This year, to grow my company (InboxDone.com), we're doing something old and something new.
The big change is we are moving budget away from paid ads to re-invest back into a content marketing strategy.
This is not new. I started the business with a strategy that included articles, videos, podcasts and other forms of link building.
(You can learn my full growth strategy here.)
The goal was to improve our rankings in Google.
I knew it would not be quick, but I had hopes it would eventually be effective.
It worked, Google has sent us customers every year and is responsible for millions of dollars of revenue.
However, a couple of years ago when we started to focus on paid ads, I began to neglect organic content.
While this didn't kill our content strategy, I know our Google rankings were slowly dropping.
Then something new began to happen.
People started showing up for sales calls after finding us in ChatGPT, Grok and Perplexity.
AI based queries for products and services are growing rapidly, but still only account for just 15% of the volume of search compared to Google.
What's especially interesting is this AI based search is not coming at the expense of Google.
Google search volume has plateaued, but even as AI based search doubles each year, it is not replacing Google search, it's augmenting it.
AI should be seen as a new channel to tap into with a content strategy, while still leveraging Google as well.
Thankfully, when you execute a solid content strategy, you can bring in leads from Google and AI from the same content.
However, there are certain things you do specifically for AI search, which is what's new with our content strategy for 2026.
Let me share with you some specific examples…
Google SEO Is Also AI Optimization
The basic SEO strategy is simple in concept, but challenging to achieve primarily due to competition.
You publish articles targeting keywords and cover topics that will attract your target customer from Google searches.
Someone wants to solve a problem and they are willing to pay money for a solution. Your articles are designed to show up when they have the intention to purchase — that is why they are searching.
The hard part is ranking high enough to be considered.
Without authority that comes from years of building links back to your web pages from various sources, you have no chance.
Especially if there is money to be made in your industry, which means the competition is also working hard to get those top rankings.
The important thing is to put a strategy in place and continue to build your authority over time.
For my company, we did the following:
- Publish new content to our blog
- Build incoming links
I'll break down exactly how we do these two things in a moment, but first we need to consider the new variable…
AI search.
Specifically, people using AI chat when they want to purchase a solution to a problem.
Take for example what happened just yesterday as I write this.
A person booked a discovery call for later in the evening the same day.
They listed GPT as how they found us (ChatGPT).
During the call, this person told me they had a conversation with AI specifically about two problems they wanted to solve:
- Their email inbox
- A more broad digital life clean-up
In short, they want help with email, admin, and the systems and processes (or lack of them) that manage everything they do as an entrepreneur online.
Unlike a search which returns links to websites, with AI a conversation leads to recommendations.
Conversations are more contextual, so you get more contextual recommendations.
AI also replies using natural language and acts as a research assistant, so it feels like advice you can trust.
You ask it for the ‘best' solution to a problem — say for example getting help with your emails — and it returns it's endorsement of what it considers the best.
In this instance, our company InboxDone was suggested as the top choice for this specific problem.
Why? Not because we have optimized for AI, but because I've invested time and money to optimize for Google over many years.
All those years publishing articles and videos about how to delegate your email to an assistant and going on podcasts and publishing content on external websites to build links, has placed us on top for our very narrow niche.
This has also lead to us being on top of AI for the same search.
In 2026 though, we're going to do even more content, this time not just for Google, but also for AI.
Creating Content For AI Search
This year we're going to continue what has worked for us in the past, but we're making AI specific changes…
We've hired the same writer we used in the past to get regular content on our blog
This time he is writing not just for keywords but for AI too. This includes:
- Writing comparison articles and top recommendation lists that include our websites but also the websites of our competitors.
For example – 10 Best Companies To Hire An Executive Assistant For Email Management
- We're building out a ‘Help Center' that features many FAQs that cover common questions about our industry and also our own services.
- We are including ‘quick answers' at the start of articles that give the short version of the article as a reference point for AI (and human readers).
Plus we continue to release testimonial videos with blog posts and share all of this content on our social channels.
The key to making this work for AI search is to still make sure you have content that has the potential for contextual matching, which means all the possible ways a person might discuss a topic with AI.
Plus, as with SEO, you need incoming links — or ‘references' that your website appears in that AI search uses as its information sources.
Just as SEO relies on keywords and topic relevancy, plus authority, AI is about contextual discussion matching plus reference authority.
This is why this year for my company we are doing the following to build links and help us get mentions in more places that will be referenced in AI.
- My co-founder is going to be a guest on podcasts this year. I did this during our early years, but this time she is going to be the star and talk about her concept of ‘Designing Your Perfect Day‘.
- We're going to create content on platforms like Medium and Reddit, external platforms that allow us to create incoming links and create reference points.
- I'm currently selecting options for getting press coverage(earned media) with articles on sites like Forbes and various business publications.
- We will also look for contribution opportunities, like presenting webinars for key target customers (Lawyers, Accountants), writing guest articles, and being interviewed for any kind of content.
On top of this we're going to publish more content on our YouTube channel, using what we publish on our blog as the basis for video versions of the same content.
All of this content and link building should reinforce and improve our Google rankings.
My expectation is this will keep our company steady, but won't lead to any wild breakthroughs. There's just not that much Google search volume for our niche, but it is very high quality (high buying intent), so I want to get what we can from it.
AI search is a wild card. It's doubling in volume each year, so that is one reason to focus on it, but will it deliver a breakthrough in growth?
I don't expect a 10x result, but if we can get the same from AI as we get from Google that would be something significant.
Why Stop Paid Ads?
The simple answer is they are not working for us anymore.
After many years and several experts attempting to help us leverage Google, LinkedIn and Meta ads, the results have gone from okay, to bad, to basically nothing.
It just doesn't make sense to use our budget on something that brings in zero in return.
I can't be sure why the decline to zero, but my guess it has to do with competition, AI and possibly economic reasons.
Will we return to ads? Probably at some point, but for now I'm happy to reinvest our ad budget into content creation and link building and see where that takes us.
I should be clear — this is not advice for you to copy us.
As I outline in my growth guide, I recommend both a paid and organic strategy, leveraging test results from both to get outcomes you can use across all campaign formats.
Anything can work for you, what matters is you have a strategy you understand and can learn from.
What you need are actions that give meaningful results.
We are getting quality leads from Google and AI and I see growth potential in AI search, so we're going down that path as we start the new year.
What paths you should follow are based on what stage your business is in, your budget and what you are selling.
Here's to a new year full of growth!
Yaro
P.S. I am considering opening up some coaching slots for anyone who is looking to build up a Google and AI search strategy this year in order to get more customers.
I'm not sure if that's a focus for you and if you'd want to hire a coach to help with your strategy though?
Let me know if you're interested and what kind of business you have, and we can see if it's worth booking in a call to discuss more.
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