TONY Restell, who has operated in the digital marketing and social media space for over two decades, is refreshingly honest about what he’s achieved – and what he hasn’t.
“We haven’t ever had any success with SEO”, Tony admits right from the off. For most digital marketers, this is not the kind of thing you announce to the world.
But it’s irrelevant when he shows me hard proof of what he has achieved, which is, well, the holy grail of cracking GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation).
GEO is AI and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) industry language for AI answers. And AI, right now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, is quite a big thing.
Every business globally is currently focused on how to appear, or be cited in, AI answers. And Tony, based on what he showed us, has the answer.
Yes, SEO remains key and businesses globally still want to be on Page 1 of Google for the phrases that people use to find the businesses that can meet their needs.
But the AI Overview at the top of Page 1 of Google for a significant number of searches is now pure gold. And Tony appears to have the Midas touch.
As a man who ran his school tuck shop as a for-profit business at the age of 16, renting the premises from the school itself, it’s fair to say that Tony has a good business “head”.
His business, Social Hire, is a B2B social media agency focused primarily on recruitment businesses, professional services firms, training companies and management consultancies in the UK, US and Canada.
He’s also a well-known figure in the B2B marketing field and was one of the keynote speakers at the Uplift Live conference in Birmingham in March of this year, which focuses specifically on LinkedIn.
All this experience and cumulative wisdom means he knows that the best way to show proof of what he has achieved when explaining it to potential clients is by using his own business as a case study.
On our Zoom call, he shares his screen and shows me an example of his company appearing in AI overviews for a search term that someone wanting to use a company like his might enter into Google.
When he taps in “what social media agencies can help my recruitment business win clients”, there he is, mentioned right at the top of the AI overview, which is where everyone wants to be.
After the call we ran a couple of searches of our own for “best social media agencies for recruitment firms” and “social media agencies for management consultants”.
The result? For the recruitment search, Social Hire was cited outright as the top agency across both the AI overview and when we switched the search into “AI mode”.
For the management consultants search, it ranked top among the dedicated B2B specialists, and Google used Social Hire’s own content to generate its answer.
So it’s fair to say that the man who, in his own words, failed at SEO, is smashing it with GEO.
And, like any natural salesperson, he explains what he does in a way that is simple and will immediately resonate with business owners.
“If you said to anyone with a business with an internet presence that they could go back in a time machine to when Google was launching and do the things that would ensure their business was page one on Google, they’d bite your arm off”, Tony says, “because imagine how much better of a business that would be today if they’d been able to conquer that.”
And the conquering of AI answers, based on the hard evidence he showed Newspage online, is what Tony appears to have achieved.
And he’s not just achieved it on Google but says much the same results appear on Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude and Microsoft’s Copilot.
So after a 3-month deep dive into the mechanics of AI search, what’s the plan moving forward?
Yet again reflecting an instinctive understanding of business, Tony says he’ll initially be rolling out the new product to firms he knows and has worked with, or is still working with.
He says: “So my plan with this is, we’re going to offer it up to existing and past clients and, as soon as we get some friendlies onboard and have a first wave of clients that we have achieved the results for, we’ll then roll it out more widely.” And that roll-out is happening now.
Tony says 50% of his clients, almost all small and medium-sized businesses with under 50 staff, are based in the UK and the other half in the US and Canada so he has a big pool of small firms to go fishing in.
Once again demonstrating his business nous, he adds that what matters is not just appearing in AI overviews but the results of that increased visibility, namely the real-world commercial outcomes.
When it comes to the bottom line, another of Tony’s key findings during his deep dive is that niche generally works better in AI answers than generic.
So optimising content around long-tail keyphrases such as “best social media agencies for recruitment businesses” is far more achievable to rank high within AI overviews and answers than “fat head” keyphrases such as “best SEO agencies”.
AI engines appear to value niche content that is laser-focused and credible rather than vanilla.
And for Tony, mastering AI answers has always been about the bottom line, namely turning those AI citations into traceable business events, such as new client meetings and wins. AI overviews for the sake of it is not his modus operandi.
He says: “The big hurdle most people have isn’t actually selling, it’s getting in the room with the people they want to sell to. Once you’re in the room and you know what you’re doing and are on top of your subject matter, it’s pretty easy to sell.”
