I help brands become the answer, not page two.
I’m Jon, an independent SEO with 11 years getting brands found in search, and the last few years getting them named by AI. I work on the two things that actually move the needle now: links for Google, mentions for AI.
Four levers, one goal: get you cited and ranked.
I keep the practice narrow on purpose. These are the things that compound, and the things I have spent years getting good at.
Link building
Editorially earned, topically relevant links above an authority threshold. Built on outreach that reads like a human wrote it, because I write it.
Mention building & digital PR
Getting your brand named, reviewed, and rounded up across the web. The signal that AI engines weight most, and the one most teams ignore.
AEO / GEO
Answer and generative engine optimization. Structuring content and authority so ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI surfaces cite you by name.
Agentic SEO systems
I direct AI to multiply output, not replace judgment. Repeatable, documented systems that scale the work without scaling the headcount.
Eleven years of moving real numbers.
A few results from in-house and agency work. Brands stay private out of respect for past and present employers, but the figures are real.
I studied philosophy before I did SEO. The job turned out to be the same question: how does a system decide what is true and worth trusting?
Search engines and now AI models are both trying to answer that, at scale, billions of times a day. My work is reverse-engineering how they decide, then earning the trust honestly rather than gaming it. That is also why I stay white-hat: the shortcuts get caught, and the brands built on them get wiped out in the next update.
I would rather move slower and build something that compounds. Real links, real mentions, real expertise on the page, and a clear reason every piece of content exists.
And the name? “Jon Chan” is a nickname my friends gave me growing up. I bought this domain years ago and named the site after it. So the brand is Jon Chan SEO, but you can just call me Jon.
Simple Sheets is where I test everything first
I co-own Simple Sheets, a bootstrapped Excel and Google Sheets brand. It doubles as my live laboratory: every link-building play, AEO tactic, and agentic SEO system gets proven there on real traffic and revenue before it ever reaches a client. When I tell you something works, it is because I have already run it.
The work changed. So I changed how I do it.
A few years ago the ground moved. People started taking their questions to AI instead of Google, and Google rebuilt its results around AI answers. The old playbook, rank the blue link, stopped being enough. Like everyone serious in this field, I had to work out what came next.
So I did something a little unusual. I turned to AI to modernize my own work, not to replace my judgment, but to handle the parts that eat a week: pulling reports, drafting briefs, keeping the plan honest, and pressure-testing new tactics against real data fast. I gave it a curated knowledge base of my method, skill files, and hard rules, so it could work the way a senior practitioner does instead of like a generic chatbot.
It worked well enough that two things became obvious. One, this is how modern SEO should be run. Two, the same system that made me faster could make other operators faster too. That is where the products came from: the playbooks I keep current, and the Operating System that hands your own AI the method and the workflow.
I am still white-hat, still allergic to shortcuts, and still testing everything on real traffic before it reaches you. The tools just let me do more of the work that compounds, and less of the work that does not.
Want to be the answer?
If your brand should be getting named by AI and ranked by Google, and is not yet, let’s talk. I take on a small number of engagements at a time.