In this episode of Content and Conversation, Ross Hudgens sits down with Devin Bramhall to unpack what’s broken in modern B2B marketing and what actually works when metrics get messy and attribution falls apart.

They talk through Devin’s experience writing B2B Content Marketing Strategy, why “media-first” is now table stakes, and how community is often misunderstood, mis-scoped, or forced into the wrong formats. Devin shares real examples from her work at Help Scout and beyond, showing how strong communities are built by paying attention to people, not playbooks.

Show Notes:

00:00 – Intro/Marketing can’t be measured with numbers alone  

05:30 – Writing a book when you already know the answer  

10:20 – Media-first content marketing explained  

15:00 – What community actually means (and what it doesn’t)  

20:30 – Real-world community examples that worked  

28:30 – Outcomes vs activities in marketing reporting  

35:00 – Telling a story your CEO will understand  

44:30 – When community is the wrong strategy  

Show Links:

• B2B Content Marketing Strategy Book by Devin Bramhall
• Follow Ross on X: https://x.com/RossHudgens

Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Bernard Huang returns to break down GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and the big question: is GEO actually different from SEO, or just SEO evolving?

We talk about how AI Mode/AI Overviews are changing search behavior, why top-funnel traffic is getting squeezed, and what “good SEO is good GEO” really means in practice.

Show Notes:

00:00 – Welcome back & why GEO is everywhere

03:05 – Is GEO actually different from SEO?

07:10 – How AI agents think vs keyword-based SEO

12:45 – The traffic apocalypse & AI Mode becoming default

18:00 – Mentions vs backlinks in an LLM world

24:30 – What people are getting wrong about GEO

30:45 – Measuring success: impressions, citations & brand search

42:55 – The “long, long tail” and the future of content strategy

Show Links:

Follow Bernard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardjhuang/

Visit Clearscope: https://www.clearscope.io/

Follow Ross on X: https://x.com/RossHudgens

Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing

Ross welcomes Gaetano DiNardi, growth advisor and B2B SaaS strategist, to unpack the brutal questions CEOs are suddenly firing at their SEO teams in the AI era: traffic is flat or down, attribution is messy, LLM dashboards look scary, and everyone wants to know if SEO is still “working.”

They dig into why traffic is no longer the primary health metric, how AI Overviews and LLMs are breaking the old “rank → CTR → traffic → leads → revenue” equation, and why CMOs should obsess less over sessions and more over demo requests, pipeline, deal size, and overall organic channel performance.

Gaetano shares how he’s reframing SEO for mid-market B2B SaaS: shifting from decaying top-of-funnel content to bottom-of-funnel “money pages,” optimizing for LLM citations and “money prompts,” and using concepts like “crash-the-party” comparison pages to win high-intent demand across both Google and AI platforms.

They also break down why LLM prompt tracking is the new rank tracking (with all the same pitfalls), how AI platform traffic actually converts compared to Google, what “dark funnel SEO” looks like in practice, and why Gaetano thinks classic TOFU SEO might effectively go to zero while brand, data studies, and opinionated thought leadership pick up the slack.

Show Notes

0:08 – Gaetano returns & why last year’s SEO playbook no longer works

1:17 – CEOs’ top question: “Traffic is down… is SEO still working?”

2:17 – Why B2B SaaS is feeling the decline hardest

3:16 – The old rank → CTR → traffic → revenue model is broken

5:46 – Top-of-funnel content is collapsing (and why TOFU is “dead-ish”)

6:13 – The shift to bottom-funnel: BOFU keywords, low volume, high intent

7:11 – Flat traffic + rising revenue: the new SEO success story

8:01 – What LLMs cite: comparisons, “best X” lists, crash-the-party pages

8:38 – Crash-the-party SEO explained in 15 seconds

13:21 – LLM prompt dashboards are misleading your executives

15:53 – Branded vs. non-branded LLM prompts: why you MUST separate them

18:06 – Build a tight list of “money prompts,” not 500 random ones

20:06 – Why AI platforms show higher conversion rates than Google

22:10 – Dark-funnel behavior: LLM → Google → homepage → convert 24:08 – Google leads have FAR larger deal sizes than AI leads

27:35 – SEO attribution is officially “cooked” in the AI era

29:27 – Traffic flat, pipeline up 3×: examples from real clients

31:25 – Use top-10 stability to prove AI Overviews stole your clicks

34:47 – Search is becoming BOFU-first — what that means

35:34 – LLM citations as the new leading indicator for SEO

39:00 – Exploding topics = more LLM citations due to low consensus

41:22 – Engagement validates information gain (why POV content wins)

47:20 – What happens to TOFU SEO? (Short answer: it shrinks massively) 48:49 – Why TOFU may survive only for authority, clustering, and links

Gaetano on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/officialg/

Tough Questions CEOs Are Asking About AI SEO: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T_IQXUCXBQtFcLekVFwqv23y8ViuRFJKBIRtn4wcImQ/edit?usp=sharing

Does traffic from AI platforms convert “better” than Google search traffic?: https://marketingadvice.substack.com/p/869517ce-4629-429f-addd-518d9342cdff

CMOs are frantically asking “what’s our Reddit strategy?: https://marketingadvice.substack.com/p/cmos-are-frantically-asking-whats

LLM prompt tracking is the new rank tracking: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/officialg_llm-prompt-monitoring-is-quickly-becoming-activity-737 7069814458097664-KLyi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAj OemoBsmGgXOOcFpcwGVG1B7IlDCvf8io

Subscribe today for weekly tips: https://bit.ly/3dBM61f Listen on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/content-and-conversation-seo-tips-from-siege-media/id1289467174 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1kiaFGXO5UcT2qXVRuXjsM Listen on Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9jT3NjUkdLeA Follow Siege on Twitter: http://twitter.com/siegemedia Follow Ross on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rosshudgens Directed by Cara Brown: https://twitter.com/cararbrown Email Ross: [email protected] #seo | #contentmarketing