In this episode, Jeremy Rivera chats with Tom Malesic, founder of EZ Marketing, to explore effective digital marketing strategies tailored specifically for small businesses. Tom shares his insights on website importance, local SEO tactics, content creation, and the impact of AI on marketing.Key Topics:

• The foundational role of a high-quality, trust-building website
• Authenticity through real photos versus stock images
• Developing unique brand voice and avoiding mimicry of competitors
• Local SEO techniques, including local service pages and Google Map Pack optimization
• The importance of personalized content and FAQs for voice search
• How AI is revolutionizing content creation, video generation, and website development
• Managing geographic targeting and scaling marketing efforts based on budget
• The significance of continuous photo and video updates for local ranking
• The shift from traditional link building to mentions and citations
• Future outlook: AI advancements and their influence on small business marketing

Julia Bocchese has spent nearly nine years helping small businesses in the creative and holistic space get found online — not through paid ads or social media grind, but through SEO, Pinterest strategy, and now AI search optimization. She also teaches SEO at the college level, which gives her a rare ability to break down the technical into the practical. In this conversation, Julia unpacks why Pinterest is one of the most underused traffic channels for small businesses, how to think about AI as a discovery platform, and what she actually looks at when a client hands her a site to fix.

Julia is the founder of Julia Renee Consulting, a Philadelphia-based consultancy serving creative and holistic small businesses — interior designers, photographers, midwives, therapists, and more. She offers SEO services, Pinterest strategy and management, blog and content optimization, and AI search (AEO) services. She also teaches SEO at the college level — without textbooks, because anything printed a year ago is already out of date.

• Pinterest as a search engine: Why Julia treats Pinterest with the same keyword discipline as Google — and why most businesses are leaving long-lived traffic on the table by ignoring it.
• The longevity advantage: Julia has clients with pins from 2009 that still drive traffic. The math on why Pinterest content compounds while social posts expire.
• Unexpected Pinterest niches: A niche Olympic swim training company with zero Pinterest competition. A Swiss boarding school. Luxury yachts. Why the "I'm not visual enough" objection almost never holds.
• Video pins done right: Audio is muted by default. Talking-head videos underperform. What actually works — and how it differs completely from Instagram.
• The Pinterest-Google double dip: Julia regularly sees Pinterest boards and individual pins ranking in Google SERPs for the same keywords her clients are chasing organically.
• AI search optimization: Why the most important information needs to live at the top of the page, and why distributing FAQs throughout service pages outperforms a single standalone FAQ page.
• Link building for solopreneurs: How Julia helps small businesses find local placements that do double duty — links and direct audience exposure in one.
• Reporting without owning revenue: Why Julia reports on traffic quality and impressions rather than conversions she can't control.
• The biggest SEO trap right now: Writing for bots instead of the humans who are actually going to pay you.
• On-page quick wins: Julia's five-point checklist when she takes on a new site — including the location-in-the-footer problem she sees on almost every local business site.

On why she teaches without textbooks:

"I don't give my students textbooks. Anything printed a year ago is already out of date in SEO. The syllabus changes throughout the semester as new findings come out — the class can look totally different from one year to the next."

On why Pinterest belongs in your strategy:

"People aren't going to Pinterest to follow people. They're searching for information. That's why I focus on it alon...

What if the biggest SEO opportunity for most businesses isn't a new tool, a new tactic, or a new algorithm hack — it's simply showing up consistently and claiming your authority?

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Jason Wade, founder of Ninja AI and an expert in AI visibility architecture, GEO, and AEO. They go deep on what it actually means to engineer your entity, why most SEOs are still running 2015 playbooks, and why one podcast episode can outperform a year of blogging.

Here's Jason's recap of this Unscripted SEO episode

• What 'AI visibility' means and why GEO/AEO is really just visibility engineering
• Entity optimization: how AI systems recognize authority — and how you train them
• The content multiplication math: one podcast → 50 assets
• Why most businesses have never actually said what they do on their website
• How Google's core algorithm updates have punished hacking and rewarded authenticity
• The Office Space test: 'What would you say you do here?' — applied to your homepage
• Why Reddit and podcasts rank instantly compared to traditional SEO timelines
• E-E-A-T in practice: showing up, speaking up, and having others verify it

“If a company can take that friction away and do the stuff they won't do — that's where the magic is.” — Jason Wade

“One podcast could become 50 assets. One podcast.” — Jason Wade

“You're training the system in the easiest way possible — by simply showing up.” — Jason Wade

“Your content gap analysis should be: what are all the competitors missing that you can provide?” — Jeremy Rivera

• Guest: Jason Wade —

ninjaai.com | jasonwade.com | LinkedIn

Services: AI Visibility | GEO | AEO | AI SEO Strategies

Article: 25 Local SEO Tips — AI Upgrade

Host: Jeremy Rivera | SEO Arcade | Unscripted SEO Podcast

More from SEO Arcade: Podcast-Based Link Building Service | Entity Optimization with Jason Barnard

Like what you heard? Subscribe, leave a review, and share with an SEO who needs to hear this. And if you want to explore how podcast-based SEO services could multiply your content and backlinks — schedule a call at SEOArcade.com.

Stephan Bajaio — CEO and co-founder of Vibe Logic, former co-founder of Conductor, and ex-CMO — joins Jeremy Rivera on the Unscripted SEO Podcast for one of the most candid conversations we've had about why the SEO industry keeps losing the narrative about itself — and what practitioners can actually do about it.

Stephan built his career from the dot-com era through to co-founding one of the largest enterprise SEO platforms ever built. He's seen the industry from every angle — agency, platform, C-suite — and he doesn't pull punches about where we've gone wrong or how to fix it.

• Why the GEO / AIO naming debate is a symptom of a bigger identity problem — and why fixing it starts with SEOs, not executives
• What SEO actually is when you strip away the jargon: connecting organizational wisdom to the audience that needs it
• The lonely island problem — why even great SEOs fail when the content team, dev team, and CMO aren't aligned
• How conflicting KPIs create internal friction and a practical approach to working with — not against — the people who control execution
• Why the best keyword research is a conversation — Jeremy's concrete-wall installer example and how to build content from real expert interviews
• Content value beyond organic traffic — why reporting only on organic is leaving most of the story untold
• Vibe Logic's 'web presence intelligence' framework and the concept of being where decisions are formed, not just where they're made
• Why passion is the one trait in great SEOs you simply cannot teach

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera sits down with Brandon Leibowitz, founder of SEO Optimizers — a full-service digital marketing agency based in Los Angeles. With nearly two decades of experience in SEO, paid ads, social media, and coaching, Brandon shares his grounded, practitioner-level take on the AI search landscape and what actually moves the needle.

• How AI-powered search surfaces (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot) are — and aren’t — changing SEO workflow
• Why schema markup is the highest-leverage technical tactic for AI visibility
• The difference between informational and transactional AI search behavior
• A page-by-page schema architecture strategy for e-commerce and service sites
• How to use competitor schema analysis as a gap-finding tactic
• Why content + backlinks + technical SEO must all work together

“The AI overview is just a featured snippet — just a new way to rebrand it for Google. The old tactics, the old strategies already worked.” — Brandon Leibowitz

“The more touch points you have and more places people find you, the more likely they are to want your product or service in the future.” — Brandon Leibowitz

• SEO Optimizers — Brandon’s agency
• Free Gift + Classes from Brandon
• Free Website SEO Analysis
• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs
• Brandon on LinkedIn
• Unscripted SEO Podcast
• Jeremy Rivera – About

Website: seooptimizers.com

Free Gift: seooptimizers.com/gift

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brandonleibowitz

The Unscripted SEO Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Rivera, SEO consultant and founder of SEO Arcade. Each episode features candid, unscripted conversations with leading SEO practitioners, agency founders, and digital marketing veterans.

Greg Merrilees is the founder of Studio1 Design — a conversion-focused website agency that has designed for over 2,000 businesses worldwide, including Hollywood A-listers like Sylvester Stallone. He’s the author of Next Level Website Design and has been building websites since 2009.

In this episode, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Greg to tackle whether websites are still relevant, how to build for searcher intent, why copywriting beats design every time, and what the rise of AI vibe coding actually means for your brand.

• Do you really need a website in 2025? Greg’s nuanced take on social media vs. owned assets
• The cold / warm / hot traffic model and how to match your CTA to intent
• Why Microsoft Clarity should be on every website (and how it compares to Hotjar)
• Website design trends to avoid in 2026 — and what converts instead
• How to find your unique positioning in a commoditized niche
• Interactive lead magnets vs. PDF downloads — what actually converts today
• The AI sameness problem: why vibe-coded websites all look the same

• Studio1 Design — Greg’s agency
• Next Level Website Design (Book)
• Free Resources — Custom GPT + book companion
• Microsoft Clarity — Free heatmaps & session recording
• Enterprise Fitness (macro calculator example)
• Yoshua Law (case study)
• Greg’s email: greg@studio1design.com
• Connect with Jeremy Rivera
• SEO Arcade — Podcast-based content marketing & link building

• Don’t Chase Website Design Trends in 2026
• The Hidden Cost of Fancy Website Effects: Lost Conversions
• How We Turned a Law Firm Redesign Into 60% More Conversions
• How We Boosted a Fitness Business’ Bookings By 64%
• AI Killed Your Website Strategy: Here’s What Works Now
• How to Create a Personal Brand That Attracts Dream Clients

Hosted by Jeremy Rivera

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Charlie Birch, Founder and Creative Director of Humaniz Collective, to explore the collision between brand strategy and modern SEO — and why treating them as separate disciplines is costing founders real revenue.

• Why Charlie's background in performance, psychology, and crisis intervention makes her uniquely equipped to navigate brand identity
• How brand strategy and SEO have more in common than most agencies admit
• The danger of only measuring attraction — and why conversion and retention are the real metrics that matter
• Why copying your competitors' strategy only makes you more like them — not better than them
• How Charlie's Brand IdQ Framework turns founder instinct into a shared decision-making lens for the entire team
• A real-world example of how interviewing the installer — not just doing keyword research — uncovered an angle nobody was targeting
• How to evaluate whether a campaign is the right fit for your brand before you invest

Humaniz Collective Website

Brand IdQ — Take the Free Integrity Snapshot

The Inner Circle — Apply for Free Monthly Networking (2nd Thursday each month, 1:30 PM ET — mention Unscripted SEO Podcast to get prioritized!)

On Raising Brands Newsletter

Breaking the Bottleneck — Founder Interviews

Charlie on LinkedIn

Humaniz Collective on Instagram

Spacebar Collective (Chris Tweeten) — 'Publishing more won't fix a weak SEO game. It's about leverage.'

Permacast Walls — The precast concrete walls example that revealed the "anti-dig" keyword opportunity

SEO Arcade — Content Gap Analysis & Forecasting Tools

Jeremy Rivera is an SEO strategist with 19+ years of experience and founder of SEO Arcade. He specializes in connecting SEO tactics to real business outcomes, helping brands turn podcast conversations into high-leverage content strategies.

Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a founder who needs to hear it.

In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Paul Baterina, Senior SEO Manager at REVOLVE — a publicly traded fashion e-commerce brand with over 260,000 products. Paul has been at REVOLVE for 13 years, making him one of the rarest SEOs in the industry: a specialist who went deep on one brand instead of bouncing across industries.

• Why long-tail category pages became REVOLVE's most provable SEO strategy — and how Paul sold it to C-suite
• The 3-product rule for deciding when a category page is worth creating vs. when to kill it
• Why luxury fashion brands resist text-heavy SEO content — and how to work with that, not against it
• The honest state of AI/LLM visibility for a major e-commerce brand: $58K/month in LLM-driven revenue and what that actually means
• How to reverse-engineer LLM citations to find the best places to get your brand mentioned
• Link context signals — why what's around a link matters as much as the link itself
• Bill Slawski's patent analysis work and how it connects to Koray Tugberk's topical authority framework
• A live SEO test showing a 25% lift in organic traffic from adding content to long-tail pages

• REVOLVE (revolve.com) — Paul's employer and the e-commerce brand discussed throughout
• Unscripted SEO Podcast — Subscribe for more unscripted SEO conversations
• Jeremy Rivera — Host — About your host
• Keyword Clusters Based on SERP Data — SEO Arcade — Understanding how Google groups related queries
• Opportunity Sizing in SEO — SEO Arcade — How to quantify SEO wins for C-suite
• White-Label Link Building Services — SEO Arcade — Community-based and podcast-based link building
• Podcast-Based Content & Link Building — SEO Arcade — The full PAASS service
• SEO By The Sea — Bill Slawski's Google patent research (search "Bill Slawski SEO By The Sea")

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-baterina-079ab629/
• Twitter: https://x.com/paulbaterina
• Slack: SEO Community & Asians In Search (run by George Nguyen)
• Conferences: SearchLove San Diego