Ross Hudgens

SEO Manager

I’m the founder and CEO of Siege Media. We’re dedicated to helping great brands scale through SEO, GEO, content marketing, and PR. 

Siege Media has been honored with inclusion in the Inc. 5000 list six times and recognized as one of Inc.'s Best Workplaces.

And we’re so proud to collaborate with some of the world's leading brands, including Adidas, Airbnb, Angi, Asana, Audible, Casper, Healthline, HubSpot, Instacart, Intuit QuickBooks, Intuit TurboTax, Norton, Quicken Loans, Shutterfly, The Zebra, TripAdvisor, Williams Sonoma, Y Combinator, Zendesk, and many more.

Founder / CEO

We grow great brands with SEO-focused content marketing. Past and current clients include Intuit, Zendesk, Casper, TripAdvisor, Shutterfly, Asana and more. 

Notable achievements: 
• Named to Inc. 5000 6x 
• Named to Inc's Best Workplaces 2x
• Named a Fastest Growing Company in San Diego 6x
• Named Top 10 Most Influential Content Marketer by BuzzSumo

ICP mapping is a critical, GEO-first tactic for B2B.

What is ICP mapping?

Creating landing pages that give you full coverage of the industries, solutions and business sizes you support.

Within LLMs, long-tail searches and user customization will look for signals like this so clear signaling will help significantly. 

Where before you could "vibe" communicate this with logos, design signaling and case studies in many circumstances, it now pays to very clearly make it obvious who you support in the form of direct landing pages.

These pages will in turn appear in query-fan-outs for LLMs, making sure you appear for the queries that matter.

This is also an alternative, brand-first alternative to the "best X software" approach -- by having these long-tail pages mapped, you have a better shot at ranking for landing pages affiliate sites won't touch, or won't touch well.

Finally, it's worth noting that this is also just good best practice for CRO independent of LLMs. 

The more content you have that speaks tightly to a given ICP, the better you'll convert within that audience. Before LLMs were a thing, industry pages were a highly recommended strategy for most SaaS companies. 

Now it's a critical one.

CEO, Siege Media | SEO for Google + AI, Content & PR

SEOs, welcome to the world of the long, long tail.

What is the long long tail?

The thinned out, multi-faceted variations on searches users, and in turn LLMs, perform to find the absolute best result for that prompt. 

As Clearscope founder Bernard Huang described on our most recent podcast, this has implications for practitioners to map their topic universe to the possible variables query-fan out could have for the bottom-funnel searches they make.

I recently called this "product page / ICP mapping" in my recent LinkedIn post. 

Where previously we could stop at a term like "project management software", now it behooves us to have pages for:

"project management software for small business"
"project management software for retail"
"project management software for IT"
"organizational planning software"
"project intake software"

.. and all the additional permutations off that.

We must now anticipate the fan-out queries and meet them where they are in order to best optimize for the future in front of us (AI Mode as default).

The best way to think about this is to build pages that have minor long-tail search volume already, that also have a high probability of better speaking to your ICP. 

If we do that, we have multi-faceted value that builds defensibility against changes to come.

New data: Despite an increase in manipulation, trust in Reddit is up 19%!

We surveyed 2,000 Americans to get an up to date sense for how users perceive different online sources in 2026, including Reddit.

The original hypothesis? Reddit manipulation due to recent integration in Google may be driving a decrease in trust.

I could not have been more wrong – trust is up YOY.

What did I get wrong in that original assessment? Google’s impact is mostly on older results, and shopping recommendations are still a small overall percentage of the social network’s content.

Also, Reddit is an offset to AI. There is much less reason to use AI-generated content there, and the respite from slop makes it a place that continues to get more and more popular.

The channels actually seeing a decline in trust, especially with earlier generations? Search engines and traditional media.

The move to originally surface Reddit was Google’s alone, and if the results they push ultimately end up manipulated as well, it’s possible this ties to some of that perception. 

Social media and AI is generally more trusted with younger audiences as well, with the biggest gaps in old and new being with social media (less trusted with old, well trusted with young) and Reddit (mildly trusted with young, not at all with old).

The full study can be found in our top navigation!

How much do American's trust online sources?

"Commit to publishing one LinkedIn post a day."

This is the wrong thinking, but it's close to the right idea.

What if we instead changed the output goal to an input instead?

"Commit to spending one hour on LinkedIn content per day."

This changes the framing from needing to post once per day to instead spending one hour of energy towards high-quality content.

This might mean only one post per week. Or even one post per month! 

But it means we've allocated energy consistently to the outcome, vs arbitrarily forcing ourselves towards an output metric that will inevitably lead to diluted content quality over time.

It's easy to see how this same framing applies to content creation beyond LinkedIn, too. It's about showing up and spending consistent time towards making something great, not hitting arbitrary frequency goals. 

The returns get exponential when you cross the quality chasm to a place few others are willing to go in terms of time invested.

The right type of affiliate review can make or break a business on LLMs.

We’ve entered a period equivalent to New York Times giving a positive or negative single review of a local restaurant pre-Yelp. 

That could close or grow that business. 

There are industries where there is one dominant URL source in the space.

What if that same source gave you a negative review, instead of a good one?

Your entire visibility would be thrown.

An example of this is Bankrate in Fidelity’s market. Bankrate is everywhere across the prompts that matter to them.

Incentives are aligned for Fidelity (and others like them) to have a good score. Because Bankrate gets paid when they get paid as an affiliate business.

But what if that dynamic changed?

These affiliate sites are getting hammered from a traffic standpoint, but they still carry clear influence in terms of the “votes” they offer these companies via LLMs. 

Don’t be surprised if the business models change with them.

Behind-the-scenes dealings around the sentiment of the reviews offered. 

Affiliates charging hand over fist to be listed, rather than getting paid per lead.
 
Attribution will get muddy, but the influence they have is clear. 

If we can associate the value LLMs create for us through self-attribution, we can tie a dollar value to the right LLM sources.

Prediction: Affiliate sites will find a second wind in the future as this all becomes clear, and the brains behind the monetization shift with it.

Here’s how to successfully promote content on Reddit:

Represent yourself authentically, as the brand.

Attach a premium image that makes sense out of context of the post and would work as a standalone asset even if you never visited the website.

Include a title that speaks in Reddit’s voice, while also intriguing the reader.

Share content that’s unique and Redditors would love (unique data, news, behind-the-scenes takes), not a recycled keyword-focused post.

Submit to niche, hyper-relevant subreddits only, and don’t overdo submission volume. Emphasize quality, not quantity. 

Overall, The Athletic does this well via their owned account. 

The submissions don’t always hit a home run, and that’s okay. 

They add enough authentic value that The Athletic never needs to be worried about being banned for their approach.

That’s how you successfully scale a content distribution approach on the network.

We shouldn’t over-optimize for personalization in GEO.

The reason?

Gemini, unlike OpenAI, requires a multi-step user opt-in (that hasn't yet worked for me) to retain information about the user. 

This is because Google takes a buttoned up approach and is understandably sensitive to possible user blowback from collecting personal information at scale. 

This means the default prompt response will be generalized for most.

If we think that Gemini is going to win, which they are now on pace to do, the idea of synthetic personas may be overstated and unnecessary for the majority. 

However, user behavior is still likely to change over time. 

Short keywords will be swapped out for longer prompts, especially for users who realize the results will not automatically be customized to them.

This means that there will still be a need for longer-tail landing pages than there was previously. 

But there may not be as massive of a long-tail as an infinite web of personalized outcomes may have previously projected, if the winners and the losers stay on pace with recent changes.

You don’t need more content.

You need stories that win coverage, earn authoritative links, and push your best keywords up the page—so pipeline follows.

We help innovative CEOs and CMOs grow market share with Hybrid Growth: Digital PR (earned media) + SEO strategy + data-driven content, plus paid amplification when it helps your stories travel.

What you get

Earned media placements that translate into high-quality backlinks.

Stronger domain authority and page-one rankings for high-intent terms.

Thought leadership that wins mindshare with buyers—not just clicks.

A senior, specialized team focused on outcomes, not vanity metrics.

How it works

Discover: We mine your product, customer data, or market trends for a standout angle.

Create: We build a compelling asset (report, map, dataset, visual).

Pitch: We target journalists and publications that influence your category.

Earn: You gain credible coverage and authoritative links.

Measure: We track rankings, traffic, and lead impact—so you see the business value.

When it’s a great fit

You have growth goals tied to organic performance and brand authority.

You believe in data-driven stories and want coverage that compounds in search.

You want senior attention and clear, outcome-focused reporting.

Next step

DM me “HYBRID” for a 10-minute fit check and 2–3 campaign ideas tailored to your goals.

Prefer a call? Share a time and we’ll make it happen.

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Ross Hudgens

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The Battle

Ross Hudgens

Joe Robison

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ross Hudgens's LinkedIn Performance

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