Caleb Johnstone is the SEO Manager & Director at Paperstack and the brains behind the company’s search engine strategies. With 5 years of experience leading SEO initiatives and a background in web development, he brings a unique technical perspective to the table. His transition to SEO was driven by a passion for the dynamic nature of the field and a love for staying on top of the latest SEO news and trends.
Company: Paperstack
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Caleb Johnstone: I am Caleb Johnstone, the SEO Director at Paperstack, a digital marketing agency based in Australia. I lead a team that helps businesses grow through SEO, Google Ads, social media advertising, and website design. What sets us apart is how we tie everything back to real business growth, not just rankings or impressions. I have spent over a decade in this field, and I bring that experience into every campaign we run. At Paperstack, we do not take a one-size-fits-all route. We work with small and midsize businesses who want performance they can actually measure. Whether it is driving qualified traffic, improving conversions, or building a site that holds attention, I make sure our strategy is grounded, clear, and built to deliver results that matter.
What emerging technology trends do you believe will have the most profound impact in the next 5-10 years?
Caleb Johnstone: Generative search is going to break a lot of models in the next decade, and not because it will replace Google, but because it will change how people interact with information across every platform. I am already seeing clients ask why their product is not appearing in AI-generated answers the way it appears in organic listings. That question did not exist two years ago. In five years, search will not just be about ranking in search engines. It will be about how information is structured, interpreted and surfaced by multiple AI systems at once. SEO is about to become far more fragmented, and the strategies will need to adapt quickly.
Can you share a specific technological breakthrough from your company that has the potential to reshape your industry?
Caleb Johnstone: In our company, we are building a system that merges large-scale SERP tracking with AI intent modeling. That means instead of just tracking position data, we are pairing every keyword with a behavioral model that measures user movement, refinement patterns and conversion paths in real time. On one campaign, we mapped 2,400 keywords to 17 conversion triggers and restructured the content based on predicted search rewrites. Click-throughs on those new pages increased by 41 percent in less than two weeks. This is not theoretical. This is already working in active campaigns. What we are building is not just another reporting tool. It is a decision layer that sits on top of the entire search funnel and helps businesses move from rankings to revenue with less guesswork and more predictive thinking. That is where search is headed, and we are not waiting for it to arrive. We are already in it.
How do you approach innovation while balancing the need for practicality and market readiness?
Caleb Johnstone: Innovation only works when it gets used, so I do not separate new ideas from execution. I track adoption as closely as I track rankings. If a tool or method does not show up in client workflows within two weeks, I scrap it or reshape it. At Paperstack, I test innovation in real time with live client environments, because I care more about applied results than theoretical promise. I run most of these trials with direct-response campaigns because the data comes in faster. I give myself short cycles, usually ten to fifteen days, and if the output is measurable and replicable, it rolls out across more accounts. I am not building for the future. I am building for what already works next month.
What challenges do you face in integrating cutting-edge technology into existing business models?
Caleb Johnstone: The biggest challenge is translating advanced systems into client deliverables that still make sense to non-technical teams. A lot of agencies rush to bolt on AI tools without understanding how those tools reshape reporting, pricing or even how clients understand value. I have worked with clients who were spending over $10,000 per month on ads but could not explain what their campaigns were even doing. So when we introduce new systems like automated bid corrections or intent-layered content clusters, we do not just ship dashboards. We train their teams, rebuild their reports, and tie everything to business metrics that mean something to them. Innovation does not work in isolation. It has to fold into the way people already think and work, or it becomes another expense no one understands.
How do you foster a culture of innovation within your organization to stay ahead in the tech race?
Caleb Johnstone: I keep innovation close to the work. At Paperstack, no one gets siloed into theory. Every team member tests new tools and methods inside live campaigns. I tie experimentation directly to outcomes like lead quality, cost per acquisition or page dwell time. I track the impact within two-week cycles so feedback is fast and tied to results we can actually use. When something works, it gets adopted across accounts. When it does not, it gets cut quickly. There is no separate lab. The testing happens in the same environment we use to deliver results.
I also rotate team leads on different client types every quarter. That cross-pollination drives unexpected solutions. Someone who was deep in eCommerce shifts into B2B and sees problems differently. That rotation alone has led to changes in how we build search intent maps and structure keyword clusters. Innovation moves fastest when it grows out of the work, not outside of it.
