so i've been running experiments with content for the past month or so and something weird happened that made me rethink everything.

i had this one article that ranked #3 on google for a decent keyword. traffic was fine. but when i checked perplexity and chatgpt? zero mentions. like my site didn't exist.

then i rewrote a different piece — same topic but structured it around direct answers, added more third-party sources, broke it into these little "answer blocks" instead of long flowing paragraphs. didn't even care about the keyword density honestly.

that one gets cited. by perplexity. twice in the same response.

the original article still gets more clicks but the second one is showing up inside AI answers where 60% of searches apparently end now without anyone visiting a site.

i think the optimization game flipped and most of us are still playing the old version. we're chasing rankings and clicks when the actual visibility is happening inside the answer itself — and if you're not structured for that you're just invisible to anyone using AI search.

still figuring out what makes something "citable" vs just "rankable" but the gap between the two is real and it's bigger than i expected.

has anyone else been tracking this or am i just late to noticing?

so i've been testing how different AI agents interact with our API documentation and it's been kind of a mess honestly

tried having claude and a few other agents actually use the docs to set something up. they either hallucinate endpoints that don't exist or just skip entire sections. sometimes they'll reference a feature we deprecated 8 months ago.

the weird part is our docs look fine to humans. clean, organized, examples everywhere. but when an agent tries to parse it? it's like they're reading a different page.

i think the issue is we built everything for developers reading in a browser, not for machines trying to extract structured data. no OpenAPI spec, no llms.txt file, nothing that screams "here's what this API actually does" in a format agents can digest.

been looking into this whole machine-readable documentation thing but it feels like we're retrofitting a house that wasn't built for it. anyone else dealing with this or am i overthinking it?

like do we need to rebuild our entire docs stack just because agents are becoming the primary consumers now? where do you even start with that

For the past few months, we thought our main marketing problem was simple: we were not producing enough content.

But over time, we realized the real issue was not volume. It was the way we were approaching marketing itself.
I want to share the exact workflow we now use every week to grow our SaaS and move toward a 100K+ acquisition goal. This is not a hack. It is a repeatable system we are actively running.

1. Step 1: Check your AI visibility and collect real user pain points
Instead of starting with traditional keyword research, we now focus on how visible our product is inside AI search systems.
The reason is simple. Users no longer search with short keywords. They ask full questions in natural language. AI systems also do not just match keywords. They generate answers based on relevance and trust.
This changes everything. Ranking for keywords is no longer enough. You need to be included in AI generated answers.
We often screenshot the exact way users describe their problems. Even small differences in wording can lead to completely different results in AI search.
At this stage, we also review competitors. We check how often they appear in answers to the same questions, and whether they are being referenced more than us.

2. Step 2: Turn every pain point into FAQ style content
This step had the biggest impact on us.
Previously, our content looked like this:
AI resume optimization

ATS scoring

Resume templates

Now we rewrite everything as FAQs based on how users actually ask questions:
What does AI resume optimization actually do?

How does ATS scoring help me get interviews?

Do I really need a template for my resume?

The goal is simple. We structure content the way users naturally ask questions to AI systems.

3. Step 3: Use Workfx AI to improve overall visibility
At this stage, we execute across four areas:
Content creation and optimization
We create content that matches real search intent and is structured in a way AI systems can easily understand and retrieve.

Building trust and brand presence
We participate in real discussions and generate content based on actual user conversations. We also build consistent presence across platforms to improve how AI evaluates the brand.

Technical improvements
We fix structural and performance issues that might prevent AI systems from properly reading or indexing our site.

Page and conversion optimization
We improve product pages, messaging, and visuals to turn visibility into actual conversions.

To be honest, we were not doing this in a structured way before.

4. Step 4: Consistency matters more than tactics
None of these changes produce results overnight.
But after running this workflow consistently for a few months, we started seeing stable and meaningful growth in user acquisition.

The biggest takeaway for us is this:
In the future, SaaS growth may not belong to teams that produce the most content, but to teams that understand how AI systems interpret and represent their product.

been working in technical seo for about 6 years now and honestly the FAQ schema situation is one of the most misunderstood changes ive seen

everyone's panicking about google killing FAQ rich results in may 2026, and half the posts im seeing are like "delete all your FAQ markup immediately" or "structured data is dead"

but thats not what happened

google removed the visual dropdown in search results. they explicitly said they still use FAQ schema to understand content. the markup still helps them parse what questions youre answering and how

here's what actually matters now — and this is the part most people are missing

AI search engines (chatgpt search, perplexity, gemini, even google's AI overviews) don't care about rich results. they care about machine-readable content structure

FAQ schema is literally designed to be machine-readable. it tells AI:

what question the user is asking

what your answer is

how concepts relate to each other

ive been testing this across a few client sites since august. pages with clean FAQ schema are getting cited in AI responses way more consistently than pages with the same info buried in paragraphs

the shift isnt "traditional seo is dead" — its that the audience for your structured data changed. youre not optimizing for a google SERP feature anymore. youre optimizing for AI comprehension

most sites ive audited have the content scattered across product pages, support docs, sales conversations. AI cant extract that efficiently. FAQ structure makes it parseable

anyway. not saying everyone needs to go schema-crazy. but removing FAQ markup because the dropdown is gone feels like throwing out something that might matter more in 6 months than it did last year

curious if anyone else is tracking AI citation rates vs schema implementation

so i've been running tests on product visibility for a few months now and honestly the results are confusing me

started out doing the usual keyword research, optimizing product pages, building backlinks — all the standard stuff. rankings went up. traffic stayed flat. like actually flat, not even a small bump

around week 6 or 7 i noticed something weird: products that ranked weren't the ones getting clicked. and the ones getting clicked weren't even on page 1 for my target keywords

tried shifting to what i'm calling a "visibility agent" approach — basically stopped optimizing for specific keywords and started optimizing for... idk how to describe it. contextual presence? like making sure the product shows up in the right situations not just the right search terms

traffic moved. not huge but it actually moved for the first time in months

the part that keeps tripping me up is i can't figure out why it worked or if it's even repeatable. also my sample size is small so could just be noise

has anyone else tried moving away from pure keyword strategy? or am i just late to something everyone already figured out

so i've been running a content strategy for maybe 8 months now and around month 5 i had this weird realization that all my blog posts were just sitting there getting like 12 views each and zero actual business impact

the problem wasn't the writing. it was that i was treating content like these isolated pieces that lived on my site and occasionally got indexed by google. which is fine except google doesn't really care about my site the way it did 3 years ago

started thinking about it differently — not "write a blog post" but "build something that keeps working." so now instead of publishing articles i'm building what i guess you'd call a visibility system? wrong word maybe. basically content that does multiple jobs: shows up in search, gets shared in communities, feeds into my email list, gives me stuff to talk about on linkedin

it's messier than the old approach. takes longer to set up. but the difference is that one piece of content now has like 5 different ways it can reach people instead of just sitting on my blog hoping google notices

still figuring out what actually works vs what's just extra effort for no reason. also not sure if this makes sense for every type of business or if i'm just overthinking the whole thing

curious if anyone else has moved away from the standard blog model or if i'm just reinventing the wheel here

so i've been running growth for a while now and something shifted around late last year that i can't quite explain.

we were doing everything right with SEO. good content, backlinks, technical stuff dialed in. rankings were fine. but the traffic quality just... dropped off. people landing on pages and bouncing. conversions way down even though position stayed the same.

around December i started noticing our target users weren't even using Google the same way anymore. they're asking ChatGPT. they're using Perplexity for research. one of our ICP personas told me in a call she "doesn't really Google things anymore unless it's local stuff."

so we started experimenting with agent-based workflows instead. like — what if the growth stack isn't about ranking anymore? what if it's about being the source that AI agents pull from when they're doing research for users?

i have no idea if this is the right move long term. we're basically rebuilding our content strategy around being citation-worthy instead of click-worthy. it's weird. also expensive to test.

curious if anyone else is seeing this shift or if i'm just overthinking a bad quarter.

Hello everyone,

Recently I’ve been reflecting on the problems I’m facing with growth. I’m not sure if any of you are in the same situation: I don’t have the energy to do marketing, and I’ve become overly reliant on paid ads, which has left growth feeling a bit stuck.

I run an auto accerories shop and we also have a physical storefront as well as an online store. buy I don’t have the energy to handle marketing and growth, because the day-to-day operations and management of the shop already wear me out.

A few weeks ago, I run into a platform explaining the concept of Organic Growth, which really resonated with me, so I wanted to share it with everyone:

There were a few distribution channels for us, where we mainly get exposure—including SEO, social media, communities, and so on.

There’s actually a bigger trend: all of these channels are integrating AI.

later I realized that AI search (like ChatGPT) will become the biggest traffic channel in the future. So these channels can no longer be handled separately; instead, they need to be treated as an organic traffic ecosystem, because they are all sources that AI cites.

this platform said buisnesses can grow without spending money, and it can also do SEO, GEO, and AEO, and help me manage social media, so I decided to give it a try and started with a “why not” mindset—let’s test it out first.

I feel like it really solved a major problem for me: no one had been doing marketing, and we were overly reliant on ads. Now AI changed my business, using AI can really bring me customers through organic traffic, and I only need to spend half an hour a day to finish all of today’s marketing work.

after starting to use this product, my organic traffic went from 300 and then stabilized at 1300–1400. I hope to share this experience with you and hope it can help you.

I’ve launched my AI growth agent at the end of 2025, helping SaaS, AI tools, and small brands get organic traffic.

After our first ~2,000 users, I started noticing a pattern: Most people don’t have a traffic problem. They have a distribution misunderstanding.

What most business owner & founders think: SEO means blog posts, Organic traffic means Google rankings and Growth means more content.

So they just keep publishing… and nothing really happens. No strategy and no plan.

However, I do think organic traffic is no longer just SEO.

It comes from 3 places:

1. Google
2. AI (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.)
3. Social (Reddit, Twitter/X, communities)

And each of them behaves very differently.

The real shift (this surprised me)

It’s not about “ranking” anymore.

It’s about whether you can be:

• Found (show up in queries)
• Trusted (AI + users believe you)
• Cited (especially by AI systems)

If ChatGPT doesn’t “see” or trust your content,
you basically don’t exist in a growing % of discovery.

What worked best for us (so far):

Some practical things that actually moved the needle:

• Writing content based on real user questions (not keywords)
• Structuring content so it’s easy for AI to parse (clear answers > long essays)
• Getting mentioned on Reddit / communities (this matters way more than expected)
• Focusing on distribution first, not just content creation

What didn’t work:

• Pumping out generic AI-written blogs
• Chasing high-volume keywords
• Thinking “more content = more traffic”

My current mental model:

Organic growth = not just SEO, but AI visibility across search + AI + social

Curious how others are thinking about this:

• Are you seeing traffic from ChatGPT / AI tools yet?
• Has Reddit or communities driven meaningful growth for you?
• What’s actually working for your organic strategy?

Would love to compare notes.

I’m building Workfx.AI right now. I help saas, AI product, brands and other small business owners to gain organic traffic. Basically, my product help them to gain more traffic from Google, LLMs and social media.

I just updated a new version which includes instagram agent and got a lot positive feedback. I currently have almost 2000 users (just using my product to do growth by myself). I am the only person to do growth marketing in my team and with the help of AI, we did made great progress in the last month.

How many users do you have, and how did you get your first 100 users? I’m happy to help and share some experience.

I’ve been thinking about the difference of paid ads and organic traffic, and I finally have some ideas

spend on ads → traffic comes instantly but temporarily

stop spending → traffic disappears

At some point I realized… this isn’t about product quality, it’s the about the traffic channel. With paid ads, we just been renting traffic, not owning it.

A simple way to think about it:

Paid traffic = renting an apartment；stop paying, you’re out

Organic traffic = buying a house；painful upfront, but it compounds

I tried to do some research to verify my idea. And I found that: 47% of website traffic still comes from organic search. SEO traffic can be 10x+ social media in many cases

Google gets billions of organic clicks daily vs a tiny fraction from ads

~49% of marketers say organic has the highest ROI

What’s more interesting is the compounding effect:

A good piece of content can bring traffic for months (or years)

Users tend to trust organic results more and you will get higher conversion rates

Now with AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity),

getting cited = basically free distribution

So the real shift (at least for me) is:

Stop thinking “how do I get traffic today?”

Start thinking “what traffic do I own 6 months from now?”

What’s been working recently:

Building content in clusters (not one-off posts, but around a topic + user intent)

Structuring content so AI can actually understand & cite it

Treating SEO/GEO as a system → monitor → iterate

Not saying paid ads are useless (they’re great for speed),

but relying only on them feels… fragile.

Curious how others here are thinking about this—

Are you still heavy on paid, or shifting more into organic/AI visibility?