Damon Burton

Business owners, what if you didn't have to depend on paid ads, Facebook, and constantly changing budgets, policies, and declined & under-performing ads? Just because you're a small business doesn't mean you can't compete against Fortune 500 companies on Google, and I'll teach you how with SEO and AI optimization. 👉 How to show up in AI overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI platforms 👉 Proper optimization to ​dial in your website so you are seen as an authority 👉 Effective keyword research to build a content strategy that attracts pre-qualified buyers ​👉 Stop guessing. Instead, get in front of existing search volume and customer demand I've only ever done two live training events... Optimize Live 2024 ❌ SOLD OUT Lake Mastermind 2026 ❌ SOLD OUT Third one is next month, Optimize Live 2026, and this will sell out too. This isn’t for everyone, but is a rare opportunity for only a few to spend 3 days with me my SEO training headquarters in Utah. You can join in-person for VIP (less than 15 seats available). Or attend virtually via Zoom. August 17 - 19, live Learn more, see the surprise speakers, or jump on the limited tickets at... 🎟️ OptimizeLive com 🎟️

Just read a four year study about 100 blogs that used to monetize well off organic, and now 85% of them have lost traffic. While most of the sites tanked, I looked at those that grew, because "The Great Blogging ̶C̶o̶l̶l̶a̶p̶s̶e̶" is equally an opportunity. Someone named Daniel Stanica wrote it. Some data was a little washy, but what stood out among the sites that won is a clear, repeatable blueprint for winning in an AI Overview world. Sites that grew? Parenting: +108% DIY/crafts: +2% Food: −44%, most declined, but the ones that grew, grew a lot A blog called Pinch of Yum grew organic traffic from 1.3 to 2.2 million monthly visitors. Kitchen Sanctuary blog grew from 950k to 2.4 million monthly visits, and its founder landed two cookbooks with a major publisher, one a Sunday Times bestseller. How did they grow when so many other sites got crushed? The bloggers were required to actually do something, then share about what they did. Make things AI can't summarize away Content that shows experience a machine without personality can't summarize wins. Own your audience instead of renting it Treat search as a customer-acquisition channel, not the business itself. Build a brand When your content is so good that people also start searching your brand name, that's a trust signal that both traditional search engines and AI platforms reward. Go deep, not wide Hubspot used to kill it by being kinda' niched to marketing, but going so broad they often blogged about wildly unrelated things. But their traffic has just been hammered over the years. Now, a focused blog with a few but consistent, firsthand content pieces beats a 500 page website about everything under the sun. Show up everywhere search engines and AI look Structured data and original content (YouTube, blogs) carry an increasingly effective benefit, and participation in communities AI pulls from like Reddit and LinkedIn compound the advantage. I'm bearish on Reddit. It's abused and, if you really know anything about behind the scenes, it's highly bot generated. Either way, the window to get ahead is wide open right now... These citation patterns are still being figured out by AI and evolving search engine algorithms. YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn are currently leading citations across major search platforms, but... only about 38% of citations come from top 10 organic results. That's down from 76% in mid-2025, meaning the old ranking game is being replaced by a new one that's less crowded, and rewards authentic, experienced creators that are willing to share their expertise. The affiliate world of "publish generic content and collect ad revenue" model is over, but that's clearing the field for creators who original content. TL;DR The opportunity for organic content isn't smaller, it's just more concentrated. Less people are sharing the traffic, meaning those that now win win bigger. Be irreplaceable by sharing unique experiences and perspective

Marketers, designers, copywriters, ad buyers, AI is taking your clients. You're not alone. After 19 years in SEO, I've seen plenty of technology waves. The current AI FOMO wave is the most volatile I've seen, hitting every marketing vertical. Here's how to reframe it as an opportunity. 👉 Why Clients Are Burning It Down Had a consulting client built an app, decided they were a tech company, and went live despite weeks of warnings from my team. They lost a year of rankings in ~10 days, months and thousands of dollars in SEO, plus opportunity cost. Gone. The $3k/mo they "saved" they still spend on tokens, but with worse results and more clean up cost. Anyone can spend a day with ChatGPT and convince themselves an agency is unnecessary. AI isn't the bad guy. Deploying it with no strategy, governance, or SOPs is. 👉 How You Handle an Exiting Client Matters More Than the Exit Be graceful. When they crash (and they will), they'll remember two things: 1 - What they lost 2 - How you treated them on the way out. They'll remember #1 either way. Whether they come back depends on #2. 👉 The Wave is Here, and so is the Opportunity I'd guess we have at least another year before enough evidence of disaster builds up beore public sentiment starts to realign. But it's already starting to show shift... We recently signed one of our biggest brand clients. They tried the AI shortcut, took the hit, and now understand why expertise matters. Clients that have felt the pain close easier, engage better, and never question the fundamentals again. 👉 Voice Your Position A wave of exits will be followed by a wave of clients who learned the hard way. I'm not anti-AI. We use it a lot at my agency. But if you believe using AI properly versus treating it as a substitute for expertise is a difference worth voicing publicly and consistently. It attracts loyal cheerleaders who will remember who was throwing spaghetti at the wall last year versus speaking truth. 👉 Trust the Fundamentals The cleanup opportunity is coming, because strategy, governance, and expertise never change. AI doesn't replace all of that. It just makes the cost of ignoring it more visible, faster.

Just paid out ~$15k in referral commissions. All these people did was make the intro to someone needing optimization. That's it. I did the rest. If you know someone, I pay 10% on-going for the right type of client.

Learn how to do and sell SEO and AI optimization at Optimize Live. Learn how to price and pitch high ticket SEO. Learn how to sell and retain clients for years. Learn how to pace accounts with proper SOPs so you can scale and maintain quality control without even needing project managers. My usual 2 day training now includes a bonus third day. Live, August 17 - 19, 2026. Less than a dozen in-person VIP tickets available. Virtual tickets available via Zoom. Learn more about everything else I'm teaching, and a few surprise speakers that you can't buy access to that are included. 🎟️ www OptimizeLive com 🎟️

Three clients in one month have been entranced by AI’s Medusa eyes and lit their online visibility on fire as a result. Road map provided to find the balance. Recommendations given to mitigate migration damage (despite recommending not migrating at all, because…) What’s the goal in moving sites? What’s the goal in deplatforming? But there never is a goal? It’s just, “because AI!” No rationale. No expertise. Not design, rebranding, CTA. Nothing is broke. The reason for change? “AI!” Because you can is not a reason you should. AI is great, but it needs more than blind trust. It needs governance. It needs a plan beyond what AIs echo chamber tells itself. About the only thing you’ll have to do soon to show at the top of Google or AI is nothing more than the basics. Because most of your competitors are starting to burn themselves down and clearing the runway to success for you.

My average SEO client is worth no less than $144,000. And I’m teaching how… My monthly SEO retainer is no less than $3,000/month, with an average client engagement lasting 3-5 years. $3,000/month x 12 months = $36,000 $36,000 x ~4 year average = $144,000 Here’s what’s crazier… I’ve had some clients on retainers over $20,000 per month. And others pay every 30 days for 18 YEARS. Want to learn how to do, sell, and retain SEO and AI optimization clients? I have a 3 day live training Aug 17-19 called Optimize Live. Less than 15 seats available. 🎟️ OptimizeLive com 🎟️

Page one monopoly of rankings evaporated within days of going live with an "AI optimized website." This is what you get when you blindly trust AI over actual SEO experts. Burned money and tokens building it. Burned immeasurable opportunity cost going live. And will have to spend 10x more to undo the mess.

🚨 Optimize Live is a go! 🚨 My live SEO and AI optimization training, Optimize Live, is scheduled August 17 - 19, 2026 via Zoom or in-person in Utah. VIP gets exclusive bonuses, and the first 5 people to save their seat get $500 off. 📅 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝟏 - 𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝟏𝟕, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 How SEO Works & the 3 Pillars to Success We are going to start with the basics of SEO to get everyone on the same page. While you do not need to know SEO, you should know basics of websites, design, or funnel building so we can talk about how to apply SEO to sites or funnels. SEO Pillar 1: Optimized Site Structure How to properly optimize your website's structure SEO Pillar 2: Optimized Content There's a big difference between writing content for the sake of writing content, and writing content to attract a buyer. Learn that difference, and the pros and cons of using AI in the process. VIP dinner for in-person attendees only One-of-a-kind surprise dinner 📅 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝟐 - 𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝟏𝟖, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 Day 1 recap: Q&A Surprise speaker (see speaker list below) SEO Pillar 3: Credibility Backlinks, citations, and their strengths and weaknesses SEO vs AEO vs GEO Understanding the difference between SEO and LLM optimization, and what strategies LLMs weigh different than traditional SEO. Selling SEO How to pitch and price SEO Project Management & Setting Client Expectations Retaining clients is less about how you react and answer questions. It's more about what you proactively communicate before clients even think to ask. Q&A Panel 📅 𝐃𝐀𝐘 𝟑 - 𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝟏𝟗, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 Advanced Agency Session How I launch new accounts with a 200+ task checklist in just seconds, and how my team is using (and not using) AI and automations. Open Q&A One of the most asked for features at my live events is more time to ask questions. So we're leaving day 3 for questions and one-on-one guidance. 𝐆𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐒 🎤 @dennisyu Digital marketing expert, speaker, former Yahoo search engine engineer, and creator of the Dollar-a-Day strategy. He helps founders scale what works via proven systems. 🎤 Richie Taylor Richie is a Principal at Adobe, and product designer with over 20 years of experience in enterprise-scale UX, AI and generative technologies. Richie currently supports Adobe's Machine Intelligence and their Design’s innovation arm, with a focus on custom model training, creative production pipelines, and scalable enterprise workflows 🎤 Taylor Cameron Taylor Cameron is a two decade veteran in marketing, helping grow some of the biggest media and sports entertainment entities across the US. He manages a lot of white label partnerships with me, and will speak to the strengths and opportunities of white label SEO to grow your business. I've done only two live trainings before, and both have sold out. VIP is limited to in-person ticket holders only, there are only 15 VIP seats available. 🎟️ Buy your ticket at OptimizeLive com 🎟️

Just hours ago, @hackernoon published a review of the white paper I wrote about the overlooked risks and liabilities of AI deployed websites. AI is great. Use it. I do. But if you believe using it properly versus pushing/selling the easy button as a substitute for actual expertise, that's a difference worth voicing publicly and consistently. I'd rather be honest than opportunistic.

🩸 The blood bath of people converting their websites blindly to AI-built sites without expert oversight continues. 30 days ago these guys had a 90% monopoly on page one rankings of Google. Now they have 4%.

AI detection tools are worthless. Period. Saw this on Reddit. An "AI detection" tool flagged the opening of chapter 5 of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as 100% AI generated. And I see it all the time. People claiming AI generated content as human written, or human written content being witch hunted and blamed as AI generated. Because, on the flip side, I've done tests feeding 100% AI generated content to a detection tool and it passed it as "human" with flying colors. If you work with an agency, ask them for transparency. Ask them how they approach content ideation, drafting, and publication. If you use AI to write for yourself, be careful trusting it's output as "unique." You don't want a penalty... or a lawsuit.

Bought a building last year with a vision. 1 -Build a community hosting free trainings in the top half l use, and rent the lower half and invite them into my world beyond just supporting each other with office space. Really grateful for how the chill little tribe in the building is starting to unfold, with @JeffSoelberg and Jalene Stanger. Just removed my sign on ground marquee and updated the road signs to support them. 2 - Make an impact by also hosting intimate, paid trainings teaching agencies how to grow, and maintain quality control at scale. Already hosted two free events. And my first paid event, Optimize Live, is scheduled August 17-19. Three days of learning proper SEO, selling it without sales resistance or sleaze, building a personal brand, and multiple surprise VIP experiences and guest speakers. Optimize Live is super exclusive, because I have about a 20 capacity seat only, and about 1/4 are sold out without me even formally announcing it. With the gratitude feedback from the free events, excited to completely change peoples agencies and lives, increase retainers, and show them that growth and freedom are both possible with the intimate paid events.

I analyzed 55 websites across a a variety of industries to compare page speed performance, HTML size, and GTmetrix fully loaded time. My personal goal was to see what industries trust our judgement more than emotions, let us dial in speed, and which industries are doing the best job keeping pages lean? Here’s what stood out... Overall averages across all 55 sites: 👉 Median fully loaded time: 2.1 seconds 👉 Average fully loaded time: 4.0 seconds 👉 Average GTmetrix Performance score: 88% 👉 Average GTmetrix Structure score: 94% 👉 Average total page size: 2.25 MB 👉 Median total page size: 1.21 MB 👉 Average request count: 90.8 Legal sites were the strongest multi-site category. Home services had excellent speed, though the sample size was smaller. Real estate and e-commerce had the biggest performance opportunities. That is not a surprise, as those clients are the ones that are more sensitive to emotions than performance data. Some of the slowest sites were not just large. They also had a lot of requests. Page size alone does not explain everything, but it is still one of the clearest warning signs. Best overall industry groups: Home Services ⚡️ Average load time: 0.859 seconds ⚡️ Average Performance score: 100% ⚡️ Average page size: 640 KB Legal ⚡️ Average load time: 0.881 seconds ⚡️ Average Performance score: 99% ⚡️ Average page size: 568 KB Digital Marketing ⚡️ Average load time: 1.7 seconds ⚡️ Average Performance score: 96% ⚡️ Average page size: 902 KB Recruiting/HR ⚡️ Average load time: 1.6 seconds ⚡️ Average Performance score: 94% ⚡️ Average page size: 1.02 MB Financial Services ⚡️ Average load time: 2.5 seconds ⚡️ Average Performance score: 98% ⚡️ Average page size: 1.77 MB Fast sites were usually not just smaller. They also had fewer requests. The fastest sites were often under 1 MB. The slowest sites tended to combine large page size with heavy request counts. Some sites still scored well despite larger pages, but that was the exception. Website speed is still one of the easiest competitive advantages in SEO and AI optimization, yet the most overlooked. Good page speed can also lower your CPC and increase conversions on paid ads (see my post the other day). A site does not need to be perfect. But if it is loading in 6, 8, 16, or 23 seconds, there is almost always money being left on the table. The sites winning on speed are not magic. They are usually just doing fewer things. Here are things you can focus on to improve your page performance. ✅ Reduce plugin bloat ✅ Remove unused JavaScript ✅ Compress oversized images ✅ Reduce unnecessary requests ✅ Improve hosting (one of the easiest wins) ✅ Limit third-party scripts (your site can load only as fast as the third-party site bottlenecks yours) ✅ Lazy-load non-critical assets ✅ Use proper caching ✅ Minify CSS and JS For SEO, paid ads, lead generation, and conversion rate optimization, speed is not just a technical metric. It is a revenue metric.

The amount of clients dominating Google's AI overviews these days be lookin' too fiiiiiiiine... 🏆

"Just do right. Right may not be expedient, it may not be profitable, but it will satisfy your soul." My team just sent me this pic they prompted. 😅 It feels completely relevant to the good fight of 2026. I don't care how bad AI continues to increase Darwinism, I will continue to speak the truth about the parts of it that are hurting people's self-awareness and ability to succeed, because I care about people and DO want them to succeed. AI is amazing. I seemingly have to remind too many people online within an honest post about AI that this isn't saying it has no utility. Which, ironically, proves the point of how irrationally defensive too many of us are about being honest enough that... maybe AI, our latest and greatest crutch, has some downsides, too.

Reminder… discounts rarely work. Delaying deadlines to honor discounts never works. Had a lead last year that was looking for an all-in-one agency. I told him it’s unlikely that they’ll find one that’s good at more than one thing and mediocre at all the rest. I had offered an instead of if they signed that week. It was something I had been testing that year and have since stopped offering. A friend in on the brokering asked if we would extend the signing deadline discount, and I said I would for the relationship, but that it defeats the purpose. 7 months later and they’ve dropped the other agency and are back now, negotiating signing. So the discount and extension didn’t matter anyway. People that sign based on price as a deciding factor are never good clients.

Pretty interesting patterns starting to show up in my audit of the top ranking AI results across these competitive industries: Health & Medical Finance & Insurance Legal & Professional Software & Technology Ecommerce & Retail Education & Travel Car Dealerships Home Services Real Estate And pulling the results from these platforms: Perplexity ChatGPT Claude Manus And I'm going to audit the structure of all the sites, and map out what variables are the most common denominators across the top ranking sites. I'll share more as I go, but... After removing duplicates, there are only 325 unique domains in the combined results across all queries across all AI platforms. That means there's huge exposure opportunity to show across multiple AI platforms with a single domain when you optimize correctly.

Just received Optimize Live™️ trademark certificate. Guess that makes 7. My next live multi-day SEO training with Optimize Live is expected in August. 1/5 of seats already sold out and haven't even started promoting it yet. Early bird tickets will be $1,000, and I’m: ✅ adding an extra day to the event ✅ adding curriculum on optimizing for AI ✅ inviting my COO to come speak about scaling SEO operations with automations and AI integration ✅ inviting my big brain friends to share behind the scenes industry secrets ✅ and a few other extras for VIP ✅ guaranteed beard grown back by then Dates are likely August 17-19. More info to come...