How to find content opportunities in Google Search Console
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In Episode 91 of Content Briefly, I had the pleasure of talking with Maeva Cifuentes, CEO and founder of Flying Cat Marketing, a boutique SEO and content agency serving mid-market B2B SaaS companies. We explored international SEO, localization strategies, GEO (generative engine optimization), surround sound SEO, and the changing landscape of content marketing.
Maeva's journey to founding Flying Cat Marketing has an interesting arc—starting as a freelance translator (following in her parents' footsteps), then moving into content writing, and eventually adding SEO to her toolkit.
What makes her story unique is where she found her passion: "I did hit a point in my career where I realized I preferred actually doing business, the business side, then doing all of the SEO and writing work. Actually, the thing I wanted to get off my plate the fastest was writing for clients."
Unlike many agency founders who scale by bringing on writers while keeping the writing for themselves, Maeva discovered she loved building a business more than client writing. This realization shaped Flying Cat's growth trajectory, as she began hiring writers, project managers, and building out standard operating procedures.
One of the most compelling insights from our conversation was about international SEO and how few companies are truly optimizing for global markets.
"Most of those markets are untapped. Nobody's doing real SEO, and then they're all just translating stuff. So there's zero competition. It's very rare that your competition is actually doing proper SEO in other languages. So it's just really still untapped way to grow in SEO, which so much of it is saturated already."
Maeva highlighted a key distinction between translation and localization: simply translating content without researching keywords, understanding search intent, and adapting for local markets won't deliver results. The search intent for the same topic can differ dramatically between regions, requiring different formats or content focuses.
She also pointed out that companies frequently waste resources by having separate teams and agencies in each region with no alignment or shared learnings: "I just spoke to a prospect the other day who is like, 'we have 11 different locations and each location has their own agency'... Imagine the cost of that already for one, and the fact that everything is being reported differently, all the workflows are different. You're not gaining any advantage from the other locations."
With the recent changes to SEO (like the HubSpot traffic drop everyone's been discussing), clients are becoming more demanding about understanding exactly how content drives business results. This has forced agencies like Flying Cat to get much more specific about goals and tactics.
"What we've been changing lately is getting way more specific on goals and explaining how every single action is tied to that goal. So if we're creating top of the funnel [content]... I have to demonstrate how that is directly going to aid my goal."
Maeva explained that vague arguments about "topical authority" aren't enough anymore. Instead, she focuses on showing how any piece of content directly supports the pages that drive leads and conversions:
"I don't think just wide range topical authority enough is going to cut it as an argument, but it needs to tie directly to authority over the page that is achieving your goals... if we do pick a top funnel piece, it allows me to be like, 'okay, yeah, actually this is a good decision because I'm seeing data that's going to tell me that this is supporting what has historically driven the most leads for this company.'"
When I asked about GEO (generative engine optimization), Maeva shared how Flying Cat is already integrating this emerging practice into their SEO services rather than treating it as a separate offering.
"We don't think you should have separate strategies for GEO and SEO. They're going to be one... It's still super experimental, but we have been able to increase a lot of referral traffic from Chat GPT, from Perplexity for our clients."
The key difference between traditional SEO and GEO lies in how AI understands and processes content. While standard search engines match queries to keywords, AI has more contextual understanding:
"In AI, it has a lot more context to try to understand. So it's going to pull things from a bunch of different SERPs, a bunch of different types of pages, but it needs to be able to break down your content into super clear 'this equals that'—just clear and contextual information."
Maeva noted that most GEO information currently available is written for engineers and machine learning specialists, revealing a knowledge gap for content marketers that her team plans to address through an upcoming blog series.
Building on the GEO discussion, Maeva introduced the concept of "surround sound SEO"—a strategy to ensure your brand appears when someone asks an AI about your product category.
"The ways people want to show up in [Chat GPT] is you ask a question about a type of tool or category and your name shows up on the list. That's the most important thing. So what you need for that is a lot of brand awareness. A lot of brand mentions across the web... that your name is super associated with the category."
Interestingly, these brand mentions don't necessarily need to include links—unlinked mentions still contribute to this association: "Honestly, the link is good, but it doesn't even matter if you're linked, it's the unlinked brand mention also helps for this."
When I mentioned that a significant portion of Superpath's membership comes from listicles about marketing communities, Maeva confirmed this aligns perfectly with surround sound SEO principles. Your brand appears consistently across search results for relevant categories, strengthening the association that helps you rank in both traditional search and AI-generated responses.
While SEO is evolving rapidly, Flying Cat Marketing is at the forefront of adapting strategies to meet these changes head-on. From rethinking how we approach international markets to preparing for an AI-driven search landscape, Maeva's insights provide a valuable roadmap for content marketers navigating this shifting terrain.
Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to Episode 91 of Content Briefly with Maeva Cifuentes.
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Jimmy is the cofounder and CEO of Superpath. You can follow him on Twitter here.
