How I Built Search Traffic for a Category Nobody Was Searching For Yet

AEO had no search volume in 2024. Here's the diagnosis I ran, the bet I made, and what five top-3 Google rankings in under two months taught me about growth in new categories.

In early 2026, I launched AEO Copilot — a tool that tracks how brands appear in AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

The product was real. The problem it solved was real. The search volume for "AEO tool" was basically zero.

That's the constraint you run into when you're building in a category that doesn't have a name yet. You can't rank for a keyword nobody types. You can't do content SEO for a concept people aren't searching for. The standard playbook doesn't apply.

So I had to find a different angle.

The diagnostic question

When a straightforward tactic doesn't work, I try to reframe the problem before reaching for solutions.

The question I asked myself: where does search intent already exist for people who would care about this?

Not "how do I rank for AEO" — that's a dead end. But rather: who is already searching for something adjacent, and what does that tell me about what they want?

The answer was obvious once I framed it that way. People don't search for "AEO tool." But they absolutely search for "best SEO agency in London." Thousands of searches per month, in every major city, across every country with a developed digital marketing industry.

And inside that pattern, a new variant was forming: "best AEO agency in London." Almost no search volume today. Zero competition. And the people searching it are pre-qualified — they already understand the problem well enough to be hiring for it.

That's the window.

The bet I made

I decided to build a directory targeting exactly that pattern: Best AEO agencies and freelancers in [city].

23 countries. 79 cities. 204 pages from one React template.

This isn't a new idea. Programmatic SEO directories have existed for years. What made this a real bet rather than just an execution task was the timing. The keyword pattern had essentially no competition because AEO itself was too new. If I moved fast, I could own it before anyone else thought to try.

The risk was building 204 pages in a category that might not grow. The upside was ranking for every major market simultaneously with a single template.

I moved fast.

What I actually built

The failure mode for programmatic SEO is thin content. Google has seen enough near-identical location-swap pages to recognize them, and it penalizes them. So I made every page earn its place.

Each location page includes a keyword-rich intro, a structured breakdown of what AEO agencies actually do (six service categories), a numbered "how to choose" section with the exact target keyword in the H2, and a six-question FAQ. FAQPage JSON-LD schema on every page, BreadcrumbList schema for sitelinks.

It's templated. The underlying structure is identical. But the content is substantive enough that someone searching for an AEO agency in Paris would actually find it useful.

The technical piece that mattered most was server-side meta injection. AEO Copilot is a React SPA. Social scrapers — LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack — don't execute JavaScript. Without intervention, every directory page would serve the same generic og:image. With server-side injection, each page gets the right title, description, and location photo before the HTML is served. The Paris page shows the Paris skyline. Every share looks like it was built specifically for that city.

I also submitted a 204-URL sitemap to Google Search Console on launch day.

What surprised me

I expected to wait four months before seeing any movement. New domain (relative to the niche), new category, no existing backlinks pointing at the directory.

Instead, pages started ranking within six weeks. Within two months, five of them were in the top three for their target queries across seven cities and one country.

The speed surprised me. I think two things drove it. First, there was genuinely no competition. Nobody else was targeting "best AEO agencies in [city]" because the category was too new for anyone to bother. Second, the pages had real content and proper schema. Google didn't have to guess what they were about.

The directory also had an immediate effect on signups. AEO professionals found their city pages while searching their own niche, listed their profiles, and converted to paid accounts. It became a recruitment channel for the product itself.

The strategic logic, plainly

The goal wasn't to build a directory. The goal was to find a place where search intent was already forming and get there first.

The directory was the vehicle. The real insight was the keyword diagnosis: find the adjacent intent, not the direct intent. "AEO tool" had no volume. "Best AEO agency in London" had no competition. Those are different problems with different solutions.

In a new category, you can't wait for search volume to develop and then compete for it. By the time there's volume, there's also competition. The window is before both exist.

That window is still open. Most markets have almost nobody ranking for this pattern. The same logic applies to any emerging category where people hire help — find where the buying intent is forming before everyone else notices.

What I'd do differently

Start with ten pages, not 204.

The programmatic bet was right. But I could have validated it with the ten highest-intent markets first — London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Amsterdam — gotten them ranking, confirmed the conversion rate, then scaled. Going straight to 204 wasn't wrong. It just meant maintaining a lot of pages before I had signal on what was working.

I'd also build in social proof earlier. The directory lists profiles but has no reviews or verified outcomes per location yet. That's the next lever.

The directory is at aeo-copilot.com/partners. If you're working in the AEO space and want to be listed, it's free.

If you're building in a category with the same problem — real demand, no search volume yet — I'm happy to talk through the diagnostic. Get in touch.