Rethinking SEO in the age of AI | Eli Schwartz (SEO advisor, author)

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
You've noticed a significant shift in how SEO works with the rise of AI answers being integrated into search results.

**Eli Schwartz** (0:06)
Transparently, I thought this was going to be an apocalypse. Up until AI overviews, whoever won on that long form piece of content would get that first click. But now that doesn't exist anymore.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:15)
What should people do to be successful in this new paradigm?

**Eli Schwartz** (0:18)
Think of SEO as a product. The product managers are the people that should be thinking about this SEO question, because it's a product question. Product people need to think about, how do we position this to the user that is not going to find out about this from a social channel, that's not going to be attracted by an ad. This is a user that's doing their own self-discovery journey. If you can't answer the question about what is it that someone's going to do a search on, then don't do SEO.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:43)
To a lot of people, SEO is kind of this dark art.

**Eli Schwartz** (0:45)
It is not a dark art. It is simple. I think step one is the step that almost everyone misses on SEO, which is...

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:57)
Today, my guest is Eli Schwartz. Eli is a growth advisor specializing in SEO and has helped companies like Quora, Coinbase, Tinder, LinkedIn, WordPress and Zapier develop and execute their SEO strategies. He's also the author of Product Let SEO and has a very refreshing take on how to think about SEO and when at SEO. Recently, he's been spending a lot of his time analyzing how SEO changes with the rise of LLM chatbots, Google giving you the answers straight in the search results, and also how to utilize AI in your SEO strategy. In this episode, we dive deep into everything that you need to know to be successful in this new AI paradigm. As Eli shares in the conversation, Google is just now rolling out changes to how search works and is greatly increasing how many searches include an AI-generated answer at the top of the search results, so things are going to start shifting under our feet pretty quickly. If you're at all thinking about SEO, working on SEO, or are just curious about how search is evolving, this episode is for you. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Eli Schwartz. Eli, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Eli Schwartz** (2:16)
It's a real honor to be here. You've had some amazing guests, and I'm honored to be counted as one of them.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:21)
It's completely my honor.
You've been working on SEO for a long time. You've been helping companies figure out how to win at SEO for a long time, over a decade. We were chatting about what's happening in SEO. You told me that you've noticed a significant shift in how SEO works with the rise of LLMs, with the rise of AI answers being integrated into search results. I thought it'd be awesome just to spend an entire episode talking about what people need to know about what's changing in SEO and how to be successful in this new paradigm of SEO with LLMs and AI being prevalent. How does that sound to you?

**Eli Schwartz** (2:57)
That's an awesome idea. I really like what's happening with AI in general for SEO because it's causing everyone that cares about SEO traffic, whether that's a PM or that's a CMO or that's a CEO, to really be forced into pivoting their thinking about what SEO traffic means. Because the tactics around SEO haven't really changed. It's always been the exact same thing. My last full-time job was out Survey Monkey and I was moonlighting on the side. I was introduced to a CEO of a big company and they were asking me about my approach to SEO. I wanted to close it. I wanted to get consulting engagement. The CEO says to me, so essentially what you're telling me is I need to find my keywords, put that into content and then build some links. Is there anything else you're going to do for me? Why should I pay you?
It's stunned me into silence because essentially that is and was SEO. Then that forced me to really pivot my thinking around what SEO might be. I pivoted my thinking and I've worked with many companies around how they should think about SEO and what SEO traffic should mean. But others have not because those tactics did work. LLMs and AI in general is forcing people to think again, how should SEO work? How should I be driving business from a search channel?