24 BILLION pages. That's the sheer scale at which Roberto Grasiano led SEO and organic growth at Shutterstock. I'm so excited that I could convince him to come on the Masters of Search to bring you 73 minutes of Enterprise SEO masterclass. Here are my key takeaways, both for Enterprise SEO and for smaller sites: 1. At enterprise scale, you can't crawl the site Roberto couldn't audit individual pages at Shutterstock (24B pages, 500M indexed). Instead, he built comprehensive taxonomy mapping the entire site structure into clusters: broad categories (animals, cars, people), then subcategories (felines, SUVs), with exact page counts for each. This taxonomy determined which optimizations to test and how to measure impact. Even at 10,000 pages, taxonomy thinking beats keyword thinking. Group pages by intent clusters and user journey stages, not just traffic volume. 2. Content optimized for bots actually costs you money Roberto moved SEO content from top of category pages (above products) to below the fold. Theory said top placement ranks better. Result? 15% traffic increase. Users wanting specific products don't read text blocks. They want to see products immediately. When you optimize for bots over humans, you hurt user experience, which ultimately hurts rankings. Plus, bots crawling content cost server resources. His rule: content should be made for humans. If it's good enough, it'll show to the people who need it. 3. ChatGPT commerce will be big When I pushed back on instant checkout in ChatGPT (pointing to Meta's failed checkout), Roberto made a psychological argument: OpenAI builds something that feels like a friend who knows you. Remember when everyone said people would never buy things online? "No one will trust this, we need to touch products." Now our parents spend hours on Amazon. Shopping behavior changes over decades. People will buy through AI interfaces. It won't be fast, but it'll happen. 4. SEOs are underpaid Roberto's advice: learn your data, understand attribution, connect organic to revenue. Don't ask your boss to track revenue if you can't answer "how much money did you make last quarter?" Moving from vanity metrics (rankings, traffic) to commercial metrics (pipeline, revenue) gives SEOs negotiating power. We have the tools and data available. We just need to use them. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Roberto on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertograsiano/ Lottie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thankslottie/ Shutterstock on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shutterstock/

Luis Rodriguez has 12+ years of international SEO experience and led organic growth at Uber and most recently Miro. He let me pick his brain for 60 minutes about scaling organic growth in PLG companies. Here are my 4 favorite takeaways. 1) Snake oil is actually useful All the panic and noise in SEO right now is helping the industry. It's forcing SEOs to go deeper, connect with experts, and prove their value. The smoke and mirrors push people to understand what's real versus what's hype. His advice: don't drink the Kool-Aid, but use the chaos to get closer to what actually drives business results. Check your data, look at your bottom line contribution, and let that be your answer to "is this the end of times?" 2) Templates aren't just acquisition tools, but retention engines Most PLG companies think templates are just entry points for signups. But templates are collaboration points that bring more people in, create virality, and drive retention. A user can start their journey with a template, but they can also restart it, continue it, and bring more people with them. This opens up organic growth beyond just the acquisition funnel into actual retention loops. 3) Traffic has never been enough as a metric What generates value for your company is revenue, subscriptions, conversions. The goal isn't to get more visitors, it's to provide growth and business value. For measurement, he focuses on three things: holistic visibility within your category (not just prompts or keywords), sessions as a leading indicator (people still need to come to your product), and retention (are you acquiring repeatable users, not just one-time visitors). 4) SEO profiles need a recalibration He's attracted to people with automation experience who aren't afraid of tools like Lovable, not just traditional content writers. Someone who started their career with ChatGPT has completely different timelines for keyword research across multiple languages, it's a medium task now, not a huge lift. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Luis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luisrodriguezc/

Most people will tell you SEO takes too long for early-stage startups. That it's a waste of time when you're at zero. Today, you’ll hear proof why this is a limiting belief, and we’ll show you exactly how to start. My guest today is Irina Maltseva, a Barcelona-based Growth Advisor who's helped companies like Aura, Sphere, Artisan, Hunter, Riverside, and Nextiva build their organic growth motion from the ground up. I found Irina's work particularly interesting due to her focus on early-stage companies like YC alumni. They come to her with a brand-new website, zero domain authority, and a fresh product. In other words, she's solving one of the hardest problems in SEO: how do you drive meaningful growth from the ground up? ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Irina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinamaltseva/

STOP starting your content workflows with keyword research. If you don’t trust me, trust someone way smarter than me — and learn why it’s just one piece of the puzzle. New #MastersOfSearch episode with Margarita Loktionova (Content Marketing Lead @ Semrush) is LIVE now. Here's what we covered: → Why customer research should come before keyword research → How to use keywords to validate demand, not generate ideas → What “net-new value” content actually looks like → Why original research scales distribution across AI, PR & social → How research turns your brand into a source, not a commentator ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Margarita on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margarita-loktionova/ Semrush on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/semrush/

This might be the most niche flex ever, but I'm pretty sure this is the first ever publicly documented talk with a Director of AEO. Prove me wrong. Andy scaled a site to Alexa Top 100 and grew revenue from $900K to $22M. Now he's leading AI search strategy at Telnyx with 14K clients like Microsoft, Zillow, and Cisco. Here's what we covered: → Why AEO and SEO will be the same thing in 1-5 years → why most people are overthinking it → The AirOps content workflow that outranked Cambridge and Stanford → How a 4-person team replaced what used to take 15 people → Why he doesn't trust ChatGPT for commercial decisions → How 10% of Telnyx's traffic comes from AI chatbots → How this traffic converts 3x better than Google → The "airport test" for hiring (+ why skills matter less than you think) ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Andy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-muns/ Telnyx on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/telnyx/

Tomasz Niezgoda (CMO @ Surfer) let me pick his brain for 60 min on how they bootstrapped to €15M ARR, get ~20% of paying customers from AI Search, and talked to 50+ customers per week in the early days. If you care about SaaS, bootstrapping, SEO, AI Search, or marketing in general, this conversation is packed with insights. Here are 5 things that stood out: 1) They didn't touch SEO for 4 years While building an SEO tool, they focused on community, webinars, and education first. SEO came later when they had the domain authority to compete with Ahrefs and Semrush. 2) 50+ customer conversations per week in year 1 Not async support tickets. Real customer calls. Tomasz and the team split them. The knowledge they gathered became their unfair advantage over competitors. 3) AI search isn't magic, it's discipline Monitor your prompts weekly. When competitors get cited, create similar content. Track visibility like a hawk. Act fast. Repeat every single week without missing. 4) They killed top-of-funnel content completely Traffic dropped as a KPI. Now they focus purely on middle and bottom-of-funnel content. "Best alternatives" and "vs" pages feed LLMs with the exact narrative they want. 5) They doubled down on YouTube and it paid off 10x They started with just 2 videos per month, and it took 3 months to see first signs it worked. Now they have 24K subscribers, published 180 videos, and it's one of their top channels. This is just 5 of 20+ insights from our conversation. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Tomasz on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niezgoda-tomasz/ Surfer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/surfer/

Bert Winterfeld runs performance marketing at HERO Software (B2B SaaS, Series B, >$50M funding) with 6-figure monthly budgets. One of the key insights he shared in our Masters of Search interview was: Paid search in B2B always hits a ceiling, and only branding breaks through it. If you're running performance marketing at a startup with serious search budgets, this episode is packed with insights you won't find in any LinkedIn carousel. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Bert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bert-winterfeld/ HERO Software on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/herosoftware-gmbh/

Eoin Clancy is Head of Growth at AirOps, one of the most exciting AI platforms currently helping marketers scale content operations. Before AirOps, Eoin spent over 6 years at Telnyx, scaling from Growth Engineer to Head of Marketing, where he also got his first taste of AI tooling. He founded "Build AI-First" in late 2023, positioning himself at the forefront of AI-driven growth strategies. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Eoin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eoinclancy/ AirOps on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airopshq/

Carla Chicharro is Director of Revenue Marketing at Mitiga Solutions, one of Europe's most innovative climate tech companies specializing in climate risk intelligence. What makes Carla particularly fascinating is her long journey from the travel and hospitality tech industry, especially at Lodgify, now switching gears to climate tech. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Carla on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cchich/ Mitiga Solutions on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mitigasolutions/

Ayla Grzegowski is Team Lead Content & SEO at awork, a Hamburg-based B2B SaaS startup that's making waves in the project management space. What makes awork particularly interesting is their David vs. Goliath story. They're competing directly with international giants like Asana, Monday.com, and Trello. So far they're pretty successful with it and Content and SEO has played a big role in that success. 📌 Try awork for free: https://www.awork.com/ ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Ayla on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayla-grzegowski/ awork on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/awork-com/

Margus Veeber is Head of Web at Pipedrive, one of Europe's most successful SaaS unicorns, competing with the likes of HubSpot or Salesforce. Pipedrive has had great success with SEO over the last years, driving more than half a million monthly organic visitors and thousands of signups. What makes Margus particularly interesting is his unique perspective on how web strategy and conversion optimization intersect with the changing search landscape. His work on optimizing Pipedrive's multilingual website for conversion sits right at the intersection of where traffic meets business results. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Margus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margusveeber/ Pipedrive on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pipedrive/

Federico Cutillo is Head of SEO at home24, one of Europe's leading home & living e-commerce platforms competing with giants like IKEA and Wayfair. What makes Federico particularly fascinating is his 7+ year tenure leading SEO at home24. He joined about a year before the IPO and helped shape the global SEO strategy for 6 markets. ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Federico on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicocutillolinkedinprofile/ Home24 on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/home24/

Kirk Williams is the founder and owner of ZATO PPC Marketing, a US-based agency completely focused on Paid Search. Kirk has been the named the #3 Most Influential PPC Expert for 2025, his 9th year on this list. 📌 Check out https://zatomarketing.com/ ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Kirk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ppckirk/ ZATO on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zatomarketing/

Mike Rhodes has become one of the most influential voices around PPC and AI. After building and selling four businesses, Mike has spent a lot of time building products like the famous PMAX Insights Script and teaching people how to do the same. 📌 Check out https://8020agent.com and https://adstoai.com ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikerhodesideas

Bob Meijer has spent over €100M on Google Ads, is a 2x Top 50 Most Influential PPC Expert, and built a 1,900+ member community, but he almost never does interviews anymore. Until I asked him to join mine. Together with Miles, Bob co-founded PPC Mastery and started The PPC Hub. One of the largest (if not THE largest) PPC communities on the planet. While most PPC "experts" are busy selling courses with theory, Bob has been quietly building something real. 1,900+ members learning from someone who actually walks the walk. €2M+ in monthly ad spend under management. 200+ Google Ads accounts rebuilt from the ground up. When someone with Bob's track record rarely does podcasts anymore, but says yes to yours, you know it's going to be special. This is the guy who: - Spent over €100M on Google Ads across hundreds of accounts - Co-built one of the world's largest PPC communities from scratch - Taught thousands of specialists how to actually drive results - Became a 2x Top 50 Most Influential PPC Expert while staying humble We'll dive deep into: → How he and Miles built PPC Mastery into a global powerhouse → What he's learned from spending €100M+ on Google Ads → How AI is changing the PPC game (and what's not changing) → His frameworks for managing €2M+/month in ad spend ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Bob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmmeijer PPC Mastery on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ppc-mastery-com/

Felix spent 10 years building the marketing that led sevdesk from startup to a €400m exit. In this episode of the Masters of Search, he’s revealing how search (especially SEO) played a key role in it. While most marketing leaders jump companies every 2–3 years, Felix stayed the course at sevdesk for a full decade. And it paid off big time. He told me that search marketing was one of the key pillars of their growth strategy throughout the entire journey. So key, that when I asked their CFO (yes, I really did that) if he’s happy about the ROI of their search efforts, he said “absolutely.” When the finance team gives search marketing a thumbs up at a €400m exit company, you know they cracked the code. This is the guy who: - Built sevdesk’s search strategy from zero to acquisition-ready in 10 years - Made search marketing so profitable that even the CFO is a believer - Navigated multiple algorithm updates while maintaining consistent ROI - Developed search strategies that actually moved the revenue needle We’ll dive deep into: → How search became a key growth pillar at sevdesk → Which search strategies delivered the ROI that made the CFO happy → How he built a search engine that survived 10 years of changes → What role AI search is playing in their current strategy → How they think they can continue their success in an AI search world ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Felix on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felix-zipf/ sevdesk on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sevdesk-gmbh/

Matthäus built one of Germany's top SEO agencies in less than 10 years, working for A-level clients like HelloFresh, Henkel, or KfW. This Thursday, he's sharing his learnings and how he navigates his 80-person agency through the GEO transformation. While most SEO consultants are still working solo or with small teams, Matthäus co-founded Claneo with Magdalena and Martin and scaled it to 80 people. He told me that he's currently in one of the most interesting phases of the company, because they're steering an entire organization through the biggest shift in the search ecosystem for 20 years. This is the guy who: - Built Claneo from zero to 80 SEO professionals in under a decade - Won enterprise clients like HelloFresh, Henkel, KfW, WHU, and DMEXCO - Navigated multiple Google algorithm updates with dozens of client portfolios We'll dive deep into: → If he fears losing the position Claneo has earned over the last decade → How he navigates the agency and his clients through the GEO shift → How big the impact of AI overviews and zero click is across their portfolio → How big AI Search already is across their portfolio → Why he is launching his own GEO conference in October ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Matthäus on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthaeus-michalik/ Claneo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/claneo/

David Konitzny has probably spent 100+ hours figuring out how AI Search really works. While most SEO professionals are still guessing about AI search, David has been reverse-engineering the actual systems. As Product Owner Organic Search @ KKP (Kosch Klink Performance GmbH), he's not just theorizing but dissecting Google's and ChatGPT's code, extracting internal AI prompts, and analyzing real performance data. This is the guy who: - Analyzed Google's "folsrch" system and mapped out how AI Overviews are actually built - Figured out how to extract Gemini's internal search prompts - Analyzed thousands of AI Overview impacts with hard data - Debunked the biggest myths about AI search optimization When someone spends most of their days literally looking under the hood of AI search systems, you should tune in. We'll dive deep into: → How AI Overviews really work (the technical breakdown) → How LLMs actually perform live search → What query fan-out means and why it matters → The uncomfortable truths about AI search optimization → What this means for your SEO strategy moving forward ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkonitzny/ KKP on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/koschklinkperformance/

Malte Landwehr just quit his 6-figure corporate job (VP SEO @ idealo) to bet everything on AI search. So I went live with him on the 1st episode of "Masters of Search", to ask him everything about it. Malte spent 5 years leading one of Europe's strongest SEO machines. And he walked away from it all to join a 10-person AI startup. Why? Because he believes we're about to witness the biggest shift in digital marketing history. When someone with Malte's track record bets his career on it, you should pay attention. We dove deep into: → How he thinks about the "Google is dead" claims → What he believes really drives visibility in AI search → How he thinks about the shift from SEO to GEO → Why he left his VP role for a startup → What this means for your marketing strategy ▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Malte on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/landwehr/ Peec AI on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/peec-ai/