SEO Got Us Traffic… But Not Sales (Here’s the Problem) Part 1 With Aimee Jurenka

In this episode of The Simple and Smart SEO Show, I sit down with SEO expert Aimee Jurenka to unpack a major shift happening in the industry right now:

👉 The death of inbound marketing as we know it.

For over a decade, SEO success was measured by one thing: traffic. But with the rise of AI search and disappearing clicks, that model is breaking fast.

We’re talking about:

•  Why inbound marketing worked for so long 
•  The real reason traffic became the main KPI 
•  What AI search is changing about visibility 
•  Why traffic without conversion is no longer enough 
•  And what SEO professionals and business owners need to focus on next 

If you’ve ever felt like “more traffic” didn’t equal more sales… this episode will connect the dots.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Traffic was the product SEO sold
  For years, success = clicks, rankings, and traffic growth—not revenue. 
• Inbound marketing created a handoff problem
  SEO brought visitors… but conversions were someone else’s responsibility. 
• AI search is breaking the traffic model
  With fewer clicks from search results, the old system can’t deliver the same results anymore. 
• Visibility + conversion are the new priorities
  SEO is shifting from “get traffic” to “drive outcomes.” 
• This is a scary… but powerful opportunity
  The industry is being forced to align with what actually matters: sales. 

✨ Memorable Moments

•  “Success was clicks and traffic… that’s what we sold.” 
•  “Inbound marketing was about traffic. AI search is about visibility and conversion.” 
•  “We got you the traffic… and then passed it off.” 

🎯 Listener Action Items

•  Take a look at your current metrics:
   👉🏽 Are you tracking traffic… or revenue? 
•  Identify your biggest drop-off point:
   👉🏽 Is it clicks → visits, visits → cart, or cart → checkout? 
•  Start shifting your strategy:
   👉🏽 Focus on content and pages that help people buy, not just browse.

Connect With Crystal:

SimpleandSmartSEO.com

Join My AI SEO Skool Community!

Connect With Aimee:

AimeeJurenka.com

Linkedin

Hey, Shopify store owners! (Especially if you're selling on Etsy, too!)

Here's a quick question: Are people actually finding your products on Google?

If SEO feels confusing, overwhelming, or like something you'll "get to later", this is for you.

I'm hosting a free, seven day Shopify SEO challenge that breaks it down into simple, doable steps.

No tech headaches, no fluff. Join us at

 Hey, Shopify store owners! (Especially if you're selling on Etsy, too!)

Here's a quick question: Are people actually finding your products on Google?

If SEO feels confusing, overwhelming, or like something you'll "get to later", this is for you.

I'm hosting a free, seven day Shopify SEO challenge that breaks it down into simple, doable steps.

No tech headaches, no fluff. Join us at

Transcript

Part 1: The Death of Inbound Marketing (Part With Aimee Jurenka)

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:00] Crystal: I'm here with a new favorite SEO to follow if you have not followed Aimee Jurenka and that is Jurenka as in i Jurenka cup of coffee. I totally love that. She gave it to me She said I could say it even though she says it! I thought it was super fun but Aimee is an amazing SEO. She's over at Rickety Roo. And she also has her own consultancy. So Aimee, thank you so much for coming on to the simple and smart SEO show podcast.

I am so excited to talk to you about the changes that you have observed in Search. Welcome.

[00:00:32] Aimee Jurenka: Thank you so much for having me. It's gonna be fun. Yeah.

[00:00:35] Crystal: Awesome. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the golden age of inbound marketing. What did it used to be like in SEO? Like kind of tell us when you started what did the System promise Marketers and businesses that had website

[00:00:50] Aimee Jurenka: Yeah. So I came in about 10 years ago right after like Panda and Penguin. So a lot of those black hat techniques and those, like I get rich quick, get [00:01:00] SEO Rich quick sort of tactics had stopped working.

And HubSpot was just really going with inbound marketing. And they did a great advertising campaign.

I mean, so it was like. For the last 10 years until AI search came out, every plumber I worked with knew about inbound marketing. They'd at least heard about it. You know, every CEO knew about it. You know, every marketing manager, you know, enterprise level. Those marketing managers knew about it and they knew the general idea around it.

And the promise was, Hey, we're gonna write educational content. We're gonna find a topic that your potential clients are gonna be interested in. We're gonna ask a question, or we're gonna answer something very generalized. 10 reasons why X, y, or Z.

Everything you need to know about blah, blah, blah.

Hiring a, you know, local HVAC specialist. Something very generalized. We're gonna write this piece of content. It's gonna get ranked organically, right? In positions on the front page. We would just say page one, right? And then what's going to happen is you're gonna get all this traffic that comes in.

And then once that traffic's there, then you can convert it down the funnel.

So what we, a lot [00:02:00] of us, right, would do is we would pitch that and hey, we're gonna do this content program. We're gonna fix your technical SEO so they can crawl it, right? We're gonna write all this content for you. And you're gonna get this traffic. And then once you get the traffic, you need to hand it off to your conversion rate optimization.

You need to work it through the funnel. You need to email, you need to follow up on that. Like at traffic, we were pretty much stopped as that was our end goal.

That was our end metric that we could sell. And it was really easy. It was really easy because we've been doing it, well, I've been doing it for over 10 years, right?

So I've been doing it since I started. Other people are already, you know, here before me. We kinda had it figured out.

There were featured snippets that come out, since I started, featured snippets, featured snippets are great. You get a featured snippet, you get all that traffic featured snippets just got you gobs and gobs of traffic.

And so, we could just go to our, our business leaders and be like, here you go. We did great. Yay.

[00:02:48] Crystal: So would you say success look like during the peak SEO years is just the traffic graphs and lots of traffic?

[00:02:54] Aimee Jurenka: Yes. Yeah. So success was like clicks and traffic. and that's what Success [00:03:00] Metric was. And we could basically, like I said, turn that in. To either our clients or leadership and be like, look, we're successful. We've done what we're supposed to do. 

[00:03:08] Crystal: Why did this model work so well for so long? Because as somebody in e-commerce, I didn't start doing SEO until About 2020 on. Like really focusing on oh there's like this actual practice of optimizing a website.

Not only on my Shopify site but also in my Etsy store. I realized there was this disconnect between like how many views I was getting. And then it was like okay then there's this drop off in actual like, visitors.

And then there's even more drop off to actually add to carts. And the most drop offs when it was like checkout. So I'm like I want that checkout number to go up You know? I don't want that front number to go up anymore. I want it to come down or something.

I want those to merge in some way.

How did it work so well for so long?

[00:03:51] Aimee Jurenka: The idea behind, I know, I'm gonna get us all fired. The idea behind inbound marketing right, was, hey, we get you the traffic, then you, you work it [00:04:00] through the funnel. You know, so either you get additional services from us for conversion rate optimization, right? Or you hand it off to that team. Or you know, we get you the email signups right? From that traffic and then, and then you gotta follow up on the emails.

It was very much like passing it off. Passing the buck at that point. You are absolutely correct, especially as a small business owner. 'cause you're looking all the way through like sales are what matter. This is a great segue ' cause now that's kind of where we're at.

Because with AI search, right, AI overviews, nobody's clicking on those AI overviews the way they did featured snippets.

They're taking those featured snippets... away, right? All that traffic away. So now our number one metric, which was, Hey, we're gonna do the inbound marketing, we're gonna get you all this traffic.

Look, we got you all this traffic we're great, is gone.

And so it's a really tough position, but also an exciting position.

Because all the CEOs, all the plumbers, you know, all the people in the middle, all the marketing managers are so used to inbound marketing. That it's like, okay, well that's dead.

We're not gonna be able to get you the [00:05:00] traffic anymore.

So yeah, now what do we do? Now what are we looking to do? What are we looking to offer people that they'll pay us for? How do we keep our jobs? And I believe it's exactly what you're talking about for . We gotta take it all the way through.

I kind of feel like inbound marketing was about traffic. Where AI search is gonna be about visibility and conversion. 

All right guys. Thanks for tuning in. I'll be back next time with part two of my conversation with Aimee Jurenka, have a great one.