Episode 853 | How to Become the SaaS That AI Recommends

Rob Walling (0:00)

Welcome back to another episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm your host Rob Walling, and in this episode, I talk with Ross Hudgens. He's the author of a new book about AI SEO, about how to become the SaaS that AI recommends in your category.

Ross has a wealth of knowledge on SEO and now GEO, which is Generative Engine Optimization, as he runs an 80-person SEO slash GEO agency called Siege Media. Before we dive into our conversation, MicroConf US ticket prices go up on October 9th. So our next MicroConf US is in Austin, Texas from April 18th through the 20th. We have an amazing speaker roster, including Austin's own Jason Cohen. We of course have our world-class hallway track, and producer Sonja is lining up some great excursions, as she always does. We're going to be staying right downtown at the Hotel Van Zandt, microconf.com/us, to grab your ticket before prices go up on October 9th and the event sells out as our last seven events have. Use promo code ROB50, that's ROB50, to let them know I sent you. And with that, let's talk about how to become the SaaS that AI recommends.

Ross Hudgens, welcome back to the show.

Ross Hudgens (1:26)

Thanks for having me again, Rob.

Rob Walling (1:28)

You were on a few years ago talking about SEO for SaaS because you run Siege Media, where your H1 is full service GEO, we make brands the answer in search. And formerly, when you came on the show, Siege Media was focused on SEO. And I can imagine there's a lot of thought going into that pivot these days. How are you thinking about SEO versus GEO these days?

Ross Hudgens (1:50)

Yeah, SEO is still definitely a massive component of GEO, but there's new flavors that are not part of it, that I think is not arguable, but some people would argue. And a lot of that's the offsite things like affiliate mentions, reviews on third party websites.

That is the new element that we're adding to the previous GEO pie. That's still a very important pie.

Rob Walling (2:14)

Makes sense. So you've written a book called Generative Engine Optimization, The Definitive Guide to AISCO, and that is available on Amazon. Well, it'll go live, I guess, about a week after this episode goes live.

And you are the person to write this book when you reached out and said, hey, I want to, I think you asked me to read it and give you a quote or something. And I was like, oh, I'm so glad you're writing this, because people keep asking me about it. It's like, look, how much GEO do you think I've done? Not very much these days, you know what I mean? Like I used to do all the marketing and all the SEO for all my businesses. And I just, I'm not there anymore. You know, I'm not doing like the down in the, you know, in the bare metal nitty gritty. And so when people ask my advice on something this specific, I'm always like, well, really wish I had a resource to hand them. And so the fact that you're writing this book, I think is really helpful. I mean, I guess the obvious question is you've been doing SEO and now you're a CEO. Siege Media is, what, 80 employees? I mean, it's a force of nature here. But what made you decide to put pen to paper and get this out?

Ross Hudgens (3:14)

So I'm a member of an organization called Young Presidents Organization, YPO. It's other business owners. And we had an offsite and someone in the group pushed us to do something called a Masagi. So a Masagi is a once a year, difficult year defining challenge, which essentially is supposed to be very difficult to accomplish. 50-50 chance of failure. And I had always, I ran a content agency that became an SEO agency.

I was a writer. I was like, wow, light bulb went off. This is the moment we're in AI.

This is when I should write this book on this exact topic. We had been going through the transformation ourselves. So I was just like, man, I'm going to sprint and do this and spend every morning writing it. And sure enough, I got it out.

Rob Walling (3:58)

And you start the book with a client story, right? You had an S&P 100 client, I almost said 500 You had an S&P 100 client that laid off its entire SEO team in mid 2025

And they had a new group called AI Transformation within the company. Tell me, summarize that story. And just so folks know, we're going to dive in after this into some practical stuff from the book so folks can learn how to do some GEO themselves.