575% AI Search Growth: How This AEO Consultant Owns ChatGPT for Web3 Startups

In February 2025, Riseworks was invisible in AI search. The crypto payroll platform had no presence in ChatGPT recommendations, zero citations on Perplexity, and no strategy for the channel that was quietly becoming the most important one in B2B fintech.

Twelve months later, Riseworks had accumulated 8,278 total AI search sessions, a 575.85% increase in ChatGPT traffic, and consistent top-three recommendations across every major AI platform for crypto payroll queries. Organic traffic was up 288% to nearly 700,000 clicks. The platform had expanded to meaningful search visibility in over 100 countries.

Austin Heaton was the SEO and AEO consultant who built it.

This article breaks down the strategy, the execution, and what Web3 founders can learn from a company that captured the AI search moat before its competitors even noticed the channel existed.

Key Takeaways

• AI search is already a significant acquisition channel for crypto and Web3 companies, not a future consideration.
• First-mover advantage in AI citation is real and compounding. The platforms recommending Riseworks today will continue recommending it as their training data updates.
• Technical infrastructure and structured content are prerequisites for AI citation, not optional enhancements.

The Problem: Present Everywhere Except Where Buyers Were Looking

When Austin Heaton began the Riseworks engagement in February 2025, the company faced a challenge that is now common across crypto and Web3 companies: strong product-market fit, real customers, and a search presence that did not reflect either.

Riseworks was competing in a high-value category, crypto payroll and international contractor payments, where the average buyer is already AI-native. Web3 founders, remote-first startups, and international hiring teams are not browsing forums to find payroll tools. They are asking ChatGPT which platform handles USDC payroll across 100 countries, or asking Perplexity to compare crypto payroll compliance options for contractors in India.

These are high-intent, high-value queries. And Riseworks was not showing up in any of them.

“Most crypto companies in 2025 were fighting over Google page one rankings while their buyers had already moved to AI assistants. The real competition was happening in a channel nobody was tracking.” – Austin Heaton, AEO Consultant

The audit Austin Heaton conducted at the start of the engagement identified six compounding problems: limited organic visibility, zero AI search presence, geographic concentration in just two to three markets, weak content authority relative to competitors, technical debt preventing scalable growth, and minimal brand recognition outside the existing customer base.

Each problem reinforced the others. Without content authority, there would be no AI citations. Without AI citations, high-value Web3 buyers would not find the platform. Without those buyers, the brand recognition gap would continue to widen.

The Strategy Austin Heaton Built

Technical Foundation First

Before producing a single piece of content, Austin Heaton rebuilt the technical infrastructure that both Google and AI crawlers rely on to understand and cite a website. This included eliminating crawl inefficiencies, implementing advanced schema markup across product and category pages, resolving indexation issues that were suppressing visibility, and restructuring internal linking to distribute authority to the pages that mattered most for commercial queries.

This work is not visible to users and does not generate immediate traffic. It is also non-negotiable. An AI model cannot accurately cite a page it cannot cleanly parse. Schema markup tells the model what the page is about, who wrote it, and what claims it makes. Without it, even strong content gets underweighted in AI-generated recommendations.

Generative Query Mapping for Crypto-Specific AI Searches

The second phase was identifying the exact conversational queries crypto and Web3 buyers were using with AI assistants. These queries are categorically different from traditional search terms.

A traditional Google search for Riseworks might be “crypto payroll software” or “pay contractors in USDC.” An AI assistant query looks more like “What is the best platform for a Web3 startup that needs to pay remote contractors in stablecoins while handling tax compliance in multiple countries?”

Austin Heaton mapped over 1,000 conversational AI queries most likely to trigger a Riseworks recommendation. These included bottom-funnel commercial questions where AI models refer users to products rather than answering directly, comparison queries where buyers are evaluating options, and compliance-heavy questions where demonstrating expertise drives citation authority.

“AI models don’t recommend companies the way Google ranks pages. They cite sources they have determined are authoritative on a specific topic. The goal is to become the source an AI model trusts on crypto payroll, not just a page that ranks.” – Austin Heaton

Bottom-Funnel Content Architecture

With the query map established, Austin Heaton produced content following a strict bottom-funnel-first hierarchy. Solution pages and comparison content were built before any educational blog content. Case studies and data-driven resources were prioritized over awareness content.

The content architecture was designed specifically for LLM extraction. Each page used a clear H2 and H3 hierarchy that AI models could parse and attribute. Statistics and quantified outcomes were bolded throughout. FAQ sections were structured to match the exact phrasing of the conversational queries mapped in the previous phase.

Several content formats proved particularly effective for AI citation in the crypto payroll category:

• Stablecoin and crypto payroll statistics pages that AI models could cite as data sources
• Contractor rates research that positioned Riseworks as a category authority
• Country-specific compliance guides that answered the multi-jurisdictional questions Web3 companies regularly ask AI assistants
• Glossary content targeting high-volume category terms that drove over 15,000 monthly clicks

Authority Building Through Targeted Link Acquisition

AI citation authority requires third-party corroboration. An AI model deciding whether to recommend a platform will weight the quality and relevance of sites linking to it alongside the content on the platform itself.

Austin Heaton secured backlinks from fintech and crypto-adjacent publishers in the DA40 to DA80 range. These were not generic link placements. They were contextual editorial mentions in content directly relevant to crypto payroll, international contractor payments, and Web3 company operations. The combination of relevance and authority is what AI models use to assess whether a source is worth citing.

The Results: 12 Months of Compounding Returns

AI Search Performance

• ChatGPT sessions: 6,772 (+575.85%)
• Google Gemini sessions: 490 (+860.78%)
• Perplexity sessions: 641 (from an already established base, +47.02%)
• Microsoft Copilot sessions: 178 (+1,680%)
• Total AI sessions across all platforms: 8,278

The Copilot number is worth noting.

A 1,680% increase reflects both the rapid growth of the platform and the early-mover advantage Austin Heaton established before most crypto companies were tracking the channel at all. Enterprise buyers using Microsoft tools are now encountering Riseworks in AI-assisted research, a segment that would have been entirely invisible without deliberate AEO strategy.

Organic Search Performance

• Homepage clicks: 698,544 (+288.59%)
• Total impressions: 9.5 million (+371.81%)
• Pricing page clicks: 12,440 (+627.49%)
• Referral program page clicks: 10,861 (+9,104.24%)

The pricing page growth is the most commercially significant number in the organic dataset. A 627% increase in clicks to the pricing page, combined with the high-intent keyword growth documented below, represents a direct correlation between the content strategy and revenue-stage buyer activity.

High-Intent Keyword Growth

• “crypto payroll”: 326 clicks (+317.95%), position improved from 9.72 to 6.96
• “riseworks app”: 1,667 clicks (+841.81%), position 1.07
• “rise pay app download”: 712 clicks (+1,149.12%), position 1.11
• “rise account sign up”: 2,463 clicks (+326.12%)

Geographic Expansion

One of the clearest signals of a successful international SEO strategy is distributed organic growth across markets that were previously inaccessible. The Riseworks results over 12 months demonstrate exactly this:

• India: 172,458 clicks (+365.99%), now the #1 global traffic source
• United States: 96,608 clicks (+221.45%)
• Nigeria: 25,445 clicks (+533.91%), establishing Riseworks as the crypto payroll leader in Africa
• UAE: 9,650 clicks (+325.49%)
• Brazil: 10,037 clicks (+320.31%)

Riseworks now has meaningful organic presence in over 100 countries. The India result is particularly significant given the volume of Web3 and remote contractor activity in that market, and the Nigeria number reflects a fast-growing segment of the global crypto payroll buyer base that competitors have largely ignored.

Why Web3 Companies Have a Narrow Window Right Now

The AI search landscape in the crypto and Web3 category is less competitive than it appears. Most crypto companies are still allocating the majority of their marketing budget to paid social, community building, and traditional SEO. Almost none have a deliberate AEO strategy.

This creates an asymmetric opportunity. The queries that matter most to Web3 buyer acquisition, questions about stablecoin payroll, crypto compliance across jurisdictions, and contractor payment infrastructure, are being answered by AI models every day. The companies being cited in those answers are the ones that invested in AI search optimization before the category became crowded.

“In 12 months, Riseworks went from zero AI search presence to 8,278 sessions across six major AI platforms. That audience is now being trained to think of Riseworks as the default answer to crypto payroll questions. That is not a traffic number. It is a brand positioning outcome.” – Austin Heaton, AEO Consultant

The window for first-mover advantage in AI search is not permanent. As AI models update their training data and more companies produce AEO-optimized content, the citation landscape will become more competitive. The companies that establish authority now will benefit from compounding citation momentum. Those that wait will face an uphill fight against entrenched incumbents.

What Austin Heaton’s Methodology Looks Like in Practice

The Riseworks engagement followed a four-phase framework that Austin Heaton applies across crypto and Web3 clients:

Phase one is foundation, a comprehensive audit covering technical infrastructure, content gaps, competitive citation analysis, and LLM readiness. This phase eliminates the technical barriers that prevent AI models from accurately parsing and citing the site.

Phase two is territory capture, the production of bottom-funnel content targeting the commercial queries most likely to trigger AI recommendations, paired with the link acquisition needed to establish citation authority.

Phase three is category dominance, the production of data-driven research assets and thought leadership content that positions the brand as the authoritative source in its category across both Google and AI search.

Phase four is scaling, replicating the content and authority playbook across international markets and emerging AI platforms before competitors establish their own presence.

The Riseworks results across all four phases were documented over a 12-month period ending February 2026. Every metric above comes directly from Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4.

The Compounding Nature of AI Search Authority

The most important characteristic of AI search citation is that it compounds. A page cited by ChatGPT today does not lose that citation status when a user closes the tab. The association between a brand and a category query is reinforced every time an AI model recommends that brand in response to a similar question.

For Riseworks, 12 months of deliberate AEO investment has produced a citation presence across six AI platforms, consistent top-three recommendations for crypto payroll queries, and an 8,278-session AI traffic base that will grow as AI search adoption increases. None of that required paid advertising. All of it compounds.

For Web3 founders evaluating their options in 2026, the Riseworks case study represents a clear proof point: AI search is not a channel to plan for. It is a channel to act on now, before the competitive window closes.

Austin Heaton is a B2B SEO and Answer Engine Optimization consultant with over 12 years of experience, specializing in AI search visibility for fintech, crypto, and Web3 companies. He works with clients at austinheaton.com.