About

I’m Syed Ali Imran — SEO and Marketing Strategist

For over a decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of business development and marketing. Today, I use that experience to help businesses grow online because digital is where they can reach the widest audience and clearly measure and attribute marketing efforts to performance. I run seo-smith.com — an SEO agency focused on SEO, PPC, paid ads, and marketing growth. We don’t just throw around jargon or charge by the hour. We focus on ACTUALLY getting RESULTS. What makes me different is that I focus on how marketing fits and works together with operations, sales, and strategy to drive business growth.

What I enjoy most is optimizing how all the moving parts connect and work together. From crafting the right offers to building visibility, driving engagement, improving conversions, and growing revenue, I make sure each element supports the next in a way that’s clear, practical, and built for long-term growth.

My belief is simple. Good marketing should make sense, deliver results, and stay affordable. Every business deserves the chance to promote itself, build awareness, and grow without feeling overwhelmed by costs or complexity.

“Most founders are great at running their business but often struggle with marketing and scaling. They follow what worked for others, get lost in the noise, and feel frustrated when it doesn’t work for them. A good marketer should first understand the business model, then build a clear mid and long-term plan, and explain it in plain language instead of hiding behind jargon”

Ali Imran

More Than Just SEO, PPC or Digital Marketing

With experience across different business functions, I focus on how digital marketing fits into the bigger business context. Every campaign, whether SEO, PPC, or social media ads are designed not only to attract new customers but also to grow the value of existing clients. This includes identifying and recommending effective offer structures for upsells, cross-sells, and front-end and back-end offers to increase customer value, improve lifetime value, and maximize ROI for marketing spend.

my approach

• Design business model canvas
  I start by looking at the business from every angle, including revenue streams, key partners, marketing channels, daily operations, etc. This helps make sure marketing strategies stay customer-focused and can adapt as the market changes.
• Define the ideal customer profile (ICP)
  Creating a clear buyer persona helps craft messaging and campaigns (for both organic or paid)
• Research competitors and positioning
  Analyzing competitors helps reveal what’s working in the market and where opportunities exist to stand out with stronger offers and messaging.
• Design the communication strategy
  This is where the messaging is planned. It covers what the audience will get, how the message is delivered, the ad creatives and hooks, and the marketing channels or platforms that will be used to reach them effectively.
• Map the funnel and offers
  I design full-funnel strategies for the top, middle, and bottom stages, creating offers, messaging, and campaigns for both paid and organic channels so the entire customer journey works together seamlessly.
• Set KPIs and timelines
  Clear goals and milestones are set for every stage of the campaign. This keeps everything organized and ensures each step supports the overall business objectives.
• Measure, iterate, and improve
  We cannot improve what we do not measure. Data tracking and analysis are the most important parts of any marketing campaign. Setting up, tracking, and analyzing the data requires the right skills and tech-stack. Once the data is collected, performance is reviewed and decisions are made on whether the strategy needs adjustment or refinement.

How I See Search & SEO/GEO in 2025 & Beyond..

SEO, PPC, and marketing are a mix of science, psychology, and math..

It’s a science because it’s built on testing, analyzing, and refining strategies to see what really works. It’s psychology because understanding how people think, search, and make decisions is key to creating messages that actually connect. And it’s math because, at the end of the day, we’re solving algorithms, analyzing data, and making sense of thousands of ranking signals.

Search has changed a lot, with so many features and options now available to users beyond traditional search engines. People don’t scroll through ten blue links anymore. They expect quick, clear, and reliable answers specific to their questions. To keep up, search engines have evolved too. Google now offers AI Overviews and an AI mode that delivers answers directly within results, while Bing integrates Copilot to help users get faster, more contextual responses. How these platforms generate answers, where they pull data from, and how to optimize for them have all changed as well.

This is where the acronym GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) was born, or at least that’s what most of the LinkedIn community has adopted. While the core fundamentals of GEO are rooted in good SEO practices, it requires a slightly different approach in strategy and execution. Mentions, tokenizing content in vector space, and a stronger focus on semantics and entity SEO have become more important than ever.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like Chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity are now a big part of how people search and make decisions. Users don’t just type keywords anymore. They ask full, conversational questions. For example, instead of searching “best mobile phone for photography,” someone might ask, “What’s the best mobile phone under $500 for photography that has great battery life and works well in low light?”

In such cases, AI overviews or LLMs respond directly. They do this in two ways:

• Live search using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): The model performs a real-time search to find the most relevant and up-to-date information for the query.
• Generating answers from training data: The model provides responses based on the information it has already learned during training, without performing a live search.

Optimizing for both situations is what modern SEO is all about. It’s NOT just about ranking for keywords anymore. Being visible across every stage of user journey is critical..

That’s why I never start an SEO campaign with keyword research alone. My process begins with understanding the business model, revenue streams, and how the brand currently attracts and converts customers. Once that’s clear, I define an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and build a topical map.

A topical map helps structure content around context and entities, not just keywords. After that, I move into entity, attribute, and keyword research (in that specific order.) This process builds what I like to call the foundation and walls of a castle, which defines the boundaries of what needs to be created, what topics will establish topical relevance & authority, and which stage of the funnel each piece of content will target (top, middle, or bottom).

Once this structure is defined, the next approach is to prepare detailed content briefs that guide writers on topic research, boundaries, and user intent. Each brief includes clear best practices to make content user-friendly and easy for LLMs to interpret, extract, and mention or cite the brand when it has a chance to appear.

How AI and LLMs Handle Search Queries

At its core, if a website and its approach are built around:

• A strong strategy that outperforms competitors in topical and domain authority
• Content that earns trust from both users and search engines
• A brand with reputation recognized by people, LLMs, and search engines

then the business is already on the right path. From there, the focus should be on tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), refining what works, and scaling growth.

Connect With Ali Imran

You can connect with me on LinkedIn, reach out by email at [email protected], or fill out the form below for a free consultation to discuss your growth plans.

I plan to publish regular blog posts on marketing, business growth, AI, data tracking, and future case studies here on syedaliimran.com. If these topics interest you or you want to learn more, consider adding this site to your bookmarks. I respect your time and aim to provide maximum value in every post.

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