How Data-Driven Content Beats Keyword-Based SEO

What happens to SEO when people stop searching the way they used to?

In this episode with our host Dawood Bukhari, Benj Arriola, Sr. SEO Director at 85Sixty, shares what he’s seeing firsthand as AI Overviews, GEO, and AEO change how people discover and evaluate information online. He talks about how his SEO team once contributed 70% of the company’s revenue, the technical challenges of working with proprietary CMS platforms at enterprise scale, and why fan-out queries are changing the way SEOs think about keyword research.

Benj also breaks down what it means to optimize for AI platforms alongside traditional search engines — from making your site easier to crawl to creating the kinds of content AI systems are more likely to surface, such as original research and product comparisons. He shares a practical impact-vs.-effort framework for deciding which technical SEO issues are actually worth fixing.

The conversation also gets into one of the biggest challenges in the AI era: attribution. Benj explains why GA4’s AI Assistance channel still has limitations, what data you can actually trust, and which metrics are worth bringing to stakeholders.

If you work in enterprise SEO, manage an in-house team, or simply want to understand where search is heading, this episode offers a practical, behind-the-scenes look at navigating SEO, AEO, and GEO in a rapidly changing search landscape.