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Seth Gorton runs Searchly out of Cape Town. His pitch to clients is that they take full responsibility from click to conversion — so Google Ads, but also the landing page, the website, the CRM, and everything that happens after the click.
At Searchly, Seth uses AI agents to do 6x more with the same resources, scaling back from 6 to 3 team members.
I sat down with Seth to get into:
✅ How he grew his agency by adding CRO and AI systems
✅ Why he cut juniors and now only hires senior specialists
✅ What the "yes-man effect" is and why it worried him.
✅ How his team rebuilt a client's entire website in a weekend and lifted conversion rate 40%
We also went deep on the CRO side, which is where most Google Ads Specialists say they see the value but don't know where to start.
Seth headed up a CRO department before founding Searchly, so he walked through his actual process — and it's simpler than most people expect.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro: Seth Gorton and Searchly
00:50 Full responsibility from click to conversion
02:25 Building the agency on the Google Ads Success Formula from day one
03:35 What they actually offer: search, Bing, SEO, CRO
03:55 Why they launched Searchly Web
04:35 Where to start with CRO if you've never done it
05:20 Find the drop-off, then find out why
06:40 The grandmother test
07:00 How CRO and Google Ads feed each other
07:50 Quality score, landing pages, and the metric on top of the dashboard
08:55 Bringing AI into the CRO process
10:05 Claude's Microsoft Clarity connector
10:45 Why Alfred told him to stop building separate systems
12:05 A day in the workflow: barely opening the Google Ads interface
13:20 Connectors, and changing the Shopify site in real time
14:45 "Anything I want to build, I can build in seconds"
15:30 Should he grow the agency or not?
16:15 Six people down to three, and the yes-man effect
17:40 Why he's fearful for juniors right now
18:45 His advice: don't use agents until you know the fundamentals
19:30 Why senior-only makes sense for a small agency
20:40 Agents replaced 90% of the work juniors used to do
21:30 The fractional CMO move
22:05 Charging when the execution is commoditized
22:55 Pricing: no change, just more efficient
23:05 A website rebuilt in a weekend, and 40% more conversions
23:45 What makes a good landing page
24:15 Custom CRMs for lead gen clients
25:00 Where AI is not perfect
25:45 The campaign that never went live
26:35 Advice if you want to add CRO to your offer
28:45 No wireframes, straight to draft
29:45 Chrome DevTools, self-correcting AI, and version 37 in 30 minutes
30:20 The bubble we're all in
31:10 AI watermarks, and what they'll actually change
35:00 The client who said "don't use AI"
35:35 The ClickFunnels lesson
37:15 Wrap
Seth is on LinkedIn and in The PPC Hub, and he offered to grade your landing pages if you send them over.
Seth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-gorton/
Searchly: https://searchly.co.za/
The PPC Hub: https://www.ppcmastery.com/hub
