Podcast With Eli Schwartz

Product-Led SEO: The Game-Changer You Need with Eli Schwartz

Show Notes

Are you ready to transform your approach to SEO and rank your website number One?

In this step-by-step guide, Eli Schwartz dives deep into the game-changing concept of Product-Led SEO, a must-know strategy for 2024! Join me as we unravel innovative SEO strategies for 2024, designed to drive more organic traffic and help you achieve that coveted #1 ranking on search engine results.

Learn from real-world examples from the author of the best-selling book Product Led SEO! Whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your skills, this podcast offers practical value for improving visibility and optimizing your site's performance.

Want personalized help to rank number 1? Connect with me today and let's achieve your SEO goals together!

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro

00:38 - How Eli got into SEO

02:12 - Biggest challenges in Eli's career

04:10 - Origin of "Product-Led SEO"

07:30 - Understanding Product-Led SEO

14:57 - Real-world example of Product-Led SEO

16:03 - SEO for B2B vs B2C

18:23 - Importance of SEO for B2B

20:14 - Do small businesses need a website?

26:01 - Measuring SEO success

28:56 - International SEO strategies

33:47 - Impact of AI on SEO

36:55 - Staying ahead in the AI landscape

39:15 - Google's Search Generative Experience

41:10 - SEO challenges and misconceptions

42:00 - Current challenges in SEO

44:35 - Future trends in SEO

47:10 - Do you read books?

48:30 - Upcoming projects

49:11 - Outro

49:18 - Where to find Eli online

Transcript

Intro

0:01 welcome to the agency Insider podcast today we have a special guest La squads

0:07 a renowned growth adviser and an SE expert Ali is the author of the bestselling book product L SEO and has

0:13 worked with some of the internet largest companies including tender coinbase and WordPress

0:21 [Applause]

0:27 [Music] Al thank you for joining us today it's

0:33 great to be here thank you for having me yeah so let's dive into your

How Eli got into SEO

0:38 background in career for our listeners so ell you had an impressive career in Su and digital marketing can you share

0:45 with us how you first got into SEO and what drawn you into this field yeah so

0:51 it was I would guess a uh an accident that I ended up in SEO like most people did I was working at a company in

0:58 affiliate marketing so I was working with a Affiliates my goal was to acquire more Affiliates for the company to run

1:04 the company's offers and meeting these amazing Affiliates and they're doing SEO

1:09 and I wanted to know more about what they were doing and I had these Affiliates that would show me how they did SEO and they sent me the links to

1:14 the blogs that they read and learned about SEO and I started building my own sites and I realized what they did was

1:20 so much more interesting than what I did and I began applying for jobs to be an SEO manager but I had no experience I'm

1:28 applying for these jobs I have no experience experience and then I I very fortunately got a job that I believed I

1:36 had enough experience to be tangentially related to SEO so I had a job still in

1:41 sales still working on affiliate projects but I had a little bit of responsibility with an SEO and and you

1:47 know Off to the Races from there and that company the SEO manager actually left I took over their job and and that

1:53 was the beginning but yeah that was not it was never something I thought I was going to end up doing which year was

1:59 this the 2008 maybe they were affiliate marketing's website then too way back

2:05 when I started affiliate marketing 2006 wow okay uh and uh what were some of the

Biggest challenges in Eli's career

2:12 biggest challenges you faced in your career I I think that the challenges I I

2:19 had then were nothing compared to the challenges that SEO has now challenges were really articulating and getting

2:25 buying for the things I wanted to do and I was able to do it because there was

2:30 and there was desire to do SEO and there wasn't a lot of counter information and I'd say now that challenge is even

2:36 bigger because you tell somebody something and they say well I just Googled it and I read something or you know I read about SEO and SEO isn't a

2:43 thing but it it was the same then there was less of a belief in how things could be done but once you articulated it you

2:50 got by in okay and uh who were some of your ke

2:56 key influencers or mentors early in your career and how did they shaped up your

3:01 career in SE say that the the biggest Mentor um

3:06 and just you know his material still out online is Aaron wall so Aaron wall wrote a book called SEO book and I learned so

3:13 much from that about how SEO works and I'd say when I first started I don't think there was a lot I mean Twitter was

3:20 really wasn't around started following Barry Schwarz as soon as you I discovered him but I don't know how long he's been writing search engine land

3:27 search engine Journal Moz but again I I was doing things before any of these things really got big I got to say like

3:33 one of the early things I did was I bought like the Maj training courses which was just ran speaking at

3:39 University of Washington in a in a classroom um that was helpful and there wasn't a lot of

3:45 material it was really I was able to learn on my own and I don't know that that's the case now there's a lot of

3:50 places to learn and read and you know ingest information I remember SE your book uh

3:56 the website and it had all the information I remember that at that time too [Music]

4:01 yeah because because I started my SEO career in 2002 I know how it went yes

4:09 yes uh your book let's talk a little bit about your book of course just I was uh

Origin of "Product-Led SEO"

4:15 taking I'm doing a podcast with Nathan you know Nathan go from goch SEO he said

4:22 that uh he before writing his book he bought all the SE books in the world

4:27 read most of them and the only one book which he found makes sense was product ly oh he never told me that that's an

4:34 honor yeah so I had it on my podcast so he said i b i I read he said I read all

4:40 the books I said all he said yes I bought all from Amazon and the only book which made sense was the product L you

4:46 so I was impressed then so I thought okay why don't I get you on the podcast

4:52 as well that's where I searched and contacted you got it I have to I to send

4:57 him a thank you note yeah sure so your book product L SEO has been of course

5:03 very influential could you share how the concept of product L SEO evolved for you and what was the pivotal moment that

5:09 made you realiz this approach was needed I'd say when I wrote the book I didn't know that it was going to be a book that

5:16 was widely read I was just writing to write so I have the same with my newsletter whoever's not following my

5:21 newsletters product let seo.com when I started writing the book and I started writing my newsletter it was just a

5:27 write there was no assumption that anybody be reading it and I had thought maybe when I'm writing this book maybe a 100 people will eventually read it I'll

5:34 give it out to some people so it was really my own ideas on how to approach SEO and the reason I started writing the

5:41 book was because I had a full-time job at serving monkey responsible for SEO and responsible for a growth team and I

5:47 I had this unique approach to SEO which wasn't driven around iterating on keywords iterating on title tags and

5:54 tweaking things but really it was a higher level let's build something around a user build an entire scaled

6:02 product and I would was meeting companies because there there were always a lot of companies out there that

6:07 wanted to hire Consultants to help them with their growth and I would explain to them that I didn't want to just fix one

6:14 page or fix their traffic but I wanted to build something around an SEO user and they would always say where do I

6:20 find out more and I'd been on podcasts you know the podcast that probably got the most coverage and the most listens

6:26 is the Y combinator podcast where I talked about the product letter SEO concept and I would I didn't have

6:31 anywhere to send them I didn't even have a Blog so I thought maybe I'll start writing these things and I'll turn it into a Blog so that way when I have a

6:38 conversation about it I can point them somewhere so probably one of my best read blog posts was this concept of

6:45 product Leto I called a product let SEO and the blog post itself took off and

6:50 that's where I was like well maybe I should call this book I'm starting to write product Le SEO but it was really

6:56 that it was a concept that I was always working on and always integrated when I did SEO and if you read the book you

7:02 know that I was you know let's call it a victim of the panda algorithm update in

7:08 uh 2011 2012 and that's where I learned that maybe chasing the algorithm wasn't

7:13 the best and that's when I pivoted my Approach towards SEO this has to be something bigger it has to be something around users um really product let SEO

7:22 is that that approach of doing that and it putting it into a book okay uh so uh can you explain the

Understanding Product-Led SEO

7:31 core concept of product like SEO and how it differs from a traditional SEO

7:36 approach yeah yeah maybe we should have started there so their traditional SEO approach is taking something in and

7:43 optimizing for a user optimizing for Google sorry so let's say you're optimizing for an iPhone page you're

7:51 working at Apple and you're optimizing for iPhones and what you would do is you

7:57 would do some keyword research and you would figure out how to put some SEO layers on top of this iPhone page right

8:04 when you're doing product Le SEO and and iPhone's not a good example of product let SEO actually we can apply it in a

8:10 different way when you're doing product Le SEO you're taking many steps back and saying who is this person that's going

8:16 to be doing these searches and what does this Searcher want what do they want to buy they want to buy a device they want

8:22 to learn something and it it's this integrated approach towards the user

8:28 much the same way every other marketing channel is an approach towards a user and building SEO around that and almost

8:35 disregarding search engine best practices because the search engine is the medium to bring the user towards the

8:41 the thing that they want instead of doing SEO towards the search engine which is backwards you want to sell to

8:47 the user in that sense let's say you know iPhone's not a good example we'll extend that to something else which is

8:53 let's say I'm traveling and I'm roaming I want to go to different countries around the world so product SEO instead

9:00 of optimizing for what cell phone reception is like in Mexico or what cell

9:05 phone reception was like in Canada in writing this long Forum content page

9:10 that user probably wants something very specific we're taking steps back we want to know who that user is that user is

9:17 not a Canadian that user is not a Mexican that user is a traveler so what does the traveler want so let's build

9:22 the product around that person and what are they going to be searching for and not again optimizing for query

9:29 because you're optimizing for queries again if you go to some Rush HR keyword Google Keyword tool you're going to get

9:36 the keywords that a Canadian person might search or a Mexican person might search but that we're different we're

9:43 doing a Persona so maybe there I wouldn't even do keyword research I would just go to a traveler and say

9:48 you're going to Canada what are the terms that you would search to see if your your phone's going to work you're going to Mexico what are the terms

9:54 you're going to search and then build my product and content around that and it's a and in my book I used examples like

10:01 Trip Advisor which or Amazon which is trip advisor didn't build out a page for

10:06 every single hotel and write content the way most people would do SEO and travel Trip Advisor built a product and this

10:14 product extends across every single language every single country every single property they don't need to you

10:20 know if a new hotel is created in New York they don't need to create a new hotel page they just build their open up

10:27 their product and know you know in integrate the pictures and integrate the description and allow ugc to start

10:33 getting created in Amazon's the same thing when Amazon started the iPhone didn't exist but yet Amazon is able to

10:40 have an iPhone page and rank on that iPhone page because they they built their SEO within their product which is

10:47 what is the product page what is the category page that we need to do really well in SEO and let's have that and our

10:53 SEO will come from that and then we will populate it as necessary and that's going to rank

11:01 and now more than rank it's going to sell right right right so it holds so much value it's like buil for user now

11:08 what Google says user intent is that what exactly this is well exactly

11:13 because what Google's trying to do is Google's trying to connect users with websites so you're not you're optimizing

11:20 for you know here's a better example you know pres on this concept I think a search is a three-sided Marketplace

11:25 there's three players in the market there's the user there's the website and then there's the search attention so let's think about Google as the broker

11:32 broker you know brokering that relationship so imagine you're in a real estate market you're optimizing your

11:39 real estate listing towards the the broker that doesn't make any sense you

11:44 you want to optimize the listing towards the user the broker is the medium obviously you want to incorporate best

11:50 practices like in the US we have this system called MLS where you list out

11:55 your houses for sale that's the broker so obviously you want to do nice things for the broker so the broker can

12:01 understand what it is you're doing but it's the the buyer that's going to be buying your house so approach Google is

12:07 the broker what Google wants to accomplish is bringing users to your site so you want to incorporate best

12:13 practices but Google's not your user Google's not your customer right that's an interesting analogy because now

12:19 Google says I mean now everybody says build for user first so that's what it

12:24 led to right yes and it yes so I I think a lot of people are paying lip service

12:29 to the concept of user first so they're saying you know they're you're not like it's an easy question to answer when

12:35 you're doing AI content so Google doesn't say you're not allowed to create content with AI Google just says you

12:42 know is it helpful is it focused on the user so that's the question you should be asking so could you write AI content

12:48 as a product description of course because the user doesn't need long form content should you write AI content to

12:54 describe medical issues probably not because that's not what the user wants

12:59 so it being user first means putting yourself in the user's shoes and then writing and creating for that person not

13:07 just saying oh we writing you know we care about the user and then move on from there so it it just also combin what now

13:15 people call as SX or search engine search experience optimization is that

13:21 also comes into this right I'm not so familiar with that but I I don't I don't even basically it says the UI needs to

13:27 be based on the user experience experience give user what they want when they landar on the page so sexo just

13:33 talks about that you again make it for the user so that's what exactly a product Le SE would also be saying

13:39 right essentially yes the user has to be front and center into this in the entire

13:45 concept right so so do you think in all this the competitor which is ranking in

13:51 the top is also matters for the SEO or you don't need to look into not at all I

13:58 never think about that yeah because whenever I'm whenever I think about Industries with competitors

14:04 usually there's something about the competitor that I think I can do better so therefore I want to just do that

14:11 better so so let's say for example what people say that if you are optimizing

14:16 for keyword a and you type it in keyword a in search engine you see if the results are coming more of blogs or the

14:23 results are coming more of commercial Pages you built your page around that so that also matters in this or not yes yes

14:31 of course because we're optimizing for the user but this I mean you want to build for the user that Google has more

14:37 data to understand what the user wants however Google does get it wrong so if what you have discovered and what you

14:43 see on the search engine Pages don't align but you have talked to the users

14:48 then you know that you should optimize towards the user because eventually the search engine will catch

14:54 up right right right now can you share some real world example where product Le

Real-world example of Product-Led SEO

15:00 Su has significantly impacted a company's growth and what were the key strategies implemented by

15:08 you I don't know if I should talk about specific companies that I've worked on I

15:14 always need to get get permission for that but I I would say you know I think the most successful example in the world

15:20 is Amazon so Amazon again if you look at all of I think Amazon is built on the

15:26 back of SEO the reason that Amazon is Amazon is because when they first started they didn't use advertising they

15:32 had a good experience and they had a lot of Word of Mouth but really was this early days of e-commerce and I did a

15:39 search for a product and I found this website Amazon always number one or always number two and that allowed you

15:45 to experience it and you tell other people about it so I would say Amazon is the most successful example of SEO ever

15:53 and has built one of the world's most valuable companies on the backs of SEO

15:59 okay and now uh you have consulted both B2B and b2c companies right my

SEO for B2B vs B2C

16:05 preference is b2c because I don't think SEO is the best fit for B2B okay and uh H how does your

16:13 strategies differ When approaching SEO and growth in B2B and b2c it's always

16:19 the same it always begins with the same which is what is the user Journey what is the buyer looking for what is the Searcher looking for and that's where I

16:26 I think B2B is more challenging because the Searcher in B2B is different so in

16:33 B2B if I'm buying an analytics product you know as an example of a company I worked for and that I can talk about I

16:39 worked with mix panel mix panel at the time was one of the fewer analytics products now there's a lot more

16:45 analytics products but if I'm buying an analytics product and I'm integrating this analytics product across my entire

16:52 company and all of my pages and apps and all that that's complex that's not

16:57 something that you do a Google search and then you just take out your credit card and you buy so the the user Journey

17:04 there is I do searches but I don't necessarily do searches to buy I do

17:09 searches to discover and then I'd reach out to sales and then I you know look at product specs so I don't think SEO is

17:16 the best fit so no matter how much money you spend on SEO you're not going to influence the final sale especially in

17:21 that space where there's not many competitors I'm going to do this process where I look at all the companies in

17:28 that space and then from there I make a decision regardless of their SEO visibility as

17:35 another example company I didn't work for Google so Google Cloud they only have two competitors in the world they

17:42 have Microsoft and they have Amazon Google Cloud does a lot of SEO you can Google Google Cloud terms and you'll see

17:48 they're doing SEO I don't think that SEO makes any sense because no one purchasing Google cloud is not also

17:54 going to discover Amazon and Microsoft and then make a decision between the three of those

18:01 without you know considering all the possibilities right so it does SEO doesn't matter so maybe SEO helps with a

18:08 little bit of visibility but I don't think it's worth investing into it so Google could get away well let's not say

18:14 Google because they could do whatever they want but Amazon could get away with doing no SEO whatsoever for their Cloud

18:19 product and still have the same exact business so that's why I don't know that B2B is always the best fit for doing SEO

Importance of SEO for B2B

18:26 B Toc is because that Journey different now the B2B depends maybe there's a

18:32 social media product which behaves like b2c small businesses use it and they pay

18:38 on their credit card so of course that's the kind of thing you do a quick Google search you buy and you act like a

18:44 consumer even though you're doing it for a business so then I I'd say you should do SEO so really it comes down to the

18:49 buyer journey and what the Searcher wants and and when it comes to b2c what

18:56 for our listeners what examples would be uh e-commerce e-commerce is a great

19:02 example so you have SEO visibility on e-commerce and they just buy but again B Toc may not be the best fit for SEO say

19:11 let's say something like actually I'll give this example I don't think restaurants should have websites so

19:19 restaurants are yes they be however I don't think the process for discovering

19:25 where to eat and the way most people are going to spend money at a restaurant is going to be impacted by SEO at a regular

19:32 restaurant maybe at a high-end restaurant where you have you know experiential websites maybe but in

19:39 general the way most people are going to spend money on food is they're either going to Google it and they're going to

19:44 go to Google Places page just to see where the place is located or they're going to go to something like uber e

19:52 food Panda right and just order from there without ever going to the restaurant's website so the restaurants

20:00 they they unfortunately spend too much money on their websites and no one really visits and if they visit they

20:06 don't visit in the context of spending money right it doesn't change what in

20:11 most cases doesn't change what they're going to do and I'd say many many smaller businesses or service businesses

Do small businesses need a website?

20:19 should not have websites for the exact same reason a a plumber does not really need a website a plumber needs a Google

20:25 Places page to say here's my phone number call me and I'll tell you what I can do when I can do it having a website

20:32 with case studies again that could be an example where the plum a B2B plumber

20:38 should have a website because a uh let's say A you know real estate company is looking for a plumbing company to be

20:45 their partner in all Plumbing a website with case studies and materials might help but a single plumber who works for

20:53 residential doesn't need a website because I have a a you know plumbing issue I don't want to look at websites

20:59 and you know all that I just need someone to come right away and fix it so it comes down to buyer Journey so B Toc

21:05 most of the time I think does matter B2B most time I don't think SEO should be doing it but obviously goes down to the

21:10 user Journey so when you build this product Le Su more on page does any off- page

21:17 concept comes into it because buyer Journey also happens not just on the website outside the website as well yes

21:24 of course so I think about off-page as PR not as backlink building so I think

21:29 we're in a world you know we just talked how long we've been doing seos Google's Google's been around for 25 years and

21:36 initially when they created Google backlinks were very important and they were not multi-dimensional backlinks

21:42 they just looked at a link and they calculated its value and you know at the time we had Google page rank page rank

21:49 they calculated its value obviously not everything was visible in the page rank calculation but they calculate its value

21:54 and you get you know good links and in theory your website was ranked higher

21:59 and it wasn't very Dynamic so if you were a plumbing website and you wrote content about popular books and you had

22:06 a higher page rank you could somehow rank higher on books even though you're a plumbing website now we're in a world

22:13 where we're in an AI world of course and the concept of links is so

22:19 multi-dimensional where the most authoritative website in the world might have content out of its Niche and it's

22:26 not going to rank because it doesn't have the right Dimensions or we're in a world where you don't even need a

22:31 backlink you don't need a hyperlink you just need a mention because Google's reading all content and they can see

22:37 that a brand is mentioned over and over and that creates sentiment or even more they can look and say this is negative

22:43 sentiment there's a you've been doing SEO a long time there's a there's a famous case I think it was 2010 2011

22:52 where this guy figured out how to get backlinks by being terrible so he would get negative reviews and everyone want

22:58 to write articles about how terrible he was but they were backlinks and the guy was he he was selling glasses eyeglasses

23:06 and he was an idiot because he bragged about this about how he got all these

23:12 negative links by being terrible and ripping people off so two things happened to him one is it was in the New

23:17 York Times one is Google saw it and figured out how to get rid of this whole thing so Google can look at sentiment

23:23 and say uh these are not good backlinks these are bad backlinks so you don't want this and the second thing was

23:28 bragged about it and he was a terrible person he was ripping people off and he went to jail because the police also read that and they said this is this guy

23:34 should go to jail so it we're in a day where they can look at sentiment so I I think that off- page is necessary but I

23:41 think of it in the terms of PR which is you want people saying good things about you and about your business right and

23:48 they could look at that and I don't think guest posts and a lot of the things that people do nowadays matter at

23:55 scale so if you're in a low competitive industry and you get three more backlinks than your your competition

24:02 maybe that matters but if you're in a high competitive industry I don't think you're necessarily going to move the needle by getting you know guest posts

24:09 on sites that are fake okay and does the social also comes

24:14 into picture because that's also the sentiments also can be showed for Facebook Instagram all those I don't

24:21 think Google can look at Facebook and Instagram necessarily but they certainly can in with Twitter because they get the

24:26 fire hose with x I I so I I think they look at sentiment but I find it hard to believe that

24:32 you're going to get positive sentiment on one network and negative sentiment elsewhere so if you're creating virality

24:39 on Twitter where Google can look you likely have other avenues of virality that are showing positive things about

24:46 the business so it's it's a holistic picture okay that's an interesting div because

24:52 most of the time people think the more the link is from higher R the better it

24:58 is but it's not of course you said rightly that with a high highly competitiveness is it's not the case

25:04 yeah yeah I I came up with an interesting analogy that to to you know approach this so are you familiar with a

25:10 study that came out recently that said multivitamins don't do anything yes so

25:16 some health they did a study that multiv if you take multivitamins you're no more likely to die older then if you don't

25:23 take the multivitamins but multivitamins are still selling because people disregard that they say well I should do

25:29 it anyways they don't know what they're talking about I think it comes the same with links many many leaders you can put

25:36 give them all the evidence and say you're wasting money and I do this all the time I look I show companies I'm

25:41 like look at all these links that you bought there was no data that show this worked at all again I'm talking about

25:46 high competitive Industries low competitive Industries I think you can move the needle and they say well I'm

25:52 afraid to stop because there might be signals you're not seeing so I'm going to keep doing it so I think links are the multivitamins of SE

25:59 yeah okay okay so let's talk a little bit about the measuring the success of

Measuring SEO success

26:05 su initiative so how do you measure success of an Su initiative especially when the results are not immediately

26:12 visible and can you discuss some kpis there that businesses should track over

26:17 a long time so the most important kpi is revenue so if you're doing SEO and not

26:24 driving any returns from it you're wasting money and you're wasting efforts so that's the kpi everyone should be

26:31 looking at I don't know why businesses pay for SEO year after year and only

26:36 measure rankings because again I I've seen this often where they say they're

26:42 having SEO success based on rankings but when I ask about Revenue they have no idea so maybe that works for a few

26:48 months but years makes no sense so that's the kpi now if that's your kpi's

26:53 Revenue you're spending money on it you're looking for Revenue you want to look for ear early signals that you're

26:59 going in the right direction and rankings would not be one Impressions would be so you're getting impressions

27:05 of search engines like what you're doing clicks would be page experience would be

27:10 would be something that you should look at so that's the way I'd approach it and it's funny when you look at the things

27:16 people do in SEO and then apply it into another Channel like paid marketing So Paid marketing is the exact same thing

27:23 you don't spend money on Google or you know meow or Instagram whatever wherever you're spending

27:29 and say well look I'm number one I've spent all this money I'm every time you do a search I'm I'm number one on this

27:36 they say well it takes us three months to close a deal but we you look for positive signals in the meantime of that

27:43 they talk to sales did they open your emails when you sent them an email did

27:48 they see multiple ads did they engage at the page so yes it still might take you months to get to a point where you make

27:55 money off that ad and it's profitable but you're not going to use fake metrics in the meantime and for some reason with

28:02 SEO they say well it's very hard to measure and it takes a long time so in the mean time I'll measure rankings if

28:07 if it takes a long time you should still find indicators that you're going to end up at the ultimate

28:12 kpi so so the kpi when somebody starts SEO has more to do with the Impressions

28:19 and the clicks and of course the page experience and of course later on the revenue because at the end of the day if

28:25 your Su agency is not selling you result in terms of tangible results which as

28:31 leads and sales then I think it's a snake o yes yes absolutely this should be something you invest in because it

28:38 has returns and if not that's okay right like if it's something that you don't

28:43 need returns from you're just looking for brand awareness just know that but don't think rankings pay bills right

28:49 right right it's it's just one marketing channel which at the end of the day has to bring tangible results right yes

28:55 absolutely right now uh let's talk a little bit about

International SEO strategies

29:00 International SEO have you done a bit of international SEO as well I've done a fair amount of international SEO now I

29:06 don't think of international SEO as a separate effort I think of it just as an international version of

29:13 SEO okay okay so of course so uh what are some of the most common Pitfall uh

29:20 businesses faces when expanding into International markets and how can they avoid I think the biggest issue is is

29:27 really not under understanding the market so if you don't understand the market then you're doing you're

29:35 marketing to users that aren't a fit so if you've mapped out a buyer's Journey For Your Home Country you can't just

29:41 translate that effort into another country you have to re-understand those users and create a

29:48 new experience for those users so um you know on a simple level there's different

29:53 ways of spelling words in the US and in other countries so let's say the word color or favorite or

30:01 optimization understanding your users and understanding who's going to be reading that content maybe they care

30:07 maybe they don't care but that's the thing that you should really focus on the same goes with spending and credit

30:14 cards and payments you can't just say well I've translated my page and now anybody in the rest of the world that

30:19 has Visa will just pay in other countries it's more complicated to make payments so you need to set up payment

30:25 systems maybe you do Bank transfers maybe use other credit card companies other than Visa or maybe use PayPal

30:32 maybe use different things but I think internationalization really comes down to what does this Market need not I've

30:39 just translated my page and now I'm doing International that's the I think the biggest mistake now one of the common question

30:46 which we receive when somebody's trying to go International is where need to have a separate TLD or do I need to have

30:53 separate folders or do I just do geo targeting so what is your take absolutely you should not have separate

31:00 websites when I ever I answer this question I I compare it to having two different houses so if you have two

31:06 houses inevitably one house will be your nice house and one house will be your second house so if you have one website

31:15 then you have one really nice house and you have all the good furniture and you

31:20 know every time you get some extra money you you know you do renovation and you keep it wellmaintained if you have two

31:26 separate entities one of them is going to be your nice house one of them is going to be your backup house and even

31:32 worse than that you have to spend more money because you have to furnish both houses and you know renovate both houses

31:37 and have relationships to keep both houses maintained so unless you are a billionaire don't have both and you have

31:44 a team and you have different teams that manage your houses and your properties don't have two houses now but the where

31:51 the things come from because Google keeps on saying they favor local tlds over the so if you are inco UK you have

31:58 a domain. co.uk which tends to rank more in the surf than the dot so does that

32:05 also play or doesn't matter it does but I ultimately I think what Google wants

32:10 is better websites and better experiences so I think it's better to have a do in a market where they favor

32:17 the. co.uk than to have an ugly well not well maintains notg good experience. go.

32:24 so if you if you're if you're a billionaire and you have both then by all means have both but if you're not I

32:31 wouldn't have two I wouldn't have two at all a good example would be apple.com which actually just has apple.com sln

32:39 sluk so it doesn't have dlds yes I think that's a great example yeah they just

32:45 use href Lang to do it yep so you are you a fan of href Lang no not at all not

32:53 I all okay because I I think that Google can account for things like like language and localization without really

32:59 needing HF Lang so if you have HF Lang I think you're giving an extra signal which they may or may not regard I'd

33:06 rather be apple and not have hfl and in the UK have my English page my U my us

33:12 page and my UK page ranking but if you have an HF Lang you might have them only rank the UK page or um maybe rank no

33:21 Pages because they have conflicting signals so I I think in 2024 those kinds of things aren't that necessary anymore

33:29 and I'm sure somebody's going to disagree with me but I I I see higher risks to having them than not having

33:35 them yeah because going wrong with a Char of L can definitely screw up your whole site they're right because it's

33:41 not a signal that they're going to take for sure it's just a signal that they incorporate right right so let's talk

Impact of AI on SEO

33:48 About a little bit about current SEO trends with the rise of AI-driven search engine technology like ChatGPT of

33:54 course SearchGPT coming next, how do you see the role of SEO? I'm excited. I think the best thing for

34:01 SEO managers and SEO consultants in general is this rise of AI because for

34:07 the longest time SEO has been take Google best practices and tell people to do them and that's SEO, and I think the

34:14 rise of AI changes the rules and makes the rules more volatile. So now should

34:19 you be optimizing for SearchGPT? Well, if you have to optimize for Google and SearchGPT at the same time, that's

34:27 more complex. What are the rules in new Google, you know, in general with Google AI overviews

34:32 and Google search—it changes, so you need an SEO manager to guide you. I also think

34:38 you know there's going to be too many people that do SEO wrong because of AI, so they're going to say, “Oh great, there's

34:44 AI now I could fire my entire content team and just write everything with ChatGPT.” Great, that's a good way to get a

34:50 penalty from helpful content and now you need someone from SEO to help bring it back. So I think SEO—this is the great

34:57 time ever to be an SEO because our industry is changing. I shared this on LinkedIn a while ago. I think now is like

35:04 being an epidemiologist when COVID came out. No one ever heard of this concept of epidemiology or very few people really

35:12 knew an epidemiologist before COVID, but suddenly everyone wanted to know one so they could ask what they should do.

35:18 Should I go to a birthday party? Should I wear a mask? How long should I wash my hands? This is co—this is COVID of

35:25 SEO. The world is about to have a pandemic. We're entering this pandemic

35:30 time and you need SEO, and I don't know that's going to go away. This is a global pandemic that will stay forever,

35:37 a good kind of pandemic for SEO. So now is a great time in

35:42 general to be an SEO and I think our careers are good for a little while.

35:49 And the other thing I would say is I don't think SEO ever dies because I

35:55 think there's just always this concept of I want to fetch my own information, so

36:00 I don't think we're going to be in a world where engines will feed information to you and just like, “Oh I

36:06 knew you were thinking about lunch and where you wanted to go for lunch so here's where you should go for lunch.” I

36:11 think we're always going to be in a world where we want choice, we want to ask questions. So today that world is

36:17 I go to a search engine and I type a query in. Five years from now it might be I, you know, talk to my watch or I talk

36:25 to my ring and I ask questions, I get multiple answers, or maybe I have a

36:30 conversation where the ring says, “Oh what do you want to do? You're hungry or do you feel like this?” and there's no

36:37 automatic answers. And you're always going to be optimizing for the choice and making sure your choices show up

36:43 front and center. So I don't think we'll ever be in a world where AI makes all of our choices for us. So yes, SEO changes

36:50 from what it is today but I don't think SEO goes away.

Right, right. So, so what strategies…

Staying ahead in the AI landscape

36:56 Would you recommend to business to stay ahead in this, of course, AI

37:03 landscape? Hire—yeah, I mean, you want to hire someone that really knows what they're talking about.

37:10 I'd say the most important strategy is to stay flexible, just to assume that everything is changing.

37:17 Right, right—so the flexibility is the key here.

37:23 Yes, because if you cement your processes in and you insist that this is the way it's always going to be, you'll be surprised. The rug will get pulled out from under you.

37:29 But if you keep looking forward into the future—even better, you're talking to your users, understanding what your users are doing—

37:35 then I think you're in the right place.

37:40 Now how do you think, of course, AI has changed the world, but how do you think the world of SEO has changed now when it comes to AI?

37:46 I'm afraid that most SEOs are not changing fast enough. I think they're

37:52 just looking at AI as, you know, a way to save time and be more lazy.

37:58 So I think we have to wait and see. I think the best SEOs are going to be the ones that adopt AI into their processes and become

38:05 more successful and more creative—but let's see.

38:11 Okay, so when it comes to processes, what all of AI have you adopted in your process?

38:16 I'm using AI to do persona research. I'm using AI to understand users better. So I'm not creating

38:22 content with AI towards nobody. I'm using AI to understand who people are, what the personas are, and then writing human content.

38:28 And I'm also using a lot of AI to write some scripts and to do regular expressions in ways I couldn't do before.

38:34 So in the past I would just Google and have to look at multiple sites and then experiment, and now it's pretty simple to just be like, "Hey, this is what I want to do—write it for me."

38:41 So are you doing any technical SEO as well?

38:47 I think of technical SEO not as its own thing but as part and parcel of what I do in general.

38:52 So when I think of, let's say, internal linking, I don't think of internal linking from a perspective of hacking the index or doing something

39:05 sneaky. I think of it as: what needs to be on this page to link out to other pages. So again, it's the same process.

39:11 Okay, okay. So what are your thoughts on the impact of Google Search…

Google's Search Generative Experience

39:18 generative experience sge I mean they've been trying it uh I mean doing still in

39:23 a trial hit and trial mood but what are your thoughts on that it comes to the SE so I think Google had to launch

39:32 something like this in order for the world to not think that they missed AI

39:37 but I also think that Google knew about this concept of AI and llms they they

39:43 claimed they invented it for a very long time and they didn't want to launch anything because it disrupted their

39:48 entire business model so I don't think Google will continue to have as much AI

39:54 on regular search results as we saw in the initial roll out because it it hurts ads it hurts their business model

40:00 there's no upside for them so I I think they'll continue to have it only on results that are not monetizable for now

40:08 but the SEO World should be considered themselves warned that they could launch it and Broad in it at any point in time

40:15 if search GPT suddenly starts making inroads and growing their market share expect Google to counter and do the same

40:22 so it's launched it's ready and it could come out at a minute's notice okay right now are there any

40:29 specific AI tools or sites or technologies that you

40:36 recommend I mean I I my favorite AI tool in general is just Gemini because it's Google and getting information directly

40:43 from Google and how Google thinks but I've seen I've seen a lot of you know I'm invested in a tool that makes Tik

40:49 Tok videos out of podcasts like this so there's a lot of interesting tools I

40:54 think a lot of tools will end up being features of bigger products but in the meantime it's almost like the beginning

41:00 of you know the internet and Silicon Valley where Venture money is funding all these ideas that will never be

41:06 profitable right right right uh let's talk about some of the

SEO challenges and misconceptions

41:12 challenges and misconceptions in the SEO uh so what are some of the common

41:18 misconceptions about SEO that you frequently encounter and how do you address that i' say the the biggest

41:25 misconception is the concept even needing to do SEO like I said earlier I don't think a lot of businesses should

41:30 even be bothering with SEO and then the other big misconception is doing SEO wrong so they're you know they do

41:38 technical SEO they focus only on technical SEO or they focus only on you know backlinking and not really thinking

41:44 holistically around the user so those are the two biggest misconceptions so it's it's more about

41:49 Su has to be think holistically like as you said like a marketing channel yes not in silos yep right right right right

41:59 and uh what do you see as the biggest challenge in SE today and uh in in terms

Current challenges in SEO

42:04 of uh this question is basically for agencies because this is an agency inside the podcast so a lot of agencies

42:09 listen so what do you think is the biggest challenges in the SE world today and how can agencies overcome that I

42:17 mean the biggest challenge is the same that that's always been really articulating value and I I think

42:23 agencies are going the wrong way in today's AI world so instead of saying

42:28 this is the new world this is how we work and we help you in this new world they're trying to deny that anything's

42:34 changing they just like ai's overviews aren't a thing don't worry about AI or

42:39 um we can just create content with AI I think agencies should be showing how

42:45 this is a confusing world and how you need SEO even more and SEO expertise even more and really understanding the

42:51 user and what that looks like in the future so I think a lot of agency

42:57 are afraid of AI and want to deny what's happening I think they should embrace it

43:04 and then use that to create almost fear with their clients and say you need us

43:09 more than you thought you did okay so do you uh so you cons what

43:15 type of a clients do you consult are they agencies also are they mainly b2c

43:20 players mostly B so later stage BC kind of companies like the companies you mentioned at the beginning of the

43:25 podcast like coinbase and Tinder right right so okay so do some Su agency

43:31 owners comes to you for advice yeah at times I mean I I do a little bit of coaching on sales and positioning and

43:38 how to integrate product Le SEO in an approach so is there my question was

43:43 coming from is there a panic in them now because of all the yes I I am seeing

43:49 revenues declining significantly for SEO agencies yes of course there was a

43:54 report in sear England where the job market also for the Su decline of course that's because it's not being

44:02 articulated what the value is fromo yeah I think it's

44:07 more banic rather than the actual thing it's not that bad actual you use organic

44:14 is still the cheap I mean the free Channel and people tends to be panicking more I think that's the they are like in

44:21 benic stage yes so again I think SEO is more

44:26 necessary than ever and I think agencies need articulating that and not um trying

44:32 to double down on things that used to work right right so what do you think

Future trends in SEO

44:37 the future holds for Su except you you said yeah the future is you are excited about the future it's more going to be

44:44 more interesting but are there any emerging trends that you believe will shape the

44:52 industry I think that there's a lot more granular search happening on Google so I

45:00 don't know if if you've seen the bubbles or like you ask a question and like let's say I look for an app and then

45:05 there's a bubble that say we'll say for Android for iPhone so that means that keyword research becomes less valuable

45:12 and I think that's something that's happening more and more we're okay we used to call that longtail and now I

45:19 think longtail is search which makes it harder to do keyword research and I think this trend means that you have to

45:25 focus even more on the user okay and in your recent post you did

45:30 mention uh as you're going to be more expensive if you are doing into PPC what

45:36 so what exactly would that be you're talking about LinkedIn post so I posted on LinkedIn that if you think PPC is

45:42 expensive than SEO is even more expensive and that comment is really I was talking to a startup founder who

45:47 told me they want to do SEO because they can't afford PPC and to me that makes no sense

45:53 because I think PPC is more profitable early on than SEO so if you know who

45:59 your user is let's say you're selling we talked analytics let's say you're selling analytics right you know what

46:06 your LTV is let's say you have a monthly subscription and each of your users will be with you for 10 months so multiply

46:13 your monthly subscription times 10 months and that's your LTV for each user so you can basically spend up to that

46:19 LTV to break even on PPC or or any other paid search engine that that's that's

46:26 your model model that's what you need to buy but if you're doing if you're saying that's too expensive I'm just going to do seo seo is just like throwing

46:33 spaghetti at the wall if you don't know what your model is to go and and buy it so if you know what your exact model is

46:39 you know I need to find users that will be with me for 10 months then do that and to do the same with with SEO means

46:46 you're just guessing so that's where it becomes more expensive I'd rather be very specific get my users have a user

46:52 base make my user stay longer than 10 months and then use the profits to go and do more

46:58 SEO right right right right so I mean as you always of course Advocate SEO is

47:05 more of a product rather than just a service right yes always always right

Do you read books?

47:11 right so I know you wrote a book the link of which of course is in the uh

47:16 comment section below but do you any other books you recommend do you read books a lot yes I try to read yeah I try

47:24 to read every SEO book and every Business book I can come across I just read Alex Hero's million-dollar offers I

47:30 know that people are not so into Alex Heros they they think he's I have read both right now reading a million dollar

47:36 leads yes I think there's a lot that could be taken from it I read I try to read as many SEO books as possible I I

47:43 was a technical reviewer the big SEO book and I'd say you know read read

47:49 books I would read any book on SEO I read Nathan got's book of course I read Jason Hennessy's two books on SEO so

47:56 there's always something to be learned and I think anybody that feels like they know everything around SEO then they're

48:02 they're done learning and they're not going to be a good SEO I I read books on you know I read um wolf from Alfa wrote

48:07 a book great book on what what chbt is and how it works so try to read as much

48:13 in these on you know any marketing areas Possible Oh and for agencies I would

48:19 strongly recommend the book never split the difference which is a negotiation book okay I'll put the link to the book

48:27 in the description below right are there any up upcoming projects or initiatives

Upcoming projects

48:33 you are working on that you are particularly excited about so yes I'm writing a new book on understanding

48:39 users and buyer Journeys no no ETA on that it's sort of being Loosely written now and then of course follow my

48:46 newsletter because that's where I'm doing all my writing so it's product let seo.com that link is also in the

48:52 description okay and eventually I will have a course so I'll have a course on on really on on how on Frameworks for

48:58 SEO so you do not have a course right now it's just a newsletter just a newsletter y okay I think you should

49:05 take some lead from Nathan on that yes he does a good course and make a good money out of it

Outro

49:11 right yes all right thank you so much La for sharing your insights with us today and it's been a pleasure having you on

49:17 the show and where can our listeners find more about you and your work and get in touch with you besides product Le

Where to find Eli online

49:23 SEO check out my yeah checked out my LinkedIn obviously product.com is my newsletter and then anything always

49:31 happy to answer any messages and and anything and answer any questions and whatever you do just you know focus on

49:37 your buyer journey and your users and for SEO agencies out there I think SEO is as safe as can be if you think into

49:44 the future and don't think about the now right right right uh that's it for

49:50 today's episode of the agency Insider and thank you for tuning in and we'll see you the next time thank you