This year I want to grow my business (InboxDone.com), we do something old and something new.
The big change is that we are moving the budget away from paid advertising and reinvesting in one content marketing strategy.
This is not new. I started the company with a strategy that included articles, videos, podcasts, and other forms of link building.
(You can learn it my full growth strategy here.)
The goal was to improve our ranking in Google.
I knew it wouldn’t be quick, but I hoped it would be effective eventually.
It worked, Google has sent us customers every year and is responsible for millions of dollars in revenue.
However, when we started focusing on paid advertising a few years ago, I started to neglect organic content.
While this didn’t kill our content strategy, I know our Google rankings slowly dropped.
Then something new started to happen.
People started showing up for sales calls after finding us on ChatGPT, Grok, and Perplexity.
AI-based searches for products and services are growing rapidly, but still represent only a limited number 15% of search volume compared to Google.
What’s especially interesting is that this AI-based search doesn’t come at Google’s expense.
Google’s search volume has stabilized, but even though AI-based search is doubling every year, it is not replacing Google’s search, but augmenting it.
AI should be seen as a new channel that you can leverage with a content strategy, while still using Google.
Fortunately, if you implement a solid content strategy, you can capture leads from Google and AI from the same content.
However, there are certain things you do specifically for AI search, which is new in our 2026 content strategy.
I want to share some specific examples with you…
Google SEO is also AI optimization
The basic SEO strategy is simple in design, but difficult to implement, mainly due to competition.
You publish articles that target keywords and cover topics that will attract your target audience through Google searches.
Someone wants to solve a problem and is willing to pay money for a solution. Your items are designed to appear when they have the intention to purchase something; that’s why they search.
The hardest part is getting the ranking high enough to qualify.
Without authority that comes from years of building links to your web pages from various sources, you don’t stand a chance.
Especially if there is money to be made in your industry, which means that the competition is also working hard to achieve those top positions.
The most important thing is to build a strategy and continue to build your authority over time.
For my company we did the following:
- Publish new content on our blog
- Build inbound links
I’ll explain exactly how we do these two things in a moment, but first we need to take into account the new variable…
AI search.
In particular, people who use AI chat when they want to buy a solution to a problem.
Take for example what happened yesterday as I write this.
Someone booked a discovery call for later that evening on the same day.
They listed GPT as how they found us (ChatGPT).
During the conversation, this person told me that they had a conversation with AI specifically about two problems they wanted to solve:
- Their email inbox
- A broader clean-up of digital life
In short, they want help with email, administration and the systems and processes (or lack thereof) that manage everything they do online as entrepreneurs.
Unlike a search query that returns links to websites, AI a conversation leads to recommendations.
Conversations are more contextual, so you get more contextual recommendations.
AI also answers in natural language and acts as a research assistant, so it feels like advice you can trust.
You ask him for the ‘best’ solution to a problem (e.g. help with your emails) and he responds that he thinks that’s the best.
In this case, our company InboxDone was suggested as the best choice for this specific problem.
Why? Not because we optimized for AI, but because I invested years and years of time and money optimizing for Google.
All those years of publishing articles and videos on how to do that delegate your email to an assistant and using podcasts and publishing content on external websites to build links has put us at the top of our very narrow niche.
This has also meant that we are on top of AI for the same search query.
However, in 2026 we will create even more content, this time not only for Google, but also for AI.
Create content for AI search
This year we’re continuing what’s worked for us in the past, but we’re making AI-specific changes…
We hired the same writer we’ve used in the past to get regular content on our blog
This time he writes not only for keywords, but also for AI. This includes:
- Writing comparison articles and top recommendation lists that include both our websites and the websites of our competitors.
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For example – 10 Best Companies to Hire an Executive Assistant for Email Management​
​ - We are building a ‘Help Center’ with many frequently asked questions about frequently asked questions about our industry and also about our own services.
​ - We include “quick answers” at the beginning of articles that provide the short version of the article as a reference point for AI (and human readers).
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Additionally, we will continue to release testimonial videos to accompany blog posts and share all of this content on our social channels.
The key to making this work for AI searches is to still make sure you have content that has the potential for contextual matching, meaning all possible ways someone could discuss a topic with AI.
Plus, just like SEO, you need inbound links – or “references” that your website uses as a source of information in the AI ​​search.
Just as SEO relies on keywords and topic relevance, plus authority, AI is about contextual discussion matching plus reference authority.
This is why we are doing the following for my company this year to build links and help us get mentions in more places referenced in AI.
- My co-founder is a guest on podcasts this year. I did this during our early years, but this time she will be the star and talk about her concept of ‘Design your perfect day‘.
​ - We will be creating content on platforms like Medium and Redditexternal platforms that allow us to create inbound links and reference points.
​ - I am currently selecting options to obtain press coverage(earned media) with articles on sites such as Forbes and various business publications.
​ - We will also look for contribution opportunities such as presenting webinars for key audiences (lawyers, accountants), writing guest articles and being interviewed for any content.
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Additionally, we’ll be publishing more content on our YouTube channel, using what we publish on our blog as the basis for video versions of the same content.
All this content and link building should strengthen and improve our Google rankings.
I expect this will keep our company stable, but not lead to wild breakthroughs. There just isn’t that much Google search volume for our niche, but it’s very high quality (high purchase intent) so I want to get what we can out of it.
AI search is a wildcard. The volume is doubling every year, so that’s a 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 important.
Why stop paid advertising?
The simple answer is that they no longer work for us.
After many years and several experts trying to help us use Google, LinkedIn and Meta ads, the results have gone from okay, to bad, to next to nothing.
It just doesn’t make sense to use our budget for something that yields zero.
I’m not sure why the drop comes to zero, but I suspect it has to do with competition, AI, and possibly economic reasons.
Shall we return to advertisements? Probably someday, but for now I’m happy to invest our advertising budget into creating content and building links and seeing where that takes us.
I have to be clear – this is not advice to copy us.
As I outline in my growth guideI recommend both a paid and organic strategy, using test results from both to get results you can use across all campaign formats.
Anything can work for you, it’s about having a strategy that you understand and can learn from.
What you need are actions that produce meaningful results.
We’re 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.
Which paths to take depend on what stage your business is in, your budget, and what you’re selling.
Here’s to a new year full of growth!
Child
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P.S I’m considering opening up some coaching slots to anyone who wants to build a Google and AI search strategy this year to acquire more customers.
However, I’m not sure if that’s a focus for you and if you would want to hire a coach to help you with your strategy?
Let me know if you’re interested and what type of business you have and we can have a phone call to see if it’s worth booking to discuss more.
#growth #strategy