William Smith
Founder & Chief Digital Strategist, Traffic9 Media
35+ years of digital marketing experience. Specialist in AI search optimization (AEO/GEO), programmatic advertising, and retargeting strategy.
Background
William Smith founded Traffic9 Media in 2023 after successfully exiting his previous marketing agency, Local Search Technologies, which was based in Phoenix, Arizona and purchased outright by a young investment firm.
After the sale, William and his wife relocated to the river town of New Richmond, Ohio, where he launched Traffic9 Media to continue helping businesses navigate the changing digital landscape. With more than three decades of marketing experience, William has guided clients through every major shift in digital marketing, from search engines and pay-per-click advertising to social media, programmatic display, and now the AI search revolution.
Today William leads Traffic9 Media's work on AI Search Engine Optimization (AISEO), helping businesses get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Gemini. His work spans Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), entity authority building, and AI content strategy.
Areas of Expertise
- • AI Search Optimization (AEO, GEO, LLM SEO)
- • Entity-based SEO and Schema.org strategy
- • Programmatic display & retargeting
- • Local SEO for Cincinnati & Tri-State
- • Performance marketing & analytics
Experience
- • 35+ years in digital marketing
- • Founded Traffic9 Media in 2023 (prev. Local Search Technologies)
- • Pioneer of AEO/GEO strategy in the Midwest
- • Published author on AI search and content strategy
- • Trusted advisor to insurance and home-service brands
Topics Covered
- • How ChatGPT and Perplexity choose sources
- • Building topical authority for AI engines
- • Retargeting strategy for 2026 and beyond
- • Local SEO for AI Overviews
Connect
Career Timeline: Three Decades Across Every Major Digital Shift
The Early Search & PPC Era (1990s)
William's marketing career began before Google existed. He worked through the rise of AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and the early Yahoo directory, learning how directories and crawlers evaluated relevance long before backlinks became the dominant ranking signal. When Google launched and reshaped the search landscape with PageRank, he was already managing search visibility for clients and quickly adapted to the new mechanics. The launch of Google AdWords in 2000 opened a second front, and pay-per-click advertising became a permanent part of every campaign he ran.
The Social Media Era (2007–2014)
As Facebook opened its ad platform and Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube matured, William led clients through the awkward transition from interruption advertising to audience-built marketing. He built early Facebook ad funnels when CPMs were measured in pennies, designed YouTube pre-roll creative when the format was still experimental, and helped local service brands turn LinkedIn into a referral engine before "social selling" was a term. The lesson from that era — distribution platforms change every few years, but the discipline of audience-first messaging never does — still anchors his work today.
The Programmatic Display & Retargeting Era (2014–2022)
With the rise of real-time bidding and DSPs like The Trade Desk, William moved heavily into programmatic display and retargeting strategy. He built campaigns that combined first-party CRM data with third-party audience segments, ran cross-channel attribution models when most agencies were still last-click, and developed the retargeting frameworks that Traffic9 Media still uses for insurance, legal, and home-service clients today. This was also the era where data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) forced a wholesale rebuild of tracking and consent architecture — work that prepared his team for the cookieless future now arriving.
The AI Search Era (2023–Present)
The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 and Google's AI Overviews in 2024 fundamentally changed how buyers discover businesses. Within months of founding Traffic9 Media, William refocused the agency around AI Search Engine Optimization, building the AEO and GEO methodologies the firm uses today. He now spends most of his strategic time on entity authority architecture, schema-first content design, and the third-party citation work that decides whether a brand gets named inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews.
The Local Search Technologies Years
Local Search Technologies, William's previous agency, was headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona and served small and mid-market service businesses across the United States. The firm built a reputation for full-funnel local SEO — Google Business Profile optimization, local citation cleanup, review velocity programs, and conversion-focused landing pages — at a time when most local agencies still treated SEO as a one-time setup task.
Over its run, Local Search Technologies served hundreds of clients in insurance, legal, home services, and healthcare. The team developed proprietary processes for managing review reputation across Google, Yelp, and Facebook simultaneously, and built one of the early data pipelines connecting call-tracking to CRM revenue — long before "revenue attribution" became standard agency vocabulary. The acquisition by a young investment firm validated the systems William had built and gave him the runway to step back, evaluate where digital marketing was headed next, and design Traffic9 Media around the AI search shift that was already underway.
That decade of local SEO work directly shapes how Traffic9 Media approaches Cincinnati SEO and the surrounding Tri-State markets today. The fundamentals of local intent, neighborhood-level relevance, and review-driven trust still apply — they just now feed into AI Overview citations and ChatGPT recommendations as much as they feed into the Google local pack.
Philosophy on AI Search
William's core belief is that AI search isn't a new channel on top of SEO — it's a new layer of arbitration that sits above every channel. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews increasingly decide which brand a buyer hears about first, often before that buyer ever sees a blue-link result or runs a comparison query. A business that isn't named inside those AI answers loses the consideration set before the funnel begins.
That arbitration is governed by two forces: entity clarity (does the AI model know who you are, what you do, and where you serve) and citation authority (do trusted third parties reinforce that identity). Traditional SEO contributes to both, but it doesn't complete either. Real AEO and GEO work requires schema-first content design, deliberate entity-graph construction, and a sustained off-site citation strategy that earns mentions on industry publications, aggregators, and structured knowledge bases like Wikidata.
He also rejects the framing that AI search is replacing Google. The two surfaces share most underlying ranking signals — ChatGPT's live search runs on Bing, and Bing shares the core signal architecture with Google — and the brands winning in 2026 are running integrated strategies that target both. See the in-depth comparison at AEO vs GEO vs SEO for the full breakdown.
What 30+ Years in Digital Marketing Have Taught Me
Channels change. Fundamentals don't.
Search engines, social platforms, programmatic exchanges, and now AI answer engines have all reshuffled the same underlying job: connect a buyer's intent with a credible answer. The agencies that survive each shift are the ones that treat the channel as a delivery mechanism, not a strategy.
Measure revenue, not vanity metrics.
Impressions, clicks, rankings, and citation counts only matter insofar as they connect to pipeline. Every Traffic9 Media engagement ties campaign work back to qualified leads and closed revenue — if a tactic can't be defended in those terms, it gets cut.
Entity authority beats keyword stuffing.
Decades of watching algorithm updates have made one thing clear: the brands Google and AI engines trust are the ones with consistent, structured identities across the open web. Build the entity first; the rankings and citations follow.
Local context is a moat.
National competitors can outspend a local business on paid media, but they can't credibly own a neighborhood. Deep local SEO and AI-localized content remain one of the most defensible positions a service business can build.
Speed of execution matters more than perfection.
The teams that shipped retargeting in 2014, schema markup in 2017, and AEO content in 2023 are the ones leading their categories now. Waiting for proof is how good agencies become irrelevant ones.
Trust compounds quietly.
Reviews, citations, partnerships, and testimonials build slowly and pay off for years. Most clients underinvest in this layer because it's harder to attribute — which is exactly why it's a competitive advantage.
How I Work With Clients
Every Traffic9 Media engagement starts with a free Revenue Leak Audit — a structured review of where a business's current marketing is losing potential customers and how much of that revenue is recoverable. The audit covers website conversion gaps, paid media waste, SEO visibility for both classic and AI search, citation share inside ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, and the underlying analytics setup that makes any of it measurable.
If the engagement moves forward, William stays personally involved on strategy. He owns the first 30 days of every account — entity architecture, schema design, AEO/GEO roadmap, and channel mix — then transitions to a weekly review cadence with the implementation team. Clients get direct access to him for strategic questions, not a buffer of account managers between them and the person making the calls. Most engagements run on monthly retainers structured around recoverable revenue rather than hours or deliverables.
Communication runs through whatever channel the client prefers — Slack, email, scheduled calls, or shared dashboards. Reporting is monthly, focused on revenue-impacting metrics: qualified leads, citation share, AI Overview inclusion, organic and paid revenue contribution, and cost per acquisition. Reports that don't map to dollars don't get sent.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did you start Traffic9 Media after selling your previous agency?
The AI search shift was already underway by 2023, and I wanted to build an agency designed around it from day one rather than retrofit one that was. Traffic9 Media exists specifically to help businesses earn visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews alongside traditional SEO and paid media — a focus that's hard to bolt onto a legacy agency model.
What makes your approach to AI search different?
Most agencies treat AEO and GEO as content tactics — write more FAQ pages and call it done. I treat them as entity-graph and citation-architecture problems first, then content. The result is that clients earn citations that compound over months rather than spiking briefly and decaying.
Do you work with businesses outside Ohio?
Yes. Traffic9 Media serves clients across the United States. The agency is headquartered near Cincinnati and runs dedicated local SEO programs in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky, but the AI search, programmatic, and retargeting work is fully remote and geography-agnostic.
Which industries do you specialize in?
Insurance, legal, home services, professional services, and healthcare — categories where buyers research extensively and trust signals dominate the decision. These verticals also benefit disproportionately from AEO because AI engines lean heavily on structured entities and third-party citations when answering high-consideration questions.
How quickly do clients see results?
Paid media and retargeting typically show measurable lift within 30 days. AEO and GEO work begins compounding around month three and is generally fully visible by month six. Traditional SEO sits between the two, with most engagements seeing meaningful organic gains by month four.
How can I get in touch?
Schedule a free Revenue Leak Audit on the Advertising Insurance page, email support@traffic9media.com, or call (888) 803-4427. I personally review every audit request before assigning the engagement.
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