This is interesting. Just wondering about your traffic volume and how long you have been running lcoalpdf?
For us, it is more like 5% of the traffic from GEO, but we have been running the company for 2 years and have created a lot of handwritten content for devs.
Volume is modest (~180 visitors/month), but the 50/50 split is what's interesting.
Been in production since August 2025, so ~4 months.
The strategy was intentional from the start: there's no point competing with Adobe, Smallpdf, ILovePDF for Google rankings. They have 10+ years of backlinks, massive marketing budgets, and domain authority I'll never match as a solo dev.
So I made a bet on GEO from day one:
- Semantic HTML that LLMs can parse
- Clear technical docs (GitHub README as primary content)
- Honest about limitations
- Privacy-first architecture (client-side processing)
Your 5% GEO makes sense for a 2-year-old company optimizing for traditional SEO. The difference: I skipped the SEO game entirely. When you're competing in an established niche, GEO-first might be the only viable strategy for bootstrapped products.
Curious: what type of dev content are you creating? And have you tested how LLMs cite it vs your traditional marketing content?
For us, it is more like 5% of the traffic from GEO, but we have been running the company for 2 years and have created a lot of handwritten content for devs.