Key Numbers
100+
Speaking inquiries from search
0
Wanted to book him: 9 booked, 12 date clashes
0x
His investment with us, earned back in bookings
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. Over a decade of content had never been properly optimized, and he had no real presence for the searches event planners actually run.
Our Approach
Full audit and optimization of 100+ blog articles and hundreds of podcast pages (URLs, meta descriptions, internal linking, keyword alignment)
Website rebrand support, so the redesign kept its SEO value instead of resetting it
A network of dedicated speaker pages for his core topics and industries: leadership, teamwork, employee engagement, healthcare, technology, manufacturing and more
Early, aggressive backlink building that built up the site's authority over time
AI search optimization, so David comes up when event planners ask ChatGPT and other AI tools for a speaker
The Outcome
101 speaking inquiries from organic search between January 2024 and October 2026, about 3 a month, logged in David's own tracker
9 became paid bookings, and 12 more wanted him but the dates clashed
Those bookings earned back his investment with us 3.4 times over (a 242% return), from organic search alone
Bookings from AI search this year, which David credits to the website and his YouTube channel together
ChatGPT referral visits up 794% from 2024 to 2025
Top 5 on Google in the US for "AI keynote speaker"
The Hook
David Burkus had years of content and a strong reputation, all sitting on a website that had never been built to rank. When event planners searched for a speaker on his topics, his site was not what they found. He logs every inquiry that search sends him in his own spreadsheet, starting in January 2024, so the numbers below start there too.
Our Strategy
From there, we built a network of niche speaker pages. Rather than one "keynote speaker" page doing all the work, each major topic and industry got its own page: leadership, teamwork, employee engagement, healthcare, technology, manufacturing and more. Each page targets the searches planners run for that one topic.
We also went hard on backlinks early. Links from relevant publications built up the site's authority over time.
The newest part of the work is AI search. Event planners now ask ChatGPT and similar tools to recommend speakers, so we work on making David's site the answer those tools give. His YouTube channel feeds the same answers, and the two work together.
The Results
David logs every inquiry that comes in through search, and what came of it, in his own spreadsheet. From January 2024 to October 2026, it shows 101 speaking inquiries from organic search, about three a month. Nine became paid bookings. Twelve more wanted him, but the dates clashed.
Set against what he spent with us over the same period, those nine bookings earned back his investment 3.4 times over, a 242% return, from organic search alone.
On Google, the niche pages hold the searches planners run for a specific topic or industry. His site is top 5 in the US for "AI keynote speaker" and on page one for employee engagement and manufacturing keynote searches.
The newest results come from AI search. ChatGPT referral visits to his site went from 137 in 2024 to 1,226 in 2025, up 794%. This year, bookings also came from planners who found him through AI tools, which David credits to the website and his YouTube channel together.
