Once upon a time, SEO was just SEO. (Cue Mr. Incredible meme.) Whether you were a billion-dollar national brand or a teen with a Spice Girls Tumblr, you played the same game: Trying to get your page in those ten blue links.
Now, two marketers might not even be playing the SEO game on the same field, let alone with the same rules. So how do they hope to win?
If you’re in SEO, today’s master needs no introduction. If you’re not, all you need to know is that he’s done SEO for more big brands than you have fingers to count them.
Kevin Indig
Growth Advisor for Hims, Toast, Reddit, Dropbox & more
- Claim to fame: Doubling organic traffic at G2, growing Shopify’s traffic by over 75% in 12 months, or standing up Ramp’s organic traffic. Of course, for any of those accomplishments, Kevin acknowledges he can’t take credit alone but gives it to a whole team of talented people.
- Fun Fact: He used to be a club DJ in a former life and played gigs in front of thousands of people. He also competed in powerlifting and weightlifting competitions.
Lesson 1: Find your vertical-specific strategy.
These days, the type of search you perform can lead to a very different experience. A product search might bring you to Google Shopping, while an informational search brings up an AI Overview. That is, if you’re even searching on Google at all.
The result is that SEO can mean radically different things to otherwise similar marketers.
“Based on what vertical you play in, you might not work with the same tools,” Indig says. “You might not even optimize for the same platform.” And a vertical-specific strategy is the only way to stay ahead in the new search game.
He gives the example of a SaaS or B2B brand vying for real estate in Google’s AI Overviews.
“AI Overviews source a lot of citations from YouTube or LinkedIn,” he tells me. So a business that wants to show up in Google search results might… not focus on either their website or Google.
Meanwhile, marketing a B2C product “is much more about Google Merchant Center than Google Search Console. [It’s] a completely different playing field and [there’s] completely different ways to win.”
“The pattern here is fragmentation,” he says. “We cannot just talk about SEO. What form of SEO are we talking about?”
But no matter what vertical you find yourself in, “SEO should not just be on Google anymore.”
Lesson 2: Decide where you want to be.
Indig simply means that good SEO is bigger than just Google these days, but it raises the question about Google’s competitors. So I asked if marketers should even be focusing on Google in the first place?
In true SEO fashion, the answer is “it depends.” (It’s comforting to know some things never change, right?) And what it depends on is — again — your vertical.
So if you’re a small business with a physical presence?
“When it comes to local search, I don’t see anybody getting close to Google in the next decade. [It still] has an absolute stronghold.”
What about eComm?
“I would argue that Google never won. Amazon still holds that space.”
And our fictional SaaS looking to show up in the overviews? That’s where things get a little more gray.
“When it comes to the informational space, I think there is a realistic chance that an LLM like ChatGPT can take significant market share.”
(Now seems like an acceptable time to plug our AI Search Grader? #ShamelessPlug #ButItsActuallyRelevantSo…?)
But that doesn’t mean it’s time to jump ship on Google.
Indig suggests thinking about your digital presence the same way you might consider what kind of store your product belongs in: Where will your ideal customers be looking? And, in this metaphor, Google is a big ol’ shopping mall.
You might head to the mall “if you’re not sure what you need, or you just want to browse around.” But if you’re after [name a very specific thing], you might head [specific thing store].
Lesson 3: Get comfortable with experimenting.
All of these changes amount to one truth: SEO is not a plug-and-play strategy anymore. And, as challenging as that can be, it’s actually a good thing.
“It’s kind of cool, because it feels like the early days of SEO,” Indig says, waxing nostalgic. “There wasn’t an exact playbook — and there was a lot more experimentation.”
If you’ve been doing SEO for less than… let’s say 10-15 years… you might not remember there was a time when none of us knew what we were doing. There was no strategy to follow. Instead, there were simply people discovering tactics that worked (and then beating them to death. But that’s not the point.)
“And I think a lot of people new to SEO, they don’t know that world. And they’re entering that world right now. I think an important skill is to really understand how to experiment, how to learn, and then how to act based on your findings.”
Lingering Questions
This Week’s Question
Right now, it feels like so many brands are investing in beautifully produced, curated, experiential moments that are intended to drive awareness and shareability (and likely very expensive).
How do you think new brands with limited budgets should approach this tactic and still manage to cut through the clutter? — Jackie Widmann, VP of Marketing, BERO Brewing
This Week’s Answer
Indig says: In my experience, the highly produced moments matter at certain moments, like when customers consider a purchase, but what often catches their attention is the highly authentic, unpolished moment.
That’s why influencer marketing works. So, as a brand with a limited budget, I’d focus my budget on a few well-produced marketing assets (like videos of product images) and the rest on authentic, raw moments that build trust and curiosity.
Next Week’s Question
Indig asks: What’s the most underrated marketing channel right now, and why do you think it deserves more attention?
