Jes Scholz is a technical SEO strategist and growth leader who rose to Group CMO at Ringier AG (a Swiss media group with nearly $1B in annual revenue), working across 100+ brands. She’s also an SEOktoberfest World Champion, a published contributor to Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal, and a judge for search awards across the US, UK, EU, and APAC.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
Why “SEO is dead” is the wrong question (and what’s actually changing)
Keywords vs entities: how Google’s Knowledge Graph understands brands
How to check if your brand exists as an entity (and what Google knows about you)
The step-by-step process to build brand salience through corroboration
Why Domain Authority is a vanity metric (and what to measure instead)
How Share of Search connects to market share (and why execs care)
How to use schema to connect your brand across the web
Quick wins you can validate in weeks (Discover, partnerships, distribution)
How AI assistants are reshaping discovery and repeat purchases
In this episode, we cover:
Chapter 1: Is SEO Dead? What’s Changing in Search
0:00 SEO is transforming (not dying)
3:05 Why organic traffic is declining
3:50 AI as the new top-of-funnel discovery layer
4:23 Why brand salience matters in AI results
Chapter 2: Entities, Knowledge Graph & Brand Salience
4:43 Keywords vs entities (how Google “thinks”)
5:52 How to check your Knowledge Graph entity
6:44 What Google associates with a brand entity
9:19 Where to start (homepage + About clarity)
10:18 Corroboration: getting others to confirm your narrative
Chapter 3: Small Business & SaaS Playbooks
11:18 Local SEO as the fastest trust signal (Maps)
12:53 SaaS without an office: directories + community mentions
13:48 Why mentions matter (not just “follow” links)
Chapter 4: Schema, and Multi-Surface Visibility
14:31 Using schema to “draw the lines” for Google
15:57 Why schema helps beyond Google (across indexes)
17:16 Measuring brand presence in ChatGPT (what’s possible today)
18:55 LLM visibility tools: how to use them without false certainty
Chapter 5: Metrics That Matter (And What to Stop Doing)
21:25 Why Domain Authority doesn’t matter
23:06 Share of Search explained (market-aware measurement)
25:17 Short-term wins vs long-term SEO reality
26:01 Discover: how to test fast via partners
41:04 Stop selling “X links per month” (outputs vs outcomes)
Chapter 6: Content, AI, and the Future of Discovery + Purchase
29:26 Writers: POV, expertise, and digital footprint
32:00 Content enrichment for deeper, more contextual queries
49:25 Transactional vs informational content in an API/MCP world
52:56 Where discovery and purchasing is heading
57:24 Books + closing advice
About the Host:
Paul Jebasingh Emmanuel is the Founder and CEO of GoX.ai and Two Minute Reports. Two Minute Reports helps agencies and marketers automate reporting workflows across 30+ platforms.
Listen to Paul’s Agency Podcast:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gox-ai
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cyb0NKCaEq0V1x1vNtqj9?si=119f46b74f184143
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pauls-agency-podcast/id1877052450
