Building Success: The Early Days of an SEO Agency

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Is SEO still a viable service offering? If you’re an SEO agency, are you at risk for extinction? With AI taking over many industries at the moment, it’s no wonder people are asking if it’s rise means the death of SEO. Today’s featured guest is an SEO expert that found her path into the industry after discovering her passion for tech. She discusses how AI is reshaping the SEO industry — not eliminating it, but transforming its execution and potential. The fundamental principles that have always driven search engine optimization continue to matter, though their implementation evolves alongside technological advancement. Tune in to gain insights into how forward-thinking businesses are adapting their SEO strategies to thrive in this new environment, and gain practical insights for navigating this shifting digital terrain.

Lindsay Halsey is the owner of Pathfinder SEO an agency that helps clients grow their recurring revenue by getting the system, tools, and training to add SEO services to their agency. She reflects on the early days of SEO, reminisces about outdated practices, and talks about why the rise of artificial intelligence and “alternative search engines” does not mean you should stop investing in SEO.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• 3 core principles of SEO that haven’t changed.

• Did AI kill SEO?

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Turning a Love of Digital Technology into an SEO Agency

In the early days of SEO, when tactics like hiding keywords in same-colored backgrounds were still common practice, Lindsay was finding her footing in a vastly different field working as a ski patroller and mountain guide.

Her dramatic career shift came through a HTML and CSS course at her local community college that developed a consuming passion for technology. As she devoted increasingly more time to computer work, her hobby naturally transitioned into a professional opportunity, leading to her first position as an SEO account manager at a local agency.

After gaining valuable experience during her two-year tenure at the agency, Lindsay took the entrepreneurial leap. Partnering with a colleague and securing their first client, she launched her own business. In retrospect, she knows their initial pricing structure was too conservative—offering SEO and Google Ads services for merely $500. Despite this undervaluation, she’s proud of having prioritized recurring revenue from the start, a lesson she took from her years at the previous agency. Unlike project-based work, which often creates financial unpredictability, a subscription model provides the stable financial foundation necessary for strategic planning and sustainable growth.

Within the first year of launching their agency, they managed to generate enough recurring revenue to pay themselves salaries that surpassed what they earned in their previous jobs, which was an important victory that helped cement their belief in the business.

3 Core Principles of SEO in 2025:

The principles of SEO have undergone significant transformations over the 15 years that Lindsay has been in the space. At its core, however, the values that guide the industry remain and now Google has gotten better as measuring and rewarding them:

1. User experience. You need to have a well-built and secure website that is easy to use and has good design.

2. Genuine experience and expertise. No more getting away with lame content that just repeats keywords.

3. External validation. There have to be external signals that validate a brand's expertise. This includes back links from reputable websites, positive Google reviews, and the establishment of authority figures within the organization.

Did AI Kill SEO?

The conversation around Search Engine Optimization often oscillates between optimism and skepticism. Lately, it has focused on AI and why its rise means that SEO is dead. Indeed, the rise of AI has also meant a rise of “alternative search engines”. Basically, this means that people are starting to move to ask ChatGPT questions they would have previously asked the Google search engine.

The answers provided by AI are rapidly improving, and users will see both advantages and disadvantages in queries answered by AI and answered by Google.

For her part, Lindsay has been seeing this fear surge every couple of years in the industry and isn’t worried about the inevitable questions of “should I invest in SEO? Will it even be around?” Her answer continues to be a resounding YES. There might be some changes and some trends, but there’s still value of ranking in Google and so it will continue to be a part of a business’s long-term strategy.

Of course, as owner of an SEO agency, Lindsay continues to monitor this rise of alternative search engines and assess where they fall into the industry. It could very well be that they’ll be part of the strategy moving forward. For now, her agency continues to help clients navigate that transition by creating content that helps them rank in all searches.

Ultimately, SEO is adapting to new technologies and user behaviors, and by understanding and leveraging user behavior, businesses can enhance their SEO efforts, leading to greater visibility and success in the digital marketplace.

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