Product vs Marketing Led SEO — Eli Schwartz

Show Notes

• Speaker 1: (00:00)Bridge toll California customer service number highway miles to the gallon Ford focus, high wind cave rescue operation. What is schema F best wine bars in San Carlos, California. Best Western hotels. How old is Rinaldo? What happened with big brother for a wedding? Should I send down the first series Imam Imam on other email clients identify fonts from where to find them or Speaker 2: (00:29)Welcome to the voices of search podcast. I'm your host Benjamin Shapiro. And today we're going to talk about product led SEO. Joining us is Eli Schwartz, who is a growth advisor, helping B to B and B to C companies scale. Their SEO visibility. Eli has helped companies including Shutterstock Zen desk, Cora G two crowd tackle their SEO challenges and accelerate their organic growth. Previously, Eli spent six years managing survey monkey's global SEO team strategy and implementation across their entire brand portfolio yesterday. Eli and I talked about product led SEO. And today we're going to talk about the difference between marketing lead SEO and Eli strategy for product led SEO. Okay. On with the show. Here's my conversation with Eli Schwartz growth advisor, SEO consultant, and author of the upcoming book product led SEO. Eli, welcome back to the voices of search podcast. Thanks. Good to have you back on the show yesterday, we talked about what product led SEO is, and it is a forward looking strategy that is not specifically focused on a short snapshot in time. Speaker 2: (01:38)You're not looking at today's keyword rankings and saying, how do I rank for these terms that are very competitive? You're thinking about what your brand does, creating content and assets, to try to understand what you're going to have the best likelihood of ranking for in the future. Now, understanding product led SEO is one thing I want to talk a little bit about the difference between a marketing lead SEO team and a product lead SEO team. Think most teams have the SEO function sitting under marketing, as opposed to sitting under product and your experience. What are some of the benefits of having the marketing team have control over SDL as opposed to having the product team being responsible for it, put this into two answers. But first I want to say that the differences for the individual is whether a product is exactly what the same, it's sort of the same, or whether you're a software engineer or computer programmer. You're kind of doing the exact same thing. It's just a matter of what they're calling you now from a personal personal standpoint, I would say, if you can get on a team and be an SEO product manager, a manager, I have found that your salary will increase by about 30%. So just encouraging you to try to shift your company or product Speaker 2: (03:00)Computer scientists make so much more money than the rest of us Speaker 3: (03:05)Or there's product managers make so much more money than the marketing managers. Even if they're doing the exact same thing. Now what's important to understand from a product approach versus a marketing approach is when you build a product, you involve a lot more research. And there's a lot more thought around that. So like we talked yesterday, when you're building a product, you don't just throw things at the wall and just hope it sticks. You're building something you already know that users want. And therefore you build a plan. You involve lots of other teams and you should still be a product manager who will be quarterback in this. And you involve a content team. You involve an engineering team, you involve a backend team or front end team QA, all those different pieces. And you're really moving the ball forward and you have fates. And it's very structured. Speaker 3: (03:52)I have found that when SEO is on a marketing team, it becomes about singular efforts. So for SEO today, I'm going to write a blog post for SEO tomorrow. I'm going to send out 30 link reclamation emails for SEO. The next day, I'm going to build out a keyword list, which I'm now going to pass over the wall to a content person. Who's going to write content target of us. I'm not thinking of the holistic approach of how do I better the entire effort and better the company. Another point around product approach is when you build a product, you have key metrics. So you want to know what sort of revenue I want to target. I know how much I need to invest in it, which means how much budget I'm going to get on the front end. When you have a marketing approach just as well, you're just doing SEL. Speaker 3: (04:33)You were on the team and maybe you have a budget for a tool. And your goal is let's say traffic, which is a very singular goal. That is just for SEO. When you have a product approach, you will be more company centric. So I just find that when it's on product from a company standpoint, the company has been more successful invest in the right places. It's actually aligned in the right place. So you're investing in SEO and a driving towards business metrics that everyone else in the business is driving forward and not towards traffic or rankings that only the SEO words about Speaker 2: (05:04)I want to dig in here before you get to the second part, because I think the KPI conversation is an important one. And with product led teams, and I will preface this with, I am not a product person by nature. I'm a marketer by nature, but the KPIs are, you know, code releases and the functionality of the site. And not necessarily the business performance of those efforts, as opposed to the marketing team is not only looking at rankings, traffic, but revenue. Now, maybe the SEO team is solely focused on rankings, but I think most marketers and organizations are starting to think about not only did I get people to the website, is this converting. When you think about the KPIs for marketing teams versus product teams, how does that impact the SEO? Speaker 3: (05:53)So it hasn't been my experience, actually, most marketing teams I've been on have metrics that are not necessarily tied to the business and their metrics are shared. So it'll be like a traffic goal or like a conversion goal, but then they don't really allocate it between each cha el. So everyone goes after the same pot. Now, my experience has been when it's a product approach and you know, I've been a number of companies and consultant for member companies. The product only has a certain amount of revenue. It doesn't really matter who are in that revenue. Either. The product is profitable and product here. I'm using very loosely. The product could just be a website or it could be an actual, tangible thing that you sell individually, like its own skin widget, whatever it is. But like when you think about that, either successful or it's not successful, and it's not shared across, like I've been on marketing teams where the goals are constantly changing by how the head marketer, whether the CMR VP or anybody, they wants to be measured. Speaker 3: (06:49)The rotating, rotating steel at the top, or the CEO wanting to make the marketing leader look better. When it comes to product. I find that it's so much more black and white, either the thing works or it doesn't work. We're not just going to change what metric we're using because it doesn't suit somebody. So maybe your experience has been different on marketing teams. Having better KPIs from my experience, especially on consulting is I come into our organization and they tell me that the SEO is not working because they're not achieving their rankings. And then I have to ask the marketing leader. Usually that's the person that hires me, why they're measuring rankings when the business doesn't profit from rankings or why they're going after keywords, that they're never going to achieve their rankings on end, even if they did, it's not related to what they sell. Speaker 2: (07:34)I think the idea is that rankings are a leading indicator. And if I rank, I will get traffic and if I get traffic, I will generate conversions. If I get conversions, I will generate revenue. And so, you know, maybe that's just the tip of the iceberg that people are looking at. And they're not thinking about the giant chunk of ice below them. Speaker 3: (07:52)I want to jump in on that for one second, looking for their company and their number one term they ranking for was a calculator term. I don't want to give away what the calculator was. They were driving thousands of visits. You went to their website, they were number one for the term. You went to their website, performed your calculation and left because there was no way from this calculation you're ever going to convert into anything. No leads, no email signups, not even a Facebook live, because all they're doing is going after this ranking was not a leading indicator. So one of the things that I try to help companies do with their SEO is actually find the keywords that will be leading indicators, that they will be finding someone that at least fits within a buyer's journey. When you're only focused on rankings and traffic, it's, you're going after what has the most traffic. So now you look the best and you never carry that forward to does that actually driving your revenue. You'll go after the wrong thing. And that's just human nature. We want to get raises and promotions. Speaker 2: (08:44)I hear you. I hear it. So tell me your, you had a second thought when I asked you about differences between product led and marketing led SEO teams. Speaker 3: (08:51)Yeah. So the other difference is, again for the individual, I mentioned earlier that the will make more money, which is always going to be always liked to make more money making cash. You know, again, just to underscore this, then maybe you put this in the show notes. When you look at SEO salaries and MAs puts them out like you and I, and you know that people doing SEO, don't actually make those salaries. And the reason that people make higher salaries and appears hollows calculators is because SEO is not in their title to do something else. So you don't believe that statistic about making more money. And if you're one of those people who wonder why you're making above the curve, Speaker 2: (09:26)Probably calling yourself an organic growth marketer or something like that, Speaker 3: (09:30)Something like that, or if you're really in the right place or a product manager, even if you're on a marketing team, your SEO vendor, I think Amazon only has SEO product managers. And we know they're not putting an average salary of $60,000. Plus Logan health benefits like Pearson. This goes up salary tables anyways. So from a personal standpoint, if your product SEO team, it doesn't matter whether you report to a COO or a product person. And I was lucky in that. I had this discovery when I reported to chief product officer, rather than a chief marketing officer. But when you're on a product team, you actually discovered you are part of a bigger organization. When you have a product roadmap, you're actually pla ing out where you're going to do. And it's not like, well, it's the begi ing of a month. What am I going to do this month? Speaker 3: (10:16)Hopefully they're comfortable with enough things. And so my boss doesn't think I'm bored or have like come up with enough things, especially in a time like now where you're at home, your boss can even see how hard you're working. That it makes it look like I'm working hard enough when you're on a product team, it's all pla ed out. You have a really long roadmap of, this is what I'm going to do for the next six months. And when that shifts is when we do the six months after that, I get a lot more job security. And I find you have a lot more ability to learn things outside of your skillset because you're engaging directly with engineers and you're learning engineer speak may be more programming. You're directing content, people, you're directing design people because it's a part of a product you're building. When you're on a marketing team, it's a lot more siloed. I find that when you want to talk to engineers, you're talking to the engineer through the product manager. Who's now someone else. So you can be that product manager, much more exposure for you. Speaker 2: (11:05)Let me play devil's advocate here. Yeah. You get to work with the engineering team. You get to work with the rest of the product team. You can build some cool shit. On the flip side, on the marketing team, you have more control over the content development and you're either managing the content production, or you have some resources there. In most cases, you also are closer to things like your PR team. You have some content syndication levers, like your performance marketing team. So there's a sort of dynamic shift that I think about when you're talking about whether SEO should be in product or whether it should be in marketing either way. There's some really fundamental cross functional relationships that you have to manage. Why it seems like the answer for you. I'd rather be on the product org a I make more money and I probably have more job security. But, you know, in terms of managing the cross functional relationships, or would you rather sit closer to the engineers or the content and PR and performance marketing teams, why do you prefer one versus the other? Speaker 3: (12:10)So I've actually pulled the content people with me over to the product side. So you're cheating the people who I was not able to take along with you as PR, but I've had a very interesting relationship with PR in small companies, PR is situate. It doesn't matter what your title is in larger companies. PR is absolute nightmare. It doesn't matter whether you're on the same team or not. They are playing a different sport performance marketing. I have a lot to say about, and performance marketing will always end up on the March 18 because they're spending a lot of money. Now I've been in, especially serving my kid wherever we spend a lot of money on paid marketing, not so much money in SEO. And one of the ways I was able to build out my SEO team was by pointing out how many conversions this yellow team generated versus how many commercials the paid marketing team generated. Speaker 3: (12:57)And the SEO team generated more net pay team has at a much higher budget. The other thing we did was we, instead of being adversaries, like there are many other companies, we were on the same team, meaning I was going after building content and going after queries and users that were much higher in the fu el that were never worth doing any paid marketing for. I didn't care though, that at the end of the day, the paid marketing team was converting those users. Because again, we were on the same team. So by working together by me, finding users higher in the fu el, and then converting, usually through retargeting abusers that the bottom of the fu el to read a bigger pie for everyone to share. Speaker 2: (13:33)Yeah, there's always going to be an overlap between the content team, the SEO team levers that do content syndication, and I would throw PR and performance marketing in there. And then your engineering and your, the rest of your product teams, SEO is unique in that it is positioned kind of in the middle of all of these different functions with business. So whether you're a marketing lead SEO team, whether you're a product lead SEO team, you really have to understand and manage those cross functional relationships no matter who you're sitting next to. Speaker 3: (14:11)One more thing to ask that I'd say from my consulting, I've had a chance to see different organizations and how they were the ones that are the most successful are actually people traveled the middle and they have a puddle of roof. So growth allows you to pull marketing levers and product levers, but just to, you know, you have to be summer. Usually they, both people do report to products. Speaker 2: (14:31)Yeah. I like the organic growth title for SEOs, because that allows you to not only do the sort of traditional SEO work, it allows you to work with the product and technical teams, but it also works in the sense of you can create content with influencers and other resources that just overall help you get traffic that is coming to your website from sources that are not paid organic growth. That's what I would title myself. If I were only an SEO, Eli, it's great to talk to you. Tell us about the book. I know it's not out yet. What's the timeframe where, and when can people look for it early January, the book was actually supposed to be done in my career, welcome to the planet earth. I don't think anybody's enjoying their 20, 20 as much as they thought they would. Speaker 2: (15:27)Essentially every time I consulted in that different organization and realized that the problems were similar across many organizations. So I have a chapter in my book talking about how to measure an SEO team too often, almost all the time as your teams are measured by rankings. I think ranking surveys give me a different approach to how they should be measured, which is essentially dollars by dollars by dollars. So really my book is it talks about the product, but it's also my experiences, both full time organizations I worked for and also from the consulting and the things that I've been able to see that help your teams be more effective, both for the company and for their own careers and just being successful at their jobs are a wealth of knowledge. I can't wait to read the book, congratulations on hopefully finished the pending and waiting for the production and thanks for being our guest. Speaker 2: (16:19)All right, that wraps up this episode of the voices of search podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Eli Schwartz growth advisor, SEO consultant, and author of the upcoming book product led SEO. We'd love to continue the conversation with you. So you can find a link to Eli's LinkedIn profile. In our show notes, you can contact him on Twitter. His handle is the number five L E five L E. Or you can visit his website, which is Eli schwartz.co E L I S C H w a R T z.co. Just one more link in our show notes. I'd like to tell you about, if you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast and ever the voices of search.com, where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests, you can also send us your topic suggestions or your SEO questions. Speaker 2: (17:05)You can even apply to be a guest speaker on the voices of search podcasts. Of course you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voices of search on Twitter. And my personal handle is Benjshap B E N J S H a P. And if you haven't subscribed yet, and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish episodes every day during the workweek. So hit the subscribe button in your podcast app, and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right. That's it for today. But until next time, remember the answers are always in there. Speaker 4: (17:36)[inaudible]