In this episode of Chase Your Dreams, SEO + AI Visibility Strategist, Glynis Tao, breaks down why SEO in 2026 should focus on aligning with real business goals to drive growth. She introduces the concept of “business-first SEO”, an approach that prioritizes buyer intent, revenue-driving pages, and clear brand messaging over vanity metrics like traffic and impressions. She discusses how AI search recommendations have transformed brand discovery, what SEO metrics actually matter—such as organic revenue, conversion rates, and brand demand—and how real fashion brands use business-first SEO to achieve 300%+ increases in organic purchases. Shifting from traditional SEO to a business-aligned strategy focused on intent, product visibility, and long-term growth is the key to driving conversions in 2026.
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About Glynis Tao
Glynis Tao is the founder & CEO of Chase Your Dreams Consulting, which is an apparel business consulting & online marketing agency that specializes in SEO + AI search optimization for e-commerce companies. She helps fashion, beauty and lifestyle e-commerce brands create optimized content and attract potential customers through organic search results.
With over 20 years of experience in the apparel industry, Glynis is an expert in creative entrepreneurship and fashion business operations. Driven by a mission to empower and help her clients build e-commerce businesses that are purposeful and profitable, Glynis uses her industry experience to develop data-driven strategies.
Beyond SEO consulting, Glynis is passionate about fostering a community of like-minded business owners. Through her Chase Your Dreams podcast, e-commerce blog, and collection of free resources, Glynis provides guidance and inspiration for entrepreneurs striving to grow their brands.
Takeaways
- Business-first SEO focuses on long-term, sustainable growth
- Rankings and traffic alone don’t drive revenue, alignment does
- SEO should start with business goals, not keywords
- AI search favors recommendations over rankings
- A clear and consistent brand voice helps AI understand and recommend your brand
Themes
What does “business-first SEO” actually mean?
Business-first SEO starts with business goals, not keyword lists. Instead of asking “What can we rank for?”, you need to start asking, “What will bring in the right people and turn them into customers?” This approach prioritizes revenue-driving pages, high-intent searches, clear messaging, and the full customer path—from journey to decision—so SEO can function as a growth strategy.
Why doesn’t higher SEO traffic always lead to more sales?
Visibility alone doesn’t drive conversions. Many brands rank high, gain impressions, and see increases in traffic, but their revenue remains flat because their traffic isn’t aligned with buyer intent. SEO that only focuses on rankings often attracts the wrong audience—people that are disconnected from products, messaging, and purchase readiness. In 2026, SEO must align with how real customers think, search, and buy.
Which SEO metrics actually matter in 2026?
Key metrics of success include organic revenue, conversion rate by landing page, branded search growth, product feed and shopping performance, and indexability of product pages. These metrics help answer the most important question: “Is SEO helping my business grow?” Measure the outcomes of your SEO strategy rather than vanity metrics for a better understanding of your business growth.
How has AI changed brand discovery in search?
AI has turned search engines into recommendation engines. Instead of asking search engines for products and services that exist, people are asking AI search to make purchase recommendations. AI systems interpret brands using signals like clear product information, structured data, trust, authority, and consistent messaging. AI doesn’t just rank content—it decides when and why to recommend a brand.
Why does my brand voice matter?
Your brand’s voice is no longer just a marketing asset—it’s a visibility signal. AI systems look for clarity, consistency, authenticity, and cohesive positioning across a site. When a brand’s voice is generic or inconsistent, it’s more difficult for AI to understand who the brand is for and when its products or services should be recommended. SEO that actually sounds like you builds trust faster, converts better, and grows your brand over time.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to a New Season of the Chase Your Dreams Podcast
00:26 The Disconnect Between SEO and Sales
01:50 What is Business-First SEO?
06:03 The Shift from Traditional SEO to Business-First SEO
08:54 SEO Metrics That Matter in 2026
11:16 The Impact of AI on Search
12:37 The Importance of Brand Voice
13:30 The Five-Step Business-First SEO Framework
15:47 Case Study: Business Growth Through SEO Optimization
18:07 Looking Ahead: Future Conversations
Transcript
Glynis Tao
Hi everyone, welcome back to the new year. It's 2026 and I'm so happy to be back with a brand new season of Chase Your Dreams podcast. I'm so excited. I have so many new guests lined up for this year. And as a matter of fact, I've already started recording with a few different industry experts and professionals, as well as stylists, designers, and PR strategists already coming up, so make sure you stay tuned and look out for that.
Let's get to today's topic. If you've ever celebrated a keyword ranking win and then you opened up your Shopify analytics dashboard to only realize that sales have not moved at all, then you are not alone, my friend. I see this all the time. I work with a lot of fashion and lifestyle brands. They often tell me that they are trying to do everything, and to them, it sounds right on paper. It looks right, but they could be ranking higher, having more impressions, more traffic, but when it comes to revenue—flat. That disconnect is exactly what we're talking about here today, because in 2026, SEO is no longer about rankings alone, it's about alignment. Alignment between your visibility strategy and your business goals, alignment between your messaging and how real customers think, search, and buy, and alignment between who you are as a brand and how search engines and AI systems understand and recommend you.
Today's episode is called, Business-First SEO That Sounds Like You: Why Brand Voice Is a Ranking Advantage. If you're tired of SEO that looks impressive in reports, but doesn't move the business forward, this one's for you.
I'm Glynis Tao and I'm the founder of Chase Your Dreams Consulting. I'm an e-commerce SEO expert and AI search strategist with over 20 years in the fashion industry. I've been on both sides of the screen as a founder of a clothing brand staying up late at night, looking at the numbers, and thinking that I've been doing all the things, but the numbers may not have necessarily matched or reflect the effort that I put in. And so, I bring that experience as a founder and now into my business as a strategist diagnosing why traffic isn't converting. What I want to share today is a shift in how we think about SEO—one that prioritizes business outcomes, clarity and brand voice, not just vanity metrics.
Here's a quick rundown of what we are going to be covering today. In this episode, I will be walking through what business-first SEO actually means, why rankings alone don't drive growth anymore, the SEO metrics that actually matter in 2026, how AI search has changed brand discovery, why your brand voice is now actually a ranking advantage, and I'm going to give you a real fashion brand example that led to an impressive 333% increase in organic purchases. Let's do this.
So what is business-first SEO? You may not have heard this term because I pretty much made it up. Business-first SEO is exactly what it sounds like. It's SEO that starts with your business, not just a keyword list. Instead of asking, “What can we rank for?”, a better question to ask is “What will bring in the right people on a site?”, help them understand what we offer and turn them into customers. That shift matters because SEO should be a business strategy and not just a checklist. In business-first SEO, what we do is we prioritize revenue-driving pages like focusing on product collection pages, making sure that we understand the high-intent searches that reflect real buying behavior. Also, having clear messaging on the website that will remove the friction and confusion and thus helping to increase your conversion rate. We're not just thinking volume here—we're thinking about the entire customer journey from discovery through to interest, consideration to final decision.
I know a lot of SEOs kind of just think of top-of-funnel traffic driving activities, but I mean, getting traffic to your site is one thing, but converting them into sales is another thing. This is just thinking more beyond traditional Google rankings. It's all about visibility now and how you show up across AI-powered search results, shopping feeds, recommendation engines, and zero-click summaries.
Search has really changed a lot from your traditional search engines into now AI-powered search engines. You can be visible and still not be the chosen one. What I mean by that is, I've had discussions with people who spend a lot of time working on blogs and content creation, and they're seeing that traffic coming in and perhaps, yeah, they are getting those rankings, but that traffic that they're getting is completely disconnected from the products and the intent and ultimately the sales. For growing fashion brands, it's not just inefficient, it's actually very exhausting to be on this constant content creation hamster wheel. Whereas when I look at a more business-first SEO approach, we are actually treating visibility as a long-term growth asset and not just a short-term win. When your SEO aligns with your business goals, your brand voice, and your customer journey, it stops feeling so overwhelming and starts to feel more supportive.
I'm just going to talk briefly about the difference between traditional SEO versus business-first SEO. Nothing wrong with that. I spent years doing this exact process of working just solely on traditional SEO and working on increasing rankings and traffic. Ultimately, at the end of the day, what do brands really want? They want sales, right? Let's take a little step backwards. Traditional SEO is what we tend to focus on more activity metrics like rankings or impressions and traffic volume and looking at the numbers in our monthly report. Content is often created to chase those keywords without really fully considering what buyer intent is or product relevance and revenue impact. Business-first SEO starts with the actual business goals. What is the customer intent and long-term growth strategies? We want to be sustainable and grow beyond those initial rankings and traffic. We want to grow the business long-term and be profitable and sustainable, right? The way we would measure success through a business-first SEO strategy is that we will measure success through qualified organic traffic. Not just traffic, but is this traffic actually qualified? We can look at different metrics just within your Google Analytics dashboard. You can tell whether or not the traffic is qualified or not by conversion rate—a big indicator—revenue generated through organic search, engagement rate, or how long and time spent on site, as well as your overall brand demand. Are you starting to feel more momentum coming as a result of this traffic that you're getting to your site? There are ways to be able to measure this. Instead of reacting to every algorithm update, business-first SEO really focuses on clarity, consistency, and building the foundations that will perform well across both traditional and AI-driven search.
I'm going to talk a little bit about why rankings alone don't drive growth anymore. There was a time when ranking number one felt like a finish line. That time is now over and I'll tell you why. Firstly, because of AI-powered search. With AI overviews and summary style results, users often get answers without even clicking. Secondly, zero-click searches. Many searches now are ending up in result pages. Third, shopping and visual results of product carousels and feeds often appear above organic listings. And finally, misaligned content—ranking for keywords that don't actually convert or grow a business. So SEO today is really about understanding how people move from discovery to consideration to decision. And if your strategy stops at “we rank”, then you are solving the wrong problem.
I'm going to talk about SEO metrics that actually matter in 2026. If rankings aren't the goal, then what is? Here's what we track in a business-first lens. We track organic revenue—not just traffic, but actual sales that are driven by organic and shopping visibility. Number two, we also track conversion rate by landing page. Which pages are converting and which attract attention without action? Number three is brand search growth. More branded searches usually mean trust and demand are growing. You can monitor and see how much of your search traffic is a branded search versus non-branded. Number four would be product feed and shopping performance, this is especially critical for fashion and lifestyle brands. Making sure that your product listings are very clear and concise for search engines as well as shopping channels to really be able to understand and show your products on various shopping channels, Google shopping. The fifth thing is make sure your product pages are indexable to search engines because if search engines and AI can't index your products, then they can't recommend them. All these little components are really important. These metrics answer a better question, which is, “Is SEO actually helping the business grow?” As a founder, the better question to ask is “Is SEO actually helping the business grow?”
I'm going to talk about how AI search has changed the game. AI didn't just tweak SEO, it has refined discovery. Search engines are becoming recommendation engines, basically. People aren't just searching for what exists, but they're asking about what they should choose, like one thing over another. They can make comparisons now. This means that AI systems will be prioritizing clear product images, clear product information, consistent brand signals, structured data, trust, and authority. You want to build trust and authority across your website. Here is the key thing to note: AI doesn't just rank content—it actually interprets brands by recommending them based on someone's search. AI is not just there to rank content. It's using all these signals to interpret the brands, which then brings us to something that more SEO strategies completely overlook. This is the part that no one really talks about or that no one talks about enough. Your brand voice is no longer just a marketing asset. It’s actually a visibility signal. What AI systems are looking for are things like consistency, clarity, authenticity, positioning, and cohesive messaging across your site. When your brand voice is vague, generic, or inconsistent, it's harder for AI to understand who you're for and when to recommend you. This is where my SEO guiding principles come in.
When I talk about our SEO guiding principles, what I really mean by that is that we believe that SEO should serve your business and not the other way around. SEO is not just about rankings, but it's about aligning your visibility with your business goals, brand voice, and long-term vision. These principles really guide everything that we do. When your SEO reflects these principles, it doesn't just rank—it resonates. SEO that sounds like you builds trust faster, converts better, and compounds over time.
I'm just going to walk you through my five-step business-first SEO framework so you get an idea of what that is. This is the framework that I use with fashion and lifestyle brands. I conduct an audit and we're not just looking at technical issues, revenue drop-offs, and conversion friction. Step two is that I prioritize high-intent keywords. That means ones that are product-led or at the category level, solution-aware searches. And number three is that I align content with the customer journey. You've got to make sure that the content aligns with where the customer is within their search journey. We have to create awareness content that should support purchase decisions. Step four is indexing a product. Feed visibility. If products aren't eligible to appear, then they basically don't exist. You have to make sure that your pages on your website are being properly indexed and visible to search engines so that they can bring them up in the search results. In step five, you want to measure your revenue and know where your revenue is coming from, how much you're generating month over month or year over year, and just looking in terms of perhaps seasonality. What are the trends that are common within your business so that you know that, okay, if it's a seasonal product, then perhaps that’s why there is a dip in sales for one month. You want to also look in terms of like, if that is the case, then what are the opportunities there to create demand or more evergreen products that could be sold more on a year-round basis? And so you're seeing less of those dips in revenue and hopefully seeing more consistency in your revenue and adjusting your strategy to those fluctuations.
I just want to mention a case study for a client, one of my favorite examples, which is one of my clients who runs a golf, tennis, and pickleball brand. When they started out, they had traffic, they had rankings, but their sales were flat. What we did was we focused on clear product aiming, stronger intent alignment, improved internal linking, clean product feeds, and bio-first optimization. Through that, optimizing their product feeds was a huge one that really helped boost their organic purchases in Google Shopping. We tested it out at the end of Q3, early Q4, and throughout Black Friday, Cyber Monday, which to them, Q4 is typically their slower quarter because majority of their products are golf, tennis-related. It was very seasonal. By applying this strategy, we were really able to see a huge lift, which was a 333% increase in organic product purchases, higher average order, and stronger brand demand. We just use very simple, straightforward SEO strategies and we were able to see these results quite quickly in quite a short amount of time. I can say that these strategies actually do work because we have tested them out firsthand with our client site.
I just wanted to give you a little preview of what is coming up next and this is exactly why you'll be hearing more founder-focused conversations on this podcast. I have upcoming episodes that include stylists talking about positioning, designers sharing how they communicate their value, and publicists breaking down their visibility and credibility, because SEO doesn't live in a silo. It interacts with brand, PR, merchandising, and messaging and that's where real growth happens.
So to close off, I would just like to say that SEO is not a checkbox, but it can actually be used as a growth engine when it's aligned. If you're ready to move beyond rankings and build SEO that actually supports your business, I would recommend you start with an online visibility report or please reach out if you want to learn more about how we can help you build a strategy that will future-proof your brand and website in this age of AI. Feel free to reach out to myself and my team, and we'd love to help you with your strategy. Let's help you turn visibility into momentum and traffic into sales.
Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.