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Hey hey! It's Connor.

Real talk: The strategies that got you ranking in 2022 are the same ones costing you traffic today.

They weren’t bad strategies. They did work. The problem is SEO has shifted, but most people are still running the 2022 playbook without even realizing it.

I've been doing SEO for 10+ years across my own companies and 50+ B2B and SaaS sites. I’ve audited tons of websites. The same 2022 habits are still showing up, and they’re costing brands real traffic.

Here's how the old vs. new breaks down:

1/ E-E-A-T is non-negotiable in 2026

Back in the day, if you had a byline and a bio, you were good to go.

SEO today needs real experience signals, such as original data, case studies, and first-person results. Google wants proof you've actually done the thing.

2/ AI Content without a POV gets ignored

In 2022, you only needed to spin content fast. The focus was publish volume.

Now, we need AI-assisted drafts and human-edited expertise. Undifferentiated AI content gets filtered out. Yours needs a POV.

3/ Search Intent over keyword matching

If you’re still just matching keywords, you’re years behind.

What works today is matching the intent behind the keyword. Informational vs. navigational vs. commercial. Same word, different content format.

4/ Topical Authority over scattered content

Used to publish blogs on whatever had search volume? Doesn't work that way anymore.

Today, you need to build a content cluster around one core topic. Shallow coverage of many topics loses to deep coverage of a few.

5/ One publish is no longer enough

We used to post once, then move on. 

In today’s SEO, you need to distribute every piece of content across all your platforms (newsletter, LinkedIn, partner network). This is how it gets indexed and cited.

6/ Backlink quality matters more than volume

Years back, we focused on the volume of links. Quantity was a proxy for authority. Not anymore.

The new focus? Quality and relevance. One link from a trusted source in your niche outperforms 50 random directory submissions.

7/ People miss LLM Visibility

Before, ranking on Google meant the work’s done.

Now, you need to rank on Google and show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity. 

We ran this exact playbook for EcomBalance. Within 6 months, the site was ranking in the top 3 on ChatGPT for high-intent ecommerce bookkeeping queries, generating 25+ qualified leads and $10K+ in revenue directly from AI search. Zero ad spend. Here’s the full case study.

SEO in 2026 isn't harder. It's just different.

The fundamentals still hold. Write for real people, build authority, earn trust. But the channels and signals have expanded.

If you're still optimizing only for Google, you're leaving the LLM layer completely unaddressed. That's where the next wave of organic traffic is coming from.

Pick one item from this list that you know you're still doing the old way. Fix that first.

If you want to see where your site stands on both Google and ChatGPT visibility, grab a free SEO audit here. Takes 15 minutes and you'll walk away knowing exactly what to fix.

See ya next Saturday,

Connor

Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. My SEO Course: “The SEO System” teaches the exact daily, weekly, and monthly SEO processes I’ve used to scale multiple companies to 6, 7, & 8 figures in sales. Available for pre-sale now!

2. TrioSEO: Hire me & my team to create SEO content for your business. We’ll create a comprehensive SEO plan, execute, & keep you updated so your business gains more traffic, leads, & sales. Get a Free SEO Audit.

3. Promote yourself to 100,000+ SEOs, marketers, & entrepreneurs by sponsoring this newsletter and my social channels. (Booked out 1 month). Email me for info.

Connor Gillivan has been building six, seven, and eight-figure businesses for the past 10 years with SEO. It’s my personal mission to create a community and services that help you grow your business by finding more people who would benefit from what you. When I started out, I wanted to make the community an inclusive, welcoming table where everyone can come to get help using high-end SEO strategies to take their businesses to the next level. After several years, and over 3000 combined followers across Facebook and LinkedIn, I will always aim to get better at what I do every single day. In addition, my primary focus is on my relationship with you. This way every time you interact with me, you end up getting ideas that take your project to the next level. I particularly appreciate when my following provides feedback via testimonials, reviews, and comments left on my site or social media accounts. Because with that feedback, I can use it to make your next experience even better than the last. Since I put so much effort into my relationship with you, I hope that any investment in me is exactly the way you hoped it would be. Because by choosing to utilize my services, it’s my promise that I will provide an experience that you will love over and over again. Now, as much as I care about making the world a better and more efficient place for businesses like yours, I also care about your privacy. I’m committed to the right to your privacy and strive to provide a safe and secure user experience. My Privacy Policy, to which you can find a link at the bottom of my website homepage, explains how I collect, store and use personal information, provided by you on my website. It also explains important information that ensures I won’t abuse the information that you provide to me in good faith. By accessing and using my website, you can trust that what you want to be kept private, will be kept private. If at any time you would like to read the Privacy Policy and get a better understanding of your rights and liabilities under the law, feel free to visit my site, find the privacy policy in the footer, and read it. If there is something you are concerned about or wish to get more clarity on, please let me know by replying to this email. The Privacy Policy also informs you of how to notify me to stop using your personal information. If you wish to view my official policies, please visit my official website.

When you visit my website you may provide me with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website. For example, you may need to provide the following information: your name, website URL information, email address, and home and business phone number.

In addition to providing the foregoing information, if you choose to correspond further with me through email, I may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone. It also explains important information that ensures we won’t abuse the information that you provide to us in good faith. By accessing and using my website, you can trust that what you want to be kept private, will be kept private. If at any time, if you would like, you can read my Privacy Policy and get a better understanding of your rights and liabilities under the law. Feel free to visit the site, find the Privacy Policy in the footer and read it. If there is something you are concerned about or wish to get more clarity on, please let me know by contacting me by replying to this email. The Privacy Policy also informs you of how to notify me to stop using your personal information. If you wish to view my official policies, please visit my website.