Why AI Recommends Your Competitor Instead of Your SaaS with Leo Poitevin #249

Speaker A: Hello. Hello everyone. This is your host Akil Jabbar.

Speaker B: And welcome back to another episode of SaaS District. In today's episode we'll be talking about why AI recommends your competitor instead of your SaaS. And today we have our guest Leo Poitovin joining us. Leo is the founder of Astrac, which is an SEO agent agency that helps ambitious SaaS companies build sustainable organic growth through SEO strategy, content production and link building. Now before launching Leo led initiatives for SEO, uh, across international companies and helping brands improve their search visibility as well as organic performance. Leo also share his practical insights on SEO and link building through his YouTube channel which we'll link in the show notes. And he helps marketers and founders better understand what drives sustainable search growth. So welcome Leo, super excited to have you on the show today.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you Akhil for having me on the show. I'm really happy to be here to chat with all the SaaS owner and everything because it's like yeah, type of business that I love and uh, so really to discuss about everything and one I think note that you perhaps don't know by the way. Um, so my main activity is definitely the agency but on the side uh, I have a second activity which is a backlink marketplace which is like, you know, marketplace but really closer to the SaaS than uh, to Amazon, you know, so uh, really interesting as well. And so definitely more on the agency side but also SaaS owner.

Speaker B: Super cool, so super, super, super mixed in. SaaS and agency owners. That's the both world. Exactly, yeah. Ah so, so, so Leo, before, before you found Astrax, right We mentioned, you know, you worked on SEO for many international companies and then which then led for you to then build your own agency. Uh, before we get started into the meeting of the interview, can you share maybe a few lessons that you learned from some of the experiences that shaped uh, your approach to growth today and how you approach SEO.

Speaker C: Yeah, so I think few stuff that I learned when I was out of SEO in this big company, marketing agencies and everything that I used to work before I um, set up my own agency is that first I was really performance based. So I was mostly working in the gambling industry before uh, that I do that. So gambling is like kind of heavily regulated and there is a bit of like the gray gambling industry which I was you know, often uh, being in. So it's really performance based because you cannot have a long term view. So everything have to be you know, performing on a day to day basis and you cannot hide behind like visibility or like you know, kind of very wars that you can hide behind when you're like in a normal agency. So uh, it was a really big listen about like being competitive and performing on day to day, like as fast as possible. That was something that was really interesting, uh, and that was really important for me later to be like focused on performances and to not hide behind, I want to say lies, because they're not lies, but like, you know, just trying to make the stuff pretty. Um, the second lesson I will say that I learned during all this time that was really valuable for me later is uh, you know, all different markets tend to work. So what I learned on French market will not be the same for the US markets, will not be the same for Japanese markets, etc. So trying to work on like Italy, Japan, South Africa, like a lot of different markets, it teach you a lot of different lessons and you understand that you um, cannot operate on every market in the same way because you know, habit of consumption will be different because algorithm from Google will be different, because a lot of stuff will be different overall media landscape, etc. Etc. So that was a big lesson as well that still, you know, is super useful for me on the day to day basis. And the last one will be that I start to, you know, post a lot on Twitter, then start to speak at your conferences, then start to do some YouTube video on the side. And I said, and I learned that you know, speaking a lot about what you do and publishing content about what you do is really a good way to build, you know, some people following you, having an interest in your content, having an interest in what you say, and that's an asset, which is really interesting in the long term. So that's also why now I'm um, you know, sharing as much as I can on podcasts and nursing because that's like something that is super, uh, interesting, that creates a good value for the people, I guess, and for me as well. So that's as well, something that I learned through the years. I started that, you know, at the beginning when I still student and I keep pushing, keep publishing, keep telling, you know, even if that's like random stories of my daily life was interesting for people and so definitely is like, I mean I think that's the three main lessons that I learned during my uh, five, six, seven years as a head of SEO in different big companies before to jump on my own adventure.

Speaker B: Love it. Now, you know, a lot of people say SEO is dead, especially now with AI coming out. I don't know if that's true. So I'd love to hear what is SEO dead? And if. No, now I have this new term, which is geo. Um, maybe you could share a little bit what's changed differently today when it comes from traditional SEO link building, does it still matter? Does SEO work or what's changed in this world in that scene?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think one important thing is that everybody says SEO is dead since at least the last 15 years or something like that. But I mean, for once they kind of, uh, I will not say true, but, you know, I don't see people searching in Google in like something like I will say 10 years. You know, most probably people will not be searching so much in Google anymore. And so I think a lot of stuff will be done via AI. Definitely. Uh, and yeah, most probably different way of searching and different way of finding, you know, good content and good solution and good, you know, providers and everything on the web. So I think there is some change definitely going on. I think it would be lie and it will be like, you know, hiding behind my truth to be lucky. There is no change. And everything there, uh, is definitely changing. The stuff that changes that, um, we used to be like, we do a search on Google, we click different blue links, we, you know, do all the cynical work and read everything and being like, okay, the solution that I think is good for me or the advice that I think is good for me is this one. According to all of what I heard and read. And now what happened is that ChatGPT or AI overall is doing this job, you know, is reading the 10 links that you have on Google. Because more or less what happened on AI when you do a search is that it's searching sometimes on Google, picking, you know, a ton of different web pages, reading all of that, mixing and synthesizing all of that, and telling, like, according to what I know about you and what you told me in this prompt and everything, the good solution for you seems to be this one. You have also deserted options and everything. So a lot of the job that was before, you know, the people's job of reading and everything, I've been delegated into AI, which is kind of the assistant now. And so there is a lot of, um, decision that are, uh, you know, before we were doing all stuff and now AI is doing for us and we trust a lot AI. So what we can see, for example, as data, is that the leads that are provided by AI tend to close at higher rates, tend to close with a higher, you know, average basket and everything. And the source of acquisition Overall is really, really strong. Um, few things that make it super, super complex is first it's kind almost impossible to track, you know, exactly the volume of leads that are coming through AI that where your brands have been recommended by AI, etc. So all the, you know, classic tracking, data analytics and everything is super tricky to do. And by tricky I mean almost impossible. So generally you just have to be like I trust that this channel of acquisition will be important for me and you have to jump in it. I mean right now some people are in this situation wise. It's important for me for most of the SaaS. I think it is really important because a lot of SaaS decision are made, you know, uh, with AI and everything. Uh, and the other side is like perhaps it's not important right now for you, but it will most probably be important in two years or something like that. So you know, better to prepare the field and to be, you know, start to build some maturity and to build some recommendation in AI. Um, then we can deep dive into different topics, subtopics of SEO. You know, all they are affecting because I think some are really affected, some are less so. For example all the technical aspect of SEO is not so much affected because in the end M, you still need Google to crawl your website, you still need AI to crawl your website. So you still have like a lot of stuff about crawling and indexing and understanding the website, rendering it, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, for content, definitely all the informational content that we used to publish. Like yeah, 10 tips how to you know, grow your SaaS. Type of content that is not really, you know, interesting anymore, doesn't really get so much clicks anymore. AI overview is taking stealing a lot of clicks. Uh, ChatGPT people tend to do that with ChatGPT now. So uh, all the informational content is naturally interesting but a lot of new content open as well. So all the use case you can do will be super interesting for ChatGPT. All the pricing, all the details, all the you know about us, all the details about the team, all your data is type of stuff that GPT will love. And for the link building we can uh, deep dive a bit later on uh, into that because it will be some topic which is super interesting where we have an approach which is a bit uh, you know, uh, weird for some people. But we use a lot of LinkedIn, classic marketplace and stuff that we used to have for SEO initially to promote GU as well. So we use all of that to do listicle on different websites to promote your solution. And generally that's the uh, you know, one key element that tend to deliver the best results for us and for your clients, for our clients. So yeah, definitely, uh, link building for me is the one that is in its traditional way less important now than it used to be. But uh, in the new form that I discover in my way, you know, it's the one that gained the best buff. So it's something that, yeah, uh, I do way more now than used to do before.

Speaker B: Yeah, it seems like you're at the cutting edge of what's going on, what's working. Right. Things are changing so quickly. Right. So I think nobody truly understands what works yet, but I think it's over time we're learning in these last couple of months. So um, you mentioned geo, right. That's the big term that a lot of people are optimizing now, not as much as SEO. So maybe you can share what is geo and then um, maybe help us understand what makes brands consistently show up. Now how do you stand out and show up in ChatGPT, the perplexity and cloud and other of these AI recommendation tools where maybe a lot of the competitors are staying invisible even though they're maybe running some kind of classical SEO strategy. Um, and what's working?

Speaker C: Yeah, so GEO stands for like Generative Engine Optimization. So I think that's the terms that people use. Some ah, other use uh, aio. So like AI optimization or AI Visibility optimization. Anyway, you know a lot of different slang terms that come out from a lot of different countries and a lot of different um, people tend to be agree on different terms. But anyway it's optimization overall for AI, you know, um, LLM and everything. So we will contain that um, AI overview in some way like, which is like at the top of Google, the small AI summary that you get, uh, that will count. So that's one which is a little bit different than the others. And uh, you have as well AI mod that will be a little bit different than the others, which is like the new Google feature that Google will push more and more and more in the future years. And then you have all the classic LLM. So we will say Gemini, we'll say chatgpt, Claude, uh, perplexity, all of the stuff that tend to you know, do search for you in some ways on the web and to give you a bit of the synthetic way of all of that. So then the big question is like, you know, why my brand is not coming in chatgpt when I hire the best SaaS for accounting or something like that and why it is always, you know, I don't know, QuickBooks coming in there for, for that. So to understand that the best all chatgpt works, uh, and I say chatgpt, but I say all LLM because more or less they all work the same. So there's two big type of queries on one side we'll have the queries that are directly answered by the model. So for example, if you ask ChatGPT, um, how long do you need to cook an egg? It will tell you like in its three minutes. It doesn't need to go on the web to search stuff like that. It doesn't care. You will never be sighted in that because it's not something that you will need to search on the web anyway. The second part will be like the specific solution. So generally we'll be like what is the best accounting SaaS for me? Because I'm uh, you know, agency owner and I need to do my accounting and my, I'm set up in Thailand, you know, so I need something which is like reliable for that and everything. So that's like really specific generally in terms of queries. Um, but even if you need something a bit more, you know, short tail, let's say you can have something which will be best accounting SaaS for the US in 2026, you know, um, on this type of queries because ChatGPT doesn't have all the answers, you know, immediately is like I better search on the web to get the good documents, the last latest up to date stuff. And then it takes all the documents that he find on the web. Generally when he will search for something like that on the web it will search for reviews, you know, of the one that he knows he will search for um, listicles. So typically who has done um, top 10 best? You uh, know accounting SaaS who has done um, um review of the different SaaS who have done like versus page of like QuickBooks versus you know, other accounting SaaS etc. Etc. So typically he will have done all of that. It will do like I don't know, three, four, five different searches on Google. Take like a total 50 documents for example. It will grasp, let's say the five documents that looks the most reliable for him and generally based on that it will do his uh, own listicle. So he will do his own, you know, list that will be for him the most reliable and the most interesting. And then because he took a lot of documents on the web, the big short answer for you is that if you want to, you know, Be uh, present on ChatGPT and to be present in different LLM and to be performing in geo. The most important stuff is to live in your ecosystem and be promoted by the influential people in your ecosystem. So it means that if somebody is doing uh, top ten, uh, of your category, you know, promoting some, some different apps of your category, uh, you need to reach out to this guy to be sure that you will be included in this top 10 as well, you know, and do that for as much as possible. Top 10 and generally at some point you will get out in ChatGPT. One of the complex stuff is that for example, if you are CRM, being in the top 10 of the best CRM is not easy, you know. So perhaps some categories sometimes you need to niche down, you know, perhaps being in the top five best CRM for uh, the, the woofers. That's okay, that's something that is doable, you know. So then you need to niche down and to climb up the, the classic stuff like being the best CRM in SEO was really complex. Being the best CRM in GEO is also complex. So yeah, a big overlap between both uh, and generally it's something that uh, was a lot of work on the ecosystem. You generally end up by having some, some stuff citing you, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think, you know it comes down to really being very specific right now. I think being instead of previously where you can be more generic with your content that you created and that'd be very, very specific because people are looking for very specific use cases for their own use versus like, you know, more generic answer.

Speaker C: And I think that something which is really interesting when you're saying that is that before people naturally, or me personally naturally, I would not have searched best, you know, for example best accounting SaaS or best CRM, uh, especially for um, SEO agency, but uh, you know, an SEO agency that does between um, 1 and 5 million a year, you know, and you need to have like a lot of details to have something that's really sorted your suitcase. And you can be searching by industry, you could be searching by uh, you know, overall size of team, by a lot of different ways of searching. And so that's like quite complex to you know, initially. And when you used to search on Google, I was just doing my search like, yeah, I need the best CRM, you know. And I will read a lot of stuff and I will make my mind. The good point with ChatGPT is because it has all the history or all the, by the way, because it has all the history that you are doing. When you are searching for something, he knows already all the context. So he knows already the industry where you are working on, it knows already the country where you're based, it knows already the size of your team, etc. So when you will do the research, it will automatically take, you know, all the stuff and do some really specific search. So generally do super specific search, more specific that people used to do. Uh, so typically I really do, for a lot of clients, some super specific pages. Because I mean if GPT is doing specific searches, that's in one of your icp, we can do specific pages that will be interesting, that will be picked up by GPT and way better chances of ranking overall. And so yeah, ChatGPT will do all this work and even if you're more general and you have like all these details in your, you know, general description, um, GPT will be able to pick them, etc. So the good point is that it will put you at the top. But the bad point is that if you're already the first one, you know, in your category and you just like super generalist and trying to address everyone, sometimes some outsider will come and you know, steal your place. Because ChatGPT will be like, yeah, no, that's more relevant because he told me that is, you know, specialized in SEO agencies. So I'm picking this one definitely because, uh, you know, my clients or my clients, the guy prompting me is, you know, an SEO agency. So yeah, I think specificity is really something that is, was underrated and will be way more important in the future in the world of.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So if I'm a, If I'm a SaaS founder right now and I'm, you know, looking to adapt my SEO strategy, right? I'm, I'm thinking about, you know, technical SEO. My website is optimized, it's, it's fast, it's efficient. I um, have my on page SEO optimized. I've got my title, you know, my description, everything optimized for the keywords that I'm looking to rank for. And then from there, you know, I'm looking to create content, right, Which I think is the big piece here. Um, we're running a traditional SEO strategy. How should they think about maybe adapting or shifting, um, their growth strategy as they're kind of being shifted towards, you know, discovering on the search engines for AI, um, is it their content? Are they writing content similarly? Because, you know, previously you're writing, let's say a 2000 word blog article and you're just trying to rank for certain keywords or help me think through if I'm a SaaS founder, how to make that shift.

Speaker C: Yeah, so I think the first thing is that what used to be SEO have a really big lap with, you know, GU that we're speaking about. So generally overall if you're really rocking it in SEO, you generally uh, like really kind of great results in gu. So that's first, you know, all the stuff that you have done in the past and all the strategy that you had was not wasted and it's something that you can keep doing and it's not waste of time. However, if you want to optimize stuff a little bit better, you know, a little bit more, um, I will give you a few advice. First advice is that it's better to not focus too much on the, you know, informational content that you yourself you will search on GPT. All type of stuff that you know, people will not search anymore. So some of them, they still have volume of uh, searches that you will see in AHREF and Semrush and in SEO tools. Um, but you know, between AI overview, that takes um, a lot of space, uh, and um, the CTR that overall is decreasing and the volume of search that overall is decreasing on informational content, uh, generally it will not be something that I will invest in the future thinking about an ROI that will come in two or three years, you know, because it's stuff that is global, overall on the decline. Second thing is that there is a lot of bottom funnel pages where you need to have a lot of content so you will be able to influence the last touch point, you know, that ChatGPT will come to check. So typically on a SaaS, I will tell you the most important pages that I do every time for uh, SaaS that I work with. First thing is that I do the, the best of the industry. So typically best, you know, uh, I work for example with a SaaS which is uh, doing like AI girlfriend. So best AI girlfriend, uh, what are the best, number one, generally my clients, number two, etc.

Speaker B: Etc.

Speaker C: So I will do this type of stuff to be sure to have my own listicle and to you know, push my own narrative about my own brand and everything. Then in terms of um, uh, bottom funnel stuff that I like to do as well, there is like all the review of different uh, competitors and clients, you know. So typically I uh, will do review of my different competitors to be sure to push a little bit of my narrative around that and to be like, yeah, they are really good for that, but they're not so good for that, you know. And for that generally is the one that we are serving and everything. So that's something where I would try to you know um, create my own place into that to be sure that I'm like you know uh, saying that I uh, am the most relevant for certain niche and certain topic and even if you know some other brands and we will surf on these brands by creating all these reviews. Um, you know I am, I am a good alternative to that. Speaking of alternative, alternative is really good keywords as well. So alternative to a brand which is really super known and everything. It's something that's really interesting and tend to uh, bring good value in SEO overall. And that's typically the type of keywords the best the review, the alternative and the vs as well. So my brand, vs, you know, my competitors brand or something like that, that will be the most important in SEO and that will bring the most value in terms of conversion rate per number of visits, et cetera. So all these type uh, of keywords, generally they are the one bottom funnel that I really like the to do. Uh, then one thing which is really important as well on the main page I will say is that we have a uh, really clear about us. You know, we describe the team clearly, we describe the offers clearly. If you hide your offers and your price behind a paywall, it's something that really turns on the AI overall and that will be like super complex for them to understand. Uh, and then I will try to have a super clear details about you know, all the data of my company, uh, the technology that I use, etc. So as much details as I can generally about uh, and the process and the team and legal stuff and everything. So more details you have about you yourself, your um, offers and everything more. It gives clarity to the AI to be able to dive into your AI, you know. And even if user were not doing that so much AI is doing it a lot. So that's something that I tend to do a lot and that will be super interesting. And then uh, what I tend to do is try to focus as much as possible. Bottom funnel keywords and the last one I will say in terms of content is typically all the use case as well as type of pages that AI will love and that will dive into and everything. Uh, and trying to you know, decline out or to say that to differentiate all the uh, different features that I have to have like landing page specialized by features and then to have like landing page by features plus ICP for example, etc. So trying to be more specialized than it used to be in terms of features, trying to be more specialized than I used to be in terms of um, uh, what I'm serving, etc. So, like that you can uh, kind of multiply all your pages. That will be the interesting one. Uh, on um, your icp, uh, the size of company you're targeting, the industry you're targeting, et cetera, et cetera. And uh, with all of that, generally you can, you know, increase the size of your website without betting too much on the informational content that will tend to decline in value where all the specialized pages will tend to increase in value in the following years.

Speaker B: Love it. That's super helpful. I mean if you have all those pages and you're able to set that up, I mean you're, you're golden. Yeah, but a lot, that's already a lot of work.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's already a lot of work.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, the agency is probably doing super successful and I'm sure a lot of people, you know, use your help. So I understand. Um, so, you know, one part is, okay, I'm a SAS founder. I'm now starting to have the strategy of building my content very specific. I have this massive list of content that I have to now create. Uh, but the other piece of that from understanding is building authority.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You can have all the content, but if nobody knows your domain exists, if uh, you're not relevant, um, I imagine the building authorities has always been important for search rankings. Now in AI First Internet Geo, what does trust and building authority actually look like? And how do you, what do the link building strategies look like there?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So I think that's uh, really something that's, you know, I will not say it's really, it's shifting definitely. You know, where uh, authority before used to be really about links, you know, more backlinks, you have more authority. It shows to Google and more it tends to be like, oh yeah, this guy have a lot of authority. Because a lot of, you know, other sites are linking to them. That's a lot of backlinks and that means it's trustworthy. So that was really the most important stuff, I will say, uh, in the past, in the last, like, I don't know, 20 years, something like that. And since 2023 it started to change a little bit. So I will say that a new branch of authority tend to show up which is like the uh, brand search and brand volume and brand, you Know knowledge. So how much people know about, about your brand, how much people come to your website by searching your brand and everything that was like something that started to show up I will say in 2023, end of September 2023, when it was like the helpful constant update in SEO we start to see, um, kind of. So backlinks was not like, it was not ineffective, you know, it was not like not effective anymore. It was not like you cannot just overdo backlinks like we used to do. Uh, and you know, it will not um, patch all the weakness that you have. So uh, now you need a bit of brand notability as well. More than only backlinks, more than you know, only one of stuff. So you need to be more complete in more360 I would say than before. Then the last stuff is also in the age of AI. So um, brand knowledge and brand search and brand volume and brand like stuff around your brands and how much time they are searched by people and everything was something that was really Google focused. I would say. Uh, and then LLM took um, I would not say a different approach but kind of like funny approach, you know, that we didn't saw before. So the way that they did it is that when you search for a solution, so I search for the best accounting stuff, uh, generally what they will do is that they will search themselves for the best accounting stuff and they will do, they will search like some signal of trust as well. But generally they just extract the top 10 of Google and they will review like two or three different top 10 goals. So you will have I don't know, 20 results. Um, and they will review all of that and you will be like, oh yeah, the most important, the most interesting one is definitely this one. So now when you want to show up and to have like some Austria in AI, generally the interesting thing will be to be in this listicle to be into, you know, the easiest way to do it is like type you know, best whatever your service you're providing. So for me for example, it's best SEO agency and then I check all the listicles that is in the top 10 and I'm like, yeah, I mean you know, I'm one of the best. You know, perhaps I'm not the number one, I'm not out of number 10, you know, so please cite me admin that um, generally it will be something that people you know will sell. So what I try to do to not be the one buying the stuff, I will tell them like yeah, I can, you know, I, I think I'm not a really bad one. I know your time is valuable and you will take some time to edit the article. So yeah, I'm not paying to be in this article but I got paid for the time that you will be editing the article. You know, so generally I play like that. And yeah, some people they will be okay to change the article, some people they will not. Generally what I try to do as well is to set up, let's say some partnership with some other people. Like I put you in mine, you put menus, etc. You know, type of stuff like that. Um, and like that you can exist and live in some different articles that will be you know, ranking well on Google. So it will provide you links from Google. Firstly so that's really good and secondly that's the one that will be picked up by uh, LLM. The last part I will say is that that's all the one that are uh, currently ranking in Google. But I mean you know, before this one exists, nothing exists. So at some point you can create as well to start to rank onto that. So what we are doing a lot right now and that's the thing that we're doing the most and that is you know, working the most for us is to go find good media. So I will give you examples. But generally we don't go to check the biggest media or whatever. We'd say like you know, niche websites that will be interesting. I have like some few thousand visitors and everything. And that we see have a lot of SEO potential overall and we will ask them. Uh and last part obviously which is the most important one is the one that they are selling backlinks already via like different marketplace or stuff like that. So we will contact them and being like, oh yeah, I want to feature you know a guest post on your website and my guest post will be that and my guest personally is something like top 10 best, you know, SEO agencies, top 10 best, uh, SAS in accounting, top 10 best AI girlfriend stuff. Um, and so then generally you have like uh, you can publish this article if it works well, if it, you know, uh, take off, if it catch up. Um, then what happened is that you have the article ranking around Google showing up, your brand showing up in ChatGPT thanks to that. So that's really something that we're working on and that tends to have the best results. The last stuff I will say is that in terms of building authority as well, one place where there is a lot of citation that is really interesting is Reddit. So a lot of people Are wondering about like, you know, should I be in Reddit, you know, or can I influence people speaking about me on Reddit, et cetera. Generally what works well is that if you have an incredible product, Purple will speak you uh, know about you naturally on Reddit. But sometimes it's quite odd and you know, Reddit sometimes a bit tricky with some hard moderators and everything. So what I do generally is that I have some partner uh, agencies that are doing Reddit posting for me as well. So they can just, you know, I give them any thread and they're able to put out a good um, comment on that and to be sure that not be marked as spam and everything. Um, and uh, yeah, if you want to do it by your own the easier generally is just to be super honest and super transparent being for example, yeah I'm the owner of this solution. We do xyz, I think and try to promote as well as a solution to not be sure to be like too much auto promotional, you know and to be like, yeah, for example this solution abc, they are also interesting and they can solve your problem. So I will say generally to build authority in SEO then in gu. That was the whole process. Uh, and yeah, a lot of interesting thing. I think the GU right now is a bit like what I like to say to my team is that GU is like, you know, when a lot of old SEO used to speak to us about SEO in 2004, they're like, yeah, it was far west, you know, so easy to rank and everything. And I felt that right now GU is a little bit broken and a little bit easy on some, you know, more easy queries obviously, um, where you can still manipulate the algorithm completely in like few gas posts and few and few hundred euros. So yeah, I think that's all generally we build authority in LLM right now.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I imagine that's why you have your marketplace which you mentioned, which is pretty successful. People are looking for quality authority links, right? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: What about podcasts?

Speaker B: Like podcasts as well like this I imagine also are pretty helpful as well, right? For your brand network.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. So, uh, definitely YouTube content is really taking off through. So that's where we enter the specifics. You know, YouTube content is really interesting for Gemini for AI mod and for AI overview. That will be the three Google stuff. And Google tend to use a lot of its own, you know, platforms to promote its own stuff and its own content. So typically all the YouTube stuff is really interesting in the three ones. I mean in the authors chatgpt publicity cloud it will be way less interesting internally and it will tend to have like less you know, reach and everything. I um, think that uh, podcast is really interesting when you try to understand what a person is doing or who is a person or type of stuff like that. Because all the podcasts that you are tend to leave a lot of breadcrumbs and that tend to generate a lot of uh, details of stuff and a lot of different questions so you can define clearly about a person. So typically I think if you are kind of a solo consultant and you need to build your own brand and your own personal stuff in terms of geo, it will be super interesting to have some podcast sometimes as well. If you're doing a really good video for example on YouTube and it's really like taking off in terms of number of views, of retention, everything you will generally it will rank really well on Google as well if your title is kind of Google Optimized, you know. Uh, and so if it ranks really well on Google sometimes it will be picked up as well by other LLMs so like perplexity, uh, GPT and Claude. Um but most of the time YouTube is really interesting for all the Google AI and that's really you know type of stuff that if you are really focusing on Google AI it will be interesting for you uh and you can do as well. One thing which is interesting like uh, one thing which is crazy is that even a really bad YouTube video sometimes can dominate rankings, you know because it will need some social media stuff at some point and it will will try to find what they can and YouTube can be one of that. So definitely even a bad YouTube video and I will give you an example. But how uh to choose a SaaS in accounting will be something that can be or top 10 best SaaS in accounting on a YouTube video even if that's not the best one. It will be interesting to publish that just to try to check this slot in some ways. Uh check this mock and something that works well. One media uh social media stuff that is really interesting is tick uh tock surprisingly. But um, yeah definitely you do I think is more interesting than TikTok but if you are going more toward B2C stuff and products and everything TikTok uh is really important for, for GU and for LLM and we can see in the different sources that are taken uh generally on all the personal stuff. LinkedIn is the leader for sure. You know as soon as you're asking question about person if you are on more like I need to choose something in B2B, etc. Generally Reddit will be the king. And as soon as you are on the other random stuff, TikTok tend to be really, you know, getting good results overall. Uh, surprisingly way more than Instagram and everything. Some stuff will be in Facebook groups as well. But to be honest TikTok is I think leading on the uh, social media short form video stuff.

Speaker B: Yeah, this is super helpful I think lots of information here, a lot of content for people to digest and, and try to apply it for themselves. So just kind of wrapping everything up and kind of overview before we get into the rapid fire questions Leo. Um, so for the last question for SaaS companies, founders, they're looking to improve their visibility without relying heavily on paying for paid acquisition, which is a big channel as well. Give us some practical steps. What should they look at, what should they create, what should they take over, what should they focus on for the next 12 months? What do you tell them?

Speaker C: Yeah, generally what I tell them is that first uh, you need to be sure that technically your website is easy to crawl, easy to index, easy to whatever, everything. So that's the first step because it's really something that, especially in SaaS, because SaaS they are developers, you know, generally the people that do SaaS and even if they are like doing vibe coding with AI, AI ah does a lot of issues sometime in developing websites and generally having something like you know, uh, normal CMS sometimes even if that's a bit boring and a bit less brutal, it will be better and easier for the Google algorithm to crawl and to index and everything. So generally what I tell them is first be sure of your technical base. You don't need to be 100% perfect and to have the best website, but be sure that your website is indexable, crawlable and everything. Then second part will be be sure to uh, on your content first do a full audit or try to develop your own content and your own story to tell your story, to tell your team to have a lot of details about the people working in your company, about your methods, about your works, about your clients. You know, try to explain as much as possible about the company because AI love to find a lot of data about the company. So you know, try to push, I will say generally one new page per month, giving more details about the company, more details about the clients, more details about, you know, the way that you're doing, the way that you are, why you are doing that and everything. If you have like awards push that, you know, that's really good. If you have like social, um, engagements or ecological stuff. Push that as well. AI love that as well. So go into that, you know, um, then what I will try to do is to develop as much as possible on the different features, to have like, you know, specific pages for different industry specific pages for different ICP for different size of companies, et cetera. To be sure that everyone that is like, you know, doing a prompt and AI is redoing the prompt according to the context can be able to, based on that, find the pages that will suit perfectly the needs of your company. So you can, you know, generally what I do is that I base myself on the existing clients that I have and I try to extrapolate from that more than to go from SEO, keywords, tool volume that I have and to try to, you know, being like, yeah, I will, I will make it much, um, better to start from the existing and to be like developing and expanding and everything. Um, then the last point would be, you know, live in your ecosystem. So try to be promoted, Try to have your clients promoting you on Reddit, try to, uh, try to have your partner promoting you, you know, via listicle or via other ways. And the people that are doing listicles and everything, try to approach them, to chat with them, and to be like, yeah, is there a way that I'm included into that? You know, can we do some exchange? Is there a way that is both beneficial for us, etc. So try to live in your ecosystem and to be cited by your partners and everything. And generally, if you're like really deep into your content, have a site which is technically good, and you know, you're trying to do the best for your users and you are, um, sighted by your ecosystem, it's a win. Generally, you know, that's something in the long term that make you win.

Speaker B: Love it. There you go. So if you guys are listening in and looking to set up your strategy, there's a secret just. But if you need help to execute it, you know, Leo's the guy to reach out to. Uh, Leo, um, ready to shift gears and do the rapid fire questions?

Speaker C: Yeah. Ready for that?

Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. All right, Leo, what's, uh, one activity you enjoy outside of work that gets you into a flow state?

Speaker C: I do wakeboarding on the Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning. And that's something that, yeah, you're definitely in a flow state. You cannot be in anything else than a flow state because if you are, uh, not in a flow state, you, you just mistaken splashing the weather. So definitely.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love It Leo, what's one piece of advice you wish you had known and if you can go back, you would tell your, your younger self, let's say your 20 year old self?

Speaker C: Yeah, I will say that one big stuff that I was really wrong about is that the importance of brand. So typically when I was younger I was really, you know, focused on performances like I said at the beginning. And so I was really thinking that brand and design and everything was like crappy and useless. And I'm realizing, you know, a bit later that it's definitely not crapping and useless and that's most probably the best asset that you build uh, through time. So yeah, I will definitely tell myself that, you know, brand is the way to go and it's not a waste of time.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Leo, what's uh, some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow? What's holding you back from growing your agency? Meaning what keeps you up at night these days?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's, that's really interesting question. I think that there is a, uh, few things. First thing is that because I'm, I'm living in Thailand targeting the French market right now, mostly, you know, most of Pakistan, French, there is a big stuff with time shift and so I'm kind of limited by um, on schedule. So happily I have a sales guy coming soon and hopefully it will help me. Um, but yeah, I mean um, you know, improving my lead acquisition channel, which is really good but I need to improve that a little bit to get more volume and as is on the other side, starting to delegate all my sales channel will be the, the two big challenge I think for the end of the year and challenge of next year will definitely to you know, be able to delegate a bit of delivery to our head of SEO guy that can help me and everything. But um, yeah, I mean I'm doing that step by step, you know, every month improving a little bit, not a step by step.

Speaker B: Leo, who are uh, or what are some of the best three resources? These can be books, mentors or people you follow in the space. Who you say been most instrumental to your success over these last few years?

Speaker C: I will say in terms of book, uh, the, the book that I've been the most influential and now I'm like trying to get at peace with it is like how to make friends and influence people. I think that's the, you know, best book that I read and that have the most change on me. Um, in terms of uh, people I follow. Alex Omozi I think is definitely the Best guy in terms of like, you know, marketing and sales and everything. That's the most interesting. And, uh, the last one will be a podcast. My first million. Uh, my favorite podcast about business, you know, definitely really interesting. Really more about entertainment in the end than business because, man, I never hacked about anything that they say, but that's something that I like to listen, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Got good resources. Uh, what does success mean to you today, Leo? Whether it's, uh, personal business, financial life. I guess there's no right answer.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a bit first a bit of everything. You know, now I see people that have a big success financially but are, uh, like not living in the way of life. I mean that I want to live. So it's something that doesn't really interest me anymore. So typically, I mean, I want to build my family to be, you know, with my girlfriend, to marry her and to, you know, be with my dog, have some children. Uh, being away financially and being nice and being able to walk because I want to walk and then because I have to and everything. So. So generally it's just about having enough money to be financially independent and having my family supporting me and being sure that everything is right.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: And keep with voting. If I can keep withboarding, that's the most important thing as well.

Speaker B: That's number one for sure. Don't forget that. That's awesome, Leo. This has been great. I really enjoyed this. Love everything you shared. Um, where can founders get in touch with you, learn more about you and your company Astrac if they want to learn more.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. The best is LinkedIn. Definitely to, you know, be in touch with me and everything you can find me on Twitter as well. Definitely. Uh, and, uh, yeah, but of all, the easiest will be LinkedIn, uh, and the uh, website of the company as well where you'll find a lot of details, uh, you know, made for human and AI. So, yeah, okay, awesome.

Speaker B: We'll put your, put those links in our show notes. Make sure to reach out, say hi to Leo, check out his agency if you guys need any help and uh, as well as YouTube channel for any, any tips and suggestions for your SEO strategy. So thanks again, Leo. Appreciate everything you shared today.

Speaker C: Thank you a lot, Akhil. It was really nice to talk to you.

Speaker B: Likewise. Thank you. Cheers.

Speaker C: Thank you. Bye Bye.

Speaker A: Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS district today. Don't forget to like subscribe and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the trust true value of your business. Get in touch with us at Horizon Capital and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below and help us improve our content for you. Um all thanks again and see you on the next one.