StudioHawk

Harry is the founder of StudioHawk, an award-winning dedicated SEO agency in  Australia, specialising in providing quality SEO services to businesses.

Harry started StudioHawk from very humble beginnings and has since grown the company to a team of 40 dedicated SEO specialists to become the largest dedicated SEO agency in Australia, as well as team of 8 in London.

Since then the company has gone on to win the Australian Business Award for Marketing innovation, was named SEMRush’s Agency of the year, and Global Search Awards 'Best Large SEO Agency'. Harry has been featured on Forbes and the BBC world news, doing all this at 24.

// Want to chat? //
🔌 Connect with me here on Linkedin
💻 Visit www.studiohawk.com.au to know more
✉ contact@studiohawk.com.au
📞 +6139091719

Founder

Kadi luggage

Kadi was born from the need for affordable luggage that doesn't compromise on quality or design, Kadi is an Australian-owned and designed brand that launched in 2023. Our team at Kadi are dedicated to making travel effortless and stylish every step of the way.

Co-Founder

Lighthouse Foundation

I am an ambassador for the Lighthouse Foundation, providing financial support through speaking engagements and donations through my organization, StudioHawk.

Lighthouse Foundations aims to help the 17 new kids on the street every day in Melbourne. We want to provide them with homes and a community to allow them to realize their potential. I'm involved because this is what several people did for me while I was homeless and allowed me to get to the position I'm in today.

Ambassador

Okay, so, I know everyone you see on LinkedIn seems to have hit $100,000 a second in 3 weeks of being in business.

And that can be entertaining.

But, if that’s what you’re looking for, don’t get excited… I’m quite the opposite.

At 17, I was homeless.

Today, 10 years later, I’m the owner of an award-winning SEO agency StudioHawk, with a team of 100+ spread across Australia, the UK & our newly added office in North America.

How did I do it?

Well, I decided to throw the traditional model on its head.

No “hacks to success”.
No “scale and sell model”.
No VC funding or outside investors.

Just slow compounding growth, through great work for our clients.

Over recent years, we’ve been awarded:

🏆Australian Business Award for Marketing Innovation.
🏆Global Search Awards 'Best Large SEO Agency’.
🏆And SEMRush’s Agency of the Year.

I’m also:

The Co-Founder of Kadi luggage.
↳ Designed for real travellers to elevate & simplify their journey.

An ambassador for the Lighthouse Foundation.
↳ Which focuses on mental health & housing for homeless youth.

A Forbes Under 30 Founder.
↳ From building StudioHawk from 0 to 100+ staff worldwide.

As well as an active investor in anything cool that I can add value to!

But it’s not all about business, my mission in life is simple:

SEO has given me a home, family, friends, and countless opportunities in my life.

I want to pay it forward.

P.S. I love speaking on SEO or my business journey so if you have a conference or workshop you’d like me to talk at…

Drop me a message 👉🏻 https://harrysanders.com/contact/

Most people don’t realise how slow StudioHawk started.

Year one?

$30,000 revenue.

Back then, I was couch surfing and sleeping in homeless camps.

No stable home, no money, no clients.

I felt like a burden, and like a failed person.

Flash forward, we’re now a global agency.

Offices in the Australia, UK, and US.

100+ specialists helping people build SEO careers and real businesses.

I’m truly grateful.

If I could redo that first year, these are the only two things that keep me up at night thinking back:

1. Buy the . com domain for StudioHawk (cost me 10K later)

2. Stop hiding and actually network

Those subtle things to back myself harder when I wasn't sure where things were heading.

Would I build it the same way again?

Probs not.

But those hard years built me.

They forced me to grow up fast and think differently.

And that’s why so many founders with rough starts end up building something great.

Harry Sanders

Founder @StudioHawk AU, UK, US | Co-Founder @Kadi Luggage | Youth Ambassador @LightHouse Foundation

I think it’s time I put my money where my mouth is.

AI Search now drives 12% of our leads

In closed business, that was $96K in new recurring revenue over 3 months.

Pretty cool.

But here’s what SEO did 👇

It drove $1.65M in recurring revenue over the same period

Both numbers are annual estimates based on how long clients usually stay with us.

At our scale, leads come from everywhere, inbound, referrals, partnerships, events, the full mix.

But this new signal from AI Search is real.

If the trend continues, it’ll add six figures in new business before long.

Still…SEO is the engine behind it.

So how did we do it?

1. 5 years of consistent SEO investment
2. Authority built through links & digital PR
3. EEAT signals through thought leadership

That’s it.

Now we’re generating healthy leads through SEO, and slowly, AI Search.

GEO bros, prove me wrong.

Would we have those AI leads with zero SEO foundation?

You tell me.

AI Search vs SEO Revenue

We turned down $7,500,000 in potential deals last year.

And grew faster than ever.

Most agencies say yes to everything.

To stay busy.

To look big.

And end up stuck in churn.

We did the opposite.

At StudioHawk, we got clear on one thing, who we actually help best.

One focus: SEO.

And the services that strengthen it.

That clarity means some brands just aren’t a fit.

Here’s what we doubled down on in the last few years:

1. Qualified harder, declined anything outside our lane.
2. Rebuilt decks to show where we don’t play.
3. Focused on brands seeking long-term SEO growth.
4. Constantly upskilling our SEO team to increase client results.

There’s a trade-off.

But what we got was record year-on-year growth and a stronger reputation.

That focus shows up in AI Search too.

LLMs are surfacing StudioHawk in results where trust is the ranking factor.

Those mentions are now driving real leads from ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Saying “no” is a growth strategy.

When you specialise, you build clarity.

And clarity compounds faster than hustle.

99% of messages I get about AI and SEO ask the same six questions

Here are my quick and dirty answers

Bookmark them, screenshot, or send them to your team.

And look, most of them boil down to the same spiels:

1. Is SEO still relevant in the AI era?

Yep, SEO is the foundation, GEO builds on top, you can’t effectively do GEO without an SEO foundation.

2. What exactly is GEO?

“Generative Engine Optimisation”, it’s about making sure your content shows up in AI-generated answers, ChatGPT and AI Mode.

There’s a lot of variations (AEO, AIO, LLMSEO etc), we use AI SEO or AI search as the umbrella term.

3. How does GEO actually work?

AI tools use search engines under the hood. ChatGPT runs through Bing. The paid version also uses Google’s index, and Google AI Mode runs through Google (obviously), and strong SEO rankings make your content eligible to be pulled and shown.

4. Do I need a new “GEO strategy”?

Honestly, just SEO is 90% of the foundation at the moment, technical SEO, structured content, schema, semantics, and digital PR is amazing for AI and search engines ranking signals.

The 10% (which also helps SEO) are things like podcasts, videos, whitepapers, and other assets that traditionally haven’t been thought of as SEO (that now should be).

5. Is this about traffic or visibility?

Both, right now AI referrals are small, but early visibility builds authority, trust, and brand recall, so when traffic does scale, you’re ahead of the curve.

6. Is GEO a separate service?

Nah, at StudioHawk we see it as part of any campaign, with some additional tactics around Reddit. It’s baked into audits, content strategy, link building, and reporting. We combo it together to get results on both fronts.

Any other burning questions?

Drop them in the comments, I’ll answer them directly.

10 years ago, I said “nofollow links don’t matter.”

I was wrong.

The link meta game completely changed.

Back then, Google treated link tags as rules. 

Now, they’re just signals.

And AI systems like ChatGPT and Perplexity? 

They value the context.

If your brand is mentioned, and mentioned a lot, you’ll rank in AI searches.

We’ve seen this across 1,000+ SEO campaigns.

Nofollow links from big, credible publications are driving visibility inside LLMs.

Recent analysis from Kevin Indig and Semrush found that nofollow links carry real weight in AI search visibility, often performing nearly on par with dofollows.

When AI scans content, it looks at placement and context , whether it’s a founder profile, a product feature, or an editorial mention.

That’s what signals credibility.

This is exactly what we build into the RAIDS Protocol, my quick and dirty Digital 
PR process.

When we infiltrate trusted publications to get links, do follow or no follow, we’ll take both.

We’re seeding brand authority that AI systems recognise and reuse.

Focus on where your brand is mentioned and how it’s framed.

That’s the signal AI search actually trusts.

Interested to learn how to do this yourself?

👇 Grab the RAIDS Protocol templates, video breakdown + access in the comments.

I’ve spent over $10,000,000 on link building in the past decade. Name a niche, I’ve gotten links for it.

Guest posts, link insertions and Digital PR.

I’ve tested everything across thousands of campaigns.

A relevant link from a real site hits harder now than it did five years ago.

Prices have gone up, but AI search didn’t cut link value.

It actually wiped out the informational sites that relied on ads.

But after all that testing and the shifts, it always came back to one thing.

Authority comes from relevant places talking about you.

That’s the signal Google and AI still trust, backed by research.

The right tags and anchor text help, but that context and relevance drives the result.

Heading into 2026, the edge for ecommerce and B2B is simple:

1. Links people actually click through DPR.
2. Coverage in places your audience already trusts
3. Citations that prove you’re real and keep consistency tight

If I had to pull one lever today, I’d pick Digital PR.

Massive value for AI, massive value for traditional SEO, and the biggest needle mover out there.

What $10M on Links Taught Me

Last week I said ChatGPT traffic doesn’t convert well, this week we got one of our biggest orders through AI Search.

Here’s exactly how it went down:

They found us through ChatGPT.

Specifically our kids carry-on page:

1. First thing they looked at was our shipping policy (people go straight to that now before they even bother looking around)
2. Then they added one suitcase to cart, then two more.
3. Then they backed up and checked the rest of the range.
4. Pink? nah.
5. Olive? yep
6. Added a belt bag.
7. Added a weekender.
8. And three kids luggages on top.

Then the funny part was they selected Instagram as how they found us.

Now today, ChatGPT launched Shopping Research, which makes this behaviour even clearer.

You tell it what you want, it asks follow-up questions.

It checks specs, reviews, availability, colour, shipping, and prices.

Then it hands you a personalised buyer’s guide before you ever hit a website.

So the whole “AI steals your content so don’t bother” take is rubbish to me.

Those pages still show trust.

They lift your money pages and influence decisions even if attribution looks messy right now.

This order proved it before today’s update doubled down on it.

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