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Services: GEO, AI Search Optimisation, Content, LLM Seeding, Reddit
How We Doubled a B2C Fitness App’s AI Search Presence and 5X’d Non-Brand Traffic in 5 Months
B2С APP Case STUDY
by Dennis Lazard · July 05, 2026
AI category ranking
#5 → #4
Growth in non-brand organic traffic
5.5X
Growth in AI Share of Voice
2.5X
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About The Brand
The Brand is a B2C fitness app focused on muscle-building and strength training – a category competing against well-funded category leaders. The app helps users follow structured strength-training programmes at home or in the gym, with around 35K branded searches per month at the start of the engagement and a meaningful presence in the broader AI fitness conversation.
ESA Digital worked with The Brand on a 5-month engagement from February through June 2026. The brief was unusual for an SEO engagement: the goal wasn’t classic organic traffic growth in isolation, but specifically to build The Brand’s presence in AI search – Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and the rest of the increasingly important LLM-driven discovery surfaces – while keeping the underlying organic engine compounding. Generative search was already shaping how consumers research fitness apps, and The Brand wanted to compete for that surface against the category’s established names.
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The Challenges
When the engagement started, The Brand had a real brand presence but a specific set of structural problems in AI search:- AI Share of Voice was sitting at 1.1%. The Brand ranked #5 among tracked competitors in AI search visibility, well behind the category leaders on Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT, with very limited inclusion in the highest-volume fitness intent clusters.
- AI citations were going to the wrong pages. Both Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT were citing The Brand mostly for support documentation – “how to cancel my subscription”, “what is the cost of the plan”, “what does the plan include” – rather than for product, programme or educational content. The brand was surfacing in trust and operational queries, not in the high-intent fitness queries that drive consideration.
- The blog and educational content layer was thin. The Brand had a content library but it wasn’t structured to be quoted by AI systems – no clear topical authority around the muscle-building, hypertrophy, progressive overload and home-workout topics that AI was answering for users.
- Third-party visibility in “best fitness app” content was limited. AI systems lean heavily on listicle and comparison content as training data, and The Brand wasn’t appearing in the “best workout app” roundups, “top muscle-building apps” guides and comparison pages that AI systems were sourcing from.
- The non-brand organic engine was underdeveloped. Non-brand organic clicks were sitting at 971 a month – meaningful but small for a brand with 35K monthly branded searches, with non-brand average position at 12.9 (page 2 of Google), suggesting wide untapped demand the site wasn’t yet capturing.
Strategic Approach
We built a five-track strategy designed specifically to win AI search visibility while strengthening the underlying organic foundation:
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Step 1: Competitive AI Share of Voice tracking
We set up monthly AI Share of Voice analysis across the fitness app category – tracking The Brand against the main category competitors across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and AI Mode. This gave us a clear competitive scoreboard to optimise against, identified which surfaces were under-indexed for The Brand, and let us measure progress month over month against the actual category leaders. -
Step 2: Content built for AI citation
We ran a continuous content programme producing roughly 10 finalised blog briefs per month, all structured for AI citation – question-led headings, clear definitions, structured FAQ blocks, evidence-backed training science, and the kind of topical depth around muscle building, calisthenics, progressive overload, training splits and senior fitness that AI systems prefer to quote. The work was specifically designed to expand The Brand’s citation surface beyond support documentation into the educational and training-knowledge layer that drives high-intent AI recommendations. -
Step 3: LLM seeding through link building
We ran a structured link building programme aimed not just at classic backlink metrics but at LLM citation pickup. Placements went into “best workout apps”, “top muscle-building apps” and “best calisthenics apps” roundups – exactly the listicle and comparison content that AI systems source from. Each placement was tracked for LLM citation pickup, and in May a third of the new placements were picked up by at least one LLM within 0–6 days of going live – including a high-DR placement on a major news network that generated a ChatGPT citation for “Which workout app is best?”. -
Step 4: Help Centre and product page restructuring
We restructured The Brand’s most-cited Help Centre pages – cancellation, pricing, subscription management, workout programme explanations – with stronger FAQ structure, clearer summaries and tighter internal linking into the commercial and programme pages. This kept the existing AI citation base healthy while gradually rebalancing the citation mix away from pure support content toward the product, programme and training-knowledge layer. -
Step 5: Reddit and community seeding
We ran a Reddit programme placing product-relevant comments in fitness, workout and strength-training communities – tracked, measured and reported as a distinct channel. Reddit threads are increasingly significant as both a direct discovery channel and as training data for LLMs, and the seeding work supported both visibility and the broader AI citation footprint.
The Results:
Result 1: AI Share of Voice grew 2.5X and overtook a category competitor
The Brand’s overall AI Share of Voice grew from 1.1% in February to 2.8% in June – a 2.5X increase across the engagement, with gains on every tracked platform. ChatGPT SoV reached 4.7%, AI Overviews 2.7% and AI Mode 2.2%. The Brand moved from #5 to #4 in the category ranking by overtaking a direct competitor, narrowing the gap to the next-largest player and putting The Brand in the consideration set for AI fitness app recommendations for the first time.
Result 2: Non-brand organic traffic grew 5.5X
The non-brand organic engine grew faster than any other metric over the engagement. Non-brand organic views grew from 88K in February to 484K in May – a 5.5X increase – and non-brand clicks grew from 971 to 4,445, a 4.6X lift. Total organic views grew from 453K to over 1M in the same window. The growth came from the new content layer ranking on a much wider set of fitness queries than the site had previously been able to capture.
Result 3: AI citations grew 2.2X — with citation quality rising alongside volume
Total AI citations to The Brand grew from 413 in February to 928 in June – a 2.2X increase, spread across 103 rising to 194 cited pages. Quality rose alongside quantity: the share of AI-found pages that were actually cited climbed from 65% to 88%, meaning AI systems weren’t just surfacing more of the site – they were quoting from a much larger share of what they surfaced. The Help Centre roughly doubled its citation footprint (about +335 citations) as coverage deepened around subscription, cancellation and pricing questions.
Result 4: Blog carved out 20% of the AI citation footprint from zero – and became the most-cited page on the entire domain
When the engagement started, The Brand’s blog contributed zero to AI citations. By June, blog pages accounted for 183 citations – roughly 20% of the entire AI citation footprint of the site – built from nothing across 17 blog pages, every single one of which was being cited by AI. The flagship piece, a 30-day calisthenics workout plan for beginners, became the single most-cited page across the whole domain: 94 AI citations, ahead of the top Help Centre article (68) and even the homepage (41). The blog produced this footprint from under 3% of the site’s organic traffic, showing that AI systems were citing the content on relevance, not traffic size.
Result 5: Brand mentions in AI grew 2.5X and the query mix flipped from branded to topic-led
The link building and digital PR programme lifted Aithor’s authority profile in a measurable way – Domain Rating climbed +8 points, and the referring domain base grew steadily through the engagement and beyond. That authority foundation was a key part of why the content layer was able to rank and compound the way it did.
Working with ESA Digital has been fantastic! They bring deep industry knowledge and used it to build a strategy that delivered exceptional outcomes for our mobile app and our wider expansion. Their data-driven approach and excellent client service mean they consistently go above and beyond to meet our specific requirements. We've accomplished so much together and couldn't be happier with the results!
Andrew Bondarenko
CPO & Co-founder, Noji (Exit to DelightRoom)
CPO & Co-founder, Noji (Exit to DelightRoom)
“I met Dennis and his Google team, when they pitched their startup Smartsub. We accepted them to our accelerator program in 2017, Batch 9 and they successfully passed through it. Within a short period of time they managed to develop MVP of their product, design and implement go-to-market strategy launching the product on the US market. Their broad digital business experience and data-driven approach allowed them to make things done.”
Cristobal Alonso (www.startupwiseguys.com)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
“ESA team with their Google Ads skills, growth mindset and natural ability to mentoring are able to bring a lot of value to startup ecosystem with so many tech companies in their growth stage and businesses struggling with Google online advertising.”
Monika Synoradzka (www.hugething.vc)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
ESA team had outperformed my expectations working with one of our main SEO clients. They delivered X2-times organic traffic growth for 12 client’s websites, working with technical, content and link-building SEO optimisation in Google, website structure, navigation, technical code and conversion rate optimisation.”
Maria Kristalinskaya (www.bbdo.com)
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
