Cody C. Jensen

Cody C. Jensen is the CEO & Founder of Searchbloom, an award-winning search marketing agency he launched in December 2014. His path into search began at Google, where he was first introduced to web analytics and the world of digital marketing. The product he worked on was Google Offers, the company's answer to Groupon, but what stuck with him was not the product. It was the access to real analytics behind real businesses, and the ability to see which decisions actually moved revenue and which ones only looked good in a report. From there, he advanced through leadership roles at some of the largest agencies in the industry, immersing himself in SEO at Boostability and pay-per-click and conversion rate optimization at 180Fusion. Each stop deepened an obsession that started young: a fascination with how people search, how systems surface information, and how businesses can earn their place in front of the right audience.
That journey also revealed a problem he could not ignore. Most firms he encountered chased vanity metrics, locked clients into long contracts, and hid behind jargon while promising results that should never have been promised. The gap between the confident sales call and the cold reality of what got delivered kept widening, and clients were treated as accounts to be managed from a distance rather than people with a business to grow. Cody built Searchbloom to be the opposite. From the early days working out of a basement, selling the work, doing the work himself, showing clients the real results, and then teaching the next person to do the same, he established a model grounded in trust, full transparency, and real accountability. That founding conviction, that an agency should be the most trusted and results-driven partner in the industry, still defines how Searchbloom operates today.
Nearly two decades into a career in search, Cody has grown Searchbloom into one of the most recognized performance marketing firms in the country. The agency is ranked the #1 SEO company on DesignRush for 2026, #2 on GoodFirms, and has been featured by Forbes Advisor as a "Best for Mid-Market" choice, along with recognition from USA Today and Backlinko. It was named an inaugural member of the prestigious Clutch 1000 list and today holds a 4.9/5 Clutch rating across more than 87 reviews, a 98% partner retention rate, and an average ROI of 720% for the businesses it serves. Searchbloom is a Google Premier Partner, placing it among the top 3% of agencies, and maintains an exceptional team turnover rate near 2%, a rare figure in an industry known for churn.
What sets Searchbloom apart is the combination of range and outcomes. The same senior team supports small and midsize businesses, mid-market brands, and enterprise organizations, so a growing local company and a national brand work with the same caliber of strategists. Searchbloom is not a cookie-cutter agency, and it does not sell packages or prebuilt solutions. Every engagement starts with a deep understanding of the client's business model, margins, competitive environment, and growth constraints, and strategies are built around what actually drives revenue and long-term value. Strategy and execution live under one roof, which means ideas never stall at reporting or get handed off without ownership. This "Partners, Not Clients" philosophy reflects how Cody approaches every relationship, treating each one as a long-term strategic investment rather than a transaction.
Cody developed the proprietary methodologies that power every Searchbloom engagement. ART drives the organic SEO work, ACE structures the paid search programs, UTU guides conversion rate optimization, and TRUST governs web development. These frameworks are not marketing labels layered on top of generic services. They are operating systems, refined over more than a decade of execution, that give clients a repeatable path from strategy to measurable result. They are also the reason Searchbloom can hold itself to the same standard it sets for its partners, ranking its own properties, earning its own AI citations, and proving its methods on its own business before applying them to anyone else's.
Most recently, Cody authored and published the MERIT framework, a five-pillar methodology for AI Search Optimization, also known as answer engine optimization and generative engine optimization. MERIT addresses how brands earn citations inside AI-generated answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot. Its five pillars span Mentions, the third-party validation AI systems use to discover authoritative signals about a brand; Evidence, the original source assets that establish genuine information gain; Relevance, the answer-first content architecture that makes content legible to machines; Inclusion, the entity optimization and technical crawler access that let AI systems understand and verify a brand; and Change, the measurement discipline that turns AI visibility into a managed program rather than a one-time project.
His view on this shift is direct: what people call AEO or GEO is an evolution of SEO, not a separate discipline. The same crawlable, authoritative, genuinely helpful content that wins traditional search now surfaces brands inside the synthesized answer. A strong SEO foundation is now the baseline requirement for strong answer engine optimization. If content cannot be crawled, it cannot be summarized. If structure is poor, it cannot be cited. Cody draws a clear line between legitimate AEO work and what he calls the "AEO relabeling" of legacy techniques dressed up in new language.
Today Cody is recognized as a thought leader in answer engine optimization, corpus engineering, and information gain SEO. He writes and speaks regularly on how brands stay visible as discovery moves from search results to AI assistants, knowledge graphs, and the systems that increasingly decide what people find. His perspective is shaped by a competitive streak he readily admits to. In his own framing, he is not only competing against every other strategist in the market, he is competing against the search engines themselves, a moving target that rewards curiosity, experimentation, and a willingness to operate at the frontier of the field.
Beyond Searchbloom, Cody has co-founded and invested in multiple businesses, including Avenues Financial, an accounting and bookkeeping firm. He lives in Utah with his wife and children, where family life centers on building, investing, and serving others. When he steps away from the work, he is usually investing in the next opportunity, giving back to his community, or sneaking in a round of golf.