The Coolest Boy in Illinois

Hopefully this ages well.

But as of right now, if you Google “the coolest boy in Illinois”, you’ll find me.

I’m not trying to be too arrogant. This is just a fun SEO experiment.

I wrote a blog on Buildapeak.com intentionally trying to rank for a phrase that has nothing to do with the business. Build a Peak is my personal brand hub. Marketing, business, projects I’m building.

So why would a site about business growth show up for “the coolest boy in Illinois”?

It shouldn’t and that’s kind of the point.

The phrase has nothing to do with Build a Peak. I just thought it would be funny to see if I could make the site rank for being a cool guy in Illinois. It worked.

It’s about testing a simple digital marketing idea.

You can make your brand show up for searches outside of your “main thing” if you intentionally make them part of your keyword strategy.

The phrase “the coolest boy in Illinois” isn’t valuable on its own. No one is buying anything from that search. But the process behind ranking for it is the same process that helps real businesses get found for searches that actually lead to revenue.

That’s why this matters.

If you can make a site rank for a silly keyword, you can make it rank for product, service, or problem-based searches too. Same system. Different intent. Different payoff.

Search engines are trying to answer questions and resolve intent.

When someone types something into Google or ChatGPT, the algorithm is asking:

Is this page relevant?
Is it unique compared to what already exists?
Does this site seem credible for this topic?

In my case, I combined:

A specific phrase
A unique angle
A real piece of content tied to my brand

That created something Google didn’t already have. That’s information gain. You are not repeating what exists. You are adding something new to the conversation.

That gets rewarded by Google.

This approach does not just apply to traditional search.

AI tools pull from indexed pages, context, and brand signals the same way. When you publish clear, unique content tied to specific ideas, you increase the chances of your brand being surfaced in AI-generated answers as well.

SEO and AI visibility are converging. The fundamentals still matter.

A few years ago, if you searched “pump cover”, Google mostly showed actual covers for water pumps and pipes.

Today, that same search shows oversized gym shirts.

Brands like Gymshark helped make that shift by becoming the authority around the phrase “pump cover” in the context of fitness. They didn’t invent the term. They claimed it.

They identified what people were typing before they knew exactly how to describe what they wanted, then built content around it.

That’s not luck. That’s strategy.

Here’s the actionable part.

Step 1: Think like your customer
Ask yourself what someone would type into Google or ChatGPT if they were:

Be specific. Weird is fine.

Step 2: Write down 10 search ideas
Not keywords yet. Just ideas. Phrases. Questions. Descriptions.

Step 3: Validate them
Plug those ideas into a tool like Google Keyword Planner or any keyword tool you like. Look for:

Step 4: Create something you can rank for
Create a page that answers the search better or differently than what already exists on page one.

Step 5: Make it part of your brand
Even if the keyword feels slightly off-brand, the page still lives on your site. That is how your brand shows up in more places without confusing your core message.

I do this weekly for:

Most people overcomplicate SEO. It’s really about understanding intent, creating something genuinely useful or interesting, and being consistent.

Sometimes that looks like ranking for a serious commercial keyword.
Sometimes it looks like declaring yourself the coolest boy in Illinois.

Same system. Different wrapper.

If you want help identifying opportunities like this for your own business, this is exactly the kind of strategy I work on inside Build a Peak. Strategy first. Content second. Distribution everywhere.

Reach out if you want a second set of eyes on your stuff.

Build a Peak