The WorkHacker Podcast - Agentic SEO, GEO, AEO, and AIO Workflow

Does Domain Authority Exist in Search and AI? Yes - Here Is Why

Call WorkHacker Chief Strategist Rob Garner at 469.347.4090, or email info@workhacker.com for more details about how we can help your business. WWW.WORKHACKER.COM
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Welcome to the WorkHacker Podcast, where we break down the strategies, systems, and real-world insights that help businesses grow smarter in the age of search and AI. I’m your host, Rob Garner.
Today’s topic takes us into the heart of one of search’s longest-running debates: does domain authority really exist? Yes -And Here’s Why
Some say absolutely, and others insist it’s a made-up metric, invented by third-party tools and not something Google actually uses. But here’s where the conversation goes off the rails. People argue over terminology instead of observing the real-world behavior of websites. And the real-world evidence is actually very simple.
To fundamentally answer whether domain authority exists, just look at two websites side-by-side:
A brand-new domain… and an established domain that has been online for years, publishing quality content, earning backlinks, and building a consistent pattern of trust with search engines.
What happens when you publish the same quality content on both?
The established domain almost always gets impressions, traffic, and visibility faster.
And the new domain? It takes longer. Sometimes a lot longer. Even when the content is objectively strong.
That gap alone tells the story. Something is happening under the surface - some form of accumulated trust, history, and credibility - that gives older, well-maintained domains an advantage.
People who claim domain authority “does not exist” often have trouble refuting this basic observation. If two pieces of content are comparable, published at the same time, and optimized similarly, the older domain wins nearly every time. That is not an accident. That is not random. And that is not mythology. That is a measurable bias toward established sites.
So what’s actually going on?
First, age and continuity matter.
A domain that has been active for years, producing quality content and earning backlinks, shows search engines a long-term signal of reliability. Websites that disappear, go offline, or stop publishing don’t develop this advantage. But websites that remain active build a historical profile that makes their future content easier to trust.
Second, backlink and reference patterns matter.
Even if the older domain isn’t a “big authority site,” it still likely has a handful of links from respectable sources - local businesses, industry blogs, partners, directories, maybe a handful of social mentions. A new domain has none of that. Search engines need validation to fundmanetally seperate spam from the good stuff. And validation usually comes in the form of links and references that signal other humans vouch for the site’s existence.
Third, behavioral and engagement history matters.
An established site may have thousands of users who have visited and interacted with its content before. Google sees this as a pattern. A new domain has no baseline of user behavior. No predictability. Nothing to measure against.
Fourth, indexing and crawling privilege matter.
Search engines visit older and trusted sites more often. They trust that new content is likely to appear. They crawl faster and index sooner. New websites are sometimes crawled slowly, inconsistently, or not at all for a period of time. That is a form of authority. Crawl priority is a privilege that must be earned.
None of this requires Google or Bing to have an internal metric literally labeled “Domain Authority” in the algorithm. All that’s required is that Google or Bing evaluates history, trust patterns, link profiles, consistency, and user signals. And they both absolutely do all of these things.
So if domain authority exists in the practical world - if we can see it, measure it, and consistently predict it - why is it such a stretch to accept the idea that well-maintained websites earn some level of accumulated authority.
Call it Domain Authority. Call it Trust. Call it Site Strength. Call it Historical Credibility. The label doesn’t matter. The behavior does.
Because at the end of the day, if you launch two identical pages - one on a brand-new domain and one on a well-established website - the older domain almost always wins. And no amount of semantic debate can explain that away.
So yes… domain authority absolutely exists. Not because a tool says so.
Not because the industry named it.
But because the real-world outcomes reflect it every single day.
Thanks for listening to the WorkHacker Podcast. If today’s episode gave you a clearer way to think about domain authority - or helped you sharpen your search and AI strategy - be sure to follow the show and share it with someone who’d find it useful.
I’m Rob, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

This Is Not My Real Voice: Eleven Labs Premium Voice Clones For Podcasting

This is not my real voice. It's a robot. 
Call WorkHacker Chief Strategist Rob Garner at 469.347.4090, or email info@workhacker.com for more details about how we can help your business. www.workhacker.com
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Thanks for listening. Today I want to direct this episode toward all of you who have spoken with me before, and have actually heard my voice in person, or maybe on a phone call, or in a Google Meet or Zoom call.
I've been conducting an experiment over the last two months with Eleven Labs voices. It wasn't a secret per se, but the surprising reactions I received warranted this explanatory episode.
The voice you are listening to right now is not me - it is an Eleven Labs premium voice clone. You are now in effect, listening to a robot. Your ears want to believe it is my actual voice reading this narrative, but it is not. The last sentence was synthetic.
This sentence is also synthetic. And the remaining audio is synthetic. In fact, ten of the 12 previous episodes utilized this voice clone, though the ideas, thoughts, and words were all mine.
I wrote every single word you are hearing now. While I started with the clone, you can expect to hear more of my real voice in future episodes. The episodes interviewing Bruce Clay, Viktor Grant, and Bob Heyman were all recorded live, as you can plainly tell when compared to these narrative-styled episodes.
I will leave it to you to judge the quality of this audio. Throughout this experiment, I have been quite surprised at how many people did not detect that this was voice cloning technology at all. I had incorrectly assumed that most people would be able to detect the clone, but this was overwhelmingly not the case.
These are people who know me very well, some who speak with me almost daily, or several times a month. There were some who thought I had done overdubs, due to slight changes in the timbre from paragraph to paragraph.
But one thing is for sure, if you did not know this was a synthetic voice before this episode started playing, you certainly do now, and all of the potential audio defects are now exposed.
It will become easier for you to recognize, not just with my voice, but with many other voices. It is an acquired detection skill that I think helps us think more critically when we are either knowingly or unknowingly consuming synthetic media.
But as the technology gets better, it will require a more discerning ear, until we potentially get to the point that it can't be detected at all, only suspected.
If you are wondering how the premium voice cloning technology works, Eleven Labs requests up to two hours of sample voice recording. This can be a single file, or multiple files.
Once the files are uploaded, it takes them about four-to-six hours to render the premium clone.
They had me read a full chapter of the Great Gatsby, and also one from Jane Eyre. I also read some business focused content, all for a total of approximately 90 minutes of audio. The better your recording set up is, the more accurate your voice clone will turn out.
I have created voices for my clients using different types of cloning. The results vary greatly. For a premium Eleven Labs account, only one custom premium voice clone is allowed. The Instant Voice Clone feature requires a shorter audio example, and can be rendered in minutes. I have had some Instant Voice Clones do a good job, replicating a permitted client's voice to about 80-85% accuracy.
In other cases, the instant voice clone does not sound like the sample voice at all, but can create original and usable voices nonetheless. The Instant Voice Clone is not near as expressive or accurate as the premium clone.
There are also many other intricacies in creating and rendering voice clones for content.
Speech synthesis markup language can be used to fine tune.
There are also tools for pronunciations and inflections.
It is also quite a strange feeling to hear yourself say words that were never spoken. Like many people, I am very cautious about the future of artificial intelligence, and I am very concerned about its potential to be misused.
But years ago I decided to continue to adapt, not just professionally, but to better understand this technology and the new world in which we are headed, whether we like it or not.
It alleviates unnecessary fears, and provides more focus on how to navigate the increasingly complex world we are being pushed into.
The technological powers-that-be have long followed a mantra that may or may not be the best thing for society: If a technology can be done, it will be done. While most of us have no control or say in these developments, the next best thing one can do is to be as acutely aware of its capabilities as possible.
Perhaps the most jarring thing about this entire process is that it forces a change in how we must perceive reality across digital spaces. Not just in voice enabled spaces, but every digital space. It becomes clear that if a voice can be convincingly cloned, we must all be aware that a conversational voice we are speaking with - even with someone known to us - must be verified.
I will continue to iteratively use my cloned voice for future podcast episodes. And I will also continue to use voice cloning and design to produce high quality podcasts for my clients. Synthetic voices have been an invaluable tool for getting a channel warmed-up for real human hosted podcasts. And when the content is good and voices are rendered to a high standard of quality, the audience doesn't mind, and sometimes prefers it.
For an example of a very successful synthetic podcast, check out Arnold Swarzenegger's long running show, designed to scale his knowledge and health acumen to a wide audience.
He is straight and upfront that synthetics are being utilized.
I will also be producing more live interviews with other top experts in the field. And the music performed by the WorkHacker Orchestra in the intro and outro - that was recorded live, with real humans improvising musically in real time, including me.
I would like to extend my sincere thanks for listening this far - these words and sentiments are real, even if the voice delivering them is not.
 
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HR Managers Guide - How to Hire an SEO Expert in 2026 - Navigating the New AI Era

Call WorkHacker Chief Strategist Rob Garner at 469.347.4090, or email info@workhacker.com for more details on we can help your business. 
www.workhacker.com
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The HR Managers Guide on How to Hire an SEO Expert in 2026 - Navigating the New AI Era
If you’re hiring an SEO right now, you’re entering one of the fastest-changing areas in digital marketing - transformed by both artificial intelligence and automation. Some of this podcast episode may sound a bit technical, but stay with me here, and maybe even listen twice.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to identify real expertise in a crowded field, apart from just namedropping new acronyms like GEO, AEO, and AIO alone. We’ll cover the shift from keywords to context, the rise of AI-driven workflows, and why hands-on experience still matters more than ever.
You’ll discover how to evaluate different roles, spot genuine thought leadership through a candidate’s digital footprint, and understand when specialization is an asset - or a blind spot.
We’ll also talk about the importance of language fluency, staying current with industry updates, and how the best search pros connect optimization directly to business goals and revenue.
By the end, you’ll know more about what to look for, what to avoid, and how to find an expert who can help your organization thrive.
Artificial intelligence has changed the game for search pros - from how search engines interpret information to how content gets created, optimized, and distributed. Yet, most hiring managers are still using outdated criteria when evaluating search talent. It is important to note that while many things have changed, it is all still largely based on the core principles of SEO. But search pros of the past must have new perspectives and experience to succeed, and this perspective is not only critical - it is imperative.
This outlines the main function of a good human resource professional tasked with filling an SEO position: Understanding the core need, understanding a candidates core skill set and experience, and making the right choice for the job at hand.
There are many objective and subjective considerations for hiring an expert, literally too many to cover in a single podcast episode. But let’s start with understanding the conceptual shift from keywords to context, which can quickly shed a great light on how prepared a search professional is for future challenges. This concept is at the crux of understanding the new age of AI-based retrieval, and will help you qualify the best candidates. A candidate speaking in these terms can help you understand if they are on top of current trends, and thinking toward the future.
A decade ago, search revolved around ranking for the right phrases. But now, search systems - powered by massive AI models—understand meaning, entities, relationships, and user intent.
So while many newcomers are still chasing keywords, true professionals are shaping context - using structured data, embeddings, content entities, engaging topics, and brand signals to train search engines on what their business represents. This does not negate the fact that keywords and keyphrases are still considerations in modern search, it is just that the way we work with them has changed.
And that’s where real experience becomes irreplaceable.
Someone who’s lived through multiple Google updates, seen the impact of automation done right and wrong, and understands how content, links, and user signals interplay over time - has instincts you can’t learn from a quick course or prompt.
Large language models can speed things up, but it can’t replace judgment. Ultimately, they are prediction engines that set the stage for human judgment, and that is not going-to change in the near future. And that again is where experience is critical.
Let’s break down some of the fundamental modern SEO roles you’ll encounter.
The Technical SEO is now part developer, and part data analyst, managing everything from structured data to automation scripts and large-language-model assisted indexing.
The Content SEO might act as the editor-in-chief of machine-generated, but brand focused and personalized digital assets - ensuring that what AI produces is not only accurate, but aligns with brand voice, compliance, and user trust, and builds to the scale needed for growth
The SEO Strategist is the conductor - designing the workflow that ties it all together. They know which steps to automate, which to keep human, and how to ensure that all of it feeds into measurable business growth.
That’s why strategic optimizers, particularly those with specific hands-on strategy experience, are more valuable than ever.
They’ve built workflows manually before automation existed. They understand how long tasks should take, what dependencies matter, and what goes wrong when you automate blindly. That experience lets them build smarter, more reliable systems - where automation accelerates - not replaces, strategic thinking.
Now, let’s talk about agency versus in-house experience.
Agencies deal with multiple clients, and can have a first hand view of search performance across multiple industries. That makes them a great place to find people who know what’s working right now.
But experienced in-house SEOs bring something equally valuable: depth. They understand the company’s tech stack, culture, approval workflows, and long-term goals.
Both of these experience scenarios can bring a different level of perspective to your own organization, and it is important to understand the differences before you hire.
Also ask your candidates about their side projects, big or small. While many companies view side projects or work as a potential distraction, having a little bit of side experience can be a good thing for you. You don't want experimentations to happen on your main site - that level of testing is for other projects without the same level of risk tolerance.
Do they manage their own test sites?
Have they built automation tools for keyword clustering or content briefs?
Do they test AI-generated content pipelines?
The best SEOs have sandbox projects where they break things on purpose to learn faster. That’s how they stay ahead. Again, it is not required, but it can bring a different level of insight to meet your expectations and needs.
So, what should you ask during an interview?
Here are some additional questions that reveal whether a candidate truly understands search in the AI era:
How has AI changed your approach to SEO in the past year?
Can you walk me through a workflow you’ve automated - and what parts you still do manually?
What data do you rely on most when measuring success today?
What’s an example of something you chose not to automate, and why?
How do you see SEO evolving as LLM answers continue to reshape discovery?
Each of these questions exposes a candidate’s depth - not just their familiarity with tools, but their reasoning process.
Another critical part of hiring the right search pro, is finding someone who understands that search isn’t just about discovery and visibility. It’s about business outcomes.
The best candidates don’t just report on impressions or traffic alone. They know how to connect search visibility to revenue, lead generation, and overall company growth. They can draw a clear line between optimization efforts and real-world results - whether that’s increasing e-commerce conversions, driving qualified calls, forecasting, lowering acquisition costs through organic visibility, or generating bottom-line revenue.
That alignment with business goals separates tactical operators from strategic partners.
A strong SEO candidate should be able to sit at the same table as the CMO, CEO, or client, and translate data into business terms. They should know how to prioritize initiatives based on ROI, not vanity metrics.
And there’s another layer to this - education.
Search often touches every department: marketing, IT, design, sales, public relations and corporate communications, even customer service. Yet many of those teams don’t fully understand how their work affects search visibility.
A great search pro knows how to bridge that gap - not by lecturing, but by educating diplomatically, and when appropriate. They bring others along for the journey, showing designers how UX decisions affect indexing, or helping writers understand how to structure content for AI-driven discovery. Does your candidate explain concepts clearly, and confidently, in a way that a person with no other search knowledge can understand? Can they boil a complex technical tactic down into clear business goals and outcomes? Can they summarize and give direct answers to questions in a way that doesn't take five minutes to explain?
The ability to teach, collaborate, and inspire understanding across departments is just as important as technical skill. Because when everyone in an organization understands how search connects to the bottom line, optimization stops being a checklist—and becomes a growth engine.
Another powerful way to evaluate an SEO candidate is by reviewing their digital footprint.
Search is a field built on visibility. Look at how they show up online. Have they written about search publicly? Have they spoken at conferences, contributed to podcasts, or shared thoughtful posts that demonstrate real understanding?
Peer validation also matters. The SEO community is vocal and interconnected, and experienced professionals tend to have some form of recognition - whether it’s thought leadership articles, LinkedIn engagement from other experts, or past collaboration with respected brands or agencies.
In a crowded space where anyone can claim to “do SEO,” seeing a track record of public insight can help you separate the truly experienced from those who might only have surface-level familiarity.
It’s not about fame or quantity of followers. It’s about seeing proof that the person you’re considering is genuinely engaged in the craft, contributing to the conversation, and staying current with where the industry is heading.
Another factor to look at when hiring an SEO expert is specialization.
Many SEOs develop deep expertise in a particular vertical or discipline. Some come from local search backgrounds - masters of Google Business Profiles, citations, and even reputation management. Others may have specialized in technical SEO, with deep knowledge of site architecture, schema, and crawling systems. You’ll also find experts in enterprise SEO, e-commerce optimization, international targeting, content strategy, link acquisition, and even AI workflow automation.
That specialization can be incredibly valuable - especially if your company’s needs align perfectly with the candidate’s skill set. A local business hiring someone who’s scaled multi-location listings will immediately benefit from that focus. Likewise, a large e-commerce site can gain an edge from someone who’s lived inside complex CMS systems and product feeds.
But specialization can also be a double-edged sword.
Sometimes, being too narrowly focused can distort broader judgment. A brilliant local SEO might struggle with enterprise analytics. A technical optimizer might undervalue storytelling and brand. A content strategist might ignore data engineering or automation opportunities.
That’s why it’s important to understand not just what a candidate knows deeply - but how adaptable they are outside that lane. Ask how they’d approach a challenge slightly beyond their comfort zone.
In the age of large language models, the most valuable SEOs are those who can connect multiple disciplines - technical, creative, analytical, and strategic -and translate them into results that serve the business as a whole.
Another thing to consider: measuring impact has changed.
You can’t rely solely on keyword visibility or traffic anymore. Ask your candidate how they measure authority. If they can explain visibility across multiple discovery channels, they just might understand some things about the future of search.
Here’s another key point: hiring an SEO strategist with real experience is like hiring an engineer who knows both the machinery and the software that runs it.
They’ve lived through the manual phase, which means they know which parts of the process can safely be automated - and which parts must remain human.
They understand that good SEO automation doesn’t start with prompts - it starts with clean data, disciplined workflows, and human oversight.
And that’s why experience isn’t just nice to have, it’s the difference between scaling wisely and breaking everything.
Another quality that’s becoming absolutely essential in modern SEO is a keen understanding of the written language.
Search is now driven as much by linguistics as by links and brand citations. Large Language Models interpret semantics, tone, syntax, meaning, context, and entities - not just keywords. That means your SEO needs more than technical skill -they need a deep sensitivity to how language actually works.
This matters on two levels.
First, in the creation of your digital content. The ability to craft sentences that are both natural and machine-readable - clear enough for AI models to understand, but nuanced enough to engage humans - is a rare and valuable skill. The best SEOs know how to balance those two worlds.
Second, it matters in prompting.
Every AI-assisted workflow begins with a prompt, and a single misplaced word can completely alter the output trajectory of a large language model. If your SEO doesn’t understand how language shapes interpretation, their automation pipelines will produce inconsistent or even misleading results.
That’s why SEOs with strong writing backgrounds, editorial experience, or linguistic awareness often outperform their technically minded peers. They instinctively grasp how small changes in phrasing can lead to massive changes in meaning - and ultimately, in search performance.
In short, words still matter. Maybe more than ever. Consider giving your SEO candidates an impromptu and timed on-the-spot writing test, and see how they do, screen sharing live in a Google Meet, or Zoom call as proof they are humans who can write as good as they say they do.
Another key factor when interviewing search candidates is how they stay current.
Search and AI evolve at a breathtaking pace. Algorithms update quietly in the background, search-engine-results-page layouts shift overnight, and new AI-driven search experiences roll out without warning. The SEO who isn’t plugged into these developments will always be reacting instead of leading.
So when you’re evaluating a candidate, ask how they keep up with changes.
Do they follow trusted industry publications like Barry Schwartz's Search Engine Roundtable, or Search Engine Land, or Search Engine Journal? Do they read Marie Haynes’ newsletter, or Google’s Search Central Blog? Do they dive in deep with Duane Forrester's Substack, Mike King's various detailed analyses, Roger Montti's posts, or Bill Hartzer's blog? Are they active in online communities like X, or do they follow people like Brittany Muller or Melissa Fach on LinkedIn, where real-time discussions among experts often reveal shifts before they hit the headlines?
You can learn a lot by asking who they listen to and engage with. Don't know who-is-who in the SEO industry? Ask AI to give you a list of top voices to be on the lookout for, but also be open to hearing about other influential voices that you can validate later.
The right SEO should also be able to explain how they track updates, evaluate credibility, and translate what they learn into practical adjustments for your business.
The best SEOs make that knowledge operational. They turn insight into strategy.
One other important point - don’t overlook veteran SEOs.
In the rush to find the next generation of “AI-savvy” talent, many organizations make the mistake of passing over professionals with 15 to 30 years of experience. But those are often the people who understand search at its deepest level.
These are the practitioners who were there when SEO was first taking shape between 1995 and 2010 - when there were fewer tools compared to today, and no AI tools to lean on. They helped build the very processes that younger marketers now learn from.
They’ve lived through every major shift in search - from meta tags and manual submissions, to link analysis, semantic indexing, and now large language models. That means they don’t just react to change - they recognize patterns, anticipate where algorithms are heading, and adapt faster because they’ve done it before.
And in today’s fast-moving landscape, that adaptability is pure gold.
Experienced pros bring strategic maturity, stability, and a rare sense of perspective. They know how to separate hype from reality, how to evaluate new tools, and how to tie search strategy directly to long-term business growth.
So while it’s tempting to chase novelty, never underestimate the value of a professional who’s already navigated multiple eras of change - and emerged smarter every time.
Another great way to evaluate a candidate is through a test project.
A well-designed test can reveal more about a person’s thinking, communication, and practical skills than any interview ever could. It lets you see how they approach real-world challenges - how they assess opportunities, identify weaknesses, and communicate strategy.
Most experienced SEOs are open to doing a test project, as long as the process is transparent and fair. Unfortunately, many have also encountered bad actors - companies fishing for free ideas with no intention of hiring. It’s an unfortunate reality that’s made many top professionals cautious.
The best organizations handle this with respect. If the project requires several hours of work, offer to pay the candidate at an hourly consulting rate. It shows professionalism, builds trust, and helps you attract serious talent.
A good test doesn’t need to be long or elaborate. It could be something like:
Reviewing and auditing a sample website and outlining a strategy for improvement.
Diagnosing a visibility issue based on limited analytics data.
Designing a simple workflow for scaling content with automation.
You’re not testing whether they know every ranking factor - you’re testing how they think, how they prioritize, and how they explain their decisions.
You’ll see their strategic mindset, their problem-solving skills, their communication style, and their ability to balance creativity with data.
You’ll also quickly spot red flags - candidates who rely on buzzwords, skip over data, or can’t clearly articulate their reasoning.
The benefits go both ways. The candidate also learns how your team communicates and what kind of challenges they’d face day-to-day. It’s a chance to confirm cultural fit as much as technical skill.
Handled correctly, test projects are one of the most reliable and fair ways to evaluate SEO talent - rooted not in theory, but in how someone actually performs when presented with a real-world problem.
Another important thing to understand about SEO in 2026 is that it has always been a mix of art and science - but with AI, that balance is shifting in powerful new ways.
In the early years of search, and even now, there was only a small scientific foundation, meaning accepted practices and standards accepted publicly by the major search engines. This included things like robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, schema markup, and canonical tags. These were structured, rule-based systems that SEOs followed to help machines interpret and index content.
But the art of SEO came from everything that couldn’t be measured or standardized - the connecting of dots, the storytelling, the reverse engineering, the creative content process, the linguistic and keyphrase research process, the timing, and the constant iterative process of finding out how search engines reacted to optimization events, and how to continue to tweak performance through a variety of tactics.
Now, with artificial intelligence, SEO has entered a new phase - art plus deeper science.
AI brings advanced data modeling, contextual and entity understanding, and algorithmic prediction into the mix. It is about how you technically format your content in a way that is contextually machine readable.
This is also why you’ll often get different answers from different candidates - and that’s okay. Even leading search publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and Search Engine Roundtable occasionally report conflicting takes on what’s working. That doesn’t make one right and the other wrong; it simply reflects the complexity and fluidity of how search works.
When you’re interviewing candidates, don’t discount someone just because their view doesn’t align with what you’ve read online. They might be ahead of the curve, speaking in newer terms or describing emerging concepts that the industry is only starting to understand. But take good notes, and validate from multiple sources.
You may be talking with someone who thinks differently - someone who helped define best practices in past eras and is already adapting to the next one.
So, keep an open mind. Ask them to explain their reasoning, and listen for logic, not buzzwords.
And sometimes, the person who sounds unconventional today is the one who’s already building the playbook for tomorrow.
So, if you’re hiring an SEO expert to meet modern demands, look beyond the buzzwords.
Ask about logic, testing, and decision-making.
Look for curiosity, adaptability, communication effectiveness, and hands-on proof of what they’ve built.
Because in a world where anyone can generate an “SEO strategy” with a prompt, the professionals who truly understand the workflows behind it are the ones leading the future of search.
And that’s who you want on your team.
 
 

Interview with Bob Heyman & Viktor Grant - Original Inventors of SEO

n this special episode, we sit down with Bob Heyman - the marketing pioneer widely credited with coining the term Search Engine Optimization - and Viktor Grant, one of the earliest innovators in digital marketing and analytics. Together, they take us back to the origins of SEO in the 1990s, sharing the stories, people, and technological shifts that shaped the practice long before Google became a verb.
From the early days of manual submissions and keyword meta tags to today’s world of AI-driven search and generative experiences, Heyman and Grant explore how optimization has evolved - and what’s next as algorithms begin to think, create, and personalize results in real time.
They discuss whether we’re entering a new era of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or simply witnessing the next natural phase of SEO, and what these changes mean for marketers, creators, and searchers alike.
If you’ve ever wondered where SEO came from, how it’s transforming in the age of AI, and what skills will matter most in the decade ahead, this conversation offers a fascinating mix of history, insight, and forward-looking perspective from two of the people who helped define the field itself. www.workhacker.com.

DFWSEM and The State of Search Conference

In this episode, Rob talks about his work with the Dallas Ft Worth Search Engine Marketing Association, and its related digital marketing conference, State of Search, held yearly in October in the DFW area.

Interview with Bruce Clay Discussing SEO, GEO, AIO, AEO and more

In this first interview episode of the WorkHacker podcast, Rob Garner chats with Bruce Clay about SEO, then and now, and also about where GEO/AIO/AEO fall in the general taxonomy of digital marketing. www.workhacker.com 

Context Is King: Why Keyword-Led SEO and GEO Are Missing the Mark in the Age of AI

For years, SEO revolved around keywords. The formula was simple: find the right phrase, place it strategically, and climb the rankings. More recently, a new idea called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, has started to make noise. The goal is to optimize for A-I answers in systems like Chat G-P-T, and Perplexity.
But here’s the catch. Both keyword-led SEO and early attempts at G-E-O share the same flaw. They prioritize words over context. And in a world where search engines and generative AI now- interpret meaning instead of just matching strings, context is the real king.
Contact us at info@workhacker.com, or visit www.workhacker.com for more info.

The Increasing Importance of Soft Backlinks: How Brand Mentions are Replacing Links in SEO and AI

Back in 2013, when I was writing my book "Search and Social", I discussed a concept that many in the SEO community weren’t quite ready to embrace. I talked about brand mentions as a ranking factor – the idea that you didn’t always need a direct hyperlink to gain authority from other websites. At the time, it seemed almost heretical to suggest that something other than a traditional backlink could carry similar weight in search rankings. Contact us at info@workhacker.com, or visit www.workhacker.com for more info.

The Importance of Secondary and Tertiary Keywords For Content in SEO and AI

Most writers and marketers focus on the primary keyword. It’s the flashy term that goes into the title and meta tag, the one everyone thinks will win them traffic. But here’s the overlooked truth: it’s the supporting keywords—the secondary and tertiary phrases—that transform a decent article into a long-term traffic magnet. Because in SEO and AI today, context is king. If you would like a free one on one consultation, visit us at www.workhacker.com or email to info@workhacker.com.

The Death of 100 Results and the Impact on Search Reporting

A small parameter in the Google search URL string quietly disappeared last week. That single change has shaken the entire SEO industry, sending ripple effects through data tools, reporting dashboards, and even the way we measure success in search. Check out this episode to learn more, and visit us at workhacker.com.