Follow-up: SERP Conf. – Eastern Europe Conference (Inter Expo Center, Sofia, 2025.03.25)

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On March 25th, took place SERP Conf. Sofia 2025, at Inter Expo Center, Sofia, Bulgaria, a conference on SEO, e-commerce, and AI.

Main topics?

„Strategies that work. Connections that help. Answers you need.”

The conference was in English and Bulgarian – with professional translation.

Below are my notes and photos I have taken at the event.

Photos from the event

Photo album on Facebook – part 1 »

Photo album on Facebook – part 2 »

Photo album on Google Photos – part 1 »

Photo album on Google Photos – part 2 »

Official photos »

My notes at the event

(Important note – Olivian: I am not sure I wrote things 100% correct)

Part 1: SEO in the Age of AI

George Chasiotis – From Google Search to an Interconnected Search

George Chasiotis – https://georgechasiotis.com/

Newsletter: GrowthWaves by George Chasiotis – https://www.growthwaves.com/

In 2024 – Google – the most popular Internet service (Source: Cloudflare data)

Google: 5+ trillion searches in 2024. 21.64% increase YoY (Source: via SparkToro).

Google has 83.54% market share on online searches. YouTube – second. ChatGPT third. (Source: Datos)

ChatGPT – leader of AI search. Gemini – second. Copilot – third. Claude and Perplexity following (Source: Datos).

2024 – Google had 373x more searches than ChatGPT (Source: SparkToro).

98% of AI traffic is split between: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini (Source: Ahrefs).

G2 – software reviews website.

At his peak, G2 – 11.7M monthly visits per month.
In Feb. 2025 – 833K visits.

What happened? Forum-and-community-like websites like Reddit took a prominent position in search results (despite the quality or freshness of results).

One study:
Reddit – the #3 most visible website across the SERPs, with 499 occurrences out of the 4,522 SERPs examined. – 5.19% of the total results.
Different studies: #1 most visible.

Stack Overflow – peaked in Oct. 2021: 72M monthly visits.
Feb. 2021: 30M monthly visits – 58% decrease compared to its peak.
Less traffic – fewer questions, fewer answers, lower website activity.
What happened? Likely engines like ChatGPT.

Another example – the  social searches decrease.
For some queries – skincare for men – people search on TikTok, instead of Google.

A search for „periodic table” might show directly the image wanted, right in the SERPs.
This makes clicks less likely.

Interconnected search – a multichannel approach to driving relevant relevant traffic to a company’s website or other owned properties.

A conclusion – SEO is not dead, far from it.

Example tactics: change the Content Audit and Keyword Research tools to include AI Overviews as a scoring parameter.

Content briefs – format to repurpose content into.

Distribution control (1), relevant demand (2), competitive advantage (3), CTR potential (4) – the intersection of these 4 gives you the SEO potential.

Overcome the objections clients might have:
#1 Definition – you need to communicate the new definition of SEO internally.
#2 Data – use data to make your case.
#3 Modern traffic loss factors – see how the modern traffic loss factors affect you;
#4 SEO potential evaluation – use the SEO potential evaluation framework.

Things to do:
#1 Keep investing in SEO, but diversify;
#2 Be up to date, but don’t hold your breath of Google updates;
#3 Don’t panic.
#4 Experiment a lot – experiment, experiment, experiment.
#5 Don’t let perception and sentiment distort your reality.
#6 Stay away from silver bullets (e.g. AI).

 

Teodor Zahariev – Hybrid SEO: Human expertise + AI automation for 10X results

E-E-A-T increased the importance of quality content; AI prefers it;
Content structure is critical – well-formatted text.

Schema Markup is important.
Also, improve user experience.
Focus on semantic keywords.
Optimize for Q&A.

You should use English for the queries and ask for a result in your desired results.
Start with the words „Imagine you’re a …”
Use the phrase prioritize data from official sources.
Always ask for links to sources of collected information.
Always apply „All data must be as up to date as possible”.
Don’t start sentences with the same two words in a row.
Do not use three-word phrases more than once.
Avoid repeating any word within eight words of the most recent iteration of the same word.
Limit usage of the following filler words, except when completely needed for correct grammar: “The”, “it”, “those”, “them”, “they”, “these”, “it’s”, “an”, “a”, “and”. Instead of filler words use synonyms for what the filler word is referring to or no word at all.
When writing on behalf of the company: Limit usage of the words “I”, “me”, “mine” and “my”. Instead, use the words “we”, “us”, “our”, “ours”.
Always have the bot write specific paragraphs.
Write a 500-800 words text which answers the following questions about SEO in as much detail as possible.
Write 1-5 paragraphs each about how high is the importance of topical authority in SEO.
Specify who your target audience is and what they need to know about your product or service.

Prompt for Keywords:

  • You are an SEO expert with experience in [EXPERIENCE].
  • You are creating a website about [TOPIC].
  • I need you to give me a list of 50 keywords and an estimate of their search volume. Additionally, I want you to classify each keyword according to the user’s final search intent.

The possible intents are:

Informational (the user just wants to learn about a topic), Transactional (the user wants to take an action, usually buy something), Commercial (the user wants to buy something but is not completely decided and needs some prior information), Navigational (the user wants to find the website of a well-known company because they do not know the exact URL).

Return the result in a table format with the following 3 columns: Keyword, Estimated Volume, Search Intent. Order the table by search volume, from highest to lowest.

You can use ChatGPT to analyze tables created using Google Search Console, for example.

E-E-A-T
Criteria: classification and assimilation of the site itself and its goals.
Checking for YMYL topics such as health, finance, society, etc.
Reputation of the website and authors.
Can the information harm the reader or is the product dangerous to the user in any way?

Trust factors in online stores: phone numbers, partnership with famous brands.
Contact phone number
About page
Personal email including the site’s domain name
Physical stores or office location
Cookie acceptance message
Availability of a terms and conditions page
SSL certificate (HSTS)
Local Business profile
Reviews and ratings from real users
Videos with information and feedback
Design in line with the latest trends
Informative FAQ pages
Availability of chat
Author Box
Awards, certificates, licenses, and documents to be uploaded to the site as PDF files and linked from them.
Icon and information for secure payment
Link to the Online Dispute Resolution site
Links to social media profiles
A blog and author bio under each blog article
High-quality author photos with a watermark
Terms for returning products
Partnerships with famous brands
Integration with famous payment systems
Loyalty programs, games, and promotions
Working (well-functioning) internal search engine
High expert level of all texts of categories and products
No thin-content pages

You can have 10x results.

 

Panel:

Evgeni Yordanov (CEO at Trackian)
AI tools can use human input to improve results.

Yordan Dimitrov (SEO Manager at Reflect Digital)
We should have the human at the center of everything we do.
If we edit content created by LLMs we must review it, to make it appropriate to the brand and tone of voice.
Also, we need to have helpful content on the website.

George Chasiotis (Growth Advisor)
You can upload proprietary data and interviews, and highlight things that you can feature in the content, and draw interesting insights.
Most people are not adding proprietary data into ChatGPT – this can help get better data.
Marketers now have an amazing tool – AI. They can build tools based on that.
There are many tools for many use cases.
Using AI you can ship things much faster.
It’s not just text, there are things you can do on top of it.
AI – a catalyst for that.
Studies about the use of chatbots in the past years.
Google search share is indisputable for now.
Chatbot LLMs can become a good traffic source for websites.

Teodor Zahariev (SEO Manager at Studio Kipo)
The share of chatbots in searches is increasing, but right now there is a small absolute value.
We should check the accuracy of results by chatbots.
You have to be an expert in order to understand if AI will grow or lower your website in SERPs.
AI is not reliable, currently.
The human content and later editing is important.

Evgeni Yordanov (CEO at Trackian)
New models to be launched – ChatGPT 5 – will use synthetic data.
We will see if this will be a curse or a blessing.
Bing has no serious growth, it’s more or less the same level.

Yordan Dimitrov (SEO Manager at Reflect Digital)
You need to have a good brand in order to survive in the world of LLMs.
It’s one thing to search for sneakers, it’s another thing to search directly for a brand – Nike.

George Chasiotis (Growth Advisor)
Right now it’s almost impossible to get results by using shady SEO tactics.

Evgeni Yordanov (CEO at Trackian)
SEO is much more than feeding keywords to a crawler.

Yordan Dimitrov (SEO Manager at Reflect Digital)
We have to focus on internal pages for SEO with AI.

George Chasiotis (Growth Advisor)
There are tools for AI brand monitoring.
RankBee – What is AI saying about your brand, products or services?

Teodor Zahariev (SEO Manager at Studio Kipo)
You can test your content: „Does this content look AI-generated?”.
For example, AI content tends to be a long phrase, with lots of commas.
Consider using small sentences and very informative – for AI-generated content.

Part 2: From Words to Intent: Semantic SEO in Action

Mihai Aperghis – Scaling Up SEO Analysis with LLMs

November 2022 – ChatGPT launches;

LLMs are great for tasks that are:
creative
vary a lot based context
require a lot of back-and-forth
are individually time-intensive
e.g. topic ideas, creating content, etc.

LLMs are not that great for tasks that are:
repetitive
have a consistent process
take less time but need to be done in bulk
e.g. meta tag optimization, keyword processing, etc.

Pain points of LLMs:
Time-consuming manual work (lots of copy/paste)
Inconsistent output – lack of standardization;
No scalability.

Two ways to use LLM APIs

1. Prompt engineering <- this is what we’ll talk about; Adjust the prompt wording to guide the LLM model to the ideal output.

2. Fine-tuning Train the LLM model using custom datasets to align responses to the ideal output

Treat the LLM as an intern (or a freelancer), not as a senior.

Embeddings turn words and images into numbers.
They are used by LLMs to understand and compare meaning

 

Dan Petrovic – Machine Learning for SEO

Beautiful Soup vs Trafilatura

Why optimize with AI? Use automation whenever possible, so you have more time to think.

Choice – save HTML or parse on the fly. If you save the HTML you can use it later, but it takes more space than parsed data.

Embedding Models Documentation • Mixedbread

GitHub – bojone/labse: Language-agnostic BERT Sentence Embedding (LaBSE)

You’ll need to learn new things constantly, we live in a new era.

impressions * rank – you get a score.
(note by Olivian – likely 1/rank, if you use position 1, 2, 3; OR you can use position 1 as „10”, as it is the larger number).

The difficult part in creating internal links – anchor text selection.

Algoritm internal linking – iei un URL, stabilești care e cuvântul cheie de top în GSC care aduce vizite, și astfel poți găsi un anchor text foarte bun pentru un URL intern.

GitHub – michiyasunaga/LinkBERT: [ACL 2022] LinkBERT: A Knowledgeable Language Model 😎 Pretrained with Document Links

Predictive CTR Model
Query + Title + Description + Position = Predictive CTR

How many LLMs did we use?
Mixedbread – https://www.mixedbread.com/

GitHub – bojone/labse: Language-agnostic BERT Sentence Embedding (LaBSE)

GitHub – google-research/albert: ALBERT: A Lite BERT for Self-supervised Learning of Language Representations

GitHub – microsoft/DeBERTa: The implementation of DeBERTa

dejanseo (Dan Petrovic)

Not used: GPT / Gemini / Sonnet.
(They wrote Python to drive small models instead.)

If you want to train a model, you don’t give all the data to the model. You need to keep some data for testing/validation.

Dashboard: Track and compare experiments, visualize results | visualize-predictions – Weights & Biases

LinkBERT by DEJAN

michiyasunaga/LinkBERT-large · Hugging Face

DEJAN – Better SEO through machine learning.

 

Panel:

Nikoleta Yaneva (Semantic SEO Strategist at Serpact)
Find the informational gaps in the content – to decide when it’s time to optimize a piece of content.
How to start? AI can help with this. We can try to find what users are looking for on Reddit, Quora, and other communities.
The main thing – try to create & optimize content that even LLMs and AI-based tools use as a reliable source of information.

Stefani Gospodinova (Semantic SEO Strategist at Serpact)
Extract the most non-performing pages and see growth opportunities.
If you have one page & one query – it’s probably not a good idea to start prioritizing this page.

Dan Petrovic (Managing Director of DEJAN Marketing)
Good idea by the audience – incorporate conversion knowledge into the workflow for internal linking.

Mihai Aperghis (Founder & Head of SEO at Vertify)
What is RAG? – Retrieval-Augmented Generation AI Explained – AWS
Instead of feeding information to the prompt, you give the model access to what is relevant and use it from an external place.
RAG – useful less for scaling, but for incorporating it into chat tools.

Dan Petrovic (Managing Director of DEJAN Marketing)
The option when you are working with a small model – create chunks, average them, and use embedding extraction. (Olivian note – not sure I wrote this correctly)
If you have large quantities of vector embeddings – you can use: Embedding Quantization — Sentence Transformers documentation
🪆 Introduction to Matryoshka Embedding Models

Stefani Gospodinova (Semantic SEO Strategist at Serpact)
Spend the time to create a proper prompt.

Mihai Aperghis (Founder & Head of SEO at Vertify)
Markdown formatting is a very simple way to format.
A lot of content in the training data in the LLMs has been in this format.
Markdown formatting occupies little space and you can structure things around it.

Nikoleta Yaneva (Semantic SEO Strategist at Serpact)
How many internal links to add? Links should be naturally put into the content.

Stefani Gospodinova (Semantic SEO Strategist at Serpact)
How many internal links to add? Focus on how big the cluster is, and what the people expect.

Dan Petrovic (Managing Director of DEJAN Marketing)
Spammy websites have 2-4 links on a page. Real blogs – have an average of 12-15 links on a page.
1 commercial link + 2 other non-commercial links – it looks spammy.
(Olivian tip) Consider links to 2 other commercial entities.

Dan Petrovic (Managing Director of DEJAN Marketing)
Favorite books:
(old version) Encyclopedia of Natural Life
Amazon.com: Exploring Metaphysics: 9781629970639: Professor David Kyle Johnson: Books
Foundation (book series) – Wikipedia

Nikoleta Yaneva (Semantic SEO Strategist at Serpact)
Focus on the user, not the engines.

Mihai Aperghis (Founder & Head of SEO at Vertify)
You need to be more efficient without compromising quality.
You should look at what are the competitors doing – try to improve on your weak points.

 

Part 3: Mastering Google Ads: Outshine Your Competition

Eugen Predescu – Maximizing Your Google Ads Strategy in 2025: Smart Tactics for Success

On Google – 12,500 searches per minute in Bulgaria.

Population: 6.9 Million people.
#98 – Population rank in the world.

75% – Internet penetration.
There are approximately 5.175 million internet users in Bulgaria.​

Average Searches per User: Globally, an average internet user conducts approximately 3-4 searches per day.

Online sales in Bulgaria: 5-6% out of total retail.

Search volume in Bulgaria – has exponentially increased.

Online sales – do not have the same growth rate as searches, indicating that people are making more informed purchases and the decision-making process for purchases has lengthened.

The economic situation – is not great, people are much more budget-conscious.
Searches for cheap, discounted, or second-hand products have increased.
Queries like „cancel subscription” – increased by 25%.
Searches for luxury products – increased. Cheap, used, but luxurious if possible.
75% of buyers choose one or a few stores from which to make purchases. The chances of trying new stores are low, so there is a need to focus on brand awareness and brand trust.
Regarding the purchase process, 70% of people use search engines for information.

The average cost per click – increased by 30.99%.

Gambling/traveling – an even bigger increase in these niches.

In the last 4 years, CPCs were in the range of $0.17-$0.21 and peaked in Jun.

How do we connect the dots?

  • New customers
  • Increased costs
  • Efficiency
  • Seasonality

On the scale of your success, there exists a set of well-defined knowledge and skills that are backed by an action plan.

How do we build the strategy?

  • Let’s work based on objectives
  • Let’s identify opportunities and challenges
  • Let’s create an action plan to achieve success
  • Let’s make informed decisions based on research and data analysis
  • Let’s stay focused

Marketing calendar

  • The campaigns through which we aim to highlight offers, promotions, category launches, and new arrivals that we have in the product catalog;
  • The Commercial Calendar takes into account seasonality, availability, well-known commercial events, and strategic periodic in which we aim to achieve sales growth;
  • The Commercial Calendar must have a commercial dynamic and a commercial mix that aligns with the business strategy. (Example: We aim to clear stock twice a year)
  • The Commercial Calendar must serve the business needs. That means it should have a measurable objective with well-established performance indicators (KPIs).

Marketing calendar:

  • January — New Year Sales & Resolutions Campaign
  • February — Valentine’s Day & Love Campaign
  • March — Baba Marta & Women’s Day Specials
  • April — Easter Promotions & Spring Sales
  • May — Labor Day & Travel Deals
  • June — Summer Kickoff & Festival Season
  • July — Mid-Summer Sales & Back-to-School Teasers
  • August — Back-to-School & Last-Minute Vacations
  • September — Fall Fashion & Tech Launches
  • October — Halloween & Autumn Sales
  • November — Black Friday & Cyber Monday
  • December — Christmas & Holiday Shopping Frenzy

Advantages of internationalizing your business:

  • Wider customer base
  • Additional sales
  • Increased profits
  • Faster growth
  • Diversified revenue streams

 

Romania has a fast-growing eCommerce marketing – €7 billion in 2024.
Average annual eCommerce growth: 10-15%. Over 70% of Internet users in Romania shop online.
Very price-sensitive and highly influenced by delivery costs.
Preferred payment methods: cash on delivery (~50%) followed by card payments.
Consumers value reviews, clear return options, and responsive customer support. Romanian-speaking customer support (ideally phone and live chat).
Low brand quality – competitive pricing and fast delivery are key factors.
Recommended: partner with local Romanian couriers (Fan Courier, Sameday, Cargus). Ideal delivery time: 1–3 working days.

General Context:

  • Google Ads & Meta Ads with Romanian creatives
  • Influencer marketing on platforms like Instagram and TikTok
  • Affiliate marketing via platforms like 2Performant.
  • Ensure product compliance with EU and Romanian consumer protection regulations. GDPR policy adapted for Romanian users.
  • Invoices should be in Romanian and display prices in RON
  • VAT rules depend on the distance selling threshold (€10,000/year in Romania)

Will Romanians like my products?
I don’t know … Let’s test! Here are some marketplaces:

One-week campaign
Budget: €1,500.
Aim: Reach & Frequency.
100% Awareness.
Google Ads: 55% (€825).
Meta (Facebook): 45% (€675)

Ongoing Tactics
Budget: €10,000
10% Awareness
20% Consideration
70% Conversion.
Google Ads: 70% (€7,000)
Meta: 30% (€3,000)

80% of online sales in Google are done through placements in Romania.

Main takeaways
Focus on getting new customers. Create a marketing calendar that helps you in this direction.
Segment your products based on profitability and adjust your Google Ads budget accordingly.
Come to Romania! The market is growing at a high pace.
Google will translate your Google Ads campaigns for free for budgets invested in foreign countries.
Google Shopping Ads generates +80% of Google Ads sales in Romania.

 

Blagovest Iordanov – The 2025 Google Ads Play

Issue #1: „It’s too complicated, I have no time”
Who’s got the time? – 15 clients, multiple topics, 200+ campaigns, your inbox is screaming at you.
Deep dive into business specific?
Maybe tomorrow.

Issue #2: „Too complicated!”

Businesses are complex.
Your brain hurts — time for another coffee break?

Lost in Translation, Drown in Data …
„Lost in translation” – marketing speaks CPC, CTR, CPA.
Business speaks ROI, EBITDA, CAC.
It’s easy to pretend we’re on the same page, but are we?

„Drowning in data, but thirsty for insights.”
We collect piles of data but rarely have the frameworks to digest it.
It’s like Meta scrolling—so many options, rarely something to watch.

Businesses: turning good intentions into great partnerships
Clear metrics:
Document meaningful KPIs clearly.
Explain them thoroughly.

Invest your time:
Help your agency understand business.
Provide it with sufficient time.
It will pay off.

Vale insights:
A good setup should first return data to provide clarity and insights.

Quality costs, success – More:
Treat the agency as a partner.
Long-term success beats short-term savings.

Agencies: making it work, invest in focus and data
Focus first:
Provide fewer clients per team member for deeper understanding.

Get data-savvy:
Master data skills (more tips later!).

Speak the same language:
Standardize framework to help translate business goals into ad strategies.

AI is a must:
Start preparing—AI’s coming (more on this soon!).

Pro tip:
Don’t switch agencies every couple of months.
Better grow together instead!

Critical thinking: think twice, measure once

Obsessing over simple metrics:
„Sales are up, everything’s great!” – but do you actually know why?
If not, it’s guessing, not optimizing.

Trusting tools blindly:
„Google Ads said conversions doubled!” But did they really?
Or is it just attribution magic?

Question everything:
If data looks too good or too bad, there might be an error.
Dig deeper!

Warning:
Tools are great but they can mislead you.

Critical thinking: more hints:
Choose KPIs that matter:
Really know your KPIs – GA4 and ad platforms love some tricky metrics.
Don’t let them fool you!

Measure the user journey
Conversions are the finish line, but knowing each step makes winning repeatable.

Start Simple, Grow Smart:
Build your analytics step-by-step.
Complex isn’t better — clarity is.

Pro tip:
You don’t have to become a developer.
But becoming a tech-savvy guy will level up your career (and your campaigns!).

Tactical layer – Properly structuring your campaigns

Campaign structure & Naming – don’t make a mess!

Naming matters (seriously!)
Good naming conventions are your shortcut to clarity.
Think about what information fields you might include in your campaign names.

How about these campaign names
BlackFriday-US&CA-DemandGen
CA_Search_EN_Brand_tCPA
JP|KR|SG-Pricing-Display-Remarketing

Prepare campaign names for Automated Data Extraction

Use consistent separators (like “–”).
Defining meaningful fields in campaign names lets automation easily extract campaign info, with fewer mistakes, ready for faster insights.

What not to do
Don’t include redundant info (Search_Campaign) – dimensions/labels exist for that!
Never randomly change names mid-campaign – confusion is guaranteed!
Don’t use special characters excessively
Avoid vague or generic naming („campaign 1” or „test”)
Never mix inconsistent capitalization or formatting
Check API Capaibilies first – verify if you desired dimensions or metrics can actually be extracted via the Google Ads APOI. Don’t get stuck later!

I know you already know it – just do it.

Brand keywords – why separate them?
Protect your data:
Brand keywords perform better than generic ones.
Mixing them distorts your insights and affects the perform

Improved performance:
Google Ads will shift the budget to your brand keywords – as they perform better.
Is this part of your strategy?

Organic traffic cannibalization:
Blending boosts the campaign’s reported performance.
But at the expense of your organic results.

The proper bidding strategy
(absolute) Top of the search results is the reasonable bidding strategy.

You are are protecting them and not trying to maximize conversions.
Maximum visibility is what you are looking for them

If they do not deliver great in the conversion rate…

Easy action steps:
Isolate brand keywords in dedicated campaigns.
Check and report performance separately from the non-brand keywords.
Analyze brand vs. non-brand trends separately — keep insights clear.
Measure the cannibalization, using Google Search Console data.

Performance Max – taming …

Placements & Targeting – stop wasting your budget!
Placements to exclude immediately:

Mobile games & apps:
They’re notorious budget-drainers.
Unless you’re promoting apps, exclude these!

Suspiciously high CTR placements:
Any placement over 1% CTR (on display/GDN) often signals trouble – bots, scams, or accidental clicks.

Use managed (whitelist) placements:
Don’t trust Google’s automatic selection.
Curate high-quality sites yourself.
Same with less urgency for the YouTube videos/channels!

Double-check Country Targeting:
Google’s default (“Presence or interest”) can flood your ads into unintended markets.
Limit targeting explicitly unless global reach is your goal!

Page feeds: your secret PMax Power

Curate your feeds

Create specialized feeds like:
BestsellersHigh-margin products
Seasonal promotions

Why this matters:
Pmax bids aggressively on top-performing items.
Special feeds help highlight items that truly matter for your business.

Attribution modeling – seeing the real picture

What’s attribution?
Attribution decides which ad interaction gets credit for conversions.

Google Ads default model:
30-day post-click, 3-day engaged view, 1-day view-through

Simply Put:
Yes, conversions can appear after your campaign ends!

Why it matters?

Conversion inflation:
Conversions can seem higher over time, causing confusion („Wait, where’s the money from all these sales?”).

Clarity & Transparency:
Understanding how attribution works and extracting/analyzing data with Google Ads API lets you understand campaign performance.

Practical pieces of Advice:
Choose an attribution model aligned with your customer journey.
Create a framework enabling you to analyze the raw data

Google Ads Query Builder  |  Google Ads API  |  Google for Developers

Validator – Google Ads Query Builder  |  Google Ads API  |  Google for Developers

Technical expertise – your secret weapon!

AI loves data, marketers should too!

Automate the boring stuff:
Stop copy-pasting data!
Automate extraction, cleaning, and processing – your sanity and productivity will thank you.

Make your data AI-friendly:
Clean, clear, and simple datasets boost AI’s power.

(think of it as teaching your AI the alphabet instead of giving it a dictionary.,)

Standardize everything:
Truly understand the dimensions and metrics used by Google Ads and GA4.
It’s like learning a universal marketing language.

Become a data rockstar:
Technical skills aren’t optional anymore.- they’re your competitive edge.

(Hint: marketers who code or automate get promoted faster!)

Why AI needs clear data

AI isn’t magic – it’s hungry for good data:
Feed it messy data and you’ll get messy results.

Clear data structures:
Clean and ordered data means AI makes accurate predictions and insights.
Data standardization and properly applied business logic are all.

Why Blending Data (Big-picture Advantage)

Holistic marketing view
Clearer insights = better strategies and quicker wins
Smarter budgeting decisions
AI-ready datasets

Cloud Computing Services | Google Cloud

Why GCP?
Out-of-the-box Connectors for Google Ads, GA4, and Search Console. Also – for Meta!
You are only paying for data storage (small money)
It’s native for Google tools
Access to powerful resources for ETL and analyses, including AI

The Future Is AI—Are You Ready?
The Clock is Ticking:
Early adopters who master clear, blended data will lead the marketing race.
Stop being interface clickers and become data masters.

Your AI Checklist:
Clean your data structures.
Master data collection quality.
Connect your data streams (GA4 + Ads + GSC) in the Cloud.

Outcome:
Sharper decisions, smarter campaigns, faster growth!

Final tips:
Stop being an interface clicker.
Embrace AI now—the future is already here!

 

Panel:

Eugen Predescu (Paid Media Managing Director at DWF)
Since Google Shopping entered Madagascar, I expect Google Shopping to be present in Bulgaria within two years.

Blagovest Iordanov (Managing Partner at ID Consult)
Complexity grows exponentially.
Some platforms don’t collaborate, unfortunately.

Ivelina Ansarova (General Manager at Accella Digital)
We worked with clients who used an internal platform for tracking.
We used GTM tags.

Blagovest Iordanov (Managing Partner at ID Consult)
Google Click Identifier (GCLID): Definition – Google Ads Help

Eugen Predescu (Paid Media Managing Director at DWF)
We should focus on the internal CRM.
Try to rely on all channels, and understand which channel is best for a specific part of a funnel.

Kalina Vasileva (Account Director at Xplora)
TV campaigns affect the audience and create a demand for the product.
We observe data in the same spot – given the same conditions.
We can say which channel produced results,

Blagovest Iordanov (Managing Partner at ID Consult)
Programmers need to be assigned business cases.

Eugen Predescu (Paid Media Managing Director at DWF)
In Romanian leu, you can go a bit lower with bidding than USD.
You should set your currency to leva, not USD.
You can add negative keywords at the account level.
You can set keywords for each account. (you can also create automated rules)

Ivelina Ansarova (General Manager at Accella Digital)
For large businesses try to have automated rules.
It’s not that much about quantity but about quality lists.
You shouldn’t focus on phrase-by-phrase.

Blagovest Iordanov (Managing Partner at ID Consult)
The negative match is still not working as it should.

Eugen Predescu (Paid Media Managing Director at DWF)
Shopping Ads was a game-changer
25-30% bigger CPC Romania vs. Bulgaria.
2x – 3x times the cost for Facebook per click – Romania vs. Bulgaria.
You probably need to 3x more in Romania than in Bulgaria for the same results.

 

Part 4: Outlaw Marketing: Breaking Rules, Winning Big

Kalin Karakehayov – The building blocks of a successful grey hat SEO

Who am I and WTF am I doing here?
18 years in the SEO industry
1500+ websites penalized by Google
Zero-ranked websites in the last 10 years
Seo.Domains: DR 88, organic traffic ~5K
$14 million in sales of SEO resources…
With a shitty website & tiny marketing!?

Intuition vs Thinking
1. Thinking sucks! It’s evolutionary young, exhausting, and ineffective.
2. Intuition is evolutionary old, easy, and extremely powerful.
3. Intuition comes from experience – it takes no extra effort to build, only time.

What is “I Grow Younger”? A framework for building your intuition.
You already have a lot of data points but they may be a mixed mess without the structure needed.
To create the structure we need to understand the major driving forces in your life.

The “I Grow Younger” Pillars
1. Unconditional Self-Love and acceptance
2. Game of Self and Game of Life segmenting
3. Hunter mode and Sheep mode dynamic
4. Never forget how things unfold in Time
5. Measure success in Long Term Freedom
6. …The One Rule that will change your life

What is SEO, is it this?

SEO = Content + Links + Trusted + technicalities …
100+ factors in total

SEO = ~$150 Billion a year of
free value as a Google byproduct

SEO is not an industry!
Failed SEO is therapy
Successful SEO is … Plundering! ($$$)

SEO is not an industry!
Plunder like a pirate :)

The only thing Google can take from you is your wooden ships. You get to keep all the gold & you have unlimited lives!

Free Lunch #1
1. AI Content
2. Minimal edits
3. Publish
4. Rank something

Free Lunch #2
Every link creates SEO value from nothing!
(every link not placed is value wasted!)

Maximize „The plundering equation”:
Number of Websites X Their Power X The Number of Links utilized per website

So…?
Scale!!!
(low quality if possible)

Link juice vs. content investment
Content ranks but cannot be sold once published.

Link juice helps rank and can be sold long-term.

Plundering meta

Long-term collecting, sculpting, and fully using (including exchanging and selling) of
Link juice

If SEO was mathematics…
The way to maximize cash from SEO is to focus mainly on
Link juice

Link Juice meets Aged Domains
Seo.Domains (120+ people team)
is the largest operation of finding, evaluating & catching
Expired/Aged domains in the world. We have ~160,000 :)

Seo.domains
We were never industry experts… because SEO is not an industry!
We were always plundering experts :)
You don’t need expertise to plunder.
You need to start and scale.

Link selling is the perfect SEO hedging!
The fuel for your SEO empire…
Not just for cash, but also for PBN diversity :)
When you’re already profitable, you’ll be under less mental pressure for your money sites.

You win even if your money sites fail!

Link Selling is Free Money
Buy ~20 domains DR 20-30, different countries
Local language AI content targeting long tail kws
Same design, href-lang each to every other one
Prioritize rare markets (Scandinavia, emerging)
Target super competitive niches like iGaming
Traffic can be bought very cheaply, incl. organic (if buyers care… and they shouldn’t)

There is no better time for PBNs!
Free AI content;
Private Whois by default;
Different Cloudflare accounts for hiding hosting IP;
Fears, Inertia, Words, Experience & Goals are all boxes;
Love, meaning, intuition & creativity are all flows.
You love flows, but if you donțt have them, you cope using more boxes… like your phone.

Flows help you, boxes help the tribe!
Evolutionary origins;
Left and right brain fight;
I can pass logic to other humans, but not intuition;
Logic is overtaught, overused, and overvalued;
Intuition is undertaught, underused, and undervalued.
In the modern world,d you mostly need flows!

Flows help you in an almost magical way
If only we could use randomness for change…
Flows are the randomness you need!
„Out of the box” without the thinking | I Grow Younger

Where do boxes and flows touch?
Stories;
The stories we tell about ourselves become true;
The stories we tell about the world don’t

Our identity can be flows or a bunch of boxes!

Personal identity
Who am I? What are my values?
What do I want from life?
What are my ways around the world?
You will never achieve anything contrary to your identity! You will self-sabotage 1000 times before that. Your brain protects your identity at all costs. So you need an identity, supporting progress in any direction!

Company identity should support progress in any direction too
2007 I created a content website before I knew it was a thing;
2009 I sold my first links before I knew it was a thing;
2009 I started an SEO agency before I knew it was a thing;
2011-2013 – various stupid “box” projects, all epic fails;
2013 – Started doing domains; Newbie mode on!
2014-2016 – Spending VC money unproductively;
2017 till now – following the money flows;

The identity of a competitor
The best domains!
Clean and check for all possible problems!
Exclusive!

The identity of SEO.Domains:
Errr… domains?

Quantity is quality for a buyer
All countries
All niches
All price ranges
100% clean to 100% spam :)

Quantity is quality for us
7.5 Million USD in side revenue from traffic and ads
0.7 Million USD in random sales
0.5 Million daily visits bring us huge visibility for free

We don’t have an identity
Sometimes this makes us seem stupid af.
We have unsold domains for $45 Million
… And only 2 marketing people out of 120 :)

But are flows effective?
Boxes are harmful and at best breed effectivity.
Flows are healthy and at least breed creativity.

Effectivity will help you achieve the possible.
Creativity will help you achieve the impossible…

How?
Flows are your why…
Link juice is your what…
…But where is your how?

Where SEO meets the Shopi
An ethnic group made for SEO!
More straightforward

What do SEOs in Shopi think of SEO directives?
The law is but a door in a field and only fools abide by them.
It is lawful to have a narrow gate in a wide field. Only heads pass through it.

The right way to be grey hat is not to be a grey hat in a white hat environment and get penalized all day long for being a black sheep. It’s to make your whole environment grey hat.

In SEO (unlike the economy) you cannot destroy the environment.
The €150 Billion pie will always be there for someone!

You can make it a mud fight!

In SEO (unlike the economy) you cannot destroy the environment. The 150 Billion pie will always be there for someone!
->
You can make it a mud fight!

In SEO (unlike in the economy) failed projects don’t completely die out which means that niches are NOT created equal!
->
Be brutally selective!

In SEO you don’t need to close all loops! The market may close them for you.
Everything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.

The Gray Hat Empire optimizes for:
Link juice (DR);
Small traffic that verifies the link juice so you can sell links;
Actual converting traffic.

But above all, money. In every ethical way.

Resellers wanted
$45 Million worth of SEO domains are waiting for you.
20% commission paid back any way you want.
We have already paid out ~$250k

 

Nikola Minkov – AI & E-commerce SEO in 2025: Adapt or Die

Clicks will drop and marketing will be targeted at user effectiveness.
The fight will be for each client.

SEO is the best sales channel, yet

How To Add Merchant Listing Structured Data | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers

Semantic SEO is key to SEO success.

If we can answer:
what keywords brought traffic to the page and how much they converted?
We can have good insights on what performs well.

The AI Revolution – A new SEO era begins – Understanding
Google’s AI integration – what exactly changed?
Ai Overviews & personalized results;
Google’s Shopping Graph and AI-powered SERP features.

AI-Enhanced SERP – From Static to Personalized:
Product carousels, knowledge panels & interactive results;
Decreased organic CTR and its implications.

The „Helpful Content Update” & AI Impact:
How Google defines helpfulness in the age of AI;
Impact of AI-generated content and detection systems.

What can kill your rankings? Understanding
Common mistakes & misuse of AI
Over-reliance on automated content (AI-generated spam);
Neglecting UX, mobile, and speed (vital in AI-driven ranking).

Penalties & demotions in AI-driven SERP
Recognizing and avoiding algorithmic penalties;
Real-life examples of sites negatively impacted by AI detection.

Adapting to AI – SEO strategies for survival

Optimizing for AI-driven SERPs
Structured data (Product Schema, Variants, Merchant Center)
Image and product content optimization (for Google Lens)

From Keywords to Intents and Entities:
Semantic SEO, topical clusters & entity-driven optimization;
How AI reshapes keyword research and content planning.

Humanizing AI-generated Content:
Balancing AI automation with original, human-centric content;
Best practices and pitfalls in using AI for content generation.

Actionable tactics – thriving with AI in 2025

Harnessing AI Tools for SEO:
Content brief (understand your customer’s needs);
Find out which keywords generate revenue for businesses;
Мanual Keyword research first and then all software;
Create the most logical and meaningful website architecture;
Content creation: use your own prompts, train them, and check everything – twice;
Recommended tools: Trackian, ChatGPT, Merchant Center.

Outlaw SEO – Smart Ways to Win:
Creative ways to influence Google’s AI personalization;
Leveraging AI loopholes (ethically).

Future-Proofing Your E-commerce SEO:
Building search-first brands & fostering brand loyalty;
Integrating UGC, influencer content, and authentic community-driven growth.

 

Panel:

Georgi Linkov (CEO & Co-founder at Studio X Digital)
We have to find ways not to confuse to user and make the product stand out.

Nikola Minkov (Founder and CEO at Serpact, SERP Conf. & SERP Acad.)
For AI user experience is important.

Georgi Linkov (CEO & Co-founder at Studio X Digital)
Technical analysis and content analysis are important.
There are important rules for PDPs to be user-friendly – meaningful content for Google and users.
In the end, there are two types of users – those who make decisions based on summarized information and those who read things in detail, go in depth.
People don’t read everything, even when reading manuals – we don’t read word-by-word.
For our reader – attributes for our user.

Vasil Toshkov (Founder of Cloxy)
The brand should be at the center.

Kalin Karakehayov (Founder at Seo.Domains and Edoms.com)
Google values links because they tend to be more difficult to manipulate.
Authority matters – used to be at some point. Right now – topical authority.
The topical authority does not work as designed.
When Google has this concept of experts, but now quantity is more important.
It is difficult to understand if the content is relevant or not. Google likely looks at links pointing to the website or to user behavior.
Spam creators are unstoppable.
Google cares about ranking, they want people to buy ads, but not links.
Links and domains with links have little to no substitute.

Vasil Toshkov (Founder of Cloxy)
Links will never disappear.
They are the foundation of how search engines work.

Nikola Minkov (Founder and CEO at Serpact, SERP Conf. & SERP Acad.)
Google will not say that links are not important anymore.

Vasil Toshkov (Founder of Cloxy)
We have to forget everything now – spam with links and spam with brands (basics of SEO).

Kalin Karakehayov (Founder at Seo.Domains and Edoms.com)
There are two types of pople who get into SEO with high difficulty:
Classic marketers;
Designers. (they are obsessed with beauty)
You shouldn’t have a conflict between the domain and the language.
Generally, you can use local domains.
You can’t use a British domain in South Africa.
Domains have not just links, they have traffic and value in themselves.
Wikipedia is a very good option, but they have good moderation.
When Reddit is flooded by AI content, it will no longer be good.
Niche domains will be valuable at some point.
For sure, it will be useful to have territory.

Georgi Linkov (CEO & Co-founder at Studio X Digital)
AI is also advancing in the design field, in design communication.
It is a huge benefit to me.
Ultimately, we as design and visibility specialists could focus on important things.
From this perspective, AI is advancing quickly.
I expect quick changes soon, especially in the creation of legitimate sites.

Nikola Minkov (Founder and CEO at Serpact, SERP Conf. & SERP Acad.)
We can manipulate content easily using AI models.
Merchant listing could make updates – they can tell Google we update our information constantly.

Georgi Linkov (CEO & Co-founder at Studio X Digital)
I call on you to create beautiful and well-optimized websites.
SEO specialists have the confidence that they are the greatest in the world.
We have the same feeling (UX).
Things will work out in the end – and will be a good product for people.
It’s important that people do their job, it’s not just people liking us.

Kalin Karakehayov (Founder at Seo.Domains and Edoms.com)
You should explore SEO – this happens through practice.
Try to optimize your website.

Nikola Minkov (Founder and CEO at Serpact, SERP Conf. & SERP Acad.)
Work for your brand.
Try to think who will work for you.
Adapt or … (not die) … you will be extinct.

Vasil Toshkov (Founder of Cloxy)
Don’t do everything others do.
Be different.

Event description

Highlights of the 2024 edition »

Videos about SERP Conf. »

Why choose SERP Conf. Sofia?

  • Do you often encounter information that is theoretical and hard to apply? In the SEO world, changes are constant, and the solutions are often unclear.
  • Practical content – SERP Conf. Sofia gives you practical content focused on real case studies, successful examples, and working strategies that you can implement right away
  • The right answers – At the conference, you will find the right answers to your questions, meet experts who share your challenges, and discover new development opportunities.
  • No language barriers—To ensure that every idea reaches you clearly and comprehensibly, we offer professional translation into Bulgarian and English.

Topics covering SEO, E-commerce, and AI at SERP Conf. Sofia 2025:

  • SEO in the Age of AI
  • From Words to Intent: Semantic SEO in Action
  • Mastering Google Ads: Outshine Your Competition
  • Outlaw Marketing: Breaking Rules, Winning Big

SERP Conf. – Eastern Europe Conference (Inter Expo Center, Sofia, 2025.03.25)

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