Sixteen years building organic search and, recently, AI visibility, into a thriving acquisition channel for B2B companies including Adobe, Skedulo, Airtable, Ribbon, Algolia, Outreach, and Atlassian.
By the numbers
- 16 yearsleading organic growth
- 83%below the cost of paid search
- 70xthe industry content hit rate
- 10xtraffic for a division at Adobe
What I do
- AI visibility (AEO/GEO/etc.) for business expansion
- SEO growth strategy
- enterprise and technical SEO
- editorial and content operations
- demand generation
- team building
- P&L ownership
- executive stakeholder management
Select Work
Adobe
Led a three-year embedded search and content engagement that grew a division’s subdomain traffic 10x, with only 200 pages produced driving 92% of that traffic.
Atlassian
Turned isolated wins into a repeatable program and won the number one organic ranking for “agile” after years of internal and agency attempts had failed.
Splunk (Cisco)
Led search intelligence and certified content across IT operations and cybersecurity with the global digital marketing team.
Achievers
Moved acquisition from $16 per click on paid search to $0.05 per organic session.
Skedulo
Grew organic sessions 68% in year one and 580% in year two, reaching 1,900% above baseline by year three.
Talend
Grew unbranded organic traffic 199% over two years, with more than ten pieces of content that dominated their respective rankings.
Airtable
Ran a three-year program delivering bespoke research and content assets at scale to a demanding in-house team, 168 research and outline packages in the final year alone.
Sumo Logic
Grew organic sessions about 300% in six months.
Marketo
Chosen by the co-founder as Marketo’s SEO partner and ran the program for five years, also co-authored the company’s guide to SEO and PPC.
HireRoad, formerly Acendre
Led a complex, high-risk migration and rebrand across multiple domains and brands. Traffic never declined (as with every migration Profound Strategy led over 16 years) and ran 14.5% above forecast at one year.
Other clients included Jobvite, Outreach, Algolia, Demandbase, BambooHR and Zuora.
Experience
Profound Strategy
B2B SEO, AI, and content consultancy, founded and owned. 35 employees at peak. Clients in enterprise software, HR tech, financial services, and more, pre-revenue to multi-billion-dollar companies, seed thru acquisition and IPO.
- Built organic search into a durable, growing, high-ROI acquisition channel: growth forecasted a quarter ahead, costed against other channels, measured in pipeline and revenue impact, owned strategy through execution.
Marketing Impact
- A meta analysis of 12 brands over four years revealed that B2B buyer clicks from our programs cost 20 to 50 cents (against $3 to $18 on paid search), with one program reaching 4 cents per in-market click.
- More than tripled brand mention rate in Google AI answers in under a month, 8% to 25%, and lifted citation share against tracked competitors from 28% to 44%, moving from third to second in the category.
- Raised correct product attribution in AI answers from 10% to 59% on non-branded buyer questions.
- Developed a content model with a repeatable hit rate north of 70%, roughly 70 times the industry norm of 1%.
Revenue Impact
- Drove 8 figures in attributed sales opportunities and 1,000s of inbound leads per year for clients from organic search.
- Owned consultancy P&L, hiring, and delivery across hundreds of engagements, renewed 9 of every 10 first engagements, and regularly presented organic strategy and results directly to CMOs, CROs, and boards.
Syllabus
SEO platform for rank-signal analysis and content performance in AI search. Spun out of the consultancy.
Background
Education
- Regent University, BS, Organizational Leadership and Management, 2007.
Board and advisory
- Inspiration Ministries, Board Member, 2015 to 2018.
- SIIA CODiE Awards, Judge, 2018 to 2020.
Speaking and publications
- Panelist, “SEO in the AI Era,” Liquid Web, 2024.
- Co-author, The Inbound Marketer’s Guide to SEO and PPC, Marketo, 2013.
- Contributor, Uberflip, Grasshopper, TMSA and Business 2 Community.
- Columnist, Search Engine Land and MarTech, roughly 30 bylined articles, 2014 to 2017.
What’s Next
Closing the consultancy in 2026 to lead pipeline growth from SEO and/or the AI space inside one company.