Philip Ghezelbash

SEO dude

Past clients: @deel, @healthline, @balancer

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Looking for US based dermatologists to provide endorsement quotes for a popular hair loss brand. Competitive compensation available.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Looking for medical reviewers with GLP-1 / weight loss expertise. US-based MDs or PharmDs only.

We're producing medically reviewed content for a new telehealth brand in the GLP-1 space, think along the lines of Ro or Hims & Hers. Articles are ~1,500 words covering clinical topics like dosing, safety, and efficacy of semaglutide and tirzepatide.

We're looking for 2 reviewers to each cover 3–4 articles to start each, with strong potential to scale.

Ideal fit:
- MD, or PharmD, ideally with relevant experience. No PhDs. 
- Prior experience reviewing health content for other brands is a plus, but not required. 
- Comfortable lending your byline as medical reviewer

We've written for brands like Healthline before, so you can expect quality and factually accurate writing, which should make your job easier.

This is paid work. If you've done this kind of reviewing before and are open to freelance engagements, connect and send me a DM, or if you know anyone that might be a good fit, tag them below!

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Pretty awesome @ahrefs made the DR endpoint free! Cool seeing the startups on TrustMRR ranked.

But remember folks, at the end of the day, DR is an arbitrary metric, and it doesn't define your SEO success.

I see too many startup founders all over X obsessed over increasing DR equating to "doing SEO".

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Good point on 6. "Don't let domain authority stop you." @jakezward

A lot of people use arbitrary metrics like DR (not saying they are useless) as a deciding factor on whether to attempt to get included in a listicle, i.e., "30+ DR only".

It's wiser to focus on whether the page is ranking, getting cited by AI, and is topically relevant to your brand.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

@ViperChill This is pretty awesome, @timsoulo! Curious to see how the /dr page on Detailed performs too 👀

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

@lilyraynyc Looking forward to it!

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Google does appear to be changing things for listicles.

Self-promotional listicles appear not to get as many mentions for the one writing them. Refer to @lilyraynyc's post attached.

Let's say you're a Framer design agency and you write an article on your own blog: "10 Best Framer Design Agencies in 2025".

Obviously, it can still get traffic, and it can be a source for AI citations in overviews, etc. - but you might not show up as a mention in the answer.

That said, it definitely does still happen. If you refer to the second image, you can see @FirstPageSage is mentioned in the answer for "best geo agencies", and their article is a top source - a self-promotional listicle with themselves at number 1.

So yes, they can still be worth publishing. AI chatbots love listicles and will continue to love them.

But it's increasingly designed to surface brands it sees as a consensus across multiple sources ... to 'qualify' them as worthy of a mention.

So what's the takeaway?

Get cited in listicles across multiple websites, and help shape a consensus that defines what your brand is.

Don't just rely on your own self-promotional listicles.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

@DavidGQuaid What would you say it’s designed for?

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

What is the difference between optimizing for ChatGPT vs Claude?

[Chris Long @chris_nectiv]

Everyone is talking about optimizing for ChatGPT but very few are talking about Anthropic.

I think this is a mistake, especially in B2B. According to @tryramp Anthropic pass OpenAI last month in overall corporate adoption.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

DR is a third-party arbitrary metric.

You can get from 0-60 DR in a few days for cheap on Fiverr.

Plenty of high DR low traffic sites exist, and vice versa.

Not saying it's useless. It's not.

Just not the symbol of “SEO success” that many portray it to be.

SEO success = are you getting more signups, demos, sales, etc from organic search.

[Tibo @tibo_maker]

check here → https://t.co/Qm9qhuii0B

completely risk-free - just let Outrank run for 60 days

if it works, the subscription paid for itself with a 10+ DR jump
if it doesn't, you get 100% refund

see you in 60 days 👋

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Everyone's talking about why listicles matter for SEO/AI search. But there's one benefit almost nobody specifically mentions, and it might be the most powerful one.

Once you get into enough listicles and they start getting cited by AI and ranking in SERPs, a snowball effect occurs.

When a writer (or LLM) is researching to write a new listicle, they scan other listicles for options to include.

So the more you get included in listicles, the more LLMs aren't just going to show you to people searching, but to people actually creating more listicles.

This is how you get cited on massive sites without spending a dime or trying.

For example, my old agency, Writing Studio, got included as number 1 on ClickUp's listicle of "the best 11 content writing services" without even trying, because we were mentioned in the listicles their writer (or AI) used when researching which brands to include.

The hard part is the initial effort of getting into listicles, but once you do, it starts to grow naturally.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Still worth doing though, but yeah better to get mentioned on 10+ listicles on other sites than just relying on a self-promotional listicle on your own.

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

Google is tweaking things, for sure

"Rather than self-proclaimed gurus" 👀👀

Also this is a perfect example of how self-promotional listicles are working for *citations* but not *mentions* - in fact they appear to mostly help competitor mentions lately.

The folks writing articles recommending themselves are cited here but don't show up in the answer anymore

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

43.8% of all source links cited by ChatGPT are "best X" blog listicles. That's from a study of 26,283 URLs by @ahrefs.

If your brand isn't inside those articles, your competitors are taking those spots instead.

Most agencies selling "brand mentions" are just reselling spots in dead link networks, stagnant DR 30+ sites that nobody reads, and AI completely ignores.

Those third-party metrics are easily gamed and don't imply ROI.

We do it differently. We ignore the arbitrary scores, look for real buyer intent, and write custom pitches to editors running active sites.

Enter @listiclepress — a service built to get your brand into the listicles AI actually cites.

First placement: $500 (intro rate for new clients).

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Well said.

I think that at the end of the day, we can’t sit here and cry that Google is taking away all the clicks from informational top of funnel content. It’s inevitable. AI Overviews are generally a better user experience for simple queries and follow the direction search behaviour is moving.

Gone are the days of post high volume blog content and profiting. I still think blogs are worthwhile, but with a very clear purpose and strategy.

And I think @foley_seo is super correct when he says stronger brand building strategies.

I say this time and time again that apart from the obvious KPIs attributed to SEO like revenue, signups, demos etc, BRAND SEARCHES matter a lot. Get people searching for your brand. Aside from actually having a great product, that happens from showing up across the web where they spend time, not just posting blog content and hoping for the best.

[Daniel Foley Carter @foley_seo]

Google AI Overviews have had a profoundly negative impact on the SEO industry, impacting businesses globally.

The clicks Google stole were clicks that drove pre-consideration purchases for tens of millions of websites.

That blog / article strategy helped drive your brand + offering visibility, even if the consumer wasn't ready to buy.

This is one of THOUSANDS of examples I have - look at the position 1-3 count in proportion to the clicks, notice anything?

Google did a HUGE rug pull on the informational niche & publishers.

They've fucked a lot of people off, imagine publishers who got taken out by Helpful Content updates only to get some recovery then taken away by AI overviews.

Salt in the wound.

Google markets themselves in a positive light - they tell the world that people love AI search, they showcase AI integration into every facet of search all whilst systemically de-valuing the crawl to click exchange ratio.

SEO isn't dead, but, it requires MORE work, MORE effort and a broader digital marketing strategy to help with distribution.

This is why SLOPPY AI content strategies are failing.

This is why your clicks are falling.

This is why Google is dropping your pages from the index.

They took your content, trained gemini on it and now they profit via gemini subscriptions & increasing PPC costs whilst you the creator get shafted.

Google isn't a business, it's a monopoly.

Want to beat them?

You need a NEW SEO strategy that focuses on expanded content adoption, stronger brand building strategies - you need to cut the fat from your digital marketing - anything not working should be cut / culled and changed.

Will AI search compensate for lost organic clicks?

No, not now and probably not for the forseeable.

Welcome to SEO, 2026 style.

#seo

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

@lilyraynyc Have you noticed whether it’s specifically the brand listed at #1 that gets skipped, or whether it’s the brand that published the article and listed at #1. i.e. will people start listing themselves as #7 or whatever to bypass it?

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

@forgebitz Yeah just like whether copy for a website is written with the help of AI - is it helpful, effective, etc? If so, fine.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Anyone saying “backlinks don’t matter” (not what @ctwtn is saying) is absolutely delusional and is an SEO noob.

That said for AI citations, specific aspects of “traditional” link building don’t hold as much merit, e.g no statistical significance between dofollow and nofollow links for citations (from a Kevin Indig study) and things like non linked brand mentions having more significance.

But to say “links don’t matter” disregards the entire way the web works. Links matter, and frankly they matter more than ever as AI equalises the playing field for content creation.

[Chris Tweten 🍁 | SaaS SEO @ctwtn]

"backlinks don't matter"

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

He’s generally right. I’d say with one nuance: informational blog content can help your money pages (that drive revenue) perform better. It can still help establish your domain’s topical authority.

I think it’s still worth strategically publishing informational blog content (not for all sites), but not as a “pump out more content volume for more traffic” strategy.

[Keval Shah | Ecom SEO + AEO @SEOKeval]

The funny thing about AI "killing" informational blog content is that it was never a viable SEO strategy to begin with.

It was a strategy that SEO agencies used to make it "look" like SEO was working.

They'd say:

"Wow! We ranked you for 'what is a standing desk' and your traffic is up 200%!"

Okay...

And how does that translate into revenue?

It doesn't.

But organic traffic is up, and the primary KPI for SEO is more organic traffic.

So it's a job well done.

That trick doesn't work anymore.

AI steals all of those clicks now, and that's actually a good thing.

SEO agencies can't trick their clients anymore.

They either need to improve organic revenue—as they should have been doing all along—or stop taking on clients altogether.

[Philip Ghezelbash @philghz]

Pretty sure the most Googled word in Korea is "Naver"

[Selene @vaaselene]

fun fact: Google only owns 28% of search in South Korea. Naver runs ~65%.

I'm Korean, and as we're expanding into SK, Naver just went into the API.

interesting how countries use different search engines. What platform does your country run on?