Lenny's PodcastEthan Smith: How Webflow saw 6x conversion from LLM traffic
In LLM answers the breadth of citations beats classic page rank; Reddit, YouTube, and Dotdash listicles feed the model, and Webflow saw 6x LLM conversion.
Episode Details
EPISODE INFO
- Released
- September 14, 2025
- Duration
- 1h 11m
- Channel
- Lenny's Podcast
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Ethan Smith is the CEO of Graphite—the leading SEO growth agency—and my go-to expert on SEO. After 18 years of mastering traditional SEO, Ethan has been at the forefront of what is called AEO: answer engine optimization, or, more simply, getting your product to show up in ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Perplexity answers. He’s discovered that ChatGPT traffic converts six times better than Google search—and most companies are completely missing this opportunity. *In our conversation, we discuss:*
- His 7-step playbook to rank #1 in ChatGPT
- Why ChatGPT traffic converts 6x better than Google
- How early-stage startups can win at AEO immediately (unlike with SEO, which takes years)
- The three tactics that actually work: landing pages, YouTube videos, and Reddit comments
- Why help-center content can suddenly be your highest-ROI investment
- The specific Reddit strategy that works (spoiler: be authentic)
- Why AI-generated content doesn’t work
*Brought to you by:* Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows: https://www.orkes.io/ Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny Great Question—Empower everyone to run great research: https://www.greatquestion.com/lenny *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-aeo-ethan-smith *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/172703231/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Ethan Smith:*
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ethan_l_s
- LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/ethans-linkedin
- Graphite: https://graphite.io/
- Graphite Research Papers: https://bit.ly/graphite-five-percent
*Where to find Lenny:*
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
*In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Welcome back, Ethan (04:34) The changing landscape of SEO (06:19) AEO (answer engine optimization) vs. GEO (generative engine optimization) (08:13) The impact of AEO (11:51) How early-stage startups can win at AEO (14:34) The quality of AEO leads (15:35) On-site vs. off-site traffic (16:32) Reddit’s role in AEO and avoiding spam (20:11) How AI models use citations (RAG) (21:41) Key principles for winning at AEO (25:00) Avoiding hyper-SEOed content, and the importance of originality (28:55) Actionable AEO playbook: steps and experiments (33:35) Tracking, measuring, and share of voice (38:34) Adapting AEO for B2B, commerce, and early-stage companies (41:11) Is letting AI index your content good? (43:06) Experimentation, control groups, and measuring results (46:15) The future of AEO, SEO, and search channels (51:35) AI-generated content: what works and what doesn’t (55:25) The dangers of infinite AI derivatives (58:44) The future: convergence of LLMs and search (01:00:40) Help-center optimization and the long tail (01:03:18) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:*
- AEO Tools: https://bit.ly/graphite-aeo-tool
- The ultimate guide to SEO | Ethan Smith (Graphite): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-seo-ethan-smith
- Inside ChatGPT: The fastest-growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley
- Webflow: https://webflow.com/
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/
- Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/
- Quora: https://www.quora.com/
- An inside look at Deel’s unprecedented growth | Meltem Kuran Berkowitz (Head of Growth): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/an-inside-look-at-deels-unprecedented
- Dotdash Meredith: https://www.people.inc/
- Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/
- Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/
- Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/
- Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/
- ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/
- Claude: https://claude.ai/
- TechRadar: https://www.techradar.com/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com
- Tripadvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/
- Why ChatGPT will be the next big growth channel (and how to capitalize on it) | Brian Balfour (Reforge): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/why-chatgpt-will-be-the-next-big-growth-channel-brian-balfour
- AI SEO: Latest Market Intelligence & Landscape Analysis—Summer Sessions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm589PmhIOY
- AI Content Study: https://bit.ly/ai-content-white-paper
- Free AI detector: https://surferseo.com/ai-content-detector/
- Common Crawl: https://commoncrawl.org/
- AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y
- Looker: https://cloud.google.com/looker/
...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-aeo-ethan-smith _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
SPEAKERS
Lenny Rachitsky
hostEthan Smith
guest
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Lenny Rachitsky and Ethan Smith, Ethan Smith: How Webflow saw 6x conversion from LLM traffic explores mastering AEO: Tactical Playbook For Winning AI Answer Engines Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite, explains how SEO is evolving into Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)—the craft of getting products recommended inside AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
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