Hey Reader,
Welcome to our 140th edition of WTSNewsletter!
This week is packed with things like:
- Victory Umurhurhu-Michael’s Reddit playbook for AI visibility & brand trust
- Meet Sasha Gusain & her journey leading her to Canva
- 1 WEEK left to save on WTSFest Portland (8 standard tickets left)
- Part 1 of Ellen Sartin’s WTSNewsletter series
- & our WTSTalk is TODAY! 👀
Thank you to this week's WTSNewsletter sponsors: Croatia Summit, KRM Digital & Redirects.net
Let's get started =)
Brilliant work by our brilliant members
1) Amanda Milligan & Crystal Carter - Why Marketers Need to Pay Attention to Agentic AI
2) Emma Moletto - Using AI chatbots responsibly
3) Gabi Troxler - Brand Authority for Local Businesses
4) Lily Ray - Your GEO Strategy Might Be Destroying Your SEO
5) Stevy Liakopoulou - 7 organic content investments that drive ecommerce ROI
---
For future editions, if you’d like to recommend any articles (and yes, you can totally recommend your own work!), fill out this form:
Croatia SEO Summit: Win 1 of 10 Free Tickets to the Adriatic's Biggest SEO Event
[Headline Sponsor: Croatia Summit]
Want to spend two days on the Croatian coast learning from 15+ world-class SEO speakers, for free?
Croatia SEO Summit is raffling 10 White Hat tickets!
The event takes place June 11-12, 2026 in Šibenik, a stunning UNESCO heritage town on the Adriatic.
Your free ticket gets you access to lunch, drinks, the official after party, a goodie bag, the AI-powered networking app and talks in two tracks featuring WTS members:
- Amanda King
- Lily Ray
- Nikki Parsons
- & many more brilliant speakers like Ryan Robinson, Craig Campbell and Brodie Clark!
No catch. Just enter your details and you're in.
Winners attend June 12th (Lecture Day). Must be 18+ to enter.
The raffle ends 15th of April!
Share your message with 8,500+ SEOs & Marketers -
Transparent pricing & details
Our latest WTSKnowledge
A strategic playbook by Victory Umurhurhu-Michael, showing why Reddit is no longer optional for brands, and how to engage authentically without getting downvoted into oblivion.
Learn how to:
- Understand why Reddit now shapes AI-generated answers
- Move through 3 engagement modes: Insight Gathering, Contextual Contribution, & Conversation Catalyst
- Identify which subreddits align with your audience
- Contribute value without promotion
- Earn trust that converts Reddit mentions into search visibility
With 90% of consumers prioritising authenticity, polished marketing content isn't what wins on Reddit. Raw, unfiltered, human participation is. And with Reddit growing 1,328% in Google visibility in less than a year, ignoring it means your competitors will shape the conversation without you.
Adapted from Victory's WTSFest London talk
Access all 10 WTSFest London talks for just £99!
A GA4 Course for Digital Marketers, by a digital marketer
[Spotlight Sponsor: KRM Digital]
Stop opening GA4 with a sense of dread. Most marketers are still guessing, it’s time you became the expert.
This GA4 Course is a jargon-free, "no-fluff" deep dive designed to turn confusing dashboards into your competitive advantage. Whether you’re proving ROI to clients or tracking complex conversions, you’ll walk away with the exact framework needed to extract insights in minutes, not hours.
Built by Kyle Rushton McGregor, who has spent years training thousands of users and hundreds of organizations since GA4’s 2020 launch. He’s distilled that massive enterprise experience into an accessible, career-boosting course.
You’ll gain:
- Actionable Tactics: Skip the theory; get the workflows.
- Confidence: Answer any client question with data-backed authority.
- Lifetime Access: A permanent resource as the platform evolves.
Share your message with 8,500+ SEOs & Marketers -
Transparent pricing & details
Our latest WTSInterview
Meet Sasha Gusain!
Sasha Gusain is Head of Logged Out Experience at Canva, where she leads the teams responsible for how millions of people discover Canva - through SEO, content, and the experiences that shape a user’s very first impression of the brand or new products.
With over a decade in SEO and growth, Sasha has helped turn Canva’s organic presence into one of the largest in the world, blending creativity, data, and technical systems thinking to drive sustainable organic growth at scale.
Outside work, Sasha lives between Sydney and the NSW South Coast with her partner Prashant, dog Waldo, and cat Salsa.
Last chance: WTSFest Portland tickets are almost gone!
Your last chance to join us at WTSFest Portland 🎟️
Our $499 standard tickets end soon (April 7th), before moving to the final $599 tier.
Here’s what’s waiting for you:
✨ 10 new brilliant speakers
✨ Upgraded, eco-friendly catering
✨ A pup-graded after party 🐶 with therapy dogs!
📍 Portland | May 7th, 2026
Save $100 while you still can.
Your WTSFest conference countdowns
We'd love to see YOU at one of our upcoming full-day marketing events!
⏳ 36 days - Portland on May 7th, 2026
🎟️ 8 standard tix ($499) before final tix ($599)
⏳ 183 days - Philadelphia on October 1st, 2026
🎟️ 4 early bird tix ($399) before standard tix ($499)
⏳ 352 days - London on March 19th, 2027
🎟️ 19 super early bird tix (£299) before early bird tix (£399)
🎥 2026 On-demand Insights - From AI Search to Real Influence & Trust
🎟️ £99 for all 10 talks
Use our Dear Boss template to request budget to attend!
JOIN TODAY!!! WTSTalk with Aimee & Nick
Make Yourself Hard to Replace: The SEO-to-AI Visibility Playbook for 2026
🗓️ TODAY at 4pm BST | 11am EDT | 8am PDT
Leadership teams are actively looking for SEOs who can measure and explain AI visibility.
The SEOs who are learning to track AI citations, build GEO strategies, and speak the language of AI search are becoming the people their teams turn to first.
They're expanding their scope, growing their influence, and building careers that are future-proof.
Can't make it live? Sign up anyway - we'll send you the recording!
Make 301 Redirect Mapping Easier
[WTSFest Sponsor: Redirects.net]
If you've ever been handed a 301 redirect assignment, joy probably isn't the first emotion that comes to mind. Redirects.net changes that, and WTS community members get one month completely free ($89 value).
What SEOs love about it:
⚡ Fast: mapping done in minutes
🎯 Accurate: algorithm-driven matching, no human error
📋 Ready for CMS upload or dev handoff
WTS member, Briony Cullin, used Redirects.net for a massive site migration:
"It was fab! Being able to batch process redirects saved me loads of time and mental anguish. It felt like I was able to jump straight to the answer, rather than fretting over a page-by-page approach."
To access: (1) Select "Login" (2) Sign up (3) Upgrade to Consultant plan (4) Use code REDIRECTS4WTS
New accounts only. One-time use.
[WTSNewsletter Series] Improving AI Visibility for local businesses through sponsorships
Series Author: Ellen Sartin
Ellen is the Client Success & Growth Manager at ZipSprout.
A research-driven Local SEO nerd with over 12 years of experience in marketing and business development, and a background in applied statistics and data analysis, Ellen explores how community partnerships between brands and nonprofit organizations drive real local visibility and engagement - and how AI is shaping Local SEO.
Part 1: How Businesses View Local Sponsorships – What the Research Shows
For more than ten years, we’ve been connecting businesses with nonprofits, events, and organizations, to create sponsorship placements that locals notice and communities value. But how do the businesses we work with view this activity?
To find out, we ran a nationwide survey to understand why businesses sponsor local nonprofits and whether they understand the link between those sponsorships and online visibility.
Our Business Survey Findings
The big takeaway?
Most businesses invest in sponsorships in order to do something genuinely positive for their communities (which is fantastic!). But many businesses are underestimating the impact of sponsorships as repeatable trust signals for local visibility.
Community impact is the most important motivator for engaging in sponsorship activities, but visibility matters too...
- 81% rated community impact as “extremely motivating”
- 48% said online visibility was a motivator, but only 24% said it was “extremely motivating”
More sponsorship activity may lead to an increased impact on visibility...
- 40% of businesses that sponsor fewer than 10 organizations reported “little to no” impact
- 83% of businesses that sponsor 10 or more organizations per year reported a “strong” or “major” impact
This could indicate either that the volume of sponsorship opportunities is a factor, or possibly, that those businesses that engage in more opportunities are more focused on leveraging those opportunities to the fullest extent.
Our take is that while businesses do care about visibility from sponsorships, it’s likely that many aren’t utilizing them to maximize visibility. We suspect that this is because some of these businesses misunderstand AI trust signals and the role sponsorships can play in increasing visibility.
In next week's Part 2 of “Improving AI Visibility for Local Businesses Through Sponsorships”, I’ll discuss what that local trust looks like and why it matters more in AI search.
If you've made it this far, thank YOU!
A reminder that everyone is more than welcome to subscribe!
Our goal is to amplify all the brilliant folks of marginalised genders in our industry - so the more people who subscribe, the more amplification!
Please help us keep WTS free & sustainable
We pay our authors, speakers & team to bring you helpful content like this.
We aim to always keep our content and community free and accessible.
If you've found value in WTS, please consider supporting us:
☕ Buying us a coffee
📧 Sponsoring a WTSNewsletter
🤝 Becoming a WTSPartner
As always, thanks for allowing us into your inbox!
- Areej, Erin, & Himee
