Kern Media® is a founder-led team of SEO, AEO and GEO consultants who work with companies across the United States. We’re heavily focused on content strategy, technical SEO, answer engine optimization (AEO) and LLM optimization to help our clients grow their revenue. That’s the bottom line. We lean on the massive potential within Google, other search engines and AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot to increase organic traffic, AI visibility and conversions.
Most of our clients are eCommerce brands and lead generation businesses, and we also work with B2B technology companies, financial services firms, publishers and many other types of brands. Our extensive backgrounds in the publishing industry and as senior consultants at larger agencies have allowed us to optimize 500+ websites. We bring over 20 years of experience, and all of this qualifies Kern Media to be the SEO, AEO and GEO experts that you want on your side.
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Meet the Founder
Dan Kern
- Over 20 years of SEO experience and 500+ websites optimized
- Former Senior SEO Consultant at Inflow and Director of SEO at F+W Media, leading SEO for 200 websites with a team of 5
- Leads the strategy for every Kern Media client, from the first call onward
- Google Analytics and HubSpot Inbound certified
- Ran a guitar gear blog for 13 years, so he knows what it takes to build an audience from scratch
Dan has helped many reputable sites exponentially increase their website traffic using white-hat SEO techniques that start with understanding target customers and your business goals. As an SEO, AEO and GEO consultant who considers himself more of a strategic marketer, Dan makes a match between the customers you want to attract, the topics they’re interested in (and the keywords and prompts they use), the content that needs to exist on your site to attract them, and the places where your brand should be seen, so you earn traffic, links, AI citations and ultimately…new customers.
“SEO is still extremely relevant, and AI search has made it even more important.”
Much of SEO (and AEO and GEO) is simply a strategic implementation of the learnings from target audience research. How can that ever die? Topical keyword research, on-page optimization, creative content strategies and genuine content marketing that builds brand awareness will stand the test of time. That core strategy earns the natural links, mentions and trust signals that Google uses to rank a website highly, and that AI tools rely on when deciding which brands to recommend. At the same time, we believe traffic should come from many different sources…not just Google. Today that includes AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, which can send some of your highest-value visitors. Diversification is critical to any investment.
Our Specialist Team
Dan leads the strategy for every engagement. Depending on your needs, he brings in specialists he has worked with for many years, each with 10 to 20+ years of experience in their practice.
Who We Work With
We work with any company that’s a good fit: an established website, a team (or developer) who can make changes, and leads or sales from search and AI that matter to the business. See our services for how engagements, pricing and timelines work.
On a free 30-minute call, we’ll look at your goals and your current search and AI visibility, and tell you honestly whether we can help.
Our Approach to SEO, AEO and GEO
Business Goals
How could any marketing campaign begin without clearly identifying the business goals? We’re not talking about traffic, either. We’re talking about bottom-line revenue goals. What % year-over-year growth do you need to achieve? Are your goals shorter than that? Looking for a certain number of leads per month to feed your sales efforts? Need to reach a certain amount of advertising revenue to hire more staff? Those are the goals that we want to help you achieve. Traffic doesn’t pay the bills, and we’d bet you’d rather have $1M from 1 visit versus $1 from 1M visits. Right?
Customer Personas
Many SEOs start their process with keyword research, yet we like to start even earlier in the thought process and start with the customer. Who are the different types of customers that come to your website? What are their roles, goals, problems, desires and outside interests? What questions do they ask Google, and what do they ask ChatGPT or Claude? Yes, it’s important to get that deep. Just as a musician “gets in the head” of his/her inspirations to master their style, we must get in the head of your customers to master our understanding of them. From there, we can make much more sense out of keyword and prompt research.
Content
The central purpose of most websites is simple: provide content, products, or services which offer value that your visitors can’t find elsewhere. People come to the internet (and now AI tools) looking for information, products, services and entertainment. A website owner must know and cater to his/her audience with the most targeted & highest quality content possible, whether this be in the form of service pages, articles, product descriptions, or any other resource. Give them what they want and beyond…and be the best at it. Specific, expert answers are also what AI tools quote and cite, which is the heart of answer engine optimization (AEO). Your job is to be compelling. Even that is not enough. We now need to repurpose that content in different mediums and through different channels, without duplicating text yet keeping messaging consistent. You must be a publisher to reach your audience.
Email Capture
Most visitors to your website won’t come back, and you have one shot to capture their email address for later marketing. This is done through a value exchange (free download, etc.) and strategically created forms that capture your visitors’ names, emails and interests. Once acquired, your business can send a series of automated emails targeting their interests, which will convert better than trying to convert people only on your website. Not every visitor is ready to buy (or contact you) right away. Build a relationship first.
Links & Mentions
Once optimized content is in place on your website, improving search rankings requires that your website attract more links. Attracting inbound links is an important part of the SEO process (after on-page content has been optimized), and is best achieved by creating amazing, in-depth content that builds your brand at the same time. Mentions matter too: AI tools pull heavily from third-party sites, so being named on respected industry sites, review sites, award lists and directories helps shape how AI describes and recommends your brand. Links and mentions from topically relevant, authoritative websites are the most valuable, but they require a respectable brand and online presence to attract. An ongoing effort in this area is required to build & maintain high visibility.
Brand Presence
Your company profiles across the web (LinkedIn, social media, directories, review sites and more) give search engines and AI tools trustworthy signals about your brand. If those profiles describe your company differently, or have outdated facts, AI tools may repeat the wrong information. Keeping every profile current and consistent with your website is a simple way to help AI describe you accurately. Google wants to rank brands…and respectable brands almost always have obvious, consistent footprints across the web.
Engagement
With search engines becoming more sophisticated, it’s now clear that user behavior, engagement, and branding are critical. It’s important for Google and other search engines to see that your brand is searched for. It’s even more important that when people visit your website from search engines or AI tools, they stay there, click around, and revisit your site. You want people to “dwell” on your website…and Google will notice.
Technical SEO
Making sure your site is easily crawlable by Google, Bing, other search engines and AI crawlers is critical to making sure all the hard work in the other areas of SEO and GEO has the impact you want. Your robots.txt file must be properly optimized for both search and AI bots, your XML sitemap must be accurate, key content must be readable without JavaScript, your site should use canonical URLs to avoid duplicate URL paths, structured data should help search engines and LLMs understand your brand, indexation bloat should be minimized and low-quality/thin content should be pruned to allow your high-quality content to drive as much traffic as possible. This is an area where nearly every business falls short without an SEO expert’s help.
Qualifications & Reviews
★★★★★ 5-star rating on Google and Clutch (read our reviews)
Have confidence when hiring Kern Media for SEO, AEO and GEO services. We are Google Analytics Certified, Inbound certified, and featured with quality reviews on leading agency review sites.
Work With a Senior SEO, AEO and GEO Team
Every client works with senior specialists who have 10 to 20+ years of experience each, not a junior account team.
You’ll talk directly with founder Dan Kern, not a salesperson, and get a custom proposal after the call.
See our services, pricing and FAQs, client reviews, how we report results or our Kern Media company facts page. Switching from another agency? Read our guide to switching SEO agencies without losing rankings.
