Key Numbers
100+
Monthly organic visitors at peak
Top0
Google rankings for core keynote speaker searches
0%
Year-over-year growth in ChatGPT referral traffic
Key Takeaways
The Challenge David Burkus had years of genuine authority as a leadership keynote speaker and bestselling author, but his website was not keeping up. With over a decade of accumulated content that had never been properly optimized, and no real presence for the high-intent searches event planners actually use, his online discoverability did not reflect his real-world reputation.
Our Approach
Full audit and optimization of 100+ blog articles and hundreds of podcast pages (URLs, meta descriptions, internal linking, keyword alignment)Strategic website rebrand support to maximize the SEO lift from the redesign
Built a network of dedicated speaker pages targeting his core niches: leadership, teamwork, employee engagement, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and more
Aggressive early-stage backlink building that compounded into lasting domain authority
AI search optimization to ensure David surfaces in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools when event planners search for speaker recommendations
The Outcome
5x organic traffic growth, from roughly 2,000 to 10,000+ monthly visitors at peak
Top 5 Google rankings for "leadership keynote speaker," "motivational keynote speaker," "teamwork keynote speaker," "business keynote speaker," and more
794% year-over-year increase in ChatGPT referral traffic - now his 6th largest traffic source overall
Consistent upward growth across 3+ years with no signs of plateauing
The Hook
David Burkus did not have a discoverability problem because of a lack of credibility. He had a discoverability problem because his website, despite years of content and a strong real-world reputation, had never been built to rank. Event planners searching for "leadership keynote speaker" or "teamwork keynote speaker" were not finding him. That is the gap we set out to close.
Our Strategy
From there, we built out a full network of niche speaker pages. Rather than a single "keynote speaker" page doing all the work, we created dedicated pages for every major speaking category - leadership, teamwork, employee engagement, virtual keynotes, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, and more. Each page was built to own its own search territory.
We also invested heavily in backlink acquisition in the early stages of the engagement. Quality links from relevant publications compounded over time and gave the domain the authority to compete at the top of highly contested searches alongside major speaker bureaus.
The most recent chapter has been AI search. As event planners increasingly turn to ChatGPT and similar tools to research speakers, we have been building the infrastructure that makes David the recommended answer - not just a search result.
The Results
When we started, davidburkus.com was pulling in roughly 1,000 to 2,000 organic visitors per month. Today it peaks at over 10,000. His pages rank in the top 5 results on Google for searches that buyers actually use - competing directly against speaker bureaus with teams and budgets far larger than a personal website.
As AI search has grown, so has his presence there. ChatGPT referrals grew 794% year-over-year, making it his sixth-largest traffic source overall. When someone asks an AI tool for a leadership or team performance keynote speaker, David's name comes up.
The site now works as a 24/7 booking engine. It does not just represent David - it actively finds his next clients for him.
