Open to consulting & new roles
I make brands visible in AI search.
Hi — I’m Brian. For 20+ years I’ve helped companies get found, first in Google and now in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. I build the GEO/AEO programs, tracking, and content pipelines that win citations in crowded categories — and I write about how it all works.
20+Years in search
600K+Keywords grown for AAA
32%New-user growth at The Dyrt
120+Clients as agency founder
Brands I’ve worked with
Where I’ve been
Twenty years of search, from agency floors to AI answers
SEO Lead · The Dyrt
2025 – Present · Camping marketplace, 80K+ pages
I own the GEO/AEO program — AI visibility tracking, brand-citation programs, a content graph with entity enrichment, and RAG-style pipelines that generated 20K+ optimized assets. Contributed to 32% new-user growth and the company’s first profitable year in twelve.
SEO Lead · AAA
2024 – 2025 · The Auto Club Group
Grew keyword visibility from 95K to 600K+ and first-page rankings from 12K to 30K+, lifted membership conversions 9%, and retained 98% of organic traffic through a multi-site migration.
Senior SEO Consultant
2019 – 2023 · Independent, SaaS & B2B
Launched early AI-driven content workflows on GPT-4 and Claude, grew topical coverage 45% with entity and E-E-A-T strategies, and lifted conversion rates 18% through UX mapping and A/B testing.
Director, Technical SEO · LOCOMOTIVE
2015 – 2017, 2022 · Enterprise agency
Led technical SEO for Cox, Sunbrella, Credit.com, and NRG — programmatic frameworks for large location and directory sites, and audits turned into execution-ready roadmaps for C-level clients.
Founder · SocialSEO.com
2002 – 2015 · Acquired
Built and led a 15–20 person SEO and content agency serving 120+ clients including Drugstore.com, Sony Music, and HughesNet; scaled ThemeSnap.com to 16,000+ customers.
How I work
Toolkit & workflows
AI search · GEO/AEO
Answer-engine optimization for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews — citation programs, content graphs, query fan-out analysis.
Technical SEO
Enterprise audits, Core Web Vitals, JavaScript rendering, structured data, crawl budget, and migrations that keep the traffic.
Automation & AI
MCP and automation workflows, programmatic SEO at scale, RAG-aligned content pipelines, and Python scripts where they earn their keep.
Analytics & reporting
Executive-ready dashboards and monthly reporting that tie search work to revenue, built on custom API integrations.
Selected work
Case studies & results
Dashboards, visibility trackers, and before-and-afters from real programs. Click any image to view it full size.
Custom dashboard tracking brand citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — the KPI executives now review monthly.
Looker Studio dashboards built on custom API integrations, tying organic performance directly to revenue.
Visibility growth over 12 months — first-page rankings up from 12K to 30K+ and membership conversions up 9%.
The entity-enriched content graph behind a RAG pipeline that produced 20K+ optimized assets at The Dyrt.
Share-of-voice reporting for AI answers: who gets cited, for which query clusters, and where the gaps are.
Traffic through a multi-site enterprise migration — redirect mapping and crawl triage kept nearly every visit.
From the desk
Recent Articles
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Cancer: A Place Where Uncertainty Thrives
Every day that passes without incident to yourself, a loved one, or a friend is a true blessing. You see, we are all walking this very thin line where, at any moment, one’s health and life trajectory as we know it can be altered entirely. One day you are celebrating family, a birthday, a personal…
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The Wonders of Immunotherapy & A Chance to Live
After my diagnosis of stage IV melanoma in early October 2017, my oncologist and cancer team immediately put me on the immunotherapy combination of Yervoy (Ipilimumab) and Opdivo (Nivolumab). This combo, which would be given in 4 infusions from October 25th to December 27th — and the subsequent 33 Opdivo infusions till April 2019 —…
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A Dismal Diagnosis & A Day I Try To Forget
October 3rd 2017. This date rattles me to the core. As much as I’d like to forget it or have it brainwashed from existence, it is etched into my mind forever. I hate the thought of this day, as it is a constant reminder of a pain and sorrow like I’ve never felt before. “You…
“Brian took AI visibility from a buzzword to a KPI our executives actually track. The citation share gains showed up in the pipeline.”
— VP of Growth, travel marketplace
“The rare technical SEO who can brief a C-suite and debug a rendering issue in the same afternoon. Our migration kept 98% of its traffic.”
— Director of Digital, enterprise membership org
Let’s talk search
Consulting engagements, full-time roles, or just a question about getting cited by AI engines — I read every message.
brian.gilley@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/briangilley
Louisburg, NC · Remote-friendly