Summary: Tsenta, the YC S26-backed AI job application automation platform, partnered with XLR8 AI to build visibility in AI search across high-intent job seeker queries. From a baseline of just 2.1% overall AI visibility, Tsenta scaled to a peak of 25.3% — a 12x increase — with citations climbing from 6 to 117 and its core Auto-Apply Tools category reaching 47.7%. On Google, previously stuck on pages 4–6, Tsenta now consistently ranks on pages 1–3 for its target keywords.
Key Results
Overall AI visibility grew from 2.1% to a peak of 25.3% — a 12x increase in under 3 months
Google rankings jumped from pages 4–6 to pages 1–3 for Tsenta's target keywords
Auto-Apply Tools category reached 47.7% — Tsenta's core positioning, up from 3.0%
Claude Sonnet 5 visibility reached 45.6% — up from 0% at baseline
Gemini visibility reached 34.2% — up from 1.6% at baseline
AI Job Search Agent category climbed to 41.7%
International Students / F-1 OPT category hit 37.5% — a critical audience for Tsenta's product
Client Testimonial
"The work you guys did, we used to rank on page 4, 5, 6 on Google. We're on page 1, 3 now. It's pretty crazy. What sets you apart is the strategy. You've got the best GEO strategy out of all the other agencies I evaluated, and honestly, you're one of the few SEO agencies out there with a reasonable price and some actual science behind the blogs you put out versus others where it feels like they're just making blogs for the sake of it."
— Agnay Srivastava, Founder, Tsenta
Who Is Tsenta?
Tsenta is a Y Combinator-backed (S26) AI job application automation platform founded in 2025. Its core offering is a transparent AI agent that monitors over 50,000 company career pages 24/7, matches job opportunities to users' resumes, and automatically submits tailored applications on their behalf — with the user reviewing each change before submission.
The platform operates through four stages: finding qualified roles before they appear on major job boards, preparing optimized resumes and cover letters, applying through automated form filling, and tracking application responses. Tsenta is available across multiple surfaces — a web application, iMessage bot, WhatsApp bot, Chrome extension, mobile app, desktop apps, and an MCP server for AI agents.
Tsenta primarily serves active job seekers — software engineers, product managers, designers, students, and recent graduates who apply to hundreds of jobs per cycle. The company has raised $500K in seed funding and is headquartered in Indianapolis with operations in India.
The Challenge: No Strategy, Just Blogs
Before XLR8 AI, Tsenta had worked with agencies that produced content the way most agencies do — a steady stream of generic blog posts, published for the sake of volume, with no strategy behind which queries to target, which models to win, or which third-party domains to build authority on. As Agnay put it: "you're basically just making blogs for the sake of it."
The results reflected it. At the start of the engagement in June 2026, Tsenta's overall AI visibility was just 2.1%.On Google, Tsenta was buried on pages 4–6 for its target keywords. And when a job seeker asked ChatGPT "what's the best AI tool to automate my job applications?" — Tsenta wasn't in the answer.
The category was crowded (Simplify, LazyApply, JobRight, Huntr, LoopCV, JobCopilot all had years of content feeding LLM training data), but the deeper issue was that Tsenta had a real product advantage — 600+ applications for $20, cross coverage nobody else offered — and no one was building the kind of structured, targeted content and authority footprint LLMs actually retrieve from. That's the gap XLR8 AI was brought in to close.
How XLR8 AI Built Tsenta's AI Visibility — Strategy First, Then Execution
Instead of publishing blogs for the sake of it, XLR8 AI opened with a strategy: map Tsenta's ICP queries across every major LLM, identify the exact third-party domains those models pull citations from, and build a targeted content and authority plan around them. Every asset that followed — blog, landing page, comparison, Reddit thread, YouTube video — was tied to a specific query and a specific model, tracked weekly, and iterated on based on what was actually moving.
1. Built a High-Volume Blog Content Engine — Query-Mapped, Not Random
Published 50+ blog posts on tsenta.com/blog across every high-intent job search query type — auto-apply tools, category specific guides, bulk apply strategies, resume optimization + auto-apply combinations, mobile app queries, and vertical-specific content for software engineers, new grads, international students on F-1 OPT, and career transitioners. Content structured for LLM retrieval with clear listicle formats, comparison tables, and "best of 2026" framing.
2. Produced Competitor Comparison Content at Scale
Built 20+ head-to-head comparison pages positioning Tsenta against direct competitors: Simplify, LazyApply, JobRight, Huntr, JobCopilot, LoopCV, AIApply, AutoApplyMax, Teal, Wonsulting, and more. Each page targeted the exact "Tsenta vs [competitor]" queries LLMs retrieve when a buyer is comparing options.
3. Built Category Specific Landing Pages
Created 27 Category-specific landing pages (Workday API, Greenhouse API, Ashby API, Lever API, iCIMS API, etc.) — targeting the developer and technical buyer queries around specific applicant tracking system integrations. This established Tsenta's authority across every major, capturing queries no competitor was covering systematically.
4. Optimized Metadata Across 36+ Pages
Executed metadata optimization across Tsenta's product, blog, and landing pages — updating titles, descriptions, and semantic signals to increase retrieval probability for high-intent queries.
5. Ran Structured Visibility Experiments Across All Major LLMs
Built and monitored weekly visibility experiments across ChatGPT (GPT-5.6), Claude Sonnet 5, Gemini 3, Google AI Mode, and Sonar (Perplexity) — tracking Tsenta's performance across 10 categories.
6. Executed a YouTube Strategy
Produced YouTube videos targeting high-intent job search queries — with video transcripts and descriptions optimized for LLM citation. YouTube consistently emerged as one of the top-cited sources across LLM answers in the job search category. Strategy was expanded with AI-generated long-form videos (5–10 minutes) built from Tsenta's top-performing blog content.
7. Reddit Community Visibility
Placed strategic Reddit comments across job search, career, and specific subreddits already being retrieved by LLMs — building conversational authority signals that AI models weight when generating recommendations.
8. Technical Infrastructure Optimization
Executed sitemap.xml, robots.txt, and llms.txt optimization across tsenta.com — including cleanup of duplicate indexing issues, sitemap corrections, and canonical fixes. Updated JSON-LD structured data across the homepage and key product pages to help AI crawlers correctly interpret and cite Tsenta's content.
9. Expanded Coverage for New Product Surfaces
As Tsenta launched its Job Application API (entirely untapped keyword territory — no other API exists for applying to jobs) and its Mobile App, XLR8 AI expanded the query set and experiment coverage in real time, keeping the AI search program aligned with Tsenta's evolving product surface area.
The Results in Detail
12x Overall Visibility Growth
Tsenta's overall AI visibility grew from 2.1% at the baseline execution (June 11, 2026) to a peak of 25.3% by early September 2026 — a 12x increase in under 3 months. Growth was steady week over week, with the biggest jumps coming from new content going live and being indexed by LLMs.
Claude and Gemini Went from Near-Zero to Category-Leading
At baseline, Tsenta had 0% visibility on Claude and 1.6% on Gemini — effectively invisible on two of the most-used consumer AI platforms for research. At peak, Claude Sonnet 5 reached 45.6% and Gemini reached 34.2% — a complete turnaround.
Auto-Apply Tools — Tsenta's Core Category — Hit 47.7%
The category that matters most for Tsenta's positioning grew from 3.0% to 47.7% — Tsenta now appears in nearly half of all AI-generated answers for auto-apply tool queries.
Google Rankings: From Page 4–6 to Page 1–3
As a byproduct of the same content and technical infrastructure work, Tsenta's Google Search rankings improved from being buried on pages 4–6 to consistently appearing on pages 1–3 for its target keywords — driving additional traffic from a channel that wasn't the primary focus of the engagement.
Citations Nearly 20x'd
Tsenta went from 6 citations at baseline to 117 citations at peak — a nearly 20x increase in the number of times LLMs referenced Tsenta's owned content when generating recommendations.
Why This Matters for Consumer AI and Job Search Brands
Tsenta's story is a proof point for what a well-executed AI search program can do for a fast-moving startup competing in a crowded consumer category. In under 3 months, a brand that was essentially invisible on Claude and barely present on Gemini became a consistently recommended platform across every major LLM — while its Google rankings improved in parallel.
For consumer AI and job search brands competing against established players with years of content advantage, XLR8 AI's approach for Tsenta — strategy-mapped content, systematic competitor comparisons, specific landing pages, YouTube content, Reddit community signals, and technical infrastructure, all tracked weekly across every major LLM — is a repeatable playbook for turning AI search into a real acquisition channel fast. The differentiator isn't publishing more; it's publishing against a plan.
