In 2024, shifts in how search engines and AI tools surface content forced us to rethink our stance on SEO – from something we ignored to something we needed to master.
SEO didn’t fit – until performance became the priority
For the longest time, we didn’t just avoid SEO – we openly dismissed it.
At our agency, we built our name on performance.
We were PPC purists: results today, data-driven decisions, and growth we could prove by the end of the week.
SEO, by contrast, always felt like a vague, slow-moving machine driven more by gut feel and Google mood swings than repeatable systems.
It wasn’t our space, and frankly, we weren’t interested.
There’s always been an unspoken rivalry between PPC and SEO.
They compete for visibility in the same search results, but they speak completely different languages.
PPC offers instant traction and clarity. SEO offers long-term compounding value – eventually. We didn’t have the talent, we didn’t buy the timelines, and we didn’t see the fit.
But all that started to change in 2024.
The rise of AI-driven search experiences – ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews – reshaped how people interact with content.
The rules changed.
Structured data, semantic context, and machine-readable signals became the new gatekeepers of organic visibility.
It wasn’t just about optimizing for Google anymore. It was about optimizing for the language models that now:
- Answer questions.
- Summarize reviews.
- Recommend brands.
And that opened the door.
We realized that SEO was no longer an abstract game of patience.
It was a technical, structured, intent-driven opportunity – the kind of challenge we were built to solve.
So we rolled up our sleeves and built an SEO service grounded in what we knew best: performance.
Why traditional SEO never worked for us
Before we ever considered offering SEO, we had to confront why we stayed away for so long:
- The timelines were vague: “Give it six months” doesn’t fly when your agency is built around immediate traction.
- The work was squishy: Content calendars, backlink plans, and domain authority scores didn’t map to revenue the way we were used to.
- The reporting was soft: Keyword rankings are cool, but you know what’s really cool? Cost per conversion.
- It felt like art, not science: That was my opinion, and undoubtedly incorrect.
We weren’t going to offer SEO until we could offer it our way.
Dig deeper: Why AI will break the traditional SEO agency model
A PPC-inspired approach to SEO
When we finally got serious about building SEO into our agency, we started from scratch.
We didn’t copy other agencies. We translated our PPC process into something that made SEO work the way we needed it to.
Here’s how we made it work.
1. Hire performance-oriented SEO talent
We didn’t look for someone steeped in link building or legacy content farms. We hired:
- A technical SEO professional with dev fluency.
- A strategist who understood conversion paths.
- A content resource who could write for users and search engines.
We integrated them with our media team – not siloed away in an “SEO department.”
This made collaboration smoother, faster, and more aligned with business outcomes.
2. Pilot with the right clients
We didn’t offer this to every client on Day 1. We handpicked a few ambitious partners who:
- Had enough organic data to analyze.
- Had leadership buy-in to test and iterate.
- Were already seeing success on paid, but wanted longer-term wins.
These clients became our SEO incubator.
We tested fast, iterated hard, and got results we could show. That gave us the confidence and proof points to scale.
3. Start with the fundamentals (but do them well)
We focused on things that made an impact quickly and could be measured clearly:
- Deep technical audits (crawlability, indexation, duplicate content).
- Global structured data.
- Site architecture and internal linking.
- Keyword-to-page mapping based on actual business intent.
- On-page optimizations that aligned with funnel stages.
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals fixes.
No fluff, no guessing. Just a prioritized roadmap that looked a lot like an ad account optimization plan.
4. Structured data as a first-class citizen
One of the biggest wins we found early on was treating structured data not as a “nice to have,” but as an essential layer of SEO.
We implemented:
- Product, Article, and FAQ schema.
- Organization and WebSite schema for entity clarity.
- Breadcrumbs and internal links for crawl context.
This helped us:
- Win more rich snippets.
- Improve rankings and click-through rate.
- Feed better signals into LLMs and AI Overview experiences
This was the bridge between organic visibility and AI-powered results.
5. Report like a PPC team
We refused to send clients 12-page PDF reports filled with rank tracking and domain metrics.
Instead, our reports show:
- Page-level performance (before vs. after).
- Conversion lifts tied to SEO efforts.
- Crawl/indexation progress.
- Structured data coverage and rich result wins.
- Organic impressions, clicks, and assisted conversions.
If we couldn’t prove it moved something meaningful, we didn’t include it.
Dig deeper: How to track visibility across AI platforms
Where we’re going next: SEO for the AI search era
This whole move into SEO was driven by what we believe is the biggest shift in organic visibility in a decade.
Search is no longer just ten blue links and some ads.
AI tools are becoming the first touch for many search journeys.
If your content isn’t structured and entity-aware, you’re invisible to the models driving those experiences.
We’re now building:
- LLM visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and others.
- Prompt-based SEO research tools.
- Scalable schema enrichment systems.
- Entity-based content maps for each client.
And we’re packaging all of it in a way that feels familiar to any performance-driven marketer.
Final thoughts: Build SEO that works like paid search
If you’re a PPC-led agency, you’re already thinking in terms of impact, ROI, and optimization cycles. Apply that to SEO.
- Build the systems.
- Hire the right people.
- Start small.
- Focus on what matters.
We were late to the game on SEO. But now that the rules are changing, it’s the perfect time to get in.
If you do it right, SEO can be just as performance-driven as PPC – maybe even more so.
Dig deeper: From search to AI agents: The future of digital experiences