How SalesHood Doubled Blog Impressions and Broke Into AI Search with Pepper

SalesHood had built its reputation on content. For years, the brand showed up consistently on page one for competitive sales enablement keywords — a key driver of inbound leads and market credibility. But heading into late 2024, the signals were worrying.

"Traffic was declining. Some of our high-performing content wasn't showing up anymore on standard searches. We started thinking — what's changed? And we realized the world of GEO and AEO was happening without us."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

The challenge wasn't just about rankings. SalesHood operates in a highly competitive landscape where larger players have deep pockets for paid acquisition and large content teams. As a bootstrapped company, organic search isn't a channel — it's the channel.

Three core problems had converged at once:

• Organic traffic was in decline despite strong historical content.

• AI-driven search formats (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini) were reshaping how buyers found solutions — and SalesHood was nearly invisible in these formats.

• The team lacked bandwidth and the specialist knowledge to navigate the rapidly shifting GEO/AEO landscape on their own.

"We're a self-funded business with some really big competitors with deep pockets. We've always fought an organic thought leadership content war. We needed to very quickly get up to speed on GEO and AEO — because we wanted to stay ahead, grow faster, and achieve our business goals."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

SalesHood evaluated multiple agencies and technology partners. The market was noisy — everyone claimed to offer the best SEO or GEO solution. But Elay Cohen was looking for something different: a partner, not just a vendor.

"I knew this was a bigger solution than just an agency. We needed a partner and someone who could guide us with the technology. I was referred by a trusted friend to Pepper, made an instant connection — and when I heard their approach to GEO and AEO, I realized this was our partner."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

What differentiated Pepper was the combination of expert human content at scale, a proprietary AI platform (Atlas), and end-to-end strategic guidance — all in one solution.

Pepper deployed a full-stack growth team across seven interconnected workstreams, moving from audit to execution within the first two weeks of engagement.

1. Strategic Foundation & Audit

Within the first two weeks, Pepper delivered complete audits of the SalesHood website and content library - mapping performance against all top competitors, identifying content gaps, and benchmarking keyword positions.

2. SEO Blog Engine —Long-Form Content at Scale

Pepper took on end-to-end content production: keyword research, topic ideation, long-form article writing, editorial review, and publishing support. Over the engagement (September–December 2025), Pepper published 20 new blogs and refreshed 8 existing ones — all delivered on time, with edits addressed within 12–24 hours.

3. GEO & AEO Optimisation with Atlas

Pepper's proprietary Atlas platform provided SalesHood with visibility into how their content appeared across LLMs — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others. Atlas tracked prompt-level performance, identified topics surfacing in AI-generated answers, and guided content restructuring to capture AI Overview slots.

4. Technical SEO

Pepper identified and resolved 10 technical SEO issues, including XML sitemap optimisation, duplicate meta descriptions, multiple H1 tags, 404 error resolution, and ChatGPT link audits. FAQ schema and Blog Internal Linking (Batch 2) improved crawlability and AI machine readability.

5. Competitive Intelligence & Off-Page Strategy

Pepper conducted deep SEO audits of SalesHood's key market rivals and completed a domain authority analysis across the top players in the category. This competitive intelligence directly informed content strategy and roadmap. Pepper also designed and piloted a Reddit strategy in r/sales and r/ProductMarketing.

6. EEAT, GEO & Content Innovation

Pepper completed an EEAT audit of the SalesHood website and developed proposals for an ROI calculator, YouTube strategy, podcast outreach, e-book formats, and SEO optimisation of press releases.

7. Monthly Reporting & Quarterly Planning

Every month, SalesHood received a comprehensive performance review covering impressions, clicks, keyword movements, SERP feature visibility, GEO theme health via Atlas, and a prioritised next-steps plan.

In under six months, SalesHood went from losing ground in organic search to demonstrating measurable momentum across every key metric — at a time when the broader industry saw declining clicks.

Impressions More Than Doubled

Total blog impressions grew from 200,000 to 417,000. Pepper-authored content contributed 141,000 net new impressions. Pepper-suggested blogs drove a 101% month-over-month impression growth in November alone.

AI Overview Visibility: 14 Keywords → 97 Keywords

Before Pepper, SalesHood appeared in AI Overviews for just 14 keywords. After six months, that number reached 97 — a 593% increase. SERP feature visibility overall grew 291% in just five months.

232% Growth in Rich Results in Just 7 Months

SalesHood expanded from 14 keywords (Aug’25) to 82 keywords (Feb’26) in AI Overviews visibility

Clicks Growing While Industry Trends Declined

Despite the broader market seeing a drop in clicks as AI formats absorb intent, SalesHood registered a 20% increase in clicks — a direct result of AI Overview visibility and top-3 position growth.

Keyword Wins

Keyword Coverage More Than Doubled: Driving a Boost in Visibility

Direct Lead Attribution from AI

SalesHood began seeing a clear link between Pepper's GEO investments and inbound lead flow. When prospects were asked 'How did you hear about us?', an increasing volume cited ChatGPT and other AI platforms.

"I can see a direct connection between the investments we made in Pepper, the utilization of Atlas, and the increased lead flow — with specific lead sources being the LLMs. People are asking questions, SalesHood is showing up in the answers, and that's resulting in closed business for us."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

Central to the results was Pepper's GEO intelligence platform, Atlas — purpose-built to give marketing teams visibility into how their brand shows up across the world's leading AI systems.

"Atlas tells CMOs and marketing leaders exactly what people are asking — and how they're showing up on those prompts. As a leader, I want to know what my buyers are thinking, what they're asking. The only way to know is by having visibility into their prompts. That's what Atlas does."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

By December 2025, SalesHood's GEO theme health via Atlas had increased to 19% (+9.4% month-over-month). The 'Sales Skills' theme led generative visibility at 38.6%, with diversified ChatGPT coverage across Sales Training, AI Roleplay, Sales Platforms, and Sales Kickoff themes.

"If you're a CMO thinking maybe you can wait, maybe this is a fad — it's going to pass you by. You'll lose the keywords you were dominating. That means less traffic, less leads. You don't want to be the CMO who has to answer that question. You've got to get ahead of it."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

Elay Cohen has become an active advocate for Pepper in his CMO network — sharing the partnership model and results with marketing leaders navigating the same GEO transition.

"There is no way a large enterprise marketing team can be up to speed with the intricacies of GEO and AEO — because what's working is changing weekly and monthly. Unless you bring an expert like Pepper in, you're going to be behind."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood

SalesHood and Pepper are just at the start of their GEO journey together. The roadmap ahead includes:

• Scaling content production to 8 articles per month with faster review cycles

• Launching high-intent content clusters aligned to key buyer journeys

• Expanding Reddit community engagement in r/sales and r/ProductMarketing

• Implementing the ROI calculator to capture high-intent, interactive traffic

• Executing the YouTube and podcast strategy for multi-format GEO authority

• Deepening domain authority through strategic backlinking informed by competitive analysis

• Scaling FAQ schema and EEAT improvements across the full content library

"We're just at the beginning of our journey of dominating the AEO and GEO space with Pepper. I get asked all the time — should we work with Pepper? Absolutely. This is more than an agency. This is more than a technology partner. If you want to move fast and become a dominant player in your space, you need to work with Pepper."

— Elay Cohen, CEO, SalesHood