By Jeremy Rivera, Founder of SEO Arcade and Host of the Unscripted SEO Podcast
I’ve been working in SEO since 2007, and I’ve seen a lot of shifts in this industry. But the conversation I recently had with Claude Zdanow (CEO) and Chris Becker (President) of ONAR crystallized something I’ve been wrestling with for the past few years: most marketing teams are optimizing for metrics that stopped mattering around 2020.
The Zero-Click Paradox Breaking Traditional Models
Chris Becker put it plainly: “You have simply got to look at your data differently now. There’s so many zero-click movements. You only get commercial clicks now — they’re coming to your website with high buyer intent.” The research phase happens on Reddit, in LLM chats, on Quora. By the time someone clicks through, they’re not browsing. They’re buying.
The data point that should terrify every executive still obsessing over traffic: traffic down, revenue up. This completely destroys the correlation between traffic volume and business outcomes we relied on for two decades.
The New Critical Metric: LLM Share of Voice
Chris asked a question that should be on every marketing dashboard but almost certainly isn’t: “Within ChatGPT, relative to my competitors, what percentage of queries do I populate within the answer?” That’s your new ranking. Not domain authority, not position 1 — your share of voice in LLM responses.
Moving Down the Funnel (LLMs Ate the Top)
Top-of-funnel informational content? LLMs generate that in seconds. The strategic shift: get to comparative level — this product vs. that product, head-to-head differentiators. If you don’t create that content and distribute it across platforms, you won’t be included in LLM synthesis when buyers are evaluating options.
The AI Agent Framework for Tracking LLM Visibility
Chris outlined a three-agent system: one agent generates 10,000–50,000 queries a target persona would ask an LLM; a second agent prompts each LLM with those queries; a third reviews the answers and identifies which sources are being cited. The output tells you exactly what content to create and on which platforms to build authority — to get cited over your competitors.
Get Niche, Get Rich
“If you’re not necessarily that top brand, focus in on one very specific area and become known for that one cluster of queries.” Better to be the definitive source for “ultra-marathon desert running footwear” than fight Nike for “running shoes.” This specificity is what LLMs reward — and what traditional broad keyword strategies completely miss.
Want to explore more insights from industry leaders? Check out my conversations with Jason Barnard on entity optimization, Katie Wagner on brand journalism, and Melissa Popp on local SEO strategy.