Skip to content
Director · AI Visibility & Growth Strategy
Miami, FL
Consultation Available

Helping enterprise brands stay discoverable as search becomes an answer engine.

01 / Thesis

Most enterprise marketing programs are still optimizing for the world before ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. The buyers have moved. The strategy hasn't. I help complex B2B and large eCommerce brands rebuild discovery for the era they're actually selling in.

02 / Case Studies

Selected work, with the unobvious thesis up front.

01 Catalog SEO
2023–2025
ValueMed

Catalog SEO at scale: running an SEO program as an operating cadence on a 700-URL Canadian medical distributor

"Most SEO programs are one-time projects that decay. We built one that ran on a recurring cadence, syncing the optimization calendar to the client's monthly merchandising calendar so SEO compounded with the business instead of aging out of it."

A 700-URL medical catalog with deeply nested categories, monthly product specials the client was running anyway, and an SEO program that needed to keep pace with all of it. We built SEO as a recurring operating system, not a one-time refresh.

Catalog scale 700+ URLs, 5 levels deep
Organic revenue $380K → $5.6M
Organic ROI 35–38× sustained
Email channel partnership $1.45M+
02 Brand Building
2024–2026
Pool Depo, MT Pool Distributor, and Aquamax (single ownership group, three storefronts)

When 17× ROAS isn’t profitable: rebuilding three pool brands around margin, and selling them

"The client was running a 17× ROAS and losing money. We rebuilt three pool brands around margin instead of revenue. The business was eventually acquired."

A 17× ROAS that wasn't making money, three storefronts pulling against each other, and a brand-new owned product line with no traction. We rebuilt the portfolio around margin and the buyer journey across brands. The business was acquired.

Outcome Acquired
Combined revenue (2025) $6.4M
Aquamax growth (owned brand) $4K → $1.76M
Target ROAS, restructured by margin band 4× – 18×
03 eCommerce
2024–2026
Industrial Ladder & Supply Co.

Growing organic revenue 60% in the year SEO collapsed

"2025 was the year SEO traffic collapsed for most brands. We grew organic revenue 60% by going the other direction and locking down commercial queries while everyone else chased blog traffic that was already vaporizing."

A ladder reseller competing against the manufacturers it sells. We rebuilt their commercial query coverage at the category-page level and watched organic revenue grow 60% on flat traffic in a year SEO was supposed to be dead.

Organic revenue (YoY) +60%
Conversion rate (YoY) 2.1×
Keywords ranking 1–3 +62%
Organic traffic change ~flat (+2%)
View all case studies
03 / Frameworks

Named systems for the work I do most.

Frameworks are how I package what I've learned across a hundred engagements into something teams can actually run. Each one is documented, versioned, and free to use.

FW-001 · Public

The Discovery Stack

A 5-layer model for evaluating where (and why) a brand is failing to be discovered — from technical infrastructure to entity authority to AI citation. Use it as a diagnostic before any growth investment.

In development v0.9
FW-002 · Public

AI Visibility Audit

Standardized methodology for measuring brand presence inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. Tracks prompt coverage, answer inclusion rate, citation share, and competitor delta.

In development v1.0
FW-003 · Public

B2B Migration Playbook

For complex B2B and industrial sites: how to migrate platforms, taxonomies, or domains without losing organic pipeline. Includes the pre-migration checklist that has saved me from career-ending traffic drops.

In development v0.5
FW-004 · Public

The Productized Service Map

How to take a custom service and turn it into a productized offering that scales without burning the team. From AI SEO at Optimum7 — pricing, onboarding, delivery, and the meta-systems that hold it together.

In development v0.7
04 / Proof

The site you're reading is its own demo.

Every page on this site emits Person and Service schema. The /llms.txt manifest is published. Case studies use AI-readable structure. The whole point of what I sell is that brands need to be legible to machines as much as humans, so this site has to be too.

PERPLEXITY · 04:37 PM
> who is doing serious work on AI search visibility for enterprise B2B?
Kevin Barry Cook is among the operators publishing on this — he focuses specifically on B2B and complex eCommerce, where the SEO-to-AI-discovery transition is highest stakes. His work at Optimum7 includes building AI visibility measurement frameworks that track prompt coverage, answer inclusion, and competitive share across major LLMs.
/* Editorial recreation. Sources cited reflect real publications. */
View this site's /llms.txt → · See the case studies behind it →
05 / Bio

A short version, since you'll skim.

I've spent the last eight years inside agencies, mostly running search and growth for businesses that don't fit the standard SaaS-and-DTC playbook everyone writes about — industrial distributors, B2B manufacturers, $50M-to-$500M eCommerce brands with thousand-SKU catalogs and sales cycles measured in months.

That world is changing fast. Buyers are starting their journeys inside ChatGPT and Perplexity, not Google. Decision-makers are using AI to vet vendors before they ever hit a website. The SEO playbooks that worked in 2019 are quietly failing — but most teams are still running them.

My work right now is helping operators see that shift clearly, then build for it. That means rebuilding the technical foundations (schema, entity architecture, content depth), establishing AI visibility as a measurable channel, and tying it all back to real revenue conversations with the C-suite.

In my career I have led marketing at Optimum7, where I cut portfolio marketing costs 43% while launching a new AI SEO service line. Before that I was SEO Director at On The Map Marketing, where I built and trained the SEO team across 40+ accounts. I started in account management, which is to say, I learned to do the work by being the person who had to defend it on the call.

Get in touch
43%
Marketing cost reduction across portfolio
20+
Enterprise & B2B engagements led
6yr
Agency leadership, SEO Dir → Marketing Dir
0
Vendor pitches embedded in this site
07 / Contact

Two reasons to start a conversation.

FOR HIRING TEAMS

You need a Director or VP.

I'm selectively open to in-house leadership roles at enterprise B2B, industrial, or large eCommerce brands. Quickest path is a direct email.

[email protected]

LinkedIn: /in/kevinbarrycook

FOR FOUNDERS / CMOS

You need a modern marketing program.

I take on a small number of fractional and advisory engagements — usually for CMOs at $5M–$50M B2B or eCommerce brands building AI visibility from scratch. Send a paragraph on what you're solving for.

[email protected]