, where they've got really good quality access. They have the exact sort of audience, that's in-market, and is a good fit for your brand. So, there's overlap, not only just from an SEO perspective, but an actual business use case perspective.

Those ones, we typically find, are a really good fit for this – where they've got good sponsored content, and advertising options where you can write good quality articles there, and those will still rank in search. While they won't typically give you the benefit: you're not going to get a followed link, it's going to be marked ‘sponsored’ or ‘nofollow’ (the traditional SEO benefits) but these articles still have the ability to rank.

That's really what you're going after. It’s not necessarily the link itself, but the ability to get your message out to folks that are really in-market, and the ability to rank really quickly for keywords that are otherwise too difficult for your own site to rank for.”

As well as the ability to rank, you say that Topic Taker is currently the most impactful answer engine optimization lever you can pull, but you also say that the window won't last forever.

What does that mean?

“We're seeing a lot of change in search results right now where, a couple of months ago we were seeing that things like YouTube showed up more frequently. Now, that's shifting a little bit more to Reddit. Some are shifting a little bit more to LinkedIn.

The real struggle here is: how do you pinpoint where your efforts are best used and, if that window closes quickly, how do you adapt? What we look at here is a multi-pronged approach. Like I mentioned, we want to have owned content. So, of course, we want to be targeting that search result or that keyword with any given page on our site that we want to focus on – whether that's content-based, whether it's a landing page. Whatever it is, we want to have an owned content there.

Then, we want to look at things like directories. Are those showing up in your search results? If so, we want to make sure you're listed on those. Then, we want to look and see what the search changes in the last three or six months have been, from a forums/threads/social perspective, and then targeting the ones that have stuck around the longest.

Then, we want to look at the narrative control window there too, where those are going to stick a little bit more long term, because the sites that you're doing this on are just going to be more authoritative than yours, in most cases.

These windows tend to close pretty quickly as they just get more competitive, right? As more people catch on to this strategy, the ability for you to rank in some of these spaces is going to be far less than if you jump on this quickly.

That's typically what we find in most spaces. Once you get going on this, savvy competitors can see and they understand, ‘Okay, you're going after these sites, you're publishing these kinds of posts, they're working, they're sticking, they're matching search intent. We're going to replicate that.’ – and then your competition window there gets really, really wide. There are a lot of folks going after a very small set of supply, and there's outsized demand.”

Jeremy, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“The key takeaway here is really building a content strategy that's both on and off page. Especially in the AI search era, where having your brand be everywhere, currently, is really key.

We're seeing that you need that owned strategy, you need an off-page strategy, and a social strategy, and it should all be interconnected and cohesive, all targeting a very specific subset of keywords that you want to rank for.

So, the strategy shifts. Typically, in SEO a couple of years ago, you would publish an article on-site, you distribute that around on socials, you try to pitch it for links. Really, we want to flip that script a little bit and say, ‘How do we create that same message and distribute it on a lot of different platforms individually, and rank those individually, so that we're showing up multiple times in search results, and we're getting more mentions at the bottom of the funnel, in AI search as well?’”

Jeremy Moser is CEO at uSERP. Find him over at uSERP.io.