Sumaartha P Pahwa

15 yrs SEO/PPC → now obsessed with AI search visibility (GEO). Google Ads for dental & local service brands. Building AI tools for audits. DMs open for business

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

Some honesty to end the day.

I doubt myself. A lot.

On paper it makes no sense. SEO executive to SEO head in 5 years. Trained hundreds of SEOs. Took businesses from zero to millions. Built websites from zero to millions of visits. Started social accounts in categories nobody touched and made them work.

I know these are achievements. I can list them. I just can't feel them.

Because a few failures sit louder in my head than every win combined. And there's this one thought that never leaves: the big success - the one that meets MY criteria - hasn't come yet.

The finish line moves every time I get close. Cross a milestone, it becomes "that was nothing, what's next."
I don't have a lesson today. No framework. No "and then I realized."

Just this: if you're achieving things and still feel like you're not enough — I'm right there with you. Fifteen years in, still waiting to feel like I've arrived.

Maybe the people who look most sorted are just better at hiding this.

Does the feeling ever settle? Genuinely asking those senior to me.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

need this kind of jump. teach me too pls :(

[Sabyr Nurgaliyev @tech_nurgaliyev]

YES, BABY!!!

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

Have to disagree with @randfish here. Yes, big platforms will dominate, but the web is still fed by millions of 'ants'—niche bloggers and site owners driving actual, ground-level expertise. Mentions matter now, but they don’t kill backlinks. Links just became part of a bigger ecosystem.

[Edward Sturm @edwardeachday]

Godfather of SEO, @randfish: “Mentions matter more than backlinks.

If you’re still link building, I have great news, you can stop. You don’t have to do it. It’s like washing chicken, you don’t have to do it man, just stop.

You can see where this train is going. Mentions.”

Me: “Less people are putting up niche blogs than before. More people are posting on YouTube, are posting on Instagram.”

Rand: “The future is big platforms dominating more and more of what gets surfaced, what’s popular, what people think about topics, what people think about products, and what people think about brands. You have to be present in these places with a message that resonates, with content that gets watched, listened to, and read.”

Edward: “If you were starting a brand new company today, you had zero audience, you had zero reputation, what would your marketing look like? Your first 90 days of marketing look like?”

Rand: “I will always pick channels and tactics that do three things.

One, serving my target audience in the places they pay attention.

Second one is I don’t think it is worth your time and energy to do something where you have no personal passion.

The third one is I would need something where I can provide unique value that nobody else provides. What is something different that I’m doing in this place where my audience pays attention that other people are not doing?”

From Episode 1050 of The Edward Show podcast: “The Death of Clicks? Rand Fishkin on Brand, AI & the Future of Marketing”

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@tim_yakubson 100%. So realistically, what’s the minimum monthly budget you recommend for an Apollo-first stack versus a Clay-first stack?

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@illyism 100%. From what I’m seeing with AI SEO, if you just nail the technical basics—clean HTML, solid structured data, and flawless indexing—it just works.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@Marie_Haynes Still not seeing this on any of my properties. Am I missing a step to enable it, or is it just a super limited rollout right now?

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

The SERPs never lie when there's sports drama. 😂 Great catch

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

yep

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

The unsexy side of media buying that actually makes scaling possible. Standardized conventions save hours of auditing.

[Professor Charley T | The Meta Ads Guy @CTtheDisrupter]

Diary of the Disrupter:
Lessons from $1B in Spend
Entry #144

If your naming system doesn’t have a legend, it won’t scale.

A legend is the key that explains every abbreviation and shorthand in your campaign names.
Without it, even the best structure slowly falls apart as people guess, improvise, or forget what things mean.

Think of your naming convention like a map. The legend is what makes the symbols usable.
Without it, the map is just noise.

A strong legend:
• Clearly defines every term and abbreviation
• Lives in one shared, easy-to-find place
• Gets updated as your system evolves
• Is used regularly—not just created once

Your legend should cover things like strategy types, bidding models, campaign formats, and automation tags. It also becomes a powerful onboarding tool. New team members can move fast without breaking the system because the rules are written down.

Structure only works when it’s understood. The legend is what keeps your naming system stable, readable, and aligned over time.

Action Item:
Create or update a shared legend that outlines every component of your naming convention. Make sure it’s easy to find, easy to edit, and part of your team onboarding.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

100%. If your entire organic strategy only lives on your own blog, you were already behind. Off-site is the real moat.

[Harpreet @harpreetchatha_]

GEO / AEO advice that needs to be fact checked.

For real businesses that make money organic marketing was never just about what was published on your own website.

(Yes that one line (and only one) after businesses that make money sounded like AI wrote it cause I reworded what someone wrote on LinkedIn).

I keep seeing this 85% of websites that show up in AI are third party. wtf does that even mean.

If you own one website, and there’s a 100 citations, that should be 99%.

If you’re smart and want to monopolize answers. You go outside and buy more websites or influence the content that shows up. Doesn’t matter what medium it is.

Businesses do this with politicians. They lobby them. They buy other companies and consolidate.

When I worked with supplement e-commerce brands, we paid influencers to make content for social media.

We paid affiliate websites to feature our products.

If you want to buy something and a friend already has it, you might ask them for their opinion.

The world has always revolved around using more than one asset for influence

You see this stat around ai trusting external websites with no context cause GEO / AEO companies are trying confuse corporate workers and sell them some bs.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

Incredible growth trajectory. I tried to look into your traffic patterns to learn from your strategy, but it’s clearly an outlier that most tools can’t accurately capture! As someone also building in the space, I’d love to know—what does your listener count look like at this stage?

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@parkerworth Spot on. I couldn't agree more. Volume is just expensive noise now. Which tools are you currently finding most effective for building that high-signal ICP?

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

Pretty simple setup — Meta and Google ads to anyone who visits but doesn't convert. First week I show them a case study or customer story. If they're still not converting after that, I send a lead magnet or a small offer. I also email anyone who's opted in. And I keep the ad frequency low so it doesn't get annoying.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

Been saying this for years. "Toxic backlinks" reports create panic (and disavow-file busywork) way more often than they prevent actual penalties. Google's own algorithms are good at ignoring spammy links — the noise just sells more tool subscriptions.

[David G Quaid (SEO) @DavidGQuaid]

The SEO Industry needs #SEMRush to dump the Toxic Backlinks Report.

Its complete FUD.

Lets reduce the noise, complexity, myths, superstitions out of SEO?

https://t.co/qj4qciUZDu

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@ahmad_a_wahabb Been testing this exact workflow on a few DTC accounts. Performance-wise the AI UGC creative holds up fine on cold traffic, but I'm still pairing it with 1-2 real customer testimonials per campaign — trust signals still matter once people click through to the site.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@DavidGQuaid Love when this happens. Feels validating when you've been telling clients the same thing for months and Google quietly makes it official. Curious what changes once more people catch on and it stops being an edge.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

@hridoyreh This is underrated advice. The build is the easy part now, honestly — AI closed that gap fast. Distribution and SEO are still what separate a side project from an actual business. Seen it play out with too many clients who built something great and nobody found it.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

This is the shift I've been telling clients about for two years — SEO stopped being a Google-only game a while back. Once you can see Instagram/TikTok/YouTube discovery data next to your Search Console reports, the content strategy conversations get a lot easier to win internally. Registering my properties today.

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

Google just changed the SEO game and most people missed it.
Search Console now accepts Instagram, TikTok, X & YouTube accounts. No website needed.
You'll see exactly which searches rank your posts.
No backlinks. No DA. Your ranking currency is now likes, shares, comments.
The most democratic search update in years.
Social SEO just became measurable. The creators who write captions like search queries will eat.
Connecting my accounts day one.

[Barry Schwartz @rustybrick]

Google Search Console now can show you your social and video content performance in Google Search for Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube https://t.co/s9zMM7WoIH

[Sumaartha P Pahwa @sumaartha_]

This tracks with what we see on the media buying side too. The intrigue-first VSLs get great watch time but terrible conversion because there's no reason to act. The ones that actually sell restate the offer/mechanism early and often, hook gets attention but the offer does the closing.