Masters of Search

The website used to be the shop window. Now buyers do half their research inside an LLM before they ever land on it, and the role of the site itself is starting to shift.

My guest today is James Ward, Head of Digital Experience at Personio, one of Europe's fastest-growing HR tech companies, where he leads web strategy, SEO, content and CRO across multiple international markets. Before Personio he spent years at Salesforce and ADP, so he's seen this shift play out from inside both enterprise giants and a fast-moving scale-up.

We dug into what...

AI search is already driving nearly 10% of Webflow's signups. A key person behind that number is Vivian Hoang, AEO & SEO Lead at Webflow.

In this episode, we'll dig into how Webflow's SEO function has evolved over the years, how Vivian started thinking about answer engine optimization before most people even had a name for it, what's actually working for them in AI search, and how she's using tools like AirOps to scale content without sacrificing quality.

I'm really excited about this one because Vivian isn't speaking about theory here. She's already built the playbook and...

HubSpot literally buried traffic as a metric last year. Not because they stopped caring about reach, but because in a world where AI systems deliver answers directly, the old playbook stopped working.

My guest today is Jennifer Lapp, Head of Growth Marketing for LATAM and DACH at HubSpot, where she's been rebuilding the growth engine from the ground up.

We'll dig into the real experiments she's been running, what's actually working and what isn't, and how she's steering her team through one of the biggest shifts in the marketing space ever.

What we...

Lily Ray is one of the most respected voices in SEO. She even launched her own Substack recently to create a "safe space for ranting about all things SEO and AI Search".

What we covered in this episode

Malte is CPO & CMO at Peec AI, one of the leading AI search analytics platforms, and one of the brightest minds in the field. So I want to take all the news, new research and interesting developments and get his perspective on them.

What we covered in this episode

My guest in this episode is Saskia Sarışın, Head of Global SEO at Meltwater, one of the leading media intelligence platforms out there. We'll talk about how Saskia and her team have built up SEO at Meltwater, how she thinks about pillar and cluster strategies at serious scale, how she's navigating the shift toward AI search, and why she still believes in investing in top-of-funnel content, even when that's becoming an increasingly controversial take.

▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Saskia on LinkedIn...

My guest in this episode is Tom Wells, AI Search Researcher at Peec AI. Tom has spent over a decade decoding ranking signals at companies like Semrush and Searchmetrics, and he recently published some fascinating research that got a lot of attention in the ecommerce SEO and AI Search world.

Check out Tom's research:

▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/radyant/ Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-loves-data/ Peec AI on Li...

My guest in this episode is Steve Toth, CEO of Notebook Agency and the voice behind AI Notebook and SEO Notebook, two newsletters with 27,000+ subscribers where he cuts through the noise in one of the fastest-moving spaces in marketing right now.

In this episode we'll dig into the current state of the industry, how big GEO is already for his agency and his clients and why he thinks ChatGPT is lazy and what he uses instead.

Check out Steve's links:

▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on Linke...

Claude Cowork is replacing agencies. A Mac Mini is the new must-have for AI enthusiasts. And Bing just gave marketers something Google still hasn't. A lot has happened in the last weeks, so it’s time for a new episode of #MonthlyLandwehr.

Malte is CPO & CMO at Peec AI, one of the leading AI search analytics platforms, and one of the brightest minds in the field. So I want to take all the news, new research and interesting developments and get his perspective on them.

What we covered in this episode

My guest today is Felix Welckenbach, Director of Product for Search and Discovery at HomeToGo, a marketplace where millions of travelers book their next dream vacation rental.

In this episode we’ll talk about how SEO is not a marketing function anymore at HomeToGo but a product capability, what this actually means like in the day to day, which companies should also think about making a similar change and why shouldn’t just measure your AI visibility but put more emphasis on the sentiment.

▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklas-buschner/ Radyant o...

This episode will be about AI. But not the ChatGPT kind of AI, but the building agents kind of AI. We’ll talk about what Alfred has been cooking over the last months, what FAFO really means (not just what the acronym stands for), and about this new kid on the AI block: OpenClaw.

If you want to understand where AI-powered marketing is actually heading, not the LinkedIn hype, but the messy, exciting reality of building stuff every single day, this is the conversation

Check out these helpful links

Repo: https://github.com/Pi...

Seven years ago, Nick LeRoy got fired. Today, he runs one of SEO's most trusted newsletters with over 12.5k subscribers, operates SEOjobs.com with over 200k annual sessions, and consults with enterprise brands on SEO strategy that actually moves the needle.

Nick is an independent SEO consultant who helps enterprise brands turn SEO into a revenue-generating channel, not just a traffic report. He's also the mind behind SEOjobs.com and PPCjobs.com, connecting talent with opportunities, and publishes the #SEOForLunch newsletter, read by everyone from enterprise SEOs to Google employees themselves.

What makes Nick different...

After 10+ years building The Blogsmith into a content agency serving B2B giants like HubSpot and Klaviyo, Maddy Osman French made an unexpected move: she went in-house. Now at DigitalOcean, she represents a "content engineer". A marketer who blend process thinking, technical depth, and AI workflow automation to scale content operations efficiently.

What makes Maddy's perspective particularly valuable is this combination of agency and in-house experience, paired with genuine technical depth. She's a bestselling author of "Writing for Humans and Robots," a certified content engineer from AirOps, and someone who actually builds RAG pipelines with n8n...

We’re kicking off a new format in the Masters of Search podcast and we’re calling it #MonthlyLandwehr. Malte is CPO & CMO at Peec AI, one of the leading AI search analytics platforms, and one of the brightest minds in the field. So I want to take all the news, new research and interesting developments and get his perspective on them.

In this episode we covered (among other things):

M&A in SEO is a topic that you won’t find a lot of content about. But it’s a high-stakes topic that can make our brake organic visibility.

My guest today is Daphne Monro, who is Head of Website & Content at hosting.com, where she oversees web strategy, content operations, and SEO for a global hosting network powering over 3 million sites.

She lived through multiple high-stakes domain migrations and rebrands, and knows the ins and outs of how to make this a success.

▶ Let's connect! 🔗 Niklas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ni...

My guest today is Björn Darko. He leads an Enterprise SEO org by day, and hosts one of the largest German SEO podcasts by night.

At Aviv Group, Björn oversees a 30-person team building SEO infrastructure for some of the biggest real estate platforms across France, Germany, Belgium.

I’m very much looking forward to diving deep into Product-Led SEO at enterprise scale, managing teams across multiple countries and brands, and what it’s like to have a full-time job while hosting or co-hosting the SEOPRESSO Podcast and the SEO Product Unveiled podcast.

...

Graphite is nothing like your typical agency. While most agencies sell slides and strategic decks, Graphite builds things. While others work on hundred-item SEO audits, they obsess over the 5% of work that actually drives results.

They've proven this approach in SEO with companies like Rippling, Webflow, Notion, and Upwork, and now they're applying the same ruthless focus to AI search.

That's why I'm excited to have Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite, on the show today.

Ethan has led Graphite to the absolute forefront of Answer Engine Optimization, one of the largest new marketing...

Lodgify is a €30M+ ARR vacation rental management platform that empowers thousands of independent hosts to compete against Airbnb through direct bookings. And over the years they have built a significant SEO and organic footprint contributing that growth.

Joining me on the latest episode of the #MastersOfSearch is Volodymyr Korol, VP of Marketing at Lodgify.

He joined in 2024 to restructure the entire 30+ person marketing organization across eight functions to drive sustainable ARR growth.

I was curious to learn more about how he leads such a big marketing org, how we thinks about SEO fi...

SEO has already been a proven growth engine for Carta, and in 2025, they've gained strong AI Search visibility driving real pipeline results. Lucy Hoyle is Senior Content Engineer at Carta, and played a crucial role in that.

She oversees editorial processes, content strategy, and AI workflow optimization for international markets, building scalable systems that turn content strategy into pipeline results.

We talked about how SEO differs from AI Search, why Lucy has been an early champion of the content engineering movement, and her POV on successful content marketing in the Age of AI.

▶ Le...

Wise is moving £145 billion across the globe, serving 15 million customers across 160 countries and 40 currencies. They’ve been profitable for years, with their latest financial accounts posting a £560 million profit before tax while saving customers £2 billion annually on hidden banking fees.

And although the absolute number is pretty high, in relation to their scale, they’re just spending about £50 million a year on marketing.

One part of this remarkable customer acquisition efficiency is a well-oiled organic growth engine.

To understand how Wise built this growth machine, I'm excited to have Fabrizio Ballarini on the podcast...

Wise is moving £145 billion across the globe, serving 15 million customers across 160 countries and 40 currencies. They’ve been profitable for years, with their latest financial accounts posting a £560 million profit before tax while saving customers £2 billion annually on hidden banking fees.

And although the absolute number is pretty high, in relation to their scale, they’re just spending about £50 million a year on marketing.

One part of this remarkable customer acquisition efficiency is a well-oiled organic growth engine.

To understand how Wise built this growth machine, I'm excited to have Fabrizio Ballarini on the podcast...

Chatbase bootstrapped to $8M ARR* and turned AI search into their No. 2 user acquisition channel. So I invited Sandra to the Masters of Search podcast to reveal how they did it.

*it was still $7M when we recorded

Her answer? There's no glamorous secret. No magic trick. No growth hack. Just proper execution of fundamentals that most teams skip.

Here's what drove their AI search success:

1) Crystal clear positioning

"AI agents for customer support" - impossible for LLMs to confuse with generic AI tools. Sandra's team maintains this exact...

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:

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...

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...

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 webs...

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...

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...

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 Ah...

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 Linke...

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.l...

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...

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 Linke...

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 mana...

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 th...

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 ye...

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: