The Unscripted SEO Interview Podcast

Jeremy Moser co-founded uSERP, a link building and digital PR agency, eight or nine years ago after local SEO in Denver and a few years inside a content agency. His clients used to arrive already sold on links. Since the end of 2025 every conversation opens with AI search instead, and his answer is the same each time: "all the conversations, when we actually dig into it, boiled down to just a fundamentally good SEO strategy with a little bit more brand building in there as well" (3:38).

Jeremy Rivera's full write-up is at unscriptedseo.com. The uSERP survey Moser plugs at the end is the State of Backlinks report.

• The 92% stat. HubSpot data Moser cites: of the mentions a brand gets inside LLMs, "92% of it boiled down to content that wasn't on your own domain" (4:08). Off-page SEO with a new name. Jeremy's own read of the same question is in what actually got people cited in AI search.
• AI-search-first is a ticking time bomb. Self-promotional listicles have ranked "maybe two or three years" without getting dinged and he is "surprised to see that it worked for that long" (7:55). For B2B SaaS clients on a one-to-five-year horizon he "pretty much never recommend[s] anything that's even remotely in a gray area" (10:33), because tanking traditional search also shrinks what the next model trains on.
• Recovery is slower than it was. Disavow, restructure, six months. That was the old pattern. "Now I see sites that almost never recover from that initial high" (13:46). A site that peaked at 200K a month crashes to 20K and stays there. Timothy Malmros walked through the current drop-domain canonical trick in his episode.
• Traffic down 30%, leads flat. Clients see organic "declined 30% over the last year but our metrics are the same in terms of leads" (18:20). "We've got a million organic visits a month, but 70% of that is really not doing any heavy lifting for you" (18:49).

1. Zero-volume, 400 clicks. A question kept surfacing on uSERP sales calls. Ahrefs and SEMrush said "maybe zero to 10 searches a month" (20:49). They built the page anyway for sales enablement and pulled "over 400 clicks to that page from organic" in 30 to 60 days (21:19). Jeremy's version is the anti-dig page for a precast concrete wall client.
2. Local still moves. For monday.com the play was broad, high-authority domains. For a local business, a general authority site barely registers; a publication in that city, state or region "tends to move the needle far faster" (24:15). Both think local SEO is the liveliest corner of the trade, which is where the #SEOchat on the helpful content update landed too.
3. The attorney test. Moser asked Claude to draft a clause for a real estate offer. His attorney's first words: "did you put this in the ChatGPT?" (26:40). "AI works really good if you have the expertise to relay to it and feed through it. It doesn't work really good if you're just relying on it from like a baseline standpoint" (27:40). He has "yet to see a single company" that moved all content to AI "sustain or improve" performance (29:10). Jeremy's link scarcity thesis is the other half of that argument.
4. Three questions before anchor text. Is it a legitimate business or a content farm you can spot in five seconds? Does it have real authority and healthy traffic for terms in its own space, not "what age is Justin Bieber" (31:57)? Would the link make sense in context? Anchor text and surrounding copy "come kind of secondary to that initial review" (32:27). The anchor text study on seoarcade.com found the same thing in the data.

More from the show's link builders in this roundup. Meet the uSERP team on their about page.

Recorded 19 March 2026.

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Paul Baterina, Senior SEO Manager at REVOLVE — a publicly traded fashion e-commerce brand with over 260,000 products. Paul has been at REVOLVE for 13 years, making him one of the rarest SEOs in the industry: a specialist who went deep on one brand instead of bouncing across industries.

Martin McGarry spent his first years in SEO building WordPress sites and hacking links, went clean about ten years ago, and now runs Search Assistance as a freelance consultant in the UK. His case is simple: SEO still boils down to words and links, and the one thing AI cannot reproduce is your perspective on the product you sell.

Why links are getting scarcer, not cheaper: The Link Scarcity Thesis on SEO Arcade.

This was Martin's first real podcast. He has done some kind of SEO for 20 years, works mostly with small businesses near him, has picked up healthcare clients in the States, and does a lot of work in iGaming, which is where most of the black hat he complains about on Bluesky lives. Full transcript and recap: https://unscriptedseo.com/martin-mcgarry/

Jeremy ties Martin's read on the Helpful Content Update to Jason Barnard's entity work and to the canonical-redirect abuse Timothy Malmros laid out on an earlier episode. Both of them land in the same place: brand, trust and real authority are what get you into Google and into the LLMs that wrap it.

Unscripted SEO is hosted by Jeremy Rivera, with the full archive at unscriptedseo.com.

Timothy Malmros is a former gambling affiliate SEO with nearly two decades in the industry. After retiring from active affiliation, he turned his focus to investigating and documenting black hat SEO techniques — particularly in the gambling and sweepstakes space — through detailed posts on LinkedIn. His work offers a rare, transparent look at how spam tactics actually function, why they succeed, and why Google takes so long to stop them.

In his own words: 
"Finished 12th grade. Got fired from Mcdonalds. Moved to Israel back in 2005. Applied to 20 jobs, got one reply and started working as a ”live person” human chatbot in an online casino. Promoted to affiliate manager 10 months later, did that for a bit over a year.

Decided, lets try to become an affiliate, if I after a year can earn 3000 euro a month I wont go back to school. Sold my company in 2016 to gaming innovation group, joined as director of seo as employee nr 6 for gig media. Gig media grew to 200+ people and became a bit to pc for me, quit in 2018, rebuilt going hard on grey hat SEO then decided to take a break from the stress of SEO in November 2024 and basically retire but quickly got bored and started writing articles instead."

Follow Timothy's ongoing research: linkedin.com/in/timothy-m-59a216b/

In this episode, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Timothy Malmros — a former gambling affiliate SEO turned black hat investigator — for a wide-ranging, candid conversation about how spam evolves, why Google keeps losing the spam war, and what the rise of AI really means for the internet's content ecosystem.

Timothy shares his hands-on research into drop domains and the canonical trick, a modern black hat method that combines expired high-authority domains with spam link bombardment and canonical redirects to game Google's rankings in the gambling and sweepstakes space. The conversation expands into Trust Rank theory, click metric manipulation, the collapse of the anti-spam team, and the disturbing implications of AI-generated content replacing original human publishing.

A refreshingly honest, technically deep episode for anyone who wants to understand what's actually happening beneath the surface of modern search.

Episode Host: Jeremy Rivera Guest: Zack Kadish, Senior Director of SEO Strategy at Conductor Podcast: Unscripted SEO Podcast

Jeremy Rivera sits down with Zack Kadish, who has spent over eight years at Conductor climbing from keyword research analyst to Senior Director of SEO Strategy. Zack shares how Conductor blends SaaS technology with hands-on strategic services for enterprise clients, how the acquisition of Content King (now Conductor Website Monitoring) created a unified technical and content performance platform, and why the biggest threat to organic traffic right now isn't a single algorithm update — it's the cumulative impact of AI overviews, discussion forums, and shopping features reshaping the SERPs.

The conversation dives into real-world enterprise challenges like multi-domain cannibalization, breaking through organizational red tape, and the surprising value of treating Reddit and UGC forums as competitors in your SEO toolkit. Zack also discusses how Conductor is integrating AI directly into their platform — and why the SEOs who embrace AI tools will outpace those who don't.

Subscribe to the Unscripted SEO Podcast for unscripted, unrehearsed, and unedited conversations with SEO professionals who share real stories, real strategies, and real results.

Laurent Cohen launched a brand new directory on September 18 with 1.6 million pages, and within about four months 300,000 of them were indexed and Google was serving it for broad terms like "chiropractor near me." His explanation isn't links. It's a voice agent on every page. Laurent builds GetOblic, a voice-first AI business directory, and writes at Laurent's Substack.

He has been doing SEO since 2003, starting in health and beauty e-commerce, back when you could rank a deep link in the top five within three hours. He now splits his time between Florida and Tel Aviv. GetOblic is also on LinkedIn.

Jeremy's full recap, with the quote cards and the takeaways written out, is at Laurent Cohen: we are indexing voice agents, not pages.

In this episode

Related on the network: Laura Hoot on why the industry doesn't think SEO is dying and Jon Henshaw on AI hype and Google's sources of truth. For the pages-at-scale side, see programmatic SEO on SEO Arcade.

Disclosure: Jeremy is a GetOblic affiliate.

Unscripted SEO is hosted by Jeremy Rivera. Want to be on the show? Apply to be a guest.

Benas Leonavicius
Freelance SEO Consultant & Agency Builder
Website | LinkedIn | Substack

Benas Leonavicius has spent 10 years in the SEO trenches—from working with large e-commerce sites to navigating the bureaucratic nightmare of enterprise SaaS SEO. Now he's building an agency focused on keynote speakers, authors, and coaches, where basic SEO fundamentals deliver outsized results.

In this conversation, we dive deep into:

If you're a freelancer trying to scale, a speaker trying to get found, or anyone wondering how AI is changing search—this episode is for you.

On SaaS Scalability:

"Although I can provide a lot of value to SaaS companies, at the end of the day, I might only have one or two clients like that per month, and then I cannot scale."

On AI Search Sources:

"For you to be on ChatGPT, you basically need to be on either the speaker bureau's websites or you need to be on those listicles because that seems to be one of the primary sources."

On AI's Future:

"I think what we're playing with is probably the worst version AI will ever be. I feel like we're still going upwards, not downwards."

On Keynote Speaker SEO:

"Imagine you're a speaker that wants to target keywords such as 'leadership keynote speaker.' They don't even have 'leadership' anywhere mentioned on their website because they want to differentiate themselves."

On Entity-Centric SEO:

"Digital visibility is less centric just to the website, but more towards the entity." - Jeremy Rivera

On SEO Fundamentals:

"Do you actually mention the keywords in the titles and the text? That's probably the highest ROI thing I do for my clients."

In this episode, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Jeremy Yang, founder of Digital Goliath, to explore the often-siloed world of paid advertising and how it intersects with SEO. Managing over $450,000 in monthly ad spend, Jeremy Yang shares brutal truths about Google Ads setup mistakes, the death of exact match keywords, and why most businesses fail at Meta advertising before they even start.

From offshore Google support nightmares to the "bullets in the chamber" framework for platform selection, this conversation reveals what seven years of hands-on PPC experience teaches you about digital marketing that no certification ever will.

Jeremy Yang
Founder, Digital Goliath
Website | LinkedIn

Jeremy founded Digital Goliath seven years ago and currently manages about $450,000 per month in ad spend across Google Ads and Meta platforms. Based in Sydney, Australia, he works with small to mid-sized businesses and white labels for larger agencies, specializing in high-accountability, hands-on campaign management.

"If you really want things to go fast, you got to go into paid ad space."

"For ads, the intensity is a lot higher. When your clients are doing ads, the stakes feel higher. They're more demanding. You have to be hovering around the computer. Things go wrong and things have to be fixed straight away."

"Everything is broad-ish now. Doesn't matter how you set it. Competitor brands can sneak in, whereas that's never happened before. So exact match is no longer exact match."

"How many bullets you got in the chamber? If you go 'Let's do this for three months' and you got like four assets, I'm like 'Where'd you get these four assets?' You go 'We shot it a year ago and the guy's gone now.' I don't know if you're going to last three months."

"Meta is about burnout. So you got to refill and replenish the tank."

"Since I started seven years ago, I only believe in using display ads for remarketing."

"If you have one product line that has 1.2X and 8X ROAS acceptable, that's not going to work because it's too scattered. Law of averages will kill you."

"Bots don't have money to spend. If you want something to happen, you still got to make sure it works for the last person who's going to be in the chain."

"SEO should recognize that this is an essential game now. It's not even optional anymore. They can't be working in silos. They've got to be a communicator."

The SEO-SEM divide persists largely due to operational intensity differences — paid ads require constant monitoring and rapid response, while SEO operates on longer timelines with more methodical testing and community knowledge-sharing.

Google's ad platform has shifted from granular keyword control to theme-based, broad-match campaigns, with Performance Max becoming the dominant model, requiring advertisers to focus on ROAS-based campaign structuring rather than traditional keyword segmentation.

Display advertising should be reserved exclusively for remarketing with clear offers, as the diminishing returns come very quickly on display, YouTube, and discovery feeds — smart advertisers allocate minimal budgets ($10-20) to maintain brand presence across touchpoints.

Platform selection depends on your content fuel supply — if you can't consistently produce fresh video and creative assets, Meta will burn you out quickly; service businesses without video capabilities should focus 80% on Google Search with 20% on Bing once search is optimized.

The future of marketing requires breaking down silos between SEO and paid ads teams, viewing performance through blended ROAS rather than isolated channel metrics, and creating content systems that repurpose assets across multiple platforms rather than treating ad creative as disposable.

In the emerging AI-driven search landscape, the "human-bot sandwich" principle matters most — bots don't have money, so content must ultimately serve humans even as it passes through multiple algorithmic layers, with genuine subject-matter-expert conversations producing far richer content than keyword-optimized articles alone.

Summary

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO podcast, Keith Breseé and Cauveé, the inspiration engineer, delve into the intricacies of content marketing. They discuss the importance of platforms like Substack and Beehive for community building, the necessity of finding one's niche, and the long-term strategies required for effective content creation. The conversation also covers the significance of understanding market gaps, leveraging influencer marketing, and the role of paid advertising. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of crafting effective hooks, storytelling, and utilizing AI tools for content creation. The episode concludes with insights on building relationships and the long game in personal branding.

Takeaways

What happens when a marketing coach who's also an actor sits down to talk about authenticity in business? You get one of the most unfiltered conversations about trust, AI, and human connection in marketing that we've had on this show.

Kyle Merrick doesn't pull punches. As the founder of Anarchy For A Day and a marketing veteran with nearly a decade of agency experience, he's seen it all—and he's not afraid to call BS on what's broken in modern marketing.

In this episode, we dive deep into the tension between performance and authenticity, why AI-generated content is killing trust, and how businesses can differentiate themselves in commodified markets. Kyle brings a unique perspective as both a marketer and an actor, understanding how to build believability while staying within boundaries.

This conversation gets heated, philosophical, and practical all at once. If you're tired of the same sanitized marketing advice, this episode is for you.

Trust & Authenticity in Marketing (00:00-10:02)

AI vs. Human Connection (10:02-22:31)

The Coloring Book Analogy (22:31-27:39)

Market Understanding & Differentiation (27:39-37:23)

Consistency & Long-Term Thinking (37:23-40:15)

"No marketer is really trustworthy until you actually get to know them. So I'm not even going to try to pitch myself on that."

"I don't give a shit about anything your business has to say if you're using AI. Let me see the people behind it, even if they're paid actors."

"Human to human podcast. This is the very important bit."

"Having been in business for myself for a decade now, it's like, this is the only kind of conversation I actually value because I know it's real, because you can sense the pain behind my words."

"People don't truly understand their marketplace. Go talk to the people that you're trying to serve or provide solutions to or sell a product to, whatever. Get to know them, their world."

"I always think about it like a coloring book. The lines are really what is within bound and reason for what is going to be believable."

"If you want real conversation, dish it out. Maybe that's the best answer to how can we get more genuine conversation in corporate marketing. Fucking do it. It ain't that hard."

"Business is still human. And if we're not accounting for that human factor, I wish you the best."

"Consistency is key. You need to be doing it a while for these different robotic entities to deem, 'All right, well, you're human and you do this.'"

Kyle Merrick is a marketing coach, actor, voice artist, and the founder of Anarchy For A Day. With nearly a decade as a marketing agency owner under his belt, Kyle now focuses on educating business owners and nonprofit leaders to think like marketing experts.

Operating at the intersection of communications engineering and resource management, Kyle specializes in helping small to midsize B2B, B2C, and nonprofit organizations craft strategic, data-driven marketing plans and messaging that drive real results. He's served industries including healthcare, hospitality, nonprofit, e-commerce, technology, and SaaS.

A "marketing vigilante" who stands to rebuild trust between organizations and marketers through education, Kyle calls BS on the rampant scams and shortcuts plaguing the industry. His philosophy? Empower through education. Separate with anarchy.

Originally from Chicago and now based in Denver, Kyle brings midwestern modesty to an industry that often rewards the immodest—and he's still figuring out how to navigate that tension.

Connect with Kyle:

Kyle's Services:

From This Episode:

Related Content on SEO Arcade:

Supporting Articles on Authenticity:

Example Referenced:

The Unscripted SEO Podcast features real conversations with SEO professionals, digital marketers, and business owners about what actually works in search engine optimization and content marketing. Hosted by Jeremy Rivera of SEO Arcade, each episode dives deep into authentic strategies, industry insights, and the human side of digital marketing.

We believe the best marketing comes from genuine expertise and conversation, not AI-generated content or cookie-cutter approaches. That's why every episode is transcribed and transformed into comprehensive articles, social content, and resources that preserve the authentic voice of our guests.

About the Host: Jeremy Rivera is the founder of SEO Arcade and host of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, with 19+ years of experience in SEO and digital marketing. He specializes in converting podcast interviews into comprehensive SEO content marketing strategies, helping businesses build authority through authentic conversation.

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