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Articles by Jonathan
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Lost in L.A.
Lost in L.A.
So I was feeling a little sorry for myself this evening. Sat at the hotel bar, contemplating life.
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Focus... Please! Just for a second.
Focus... Please! Just for a second.
Wake up… Coffee… Gym?? Office! Emails… Projects… Calls… Accounts?? Stress! AHHH! I am sure most of you are familiar…
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisThere has been a lot of posting and promoting of amazing events that I have had the pleasure of speaking at (and still am to speak at) over the second half of 2026. But the most amazing event this year, hands down, has been our own event "Beyond the funnel". We didn't advertise it, we didn't sell tickets, there were no sponsors, and all speakers were hand selected. It all started a year ago when I was at Shenzhen SEO, and I just knew that I needed to host my own event. What many people don't know is that SwishDM and I have been working with global industry-leading companies from China for many years now, so it just made sense. So, I decided to approach my Chinese business bestie, Mayi, and say, "Hey, let's do a tiny little side event." Well, as you can imagine, everything completely spiraled out of control, and a year later, we hosted our own mini conference for 80 esteemed guests directly in Shenzhen, China. We counted three billion-dollar companies being in the room and many hundred-million-dollar companies. But the best thing was actually having Simon open up the show, the very person who had first brought my business to China by being a client more than five years ago, and who still today consults me at least once a month on how to continue to grow my business in a market as competitive as China. Just as amazing as having the show closed by Mayi, who has been one of my biggest supporters out there, no matter whether its in making an important introduction, or helping me figure out some Chinese app that I am too western to understand. And finally a huge shout out to Zeke Daldy, Thanh Nguyen & Scott Law from the SwishDM team who flew out to China having to just trust that Mayi, Kristy and I had organised everything on the ground.
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisNever would I have thought that I would be speaking on the main stage in China while also being a main Sponsor there, and don't worry the two aren't connected. A few years ago I came to China for the first time, to meet some of our clients and meet with new prospects. I met more and more wonderful people, until eventually I bumped into the amazing JP Zhang the East meets west connector. He invited me to speak at one of his smaller events, and eventually at this main event also. So I decided to bring some of the team out, get a booth, and really represent SwishDM in full force. The response has been nothing shy of overwhelming, and we are honestly still dealing with the follow-up from the event. Needless to say we will be back next year!
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisAbout to touch down in what has quickly become one of my favourite cities, Shenzhen. Here to speak at multiple events back to back, first of all at the amazing ShenzhenSEO. An amazing event led by visionary JP Zhang Not only have i got the pleasure of speaking, but I also brought part of the leadership team from SwishDM to sponsor the event. Come see us at our booth!
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisMy friend Jarod Spiewak and i call each other once a month to keep each other accountable on our business growth. A couple of months ago i was talking about how much I feel that i get out of public speaking and that i should do more of it. Jarod challenged me to double down. No half measures, the board is filling up. I'm now also pitching for Q1 USA Dates. I hope I can see you at some of these events! Let's gooo!
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Jonathan Kiekbusch posted thisWe ran AI-generated content through 5 detectors across 4 editing passes. Here's the uncomfortable finding: The most reliable way to pass an AI detector is to write worse. Typos. Grammar slips. Subject-verb disagreements. Inconsistent capitalisation. That's what moved the scores most dramatically, not thoughtful editorial work, not rewriting, not "humanising" tools. Plain old mistakes. Which raises an obvious question: are these tools actually detecting AI, or are they just detecting the absence of errors? We tested Copyleaks, GPTZero, Originality.AI, Winston AI, and Walter Writes against raw output from ChatGPT 5.4, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Gemini 3. The results were revealing: → Winston AI scored unedited Gemini 3 as only 46% AI in Pass 1, before we changed a single word → Copyleaks was the most consistent detector; the hardest to move across all passes → Claude Sonnet 4.6 was the easiest to get through undetected; ChatGPT 5.4 had the strongest fingerprint → Clean editorial work (varying sentence rhythm, stripping AI vocabulary) reduced scores on most tools without touching quality Meanwhile, Google's position hasn't changed since 2023: they (say they) don't run a detector check. They measure whether the content is worth someone's time. A well-researched, useful piece produced with AI assistance can outrank lazy, padded human-written filler. The detector industry built an answer to a question Google doesn't ask. Full methodology, results tables, and what this means for anyone commissioning content 👇
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisShenzhen what an honor. I was planning a trip to China to meet with some of our enterprise clients here. As I was planning the trip I had the idea to message the one and only JP Zhang, having attended some of his events I really wanted to meet him in person. It turned out that JP was just organizing another event for the Sunday while I was in town and was so kind to invite me to speak. So not only did I get the opportunity to speak in China for the very first time in my speaking career but I also got to meet many amazing attendees and get to share the stage with some other inspirational speakers. If you need an event speaker for your event about SEO or GEO please do get in touch I still have a couple of slots free this year but my calendar is filling up quickly.
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisHas Google quietly deprecated inurl: and intext: in some regions? Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed something strange. The inurl: and intext: search operators, staples in every SEO’s toolkit, appear to be behaving inconsistently across different regions. In some locations: inurl: queries return partial matches or result in nothing found screens intext: results look blended with standard broad match results There’s been no official announcement from Google. But the SERP behaviour suggests something has changed under the hood. I’m curious: Are you seeing the same behaviour in your region? Have you found reliable workarounds? Search keeps getting less transparent.
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisFinally! We have real data on how AI is using our content. 📉 Microsoft just dropped the "AI Performance" report in Bing Webmaster Tools and honestly… I can’t believe they beat Google to the punch. You can now see exactly which pages are being cited in Copilot and the specific "Grounding Queries" (aka keywords) the AI used to find you. No more guessing games. GEO just got a lot more interesting.
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Jonathan Kiekbusch shared thisGoogle’s New Browser Will Change the Internet Forever Google Labs launched Disco, and it’s not another browser. Instead of showing links, it builds custom apps for you in real time using Gemini 3. Trip planners. Meal planners. Interactive study tools. All generated instantly inside your browser. If this goes mainstream, websites become data sources… and browsers become app builders. macOS only for now, waitlist at labs.google.com/disco Follow for the latest search and AI trends shaping the future 👀
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Jonathan Kiekbusch reacted on thisJonathan Kiekbusch reacted on thisIt’s October 1st, which means Black Friday and Cyber Monday are 8 weeks away. 🫠 Is your website ready for it? No… we don't mean discount codes generated or your email blasts. We mean your brand’s site. Some questions worth asking today: - Does your Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday page exist yet, and has Google indexed it? - When someone searches your brand plus "Black Friday", what comes up? Your sale, or a voucher site? - Will the posts that already bring in your traffic mention your promotions at all? If any of those made you pause, it's worth acting now. A sales page needs weeks to get crawled and indexed before shoppers start searching, and that's time you can't buy back in November. 📈 We go through this every year with our eCommerce clients. So, we've written a post about some of the basics with a free, downloadable 9-page game plan to help position your website ahead of the sales season. You can expect: - Week-by-week timeline working back from 27 November - Tech checklist for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday pages - Flowchart for your sale pages before, during and after the sale - Step-by-step plan for adding sale CTAs to posts that already get traffic - Catch-up plan if you're starting late You'll know what to do, what to skip, and when to do it. Read the article, download our game plan, and let us know if we’ve missed anything so we can update it for next year. Link in the comments. ⬇️
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Jonathan Kiekbusch reacted on thisJonathan Kiekbusch reacted on thisProbably the best way to wrap up the 2026 conference tour - speaking at Affiliate World in Bangkok. 7000+ attendees from around the world Super excited and grateful for the opportunity 🙏🙂
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Jonathan Kiekbusch reacted on thisJonathan Kiekbusch reacted on thisFelix Norton's agency was losing organic traffic. Its leads kept climbing. Then his clients told him why: ChatGPT had recommended him. So he set out to find what makes an AI model pick one agency over another. He tested positioning, digital PR, self-promotional listicles, parasite SEO and citable content, plus a few experiments too stupid to admit to that worked anyway. He's sharing the playbook behind his talk, "How You Can Get AI To Recommend Your Agency 99% Of The Time," in his Strategy Track session, 4pm Monday 9 November. CMSEO 2026, Chiang Mai, 9-13 November.
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Jonathan Kiekbusch liked thisJonathan Kiekbusch liked this🇨🇳 3 days 10 podcasts, VIP networking, sightseeing of the most tech advanced cities in the world. That's the summary of Shenzhen SEO Conference! And this is the first time Odys Podcast: The High Stakes Growth Show participated as the offical podcast of an SEO event! We recorded fantastic interviews with the TOP industry leaders: 1. Lars Lofgren on parasite SEO arms race 2. Eli Schwartz on why SEO traffic death is good for business 3. JP Zhang on why Asian businesses want Google 4. Lily Ray on SEO Trust Debt 5. Gary Illyes on crawlers and upcoming bot identification 6. Josh Blyskal on why ChatGPT SEO ≠ Claude SEO 7. Benzi Foo on ranking in Asia 8. Si Quan O. on content automation at Ahrefs 9. Nik Ranger on invisible penalties 10. Sasha Gusain on how SEO becomes part of a product at Canva Big thank you to wonderful Michał Mączka for the 3 full days of the recordings! Huge shout out to JP Zhang for organizing one of the most interesting events in the SEO world! And thank you so much for an amazing organization to Shenzhen SEO and Odys Global teams, especially Kadi Aguraijuja 🙏 It was great to catch up with my old time friends and meet many new people! Thank you for great conversations: Cristina S. S. Filza Taj, Jamie I.F., Andrea Abbondanza, Paula Glynn, Laura Iancu, Sarah Pokorná, Jan Wieczorek, Aldo Torrecilla, Katrien Ackx, Nick Vanderhoven, Nemanja Mirkovic, Sacha Fournier and many others! And now I'm off with my great friend Jessica López Ruiz to sightsee more of China 🔥 #seopodcast #seoconference #odyspodcast
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Jonathan Kiekbusch liked thisJonathan Kiekbusch liked thisJust wrapped up 2.5 days in Boston with 62 other second in commands through the COO Alliance. I’m leaving with a full notebook, lots to think about and a whole lot of appreciation for the experience. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be in a room with people who understand the unique challenges and were so generous with their time, experience, and vulnerability. It was refreshing to hear people openly share what’s worked, what hasn’t and everything they’re still figuring out. I’m home feeling energized and thankful for all of the connections I made.
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Jonathan Kiekbusch liked this100+ agencies gather at Cebu, next week - Future of Agencies-Cebu Summit, 2-3 October :) Stoked to see well loved and respected leaders from US, Poland, Czech Republic, China, Singapore, India and Philippines - gathering together to share insights to agency leaders. From better automation, to sales, from brand building to community power, from technical audits to soft skills that can get you to 7-8-9 figure scale, this one has turned out to be quite an event I am personally looking forward to be a part of. Taking AdSummits in to the next year, this will be the last beach destination summit, that we will be doing this year. Next year, we go metro - think big. Think host cities with PPP GDP of $300-$660 Bn. But that will wait until next year. This week, we add value at Cebu. Alan CladX Chris M. Walker Christopher Seth Palmer JP Zhang Bart Magera Jay-Cee Tan MK Bertulfo Udipta Basumatari Cris Vinson Garik Tate Le-an Lai Lacaba Faith N. Kherk Roldan Donavan High Michelle Canlas Ann Vargas Cheenee Carmela Luarca
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Jonathan Kiekbusch liked thisJonathan Kiekbusch liked thisA recap of my experience at the Shenzhen SEO Conference in China! 🇨🇳 I wanted to take a moment to thank some of the people who made these days so special. First of all, a huge thank you to JP Zhang for hosting, speaking, and putting together such a high-level SEO conference. One thing I particularly appreciated about the conference was the honesty of the conversations on stage. The focus was on sharing real analysis and experiences rather than promoting products or turning presentations into sales pitches. I also had the opportunity to be part of the organization team. Helping behind the scenes was a great experience that allowed me to meet and interact with so many attendees and I was part of a great team. Xiè xiè, Olivia Olson, Rahile, Rui, Teresa Fu, Margit, Chen, Franny, Rachel and Vivian! A big shout-out to our MC, Ash Pemberton, who did an amazing job on stage and kept the energy going throughout the conference. There were so many great speakers, but there were two of them I was particularly excited to finally meet and see on stage. Lars Lofgren I first discovered you with your research about Forbes parasite and since then I've been following your work. Watching your talk in person and having a conversation was one of my highlights. Lily Ray One of my favourite discoveries of the conference was finding out that you speaks Spanish! Ahora me caes mejor! 😂 It was nice talking about more than just SEO and I felt comfortable sharing my experiences with you and the fact that you were the DJ at the closing party was definitely one of those conference moments I won't forget. This conference was also particularly special because I got to see two friends on the stage, Cristina S. S. and Andrea Abbondanza. I loved seeing both of you! It was cool to see friends working on their own projects around the conference, including Aneta Samkoff, recording podcasts and creating content for Odys. Finally, a huge shout-out to everyone I met for the first time and everyone I got to reconnect with. We created our own SEO family, and I'm so glad we had the chance to meet again. Laura Iancu Emily Au Filza Taj Tereza Řeh Sacha Fournier Jamie I.F. Sarah Pokorná Natalia Witczyk, Jabez Reuben Brian Ho Philip Petrescu Ilman Akbar Jiyoung Lee Nemanja Mirkovic Ema Fulga Noraina N. Nick Vanderhoven Katrien Ackx Paula Glynn 🙏Stewart Vickers Thank you for the conversations, the laughs, the nights out, the HUGS, the ideas we shared, and all those little moments that make this conference different. Conferences are about SEO, knowledge and business, sure, but the part you remember most is usually the people. Xiè xiè, Shenzhen 🇨🇳��️
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Louis Halton Davies
Cheap leads feel amazing… for about five minutes. The cost per lead drops and everyone celebrates. Then someone asks a very normal question like, “So… do any of these people actually want to buy?” That’s when it all unravels. Because low CPL has never been a proxy for intent, it’s just a vanity metric with a nice haircut. If the lead arrives fast and cheap, the real cost usually shows up later in your pipeline. #B2BMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #MarketingStrategy #LeadGeneration #DemandGen #B2BLeadAds
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Jarrell Hibler
You can't scale what you can't see. Most agency owners I talk to aren't struggling because of a lack of talent or services. They're struggling because their team is operating in silos - branding doing one thing, PPC doing another, social doing its own thing - and nobody has a clear view of how it all connects for the client. That's not a delivery problem. That's a transparency problem. When clients don't see the full picture of what you're doing for them, they don't see the value. When your team doesn't have visibility into each other's work, cracks show up in ways that are hard to explain on a call. The agencies growing right now aren't necessarily doing more. They're making what they do more visible - to their clients and to themselves. Transparency isn't just a leadership value. In an agency, it's a revenue strategy. If your clients can't clearly articulate what you do for them, that's worth sitting with. Drop a comment or DM me - happy to talk through what that looks like in practice. #MarketingAgency #AgencyGrowth #ClientRetention #LeadershipTransparency #AgencyOwner
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Jon Crowder
Got some incredible feedback from a client today. I have obfuscated some details so as to not share confidential information but after completing a CRO audit and giving them loads of recommendations to experiment on and immediate things to fix... "Performance has been record level on CPL and volume using [changed pages]. So we're replicating them over onto the live site and then we're going to start and test the other tweaks we spoke about. Since adding the changes daily lead volume sky rocketed by 200-300%"
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Sean Lang
If I took over your struggling agency tomorrow, here’s where I’d start. 💬 “I can't take a week off without shit going sideways.” → Audit everything you're still doing → Decide what actually requires you → Move everything else into clearly owned roles → Give those roles measurable scorecards → Install a weekly management cadence → Systemize the recurring work that still lives in your head A week away shouldn't be a stress test for the entire agency. If everything falls apart when you're gone, the issue isn't your vacation plan. It's that too much of the business still depends on you. 💬 “We're doing $100k months. Where the hell is the money?” → Calculate profitability by client → Calculate your actual delivery costs → Include the founder labor you're currently pretending is free → Find the clients/services destroying your margins → Fix pricing and scope → Redesign delivery around the economics you actually want Don't try to grow your way out of bad economics. You'll just build a bigger version of the same problem. 💬 “I hired people so I could get out of delivery. Somehow I'm still in delivery.” → Identify exactly where you're still getting pulled in → Find the ownership gaps causing it → Clarify who owns those outcomes → Build scorecards around them → Give the team a cadence for solving problems without you → Track where you continue getting pulled back in Hiring people doesn't remove the founder. Transferring ownership does. 💬 “Everyone's slammed. I know I need to hire, but I don't even know who.” → Map where everyone's time is going → Find the actual capacity constraint → Separate work that should be eliminated, delegated or systemized → Identify the outcomes nobody currently owns → Design the role around those outcomes → THEN hire Otherwise you're just adding another salary to the chaos. 💬 “We've been stuck at the same revenue for a year and I don't know what to change.” → Look at who you're selling to → Look at what you're selling them → Look at what you're charging → Look at the economics underneath it → Look at how you're delivering it → Look at whether your current team can support the next version Sometimes the problem isn't actually sales. You've just reached the limit of the agency you accidentally built. And that's the common thread through all five: The pain you feel usually isn't the actual problem. “I need better people.” “I need more leads.” “I need to get organized.” “I need to hire.” “I need to work less.” Those are symptoms. Figure out what's actually causing them, and the recipe gets a lot clearer.
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