Start With Dessert: Prioritizing BoFu Content for GEO

Tofu is a superfood. When well prepared, it’s the ultimate appetizer: nutritious, delicious, and you can pair it with almost anything.

During SEO’s golden age (ca. 2011-2021), ToFu content was also a superfood. Its nutrients fueled organic growth campaigns, no matter the vertical or business model. B2B, B2C, CPG, DTC, SaaS, PLG: every acronym had something to gain from starting their content program with the ultimate appetizer of ToFu content.

Those days are behind us. As search becomes even less likely to generate clicks, AI answer engines become more popular, and the content ocean becomes home to more trash islands, ToFu content has lost its edge. 

The good news: now we can start with dessert. BoFu is now the way to get LLM visibility, convert traffic, and create the same type of content moat that ToFu used to offer.

BoFu content can (and should) be the foundation of your content strategy. 

ToFu for every meal

We had great reasons for starting with ToFu content; it wasn’t a mistake back in the day. This is a classic example of a marketer’s job-to-be-done staying consistent, but the tools and techniques adapting to a new environment. We accomplish the same things today with BoFu content.

BoFu wasn’t really “content marketing”

In the good old days, when marketing teams had unlimited spend and working in tech involved kegerators and ping pong tables, content marketers didn’t have to worry about BoFu content. We had product marketing teams and sales enablement sprints to handle that for us.

Plus, those product marketers could afford to spend time constantly updating documentation, agonizing over 20 personas, and finding joy in the most minute product releases. Content was about bigger and better things (brand awareness! CAC! 10x everything!)

ToFu had brand benefits

ToFu content to fuel SEO engines was a win-win. Not only did we get beautiful numbers to take upstairs and declare victory with, we also got all sorts of brand awareness plays. “Look at all these impressions! All these people saw our name next to a blue link,” we said. 

ToFu content padded the stats

Those numbers were beautiful, too. 300% QoQ increase in clicks? No problem. We did a little competitive gap analysis, targeted keywords that didn’t have any associated content, and went to town. Spinning up an SEO program got real results very, very quickly when getting ToFu content to rank was easy.

ToFu really was a best practice

Building topical authority with a deep dive pillar piece, then adding supporting pieces to target longtail related keywords, truly was a best practice (I always called this hub-and-spoke). It wasn’t just that ToFu content got us results; it was the right way to get results with a new content program.

ToFu started the funnel

No one starts their journey with a pricing page or a comparison table. ToFu was the way to get eyeballs on the website—a lot of eyeballs. Then, we can hand them off, work at moving them down the funnel, nurture them, or just take the session as a win. Buyers start at the top of the funnel, and capturing that early-stage demand meant ToFu content.

ToFu built a moat

Owning any and all keywords, even tangentially related (or completely unrelated) to our value prop, put our competitors at a disadvantage. The easiest way to do that was to create a lot of content around ToFu topics and high-volume keywords.

Of course, there’s a reason these H3s have all been past tense: none of this stuff applies anymore.

Starting with a BoFu dessert

The old approach that put ToFu first (and often last) just doesn’t work in 2025. It’s harder than ever to rank; building (mediocre) content at scale has never been easier, and searches (in any platform) are less and less likely to result in clicks. Oh, and you probably have less budget than you did in 2019.

BoFu brand benefits

Now that teams are leaner and meaner than they used to be, it’s often on content marketers to also be product marketers and craft compelling sales enablement content. That’s ok; we probably should have been using our expertise to build this stuff all along. Now we get to bring our storytelling skills to these high-converting channels.

Plus, we get to milk brand awareness out of a funnel stage that traditionally isn’t about brand. When you build great BoFu content, you leave a clear brand impression on prospects. You’re saying “next time, skip the marketing channels, use a branded search, and come straight to us – we’ve proven our value already.” 

With the rise of LLMs, more and more brand mentions happen at the BoFu level because AI looks for brand mentions tied to clear product descriptions, pricing, and value propositions.

BoFu focuses on the only stat that matters

Dave Kellogg loves to say “marketing exists to make sales easier”, and nothing does that like BoFu content. And in today’s ever-evolving macroeconomic climate, content needs to stay close to the money. When we focus on BoFu content, we prove the value of our work without a lot of song and dance. We can point directly to business results. So don’t shy away from those case studies, comparison articles, and industry pages.

Volume doesn’t matter when clicks are scarce

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed brand is king. If everyone else is getting zero clicks and you’re getting one, you better darn well convert that one! You can’t do that with another ultimate guide to [top of funnel keyword]. Build content that has the best chance of making an impact with a high-value site visitor. Case studies are a great option here; they combine real-world data with clear storytelling to help connect a prospect to your product and brand.

If gas costs an arm and a leg, you'd better build the most fuel-efficient engine possible. Once you’ve built that high-performing engine, you can fuel it with multiple marketing channels. You’re actually getting the most bang for your buck by creating BoFu content now. Traffic from search might be down, but your BoFu content can influence buying decisions for traffic from social, events, influencers, partnerships, etc.

Because this content powers conversions across marketing channels, it’s your answer to a CFO asking you to “do more with less.”  

The long and winding road funnel

In our youth, we were certain that the funnel was a sequential journey. You only go around the Monopoly board in one direction. But what if you had the cash and wanted to skip directly to buy Boardwalk? We don’t control how prospects move through the funnel, and lately, it’s looked more like a Gordian knot than an orderly upside-down triangle.

Content should adapt—Ashley Faus calls this the “content playground”—and a big part of that adaptation is having great BoFu content at the ready, no matter when a prospect needs it. Maybe that’s after a conversation in a Slack community, maybe that’s after an event, or maybe it’s the first interaction with your brand because ChatGPT told them you were the best. 

BoFu is the new moat

ToFu used to be your moat in search, the thing that gave you an institutional edge over competitors across the entire channel. While traditional search is still relevant, it’s time to bring the moat closer to home.

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Great BoFu content helps you control the narrative for prospects who have the highest intent to buy – it gives you the institutional edge for the people who are most valuable and relevant to your business outcomes. When you have the best comparison pages, can demonstrate your value to each niche ICP, and have case studies that resonate, you hold the advantage.

BoFu = best practice

Along with digital PR and brand mentions, LLMs depend on well-crafted, thoughtful BoFu content to make your brand visible in their answers. AI searches tend to be much longer than traditional searches (20+ words more per query), and helping the AI retrieve information about your target audience, your product features, your pricing plans, and your specific value proposition is the new version of “make sure your keyword is in the H1.”

These simple, specific BoFu content moments also fuel the digital PR and branded search that leads to future GEO success. A virtuous flywheel of inbound growth is still possible in 2025’s AI search environment.

Let Ten Speed cook (dessert)

When my team starts working with a new client, we look for BoFu opportunities first. We’ve had initial 90-day roadmaps be as much as 80% BoFu content, and it’s because we can often find opportunities for quick wins. We update core pages, we build case studies, we find gaps in comparison content, we highlight your most valuable features and use cases.

We create content that’s high-signal, low-noise, and laser-focused on your ICP. By building this content first, we learn a lot about your product and buying journey, and we help future-proof your strategy for GEO.

Best of all, we get to maximize the value of any traffic you already have coming in. Brands with established content programs often have hundreds (if not thousands) of existing posts. We audit those and typically find lots of opportunities to combat decay. In the meantime, we can make the traffic those pieces bring in as valuable and efficient as possible. 

Our technical SEO experience and editorial expertise are just the icing on the cake. Get in touch to learn more about our approach to building BoFu content.