The Crestodina
Playbook

SEO, AEO and conversion advice from nine Andy Crestodina talks, 2019–2026, organized into one system.

Source key

Nine talks, seven years, one through-line

Contents

Ten parts, from foundation to action plan

01 The foundation

06 Differentiation: what AI can’t make

02 Search in the AI era

07 Producing and promoting content

03 AEO / GEO: winning recommendations

08 Conversion: the mousetrap

04 Classic SEO, still the price of entry

09 AI workflows for performance

05 Refresh beats new

10 Measurement and a 90-day plan

Why content exists

Articles earn links so the money page can rank

Quality over quantity

10× the effort earns 100× the results

• “Every chart in digital is an exponential curve.” A few pages take nearly all traffic and links.
• 75% of content earns zero links (Moz/BuzzSumo, ~1M articles).
• You don’t need 1,000 articles. You need 100 great ones.
• Andy’s cadence: one post every two weeks, 10–12 hours each.

02 · Search in the AI era

Organic traffic is down, but not because of your rankings

8,000 px

How far down the page the #1 organic result for “buckets” sits today. Google went “from a library to a shopping mall.”

Split everything by intent

Two kinds of search, two different futures

What to change this quarter

Stop measuring the old game

What GEO really is

AI optimization = search optimization ∩ conversion optimization

How AI picks who to recommend

If your page doesn’t match the prompt, you’re out

Prompt reverse-engineering

Write what buyers type into prompts onto your pages

Train the AI to be your sales rep

Three pages carry most of the weight

Your site is the one place with unlimited room for answers, and your best shot at AI training data.

Seven ways to get AI to mention your brand

Every AI tactic is a classic discipline in new clothes

Competitive source analysis

Ask AI where it learned about you, then about them

Feeding the training data

Put your pitch where AI ingests it

Be where your audience gathers

Map the “watering holes,” then go on a world tour

The places your audience trusts are likely the places AI learns from when it decides who’s good in a category.

Trade associations · conferences to sponsor or pitch · online communities · publications and editors · podcasts · marketplaces

Prompt (Liza Adams)

“For a [company type] in [industry] we are targeting these verticals: [list]. You are an expert in [industry] marketing, familiar with where these buyers spend time. Identify the ‘watering holes’ where they learn, engage and build relationships.

Create a table: categories of watering holes as rows, verticals as columns, specific places in the cells.”

Myths and traps

Four AEO shortcuts that don’t work

The AI-visibility audit

Score your key pages the way AI reads them

Give AI the page and a rating scale. Ask for ratings, gaps, and “how content gaps could reduce AI visibility.”

Andy’s own site: “a lot of threes and twos and some ones.”

04 · Classic SEO, still the price of entry

Should this piece be optimized for search at all?

No at any step? Pick one:

Skip SEO and promote elsewhere · Publish it on a higher-authority site · Target a longer, less competitive phrase

Difficulty vs. authority

Your authority must be in the range of the pages that rank

Bootstrapped semantic SEO

Cover the topic, then cross phrases off the list

Expand with new sections or paragraphs. Never stuff phrases in, and knowingly dismiss the ones that don’t fit.

“The length of an article is driven by the size of the topic.”

“My most important slide”

Make the best page on the internet for the topic

Key phrase in title, H1 and body, plus related phrases

Title tag ≤60 characters, phrase near the start

One page per service. Google ranks pages, not sites

Descriptive headlines, nav labels and subheads

Internal links from old posts to every new one

URLs short, with no numbers and no format words

No pop-ups for content: “URLs are the currency of the internet”

Local: consistent name, address, phone everywhere

Write each title for its job

“There is no such thing as a headline”

Every reader runs a 2-second cost/benefit check: “Is tapping this worth it?” Raise the benefit or lower the cost. A number, “diagram” or “checklist” signals a low cost.

Update top performers

›

Create visuals

›

Write new posts

›

Email

›

Social scrolling

Finding refresh candidates

Do your keyword research inside, not outside

How to refresh

An 80% rewrite on the same URL: “not a light coat of paint”

Keep the URL. No canonicals, no 301s. A seasoned URL already has trust and links.

Redo the research. New target phrases, related phrases, People Also Ask.

Add real value. 800 → 4,300 words, 6 → 27 tips, 5 contributor quotes, original charts.

Original research

Find, publish and promote the missing statistic

“What is the frequently asserted but rarely supported statement in your field?” Solve for X and “win the internet for the day.”

“Is your website the primary source for any new information?” If yes, you’re a categorically different brand.

Research methods, cheapest first

Anyone can do original research

A reusable template: “What are the top X companies doing with Y?” Then report the percentages as best and worst practices.

Thought leadership

An opinion someone can disagree with

Most content is utility how-to that nobody could disagree with. Mix in point-of-view pieces, invite dissent, and add stories only you can tell.

“I’m not trying to be right. I’m trying to be interesting.”

Topic-finder prompt

“What are some relatively mundane, almost trivial topics that [job title] has strong opinions about?”

Office managers: thermostat battles, reply-all abuse, loading the dishwasher.

Zoo vets: glove thickness, dart gun vs. blowpipe, the worst-smelling medication.

“AI has never smelled animal medication, but our audience has.”

Collaboration

“An ally in creating content is an ally in promoting it”

07 · Producing and promoting

A 15-step workflow, promotion built in

Formatting is not optional

A visual at every scroll depth

“100% of web pages have a back button.” A “desert of text” sends visitors to it, especially social visitors fresh from an addictive feed.

“The more your article looks like a social stream, the greater your engagement.”

Topic–channel fit

Search and social aren’t different channels. They’re opposite.

Promotion playbook

Publish everywhere, not only on your site

The 1% content strategy

One money page, many spokes

Run the spokes in quarterly rounds. Assume ~25 new linking sites per round until you match the top results.

Only ~1% of programs combine research, influencers, off-site publishing and constant updates.

“Didn’t cost me money. It just took me time.”

Peach = published off-site

Understand their questions

›

Answer them

›

Add evidence

›

Clear CTA

Research before you write a word

Interview customers and sales, then use their words

Checklist

Anatomy of the “perfect” B2B service page

“Most web pages are just big piles of unsupported marketing claims.” Ask AI to count yours. “It’s terrifying.”

Clarity over creativity

Would your headline make sense at a barbecue?

Descriptive navigation. Not “Products · Services · About,” which millions of sites use. No hamburger menu on desktop.

Kill the slider. 5.7% clicked it; 28% scrolled past. Stacked testimonials got 5× the views.

Test, don’t argue. A 5-second test with 20–50 people settles headline debates for about $50.

Evidence

Make every page a testimonials page

Quote as headline. The 5–7 strongest words become the subhead. Add a face and a name.

Billboards on the highway. Put proof on the most-trafficked path, not a rarely visited page.

Best messenger. “Everything you say is marketing. Everything they say is social proof.”

Calls to action

Nobody clicks until the benefit outweighs the cost

Specific wins: +31% and +213% from more specific button copy (Michael Aagaard).

Reassure: low-commitment CTAs with microcopy, e.g. “Get expert direction without committing.”

Fix signup first: 0.1% → 0.5% visitor-to-subscriber compounds forever.

The big unlock

Build a synthetic persona first

“Why would AI be targeted until you teach it the target?” Then ask: “What’s missing from this [homepage, deck, calendar] from my audience’s point of view?”

Check it: “I don’t trust AI. Trust yourself.” Feed it real sales-call transcripts. Save it as Markdown in a shared library.

Persona prompt

“Build a persona of a [job title] in [geography] at a [company size] company, with these [responsibilities], [challenges] and [goals], looking for a company like ours in [category]. Give me:”

AI-assisted conversion audit

Screenshot + persona + prompt = a heat map of gaps

Follow-up prompts in the same chat

Count every unsupported claim · persuasion and cognitive-bias ideas · emotional frustrations not addressed · better CTAs for nav, hero and mid-funnel

Starter prompt library

Eight prompts worth saving

Stages of AI proficiency

From disruption to opportunity

10 · Measurement

“Reporting is not analysis”

Idea › question › answer › decision › action › measure the impact. “Analytics is useless unless you make decisions, then take action.”

And beware vanity: “I could triple my traffic and starve.”

Putting it together · our synthesis

A 90-day plan built from the playbook

Companion files: PLAYBOOK.md (every citation) · notes/ · transcripts/ · slides/ (791 original slide captures)

All quotes: Andy Crestodina, Orbit Media Studios. Watch the originals; links are in the speaker notes on slide 2.