Sam left his job in May 2023 with no paid clients and started pitching websites at local networking events in Bend, Oregon. The response was humbling:
“I said, ‘I build websites for small businesses.’ And everyone was like, ‘Cool. So does Squarespace.’”
Stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle between website projects, a mentor pushed him toward a recurring service that drives measurable ROI. He picked SEO – specifically local SEO – tested it on his own site, then on his first clients. “I went back to their websites, just tweaked a couple things, and next thing you know my doula is ranking second.”
By early 2024 Thencan (root word: thoughtful) had flipped to SEO-first, website-second. Two and a half years in, the agency serves over 20 clients with a team of 9, and Sam teaches his local SEO playbook to 100+ students in his academy, Local SEO Academy.
The challenge: “What do we do with AI SEO?”
The same question kept coming from two directions — clients and academy students. Local business owners were hearing the hype and Sam knew what happens next: “Something shiny gets put in front of them. How do you have something shiny to offer back?” He also wanted to keep clients away from bad advice.
“I don’t want you to go to the LinkedIn SEO hype bro posting about how adding schema to your site is gonna save the day.”
But he refused to sell AI SEO without data:
“If you’re not measuring the data, you can’t make an informed decision. We need to actually get a tool to measure these things. We can’t sit around anymore and pretend this doesn’t exist.”
So he tested the market — and burned money doing it. “I spent hundreds if not low thousands of dollars trying out different tools. HubSpot, Peec, the big guys to the little guys. Tools that didn’t measure stuff every day. Tools that used API results instead of real results.”
The solution: AI visibility report cards, powered by OtterlyAI
A colleague recommended OtterlyAI. “I was like, ‘Who the heck is OtterlyAI?’ Well, they got some cute graphics, we’ll try it out – and $29 is attainable for the first little bit. And since then it’s been clicking.”
Thencan now uses OtterlyAI in three ways:
1. AI search report cards as a client entry point. The team runs clients’ brands through OtterlyAI and shows them how they appear in ChatGPT and other AI engines. “People are really liking that. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’m showing up pretty high. The work you guys are doing is helping me on ChatGPT too.’” Several clients converted the one-off report card into ongoing monitoring. Three of the roughly five clients who received a report card kept ongoing monitoring going, and nearly every participating client actually landed a client through ChatGPT or another AI tool during that stretch.
2. Content recommendations tied to citations. OtterlyAI’s recommendations feed client conversations. One client runs a podcast essentially nobody listens to. “I said, ‘If you’re doing it anyway, we might as well try this — it could get cited, right?’ And he’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a good point.’”
3. Query fan-out data as prompt research. For local businesses, Sam’s core insight is that the game isn’t getting into the model: “When I look at Jim’s Roofing Company in Bend, Oregon – you’re not getting in the model. We’re not even playing that ball game. What happens when somebody says, ‘What’s a highly rated roofing company near me in Bend?’ First thing it does is a web search.” OtterlyAI’s query fan-out feature shows him how AI engines actually search: “Every once in a while I see a wording where I’m like, ‘I didn’t think about that. That’s interesting that it searched like that.’ That can feed directly into our tracked prompts, and it feels like our reports are closer to how the LLMs are actually thinking.”
Why local SEO + AI search is a different game
Sam’s take on local GEO, in his own words:
The buyer sits higher in the funnel.“They’re not at the ‘kitchen remodeling Portland, Oregon’ page yet, deciding which provider to go with, that comes later. If they’re using AI, they’re still researching. They’re higher up: ‘Do I even hire somebody? What kind of cabinets?’ How do we get recommended during that buying process?”
Local is grounded, not memorized. Almost every local prompt triggers a live web search — so citations, Google Business Profile, and authority signals still carry the day.
Local is more resilient.“We haven’t gotten hit with AI Overviews as much as national SEO, because we don’t rely on blogs. We rely on service and location pages. And until robots can fix furnaces, local service providers are gonna be around for a minute.”
The results
~5 clients received AI visibility reports; 100% converted to a first quarter of monitoring, and 3 converted to ongoing local GEO plans.
Using the data, the team found keywords the client was missing in the organic SERPs. After going back and working on that page, the client went from not showing up for a keyword, to showing up first in Google, to being cited daily on ChatGPT and other AI engines.
Added over $1000 in MRR from local GEO plans and all clients stayed on with their original local SEO plans
OtterlyAI now the recommended AI search tool in Sam’s Local SEO Academy (100+ students), alongside Semrush for classic SEO.
“When it comes to AI SEO, there’s gotta be a tool I recommend. And right now it’s OtterlyAI – I like to recommend the stuff I use.”
See how your brand shows up in AI search. Start monitoring with OtterlyAI from $29/month.
Snapshot
Customer
Thencan Designs — thencandesigns.com
Founder
Sam Sarsten
Location
Bend, Oregon, USA
Industry
Web design & local SEO agency for small businesses
