Is SEO still a dark art? — Eli Schwartz // elischwartz.co

About the speaker

Eli Schwartz

Eli Schwartz

 - Eli Schwartz

I’m an SEO expert and consultant with more than a decade of experience driving successful SEO and growth programs for leading B2B and B2C companies.

Show Notes

  • ·02:00 : Is SEO a dark art and is it worth it? ·There are good and bad ways to get people to visit your website. But if they are tricked, they will just end up leaving and impacting your bounce rate. Eli talks about some of the shadier SEO strategies that people use and the long-term consequences they have on your brand. Google is not the enemy. Ben and Eli discuss the mindset that you need to ensure that your SEO strategies align with Google and keep you ranking high. ·04:41 : Setting up a reliable foundation for SEO ·Eli and Ben discuss the process of SEO and how Googles algorithm ranks your content. It takes months for search engines like Google to trust your website but once thats over you can enjoy the traffic and conversions that come with it. Ben and Eli get into detail about why people engage in SEO dark arts practices and short-term and long-term effects they have. ·08:00 : The best way to approach SEO ·Ben and Eli talk about what it takes to be successful at SEO. While SEO does take time, the long-term reward is great and compounding. Dark SEO practices, however, come with harsh and sometimes permanent penalties. Ben and Eli both share their personal experiences of being punished by Google for practices they Google considered bad SEO behavior. ·14:38 : Elis view on his book Product-Led SEO: The Why Behind Building Your Organic Growth Strategy. ·Eli gets into detail about why he wrote his book, Product-Led SEO: The Why Behind Building Your Organic Growth Strategy. There are many questions you need to answer before deciding whether or not you should be thinking about SEO and why. Ben recommends this book to anyone who wants to learn how to do SEO the right way.

Episode Summary

  • ·“... we talked about what is product-led SEO other than the title of your book. It's the principle of understanding whether you should be doing SEO and how to make sure that you're not just optimizing keywords, but driving positive user experiences.” ·“I think for some SEO is, and always will be a dark art, but I think that's misguided. I think that if you think about who you're doing SEO for, there should be no question of that.” ·“I think one of the common misconceptions that there is in the world about SEO is that, you know, Google is your enemy and Google, you're trying to hide from Google. And I think really we should everyone in the search industry and everyone everywhere should embrace Google.” ·“You can climb that mountain really quickly. You can find loopholes and Google's algorithms. You can buy links, you can make shading pages, but then once it stops working, once Google catches you you're done forever.” ·“I don't think Google measures click through on individual search results because Google is a very scientific company.” ·“So rather than go out and put all this money and effort into like, how do you get people to link to you when you don't really deserve that link? Put all that effort into building the brain, putting the effort into why people should love you and getting people to talk about you.” ·“So product led SEO is a book written to think about SEO from a strategic standpoint, to think about whether you should do SEO, if you should do SEO, how you should think about SEO.” ·“If you're an executive suddenly responsible for SEO or you've been responsible for SEO for a long time… if you're an SEO manager and you want to know how to better think about SEO for long-term success… then this book is for you.” ·“if you're an SEO manager, who's just banging your head against the wall, trying to explain to your boss why they need to stop asking questions about why your rankings fell by three positions. This is a book that really helps them understand that this is not the metric you need to use to measure your SEO success.” ·“If you're the SEO, that's in a dark place doing dark shady things, and you're not sure how to do it the right way or why to do it the right way. Then I think that this is the book for you.”
About the speaker

Eli Schwartz

Eli Schwartz

 - Eli Schwartz

I’m an SEO expert and consultant with more than a decade of experience driving successful SEO and growth programs for leading B2B and B2C companies.

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