The Two Types of SEO Left: Zak Ali on Surfaces, Digital PR & Terminal-Native Workflows

Most SEOs are defending a job that no longer exists. Zak Ali () — General Manager of Finder US ( and one of the rare practitioners who took SEO from the terminal to the executive suite — argues the discipline didn't shrink, it got absorbed. In this episode he and host Jeremy Rivera () get into "search everywhere optimization," why he dissolved Finder's dedicated SEO team, and why retention — not rankings — should be every SEO's core KPI. Zak started in search in 2015, co-founding the news blog Rant and growing it to ~100,000 readers before joining Finder in 2018 as a publisher, then head of growth, and now GM of the U.S. business — owning organic, paid, email, CRM, and sales. In this episode:- Why LLMs turned search engine optimization into search everywhere optimization (a nod to AJ Kohn's "surface optimization" (https://www.infinitevisibilitygroup.com/posts/surface-optimization/))- The two types of SEOs left: technical SEOs, and SEOs who haven't realized their job is now digital PR and branding- Why Zak killed the SEO team and rebuilt it as a generalist growth org- Retention as an SEO KPI — "the traffic you have today is as cheap as it's going to be"- How AI is putting the customer first again (and why "slop" predates LLMs)- YMYL trust signals, editorial independence, and the regulatory "back door" to search- Google News (be first) vs. Google Discover (entity optimization, and ephemeral traffic)- The terminal-native stack: Ahrefs MCP, Claude Code (https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code), DataForSEO (https://dataforseo.com), building your own LLM tracker, and a "second brain" in Obsidian (https://obsidian.md)- Information gain and anecdotes — why LLMs can't have experiences (with the obligatory Darmok and Jalad reference) Chapters:- (00:00) Meet Zak Ali — Rant, Finder, and Finder Rewards- (02:55) SEO within LLMs: search everywhere / surface optimization- (05:26) Selling SEO's value to the executive suite- (08:02) How AI puts the customer first again- (09:17) Which pre-LLM SEO strategies survived- (10:50) "AI is the steroids SEOs needed" & the Helpful Content Update as a correction- (13:13) Is AI traffic its own channel — or a piece of the puzzle?- (14:51) Regulated/YMYL industries and trust signals- (18:21) Google News vs. Google Discover- (22:06) Retention as the real KPI — and killing the SEO team- (24:27) Paid vs. organic, and systems thinking- (26:45) Tools he loves right now- (28:29) Open-source SEO, MCP, and living in the Claude Code terminal- (29:27) Second brains, "publisher" agents, and AI org charts- (34:49) The question for the next guest: is the faceless brand dead?- (40:44) Rebranding SEO → "search everywhere optimization" Notable quotes: ▎ "There are two types of SEOs that exist today. There are the technical SEOs, and there are SEOs who haven't realized yet that their job is digital PR and branding." — Zak Ali ▎ "The traffic you have today is as cheap as it's going to be. It's only going to get more expensive. Retention should be a core KPI of every SEO." — Zak Ali ▎ "What AI is doing is actually allowing us to put the customer first again." — Zak Ali