Ross joins Will Critchlow of SearchPilot for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolving landscape of e-commerce SEO and content strategy in the AI era.

They cover how e-commerce brands are adapting content for multimodal search, why digital PR is surging, what still works in a zero-click world, and how Siege’s homepage study reveals surprising traffic shifts from AI engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews.

Ross also shares lessons from working with Instacart, thoughts on EEAT, brand building in 2025, and how SEOs can think more like product teams to win long-term. Plus: goal-setting, basketball, and how to build your perfect calendar.

Show Notes

0:08 – Introductions

1:00 – Ross on what e-commerce clients are asking for in 2025

2:12 – High-fidelity content and why it still drives SEO value

3:24 – The digital PR spike—and why it might not be right for every brand

4:17 – Rethinking link building: content that earns links without outreach

5:11 – The shift from link bait to real brand-building campaigns

6:34 – Why measuring content value is still messy

7:28 – Investing in analytics and attribution models that actually work

8:52 – Instacart case study: how it’s still winning in 2025

9:59 – Calculators as a defensible content type against AI overviews

11:15 – Homepage traffic is up 10%—what Siege’s study found

12:56 – Differences in B2B vs B2C AI traffic attribution

14:15 – How AI referrals may go dark: no referrer, just branded visits

15:40 – SearchPilot’s view: aggregating dark and disaggregated traffic sources

17:20 – How LM-driven browsing creates long tail referral lift

18:57 – AI is doing the searching: optimizing for “robot” queries

21:00 – Why retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) matters for e-commerce

22:44 – Digital PR’s role in influencing AI citation engines

23:51 – Siege’s brand mention study: impressions up, but who’s watching?

25:20 – Review volume = the next big SEO edge in e-commerce

26:04 – Instacart’s product reviews may be helping SEO more than you think

27:15 – Human authorship: should you expose expert bylines?

28:52 – Where author signals matter most

30:04 – Real-world reviews are the new long tail content strategy

31:09 – Who’s doing it well?

32:14 – Brand authority, SEO signals, and Siege’s convo with Dr. Pete

33:48 – Building a brand health dashboard (and what to track in 2025)

36:18 – Who owns content? SEO increasingly embedded in product teams

37:40 – Product SEO as a mindset, not just a technical checklist

39:24 – Optimizer mentality, health goals, and personal systems

40:11 – Ross’s “perfect calendar” and how it supports business goals

42:06 – Will on process goals vs outcome goals in business and life

43:44 – Can you be too optimized? Balancing mental health and iteration

45:07 – Long-term vision in a 3-week world

46:00 – Where to find Ross online and what Siege is working on next

Show Links

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Will Critchlow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willcritchlow

Homepage Study:‬‭ https://www.siegemedia.com/strategy/ai-homepage-traffic-increase

SearchPilot:‬‭ https://www.searchpilot.com/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 |

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