Google Search ConsoleAn agency that buys attention for its clients had almost none of its own in search. Google found Hayes Media by its name and rarely for the problems it solves. Eight weeks after we started publishing for them, search is a sales channel, and the founder says its leads arrive warmer than the ones paid ads bring.
The client
Hayes Media is an eCommerce growth agency founded by Jordan Hayes. It runs direct-response ad creative, Meta media buying, and email and SMS for brands scaling to $10M a year and beyond, and has worked with more than 57 eCommerce brands, including Remi, Mammoth Headwear and Austlen.
The problem
Brands choosing an agency compare them on Google, and more of them now ask ChatGPT or Gemini for a shortlist. Hayes Media had no pages answering those buyer questions and nothing an AI assistant could cite. In the first week Search Console recorded, almost every search that showed the site contained the word "Hayes", and the searches that did not almost never put it on page one.
The strategy
Three moves, the same SEO and AEO program we run for our other clients.
Map the questions buyers ask before they hire. We built the question map around Hayes Media's three services: the agency-selection searches ("best email marketing agencies for eCommerce", "Meta ads agency", "agency vs in-house"), and the operator questions a retention or paid-social lead searches every week, such as Klaviyo flows, abandoned-cart emails, click-to-open rate and a falling Meta ROAS.
Publish on a schedule, with sources. Fifty articles went live between 4 September and 27 October 2026. The ranked comparison pages name every competing agency with facts from that agency's own site or Clutch profile, give each entry one honest limit, Hayes Media's included, and list their sources.
Make the site readable for AI assistants. A canonical facts page tells assistants what Hayes Media is, who runs it and what it sells, an llms.txt file points them to it, and every article opens with a direct answer an engine can quote. It is the same generative engine optimization work that put Delshad Legal first of 12 tracked firms in AI answers.
The results
$6,000 closed in the first month
In the program's first month, a consulting lead from search closed at $6,000: four strategy calls and media-buying consulting over two months. A few weeks later, a brand doing $50M a year booked a sales call the same way. It wanted Google Ads, which Hayes Media does not sell, so that one did not close. Jordan's read on the channel: search leads come to the call warmer than paid-ad leads. These figures are Hayes Media's own.
Google: 5.4× the searches, 7.5× on page one
| Measure (Google Search Console) | Program's first week (2–8 Sep) → week of 20 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Non-branded searches that show Hayes Media | 5.4× |
| Non-branded searches where it ranks on page one | 7.5× |
| Non-branded impressions | 5.1× |
| All impressions, branded included | 2.3× |
The climb is steepest at the end of the window: impressions on 26 October ran 3.9× the first week's daily average. Most of the fifty articles are under four weeks old. Site-wide clicks have not moved yet, because most new pages still rank below the top ten, where few people click. The ranked list of eCommerce email agencies is the page furthest ahead: it already reaches page one for buyer questions such as "who are the best ecommerce email marketing agencies?".
AI search: buyers' questions now land on Hayes Media
We did not run AI-visibility tracking for Hayes Media, so this study has no AI share-of-voice figure. Search Console shows the early sign. Over the program's first eight weeks it logged long, conversational searches that read like questions typed to an assistant, such as "best klaviyo email marketing agency for small ecommerce stores" and "best ecommerce marketing agencies for fragrance brands", with Hayes Media at position 1 for both. AI assistants that search the web send queries like these to Google when a buyer asks them for a shortlist.
What made this different
The articles are written for the buyer who is about to hire, not for traffic. A ranked list where the author is number one only works if it is fair, so every entry carries a limit and every fact has a source. That is what lets a buyer, or an assistant reading for one, trust the page. The second difference is pace: we shipped fifty sourced articles in under eight weeks, and Hayes Media's team never had to leave its client work to make it happen.
Search Console recorded this site from 2 September 2026, the program's first week, so that week is the baseline. Non-branded counts use the searches Search Console names; it withholds rare ones in both weeks. Lead and revenue figures are Hayes Media's own. Published 29 October 2026, with Search Console data to 26 October.
Engagement: SEO and AI-search content program, from September 2026.
