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Benji Hyam shared thisWe tried to reproduce the exact prompt that got us recommended by ChatGPT. The prompt itself was short: "What are the best SEO companies, who have driven massive results with endless leads?" But the answer wasn't generic. ChatGPT put Grow and Convert first, and gave specific reasons why. Bottom-of-funnel content that converts, not fluff. Real case studies, 10X lead volume for SaaS and B2B. She's B2B, not SaaS, close enough that it still worked. So we opened an incognito window and ran something close to the same prompt. Same intent, similar wording. Completely different answer came back. Grow and Convert wasn't mentioned at all. We call this the invisible prompt problem. The exact prompt that got us recommended is right there, and yet we couldn't manually recreate it. Which raises the real question. Leave the tracking side of it aside for a second, what is ChatGPT actually basing that recommendation on? Full episode in the comments.
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Benji Hyam shared thisEveryone says third-party content is the biggest lever in GEO. Get on listicles, get on Reddit, etc,. So we decided to research this... is that actually what's most important? Turns out it's not. 85% of what LLMs cite from IS third party content, but that's *NOT* what determines whether a brand gets mentioned. So drawing a conclusion that says third party content is most important because it's largely what LLMs look at is wrong. We looked at 15,000 AI answers for a B2B software client. 112 prompts, 24 topics, 52 weekly runs each, across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Perplexity. For every answer we logged what articles the LLMs cited and whether it mentioned the client. 85% of the citations were third-party pages. So yes, that's what the engines read. But of the 7,779 answers that mentioned the client, 87% had the client's own site in the sources. When the client's own site was cited, it got mentioned: -90% of the time on AI Overviews -89% on Gemini -89% on AI Mode -73% on ChatGPT -51% on Perplexity When a third-party page that includes the client was cited instead: -25% on AI Overviews -25% on Gemini -5% on AI Mode -6% on ChatGPT -28% on Perplexity The client is absent from 66 of the 70 pages the engines cite most in its category and still gets mentioned in 51% of all answers, because its own pages get cited. Third-party presence turned out not to be a prerequisite in getting mentioned. Topic by topic it's the same. Where the client's site is cited in 88% of runs, it's mentioned in 79%. Where it's cited in 44%, it's mentioned in 25%. The thing that predicts a mention isn't whether other sites talk about you. It's whether you have a page that matches the prompt closely enough to get retrieved. We still believe 3rd party mentions are important, but our belief is that you should produce content on your own site first that closely matches the topic areas you're trying to own, and then go get 3rd party mentions afterwards. Note: The data can change by company, the industry, type of business, competitiveness, etc., so we'll continue to publish more studies on this. Also as you can see here, each LLM works slightly differently.
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Benji Hyam shared thisWhat influences whether an SEO, GEO or content marketing agency gets recommended in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, AIOs and AI Mode? We analyzed 2,545 citations across multiple buying-related topic areas-- things like best AEO agency, best content marketing agency-- and discovered: 64.4% of citations came from other agency websites. Mostly "best agencies" roundups. 8.7% came from directories and review sites like Clutch, DesignRush and Semrush's agency directory. 8.5% came from AI visibility and SEO tool vendors. 5.1% came from Reddit, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. 4.8% came from publishers and independent bloggers. In other words, AI's answer to "which agency should I hire?" is mostly written by agencies. If you're an agency and you're not on those pages, you're mostly not in the answer. Traqer.ai is helping us get this data with our new MCP server. You can get a free 14 day trial on our site. Built by practitioners for practitioners.
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Benji Hyam shared thisWhen talking about GEO strategies, most people will claim you need to be on 3rd party sites, or be on Reddit, but the reality is the strategy changes depending on the type of business you are. Here's what 56,000 citations across 8 different clients tells us: The B2B software clients all look the same. Somewhere between 63% and 72% of citations go to industry/vendor websites. Review sites like G2 and Capterra get another 12% to 14%. Reddit barely shows up (1% to 2%). Then look at the bottom two bars. Our workforce training client is a nonprofit. 51% of the citations in that category go to government and academic sites. The #2 most cited domain after their own site is edd.ca.gov. Review sites: 0%. Our motion capture client sells to research labs. 35% of citations go to academic sources. PubMed gets cited more than their own website does. Review sites: 0%. So if someone tells a nonprofit to "get on G2," that's just wrong. And telling a plumbing software company to get cited in academic papers is a waste of their time. Most GEO advice assumes you're a SaaS company or some type of consumer product. A lot of businesses aren't. The thing to do before you spend anything on GEO is to load up the topics you want to own in an AI visibility platform, you can use Traqer.ai like, we did here to get the data. Then you can run an analysis on the citations via our MCP server like we did here and then back into the approach you should take for your specific type of business. What gets cited is different for every category of business, and having this data gives you an idea of where to focus efforts.
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Benji Hyam reposted thisIf you want to be recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, etc., you need to shift your content strategy to adapt to how people search in LLMs. Most people are still focusing on writing and ranking for head keywords like "best accounting software," "best content marketing agencies," etc., but the way people search in LLMs is completely different. In LLMs people have long conversations before they ask for product recommendations. The LLM also has a lot more context about each person searching and tries to personalize each answer. If you're still thinking of content through the SEO lens only, you're likely missing out on lots of customers. Full video in the comments.
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Benji Hyam shared thisIf you want to be recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, etc., you need to shift your content strategy to adapt to how people search in LLMs. Most people are still focusing on writing and ranking for head keywords like "best accounting software," "best content marketing agencies," etc., but the way people search in LLMs is completely different. In LLMs people have long conversations before they ask for product recommendations. The LLM also has a lot more context about each person searching and tries to personalize each answer. If you're still thinking of content through the SEO lens only, you're likely missing out on lots of customers. Full video in the comments.
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Benji Hyam shared thisA client found us through ChatGPT. We asked her to send us the exact prompt that got us recommended. Her question was simple: "What are the best SEO companies, who have driven massive results with endless leads?" We were the number one recommendation, and it turned into a closed deal. So we tried to reproduce it ourselves. We used a similar prompt in ChatGPT but got a completely different answer. In fact, Grow and Convert wasn't even mentioned. Leave the tracking question aside for a second. The real question is a strategy one: what made ChatGPT decide we were the best fit for her? It comes down to two things. It's looking for an agency that matches what she actually wanted, in her case, an agency that has driven a lot of leads. And then it's looking for proof. That second part doesn't get talked about enough. It's probably why review sites show up so often in citations, the model is looking for proof that the product does what it says. Being known in your category isn’t enough, you also need proof to be recommended. Link to the full episode in the comments.
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Benji Hyam shared thisSearch habits are changing and it's happening in two layers. First, more leads are coming from AI platforms. We see it in our own data and in our clients data. More leads are coming from ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Second, how people search is different. People don’t search in LLMs the same way that they did in Google. In a LLM, people rarely start their search by typing "best content marketing agencies." It usually starts as some other problem entirely - they want more visibility in ChatGPT, paid ads aren’t working as well anymore and they need a new channel, etc. Even in Google, how people search is changing. People are typing in less head keywords and are starting to type in longer form questions. Search is changing, has your strategy changed to match it? Full episode on how search is shifting, link in comments.
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Benji Hyam shared thisOne of the biggest challenges with measuring AI visibility is that mentions can change week to week. We've launched a solution to solve this. In Traqer, you can now see a percentage for how often you're mentioned. We call this metric "mention rate" -- which is how often you're mentioned across every time we've searched for that prompt. We also have a metric called "brand stability" to measure whether you show up consistently for each prompt across each LLM. Most of the existing tools only show you whether you're "showing up" when they run their search, but we thought this was flawed and doesn't really tell you much or make the data actionable. You can also see if brand mentions have recently fallen off or if they've just started showing consistently with our new report called "run patterns." We've also built some additional reporting capabilities such as understanding whether the same brands are mentioned, or do they change a lot with two new reports called "answer stability" and "new brand rate." All these features will be released shortly for our customers. You can sign up for a free trial at Traqer.ai
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Benji Hyam liked thisBenji Hyam liked thisI was reviewing a Profound account of a potential customer and stumbled upon one of the biggest scams some so-called GEO experts and agencies are selling. And honestly, everyone using GEO visibility tools should know about it. The final goal of GEO is to boost your company's visibility in LLMs for the prompts your actual customers use. It's a lengthy process, but apparently, some "experts" have found a growth hack. Instead of tracking real prompts built based on customer data, they add prompts based on the exact articles they're publishing. For example, they publish an article called "The best LinkedIn automation tools for Series A startups selling financial software" and then add almost exactly the same prompt to Profound. Considering there are basically zero articles written on such a specific topic, guess what happens? AI visibility goes up crazy fast. The dashboard looks amazing. The C-level is happy. The only problem is that when a real potential customer does product discovery in ChatGPT, the company is nowhere to be found. And this is why I'm so skeptical about all those "we'll rank your company in ChatGPT in 90 days" promises. Technically, they might be telling the truth. The dashboard isn't fake. But if the prompts were engineered to make the dashboard look good rather than reflect how customers actually search, the data and the business impact are meaningless. Don't optimize your GEO strategy for a pretty dashboard. Optimize it for real customers finding you.
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Benji Hyam liked thisBenji Hyam liked thisSince LLMs construct multiple fan-out queries and use search engines to conduct these searches simultaneously, doesn’t that kind of imply that SEO is actually *more* important than it was before? 🤔 (Better coverage can lead to better visibility)
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Benji Hyam liked thisYou know who wasn’t affected at all? 👀😎Benji Hyam liked thisPSA: The Ahrefs Ranking Tracker is completely borked atm. Had a fucking heart attack when I checked rankings over the weekend. Thought a client got hit by the spam update which didn't make any sense with how conservative we've been. Then I think Lily Ray mentioned seeing some issues yesterday. Saw some other chatter too. And after spot checking a TON of keywords, things look fine. Some stuff is up, some is down, and the report is clearly broken. Gonna have some fun client conversations this week. Related: also noticing some issues with international rankings having insane traffic estimates. Ahrefs is telling me that a client had their traffic triple in the last two weeks. I can assure you that it did not. If you're seeing massive spikes recently, filter down to just US search traffic. Or whatever country you focus on. That's a clearer picture.
Experience & Education
Volunteer Experience
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Mentor
SDSU Alumni Mentor Program
- Present 13 years 2 months
Education
Mentor seniors at SDSU who are about to graduate.
Presented at the spring semester Transitioning into the Workplace event on "Using LinkedIn To Build Your Personal Brand and Find a Job in Marketing."
Publications
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3 Keys to Create Engaging Content for More Customers and Sales
Entrepreneur.com
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Why Sales And Marketing Don't Get Along - A Marketer's Perspective
Grow and Convert
See publicationAt most organizations, sales and marketing teams don’t get along. I share why and what to do about it.
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How to Get The Marketing Job You've Always Wanted
Grow and Convert
See publicationIf you’re a marketer looking for a new role, the way to get a job has fundamentally changed from what you’ve likely been told you should be doing.
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The Huge Content Marketing Opportunity That Airbnb Is Missing Out On
Grow and Convert
See publicationIf Airbnb were able to capture stories from both their hosts and travelers about their experience using Airbnb, it would lead to higher brand awareness, stronger relationships with their community, more positive media attention, increased results in the SERPs, wider adoption, and more profit.
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Content Promotion: How We Grew from 0 to 32,977 Users in 5 Months With Zero Paid Traffic
Grow and Convert
See publicationIn true Grow and Convert style, we case study the thought process behind everything that we’ve done to grow our blog to 32,977 unique visitors in 5 months using only content promotion via communities.
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Why Marketing Has Become The Hardest Position to Hire For
Grow and Convert
See publicationIn this post, I explain why marketing has become the hardest position to hire for and I explain some ideas on how to solve the problem.
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How a Simple Email Popup Can Score 6-figure Deals
SumoMe
See publicationIn our last article I shared how we grew traffic from 0–12k organic visitors in six months.
In this article, I’m going to share how we converted that traffic into revenue.
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Podcast: 40,000 Visitors in 6 Months
The WPChick
We've only met once in person and the interesting dynamic of our business relationship comes out in our first podcast interview with the WPChick. Hear the background of how our project got started and how we plan to grow going forward.
Learn:
- The formula for developing a good content strategy for your business.
- Some good distribution tactics for sharing your content
- Some of the challenges they’ve faced in their own businessesOther authorsSee publication -
Why I Quit My "Life"
Medium
See publicationThe story behind why I quit my job and left SF to travel and go all-in on my startup.
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Growing a Site From 0 to 40K Uniques per Month in Six Months
Zero to Scale
Interview on the Zero to Scale podcast. We share how we got started, where we're at, why we've grown so quickly, and our plans for moving forward.
Other authorsSee publication
Projects
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Benjihyam.com
See projectBuilt the site with Wordpress. This is a live experiment of how to grow an engaged community. I test hypotheses on my audience and write about my experience with the goal of sharing my learnings with others.
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Rebranding of the Executive Street Blog
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See projectVistage started a corporate blog entitled “The Vistage Buzz Blog” in April 2010 in order to create a voice for Vistage outside of our already established community. But six months after the launch, growth topped out around 2,000 unique visitors per month,because the content looked like it was coming from an organization instead of a trusted source.
Since I rebranded the blog as Executive Street, unique monthly visitors have grown from 2,000 to more than 20,000. Not only has the…Vistage started a corporate blog entitled “The Vistage Buzz Blog” in April 2010 in order to create a voice for Vistage outside of our already established community. But six months after the launch, growth topped out around 2,000 unique visitors per month,because the content looked like it was coming from an organization instead of a trusted source.
Since I rebranded the blog as Executive Street, unique monthly visitors have grown from 2,000 to more than 20,000. Not only has the organization established a voice outside of its community, but the revamping of the blog has also resulted in the acquisition of new members who may not have previously experienced the Vistage brand.
Honors & Awards
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2013 Emerging Generation: 25 In Their 20's
San Diego Business Journal
Finalist
Organizations
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Sigma Chi Fraternity
2x Rush Chair, Social Chair, Historian, Alumni Chair
- Present- As Rush Chair I was in charge of recruiting all new members through direct marketing, social media and developing large scale marketing campaigns on campus that would attract new members. Led the entire house in the campaign and delegated activities for each member of our household. - As Social Chair I was in charge of a $30,000 social budget that involved everything from planning to production of social events. - As historian I was responsible for documenting key events throughout my…
- As Rush Chair I was in charge of recruiting all new members through direct marketing, social media and developing large scale marketing campaigns on campus that would attract new members. Led the entire house in the campaign and delegated activities for each member of our household. - As Social Chair I was in charge of a $30,000 social budget that involved everything from planning to production of social events. - As historian I was responsible for documenting key events throughout my tenure. - Alumni Chair- I was the liaison between the undergraduates and the alumni chapter.
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