There are so many different marketing tactics out there, and with a smaller (or nonexistent team) its impossible to do them all. SEO is a great option but is also one that takes time to get rolling. Eli Swartz talks in this episode about if SEO is the right strategy for you and how to plan.

What you'll learn:

→ is SEO the right strategy for you?
→ how your audience plays into your strategy.
→ when is the the right time to add SEO to your marketing mix.

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[4:52] Getting Started with SEO The first step is understanding who your audience is and what they are looking for. Use keywords in your content and headlines that your audience will search for the most.

[13:16] Understanding SEO Just using specific keywords in your content will not necessarily drive results. Have a firm understanding of your audience first, so you can use those keywords in the correct context. Have a goal for what you want to achieve through SEO.
[21:56] Plan for Long-Term Using SEO may not be the right path until 18 to 24 months after start up. Think about where you want to be in 2 years, and then move into short term plans and start building a foundation to get there.

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So there are all sorts of marketing tactics that you can do that are out there. And SEO is just one of them, SEO, meaning search engine optimization and how to get more organic reach to your website. So today I have a guest, Eli Schwartz, who's joining me to talk about SEO and how to make the most of it. But most importantly, if it's even the right tactic for you to be doing right now, which I think is a really important topic, because not all things are the right things for us to be doing. And I talk about this a lot, right? How to add in benefits, how to test your marketing, how to make sure you know what's working and what's not. So, that is what we are going to talk about in today's episode. Eli Schwartz, an SEO expert and consultant with more than a decade of experience working for leading b2b and b2c companies, has the ability to demystify and navigate the SEO process, and has generated billions of dollars in revenue for some of the internet's top websites, including such clients as Shutterstock, WordPress, Blue Nile, Cora, and Zendesk, his new book is product lead SEO, the why behind building your organic growth strategy. Now before you say, Well, I'm not a product based business, this isn't going to be for you, I promise, He gives you a way to think about your business that can turn it into a product based business. So listen to this episode, take it in and think about how this might play into your overall marketing strategies. And if it's something you're ready to tackle, or maybe something to tackle in future months to come. But either way, it was a great conversation. And I think you'll learn a lot about how to really think about SEO and how we do it in our businesses. So before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by our website Wednesdays, these are free, quick workshops with an actionable step you can take on your website, they take place on the third Wednesday of every month. And so to see which is the upcoming topics that we'll be talking about this month, head on over to thefirstclick.net/website-Wednesday, there's no registration needed, all you need to do is be on my email list to get the link in order to show up. There's no pitch. And I have a freebie at the end of every single 30 minute session if you stick around to the end. So again, thefirstclick.net/website-Wednesday. Let's get into the episode. 

[INTRO] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. And each week, I bring you tips from myself and other experts, as well as hot seats with small business owners and entrepreneurs to demystify digital marketing, and get you on your way to generating more leads and growing your business. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Hey, everybody, please welcome Eli Schwartz to the podcast. Eli, thank you so much for joining me.

[Eli Schwartz] It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah. So before we kind of kick things off and get into some actionable stuff. Why don't you tell me why SEO? Why is this kind of the game changer for you? And something you think is super important for our marketing strategies?

[Eli Schwartz] Yeah, I have to be honest, it may not be. I differentiate myself by telling a lot of people not to do SEO. So I think what it comes down to is SEO is a marketing channel like any other marketing channel. And if you choose to do SEO, it should only be because you have people that are looking for you on search. And that's what SEO is. You're optimizing for this channel of people going to search engines and clicking organic results. In many cases, they're not in many cases, there's no audience whatsoever, and people shouldn't do SEO. Now, assuming that SEO matters to you, and you do help people on organic search clicking and looking for you. SEO is a game changer. Because the search engines create algorithms which are designed and I think it's a plural, search engines,  not just Google. They create search engine, they create algorithms, which are designed to help understand what users are looking for, but also to understand what the content is on the website so they can match that to what the users are looking for. Now we're this gets a little interesting, is those algorithms do these things on their own. So you can get search traffic, even if you close your eyes and don't do any SEO, but why would you leave that to chance? So SEO is really just this process of optimizing, you get in a car, a new car you haven't driven before, you want to adjust to see, adjust the steering, adjust the mirrors. You can drive the car without it but like why would you so like, approach SEO the same way. If people are coming in searching for you, and this is a channel that's going to be effective for you, why wouldn't you optimize? Now obviously, there's a long continuum of like, just do a couple of things to let's really spend a lot of money in this channel, but it starts there. Why wouldn't you optimize if this is a tale that's important for you?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love the car analogy because I think that makes so much sense. Well, and most of our listeners are nonprofits and they have access to the Google Ad grant, which can like beef up your search visibility much faster. And so today for the purpose of this conversation talking about SEO with regards to content and why creating content matters. So how, like if, if we've been creating content, I want to hit this in two ways if we've been creating content already, but we haven't been doing any SEO stuff behind it, like where might we want to start with that.

[Eli Schwartz] So it really comes down to users and what users are looking for. So you're, if you're creating content, and you haven't created the content for users, don't create content. If you're creating the content, you're creating the content for users, the next step is really understanding what it is that the users are looking for, and incorporating those words into the content. But more than that, incorporating those words into the titles of the content, because that's how it's going to appear on search. So the same way, when you know, we all as regular users of search, discovering things online, the same way we go on google something, or bing something, or duck duck go something, and we see a bunch of search results. And one of those search results says nothing here, or no title or title missing, we're not going to click because it's not interesting to us. We don't know what's there. That's what you're really optimizing for. And the search engines are looking for the same thing. And it's not that, you know, for any SEO advice you've heard in the past, you have to use a specific word. If you don't use that word, you can't you're not doing SEO, where you have to use the word in this specific order. If you don't do the word in this specific order, you're going to be outranked by someone who's doing it better than you. And that's not the case whatsoever. You know, there was a site that I recently saw in the luxury goods space, you know, luxury goods, like Gucci, and Louis Vuitton, Bergdorf, like, these are all things that you have a big issue with infringement. And these companies will go and search online and find people that are infringing the copyrights and making fake designer bags and fake designer goods. So the sites that are making these fakes, they do a good job of hiding, but you're not using the copyright and say, well, it's not really a Louis Vuitton bag, it's not really a Gucci bag, I just called it a LV bag, you know, or L, you know, star star star V bag. And, you know, maybe to Louis Vuitton that works. But if you were to go and search that it would actually be ranking on search results for Louis Vuitton, even though they haven't even used those words, they are able to get links which use those words or cut, The Searchers have figured out that L star star star v, when people want that that's actually over top. So you really don't need to go to that distance of like, well make sure if you're using the word you have to use the exact word people look for, or make sure that if people are looking for the plural version of the word, use the plural and not the singular. So I, you know, I know that I'm making it harder for some people by saying this that like you don't, there's not a lot you need to do for SEO. But I'm also making it a lot easier, because there's not a lot of things you need to do for SEO.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So is it all about, kind of, defining what that core topic keyword is, but then still using it in a conversational way regularly throughout your content?

[Eli Schwartz] Not so much anymore. So I would find the core topic that users are looking for. And then try to incorporate the words they use, because those are the words they use. But if you don't use the words they use, you know, like anybody that’s ever visited a doctor, and the doctor has given you, like, a report and they tell you, Oh, you have all these things. I've noticed all these things, and you're like, oh, is this bad. And then you go and search those terms. And they're just telling you that you have a runny nose, but they could use the word runny nose, that's the idea is like, use the words that your customers and your users are using. They're using those in search engines, they're using them in conversation. So use those words. Now, if you don't use those words correctly, that doesn't matter that much. I would just use those words because it will resonate more with users. These algorithms are trying to figure out the synonyms, the art, the algorithms are trying to figure out the context, even if you don't use those words.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So how do we go about finding those words?

[Eli Schwartz] So the simplest way to find those words is to understand your users and to understand your audience. Now, if you don't really understand your users and understand your audience, we'll go figure that out, of course. But if you need a little guidance on doing that, the simplest thing to do is to go to google and type the topic that you're looking for. And see what Google suggests as related queries. I love when you type in Oh, and Google will also carry forward anything that you've already been doing. So say you're looking for a movie to watch and you're like me, you're obsessed with only watching movies that get a high score on IMDb because you don't want to waste time but discover that the movie was terrible. So you type in the name of a movie. Now the interesting thing about movies is they're very generic terms like long night, you know, the fun day, right? Like, they're very generic. But if you type in the name of a movie, and then you add in the word movie, now all of your next queries, which are very generic, like the Longest Yard, there's a lot of things that can have the Longest Yard. The word frozen, or Top Gun, right, like all those things are now going to bring up movie results. So it's not about the words, it's really about the context and the topic that you're searching for. So if you don't understand your users, or you just don't understand users in this context, you can go into Google and type and see what else Google suggests, you can scroll a little bit down. And there's things that it says people also ask. So these are other queries that people are looking curious about. And then you can go all the way to the bottom, and they'll give you related queries. And that will give you a ton of ideas, of like, these are my users. Now, Google is not perfect. And sometimes you're looking for a movie and Google suggesting music. So you can ignore those suggestions. And then the third thing you can do so again, one is talk to users two is go on Google, the third thing to do is just use a keyword research tool. And there are a number of them. And they're very, very similar. So you can use Google's keyword planner. So you know your listeners are using Google's advertising, that means they have access to Google Keyword Planner, and Google Keyword Planner will just help give ideas. I wouldn't necessarily trust the numbers that Google gives, but it does normalize and give you a directional sense of this. People searched this more than that, and maybe it'll show you some seasonality. There's other tools like SEMrush, or H refs, that will give, just dive in and see good ideas. But I wouldn't necessarily say well, I need to go and you know, married to this word, because the tools told me that, you can be married to what your users want.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I think that's important, because there is an element of SEO that is all about user experience and user interaction with your website. So if you just go keyword specific, and develop all the content on your website for that, but your website isn't actually serving those people that can actually negatively impact you.

[Eli Schwartz] Exactly. So it's one of the things I see all the time in my consulting. And I talked to a lot of companies who, they think SEO is a silver bullet. They reach out to me because they want me to provide that silver bullet for them. And it's not because they don't first understand that their users are using search. If you're in a b2b space, your users might not be using search, because that's not the way they find tools. If you're in the nonprofit space, and you're focusing on donors for your SEO, that's probably not where you're going to be finding new donors. Anybody that's in nonprofits know that the best way to find donors is probably by networking and doing actual conversations and outreach. Whereas, if you're in the nonprofit space, and you're looking to serve as particular demographic, that's probably where you are going to find people searching, someone is looking for a support group to be connected to, someone is looking for a shelter to find to adopt and foster dogs like, that's where search matters. So really understand, do you have that search audience, or do you not have that search audience? If you don't have that search audience, there is no silver bullet that can really help you with SEO, there's not a channel where the more you spend, the more you return at all.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So then when we think about our content marketing, because that's where I think a lot of people get stuck is I don't have time to blog on a regular basis, or I don't have time to do all this stuff, kind of how often should websites be adding new blog posts or content to their website, if they have an SEO strategy in order to kind of see that consistent income? And again, I know there's no silver bullet, there's no specific timeline, but you know, how much effort and time should they put into a content strategy before they kind of test if it's working for them or not?

[Eli Schwartz] So if you're if you're creating content for the right audience, you know, there's an audience there, I would never even check to see if it's working, because that assumption is probably correct. Which is, I know that my users need to understand this, I know that this is going to teach them something, it's very unlikely that you're going to be measured, be able to measure the specific outcomes from this content. Again, say it's, you're in the nonprofit space and you're trying to help people find services, it's very unlikely that the content alone is what convinced them to contact you. You need to build trust, you need to build a relationship. It's very possible that something else helped them go down that road and someone introduced them to your nonprofit. So if you're looking for specific returns of, this piece of content converted all these people, it’s probably not going to happen. Now. You can obviously do an A B test. You can rip out the content, say Oh does the quality of the conversations we're having to the quality of people coming to our flow change. Probably well, why would you do that? If you have this gut feel that the content is good and people like it and that's how they understand you and it comes up in conversation that it's working for you.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, so it's about kind of testing multiple types of things and and then just kind of paying attention to what is coming up within the conversations you're having both via your website, and also kind of in person at the networking things because like you said, I agree with you 100%, that you're not going to put up a blog post, that's like all the reasons to donate to our organization. And that's going to drive money, what your content, how your content is going to drive revenue to your organization is by the products and services that you provide, and just getting people to dive deeper and making you that kind of expert. So what are, kind of, some of the big mistakes or things that you see, people spend too much time on with SEO that just don't matter?

[Eli Schwartz] The biggest one is really not understanding users, and then they don't understand their users. So then they're focused on these keywords. And they write a bunch of content towards these keywords. So I think that's a two fold Issue. Issue number one is the contents not useful for users. Issue number two is the goal around the content that they're writing is to rank on a keyword. And in most cases, that's not really possible. So say someone is, you know, the idea of a dog shelter, and the keyword they are focused on is dog shelter and looking at the radius around dog shelter, it's highly unlikely that you will ever be number one for that keyword dog shelter. So I wouldn't put my focus there whatsoever. So that's really the biggest mistake people make. And I'd say around that, you know, again, builds upon this, if you don't have this SEO strategy, you're going to be making mistakes after mistake. They'll focus on specific tactics, without really thinking about how those tactics ladder into strategy, a tactic might be the keywords you put in your title tag, that's just a tactic. And if it doesn't ladder into strategy, if this is who this content is created for this is the user that should be reading it and engaging and acting on this content. What you put in the title tag doesn't matter. It's just a tactic. And again, it's not focused on anything. The same goes with how you interlink your site, which pages linked to other links, if you're doing it to trick an algorithm, but it doesn't really align with what you're trying to do with your site. No point in that. And then the third thing on that is, and you can you know, a lot of people are familiar with this around SEO, which is building links. So, big mistake people make with building links is that they think that a link alone is valuable. And that's not really the case. So the way they think is, oh, I got a link from an authoritative website. And you know, what's interesting is your audience and nonprofits and nonprofits have this ability to get a lot of great links from the media, especially if they are able to tug at certain heartstrings the journalists and the media want to talk about them. Those are links. But not all links are built equal. So the way that search engines, and we’ll use Google in this case, because they're the ones who invented it, the way that Google looks at links is they look at them in context. And the way they invented this. And you know, it's important to keep in mind that they invented this 22 plus years ago, like before 2000, they invented this concept that links help understand the authority of the content in 22 years, you know, when they invented this thing, people didn't even have computers, let alone use Google. And now we have like, computers in our pocket and self-driving cars and all the innovations we have and you know, rings that can measure our heart rate, like the world has changed. And somehow when it comes to links, people approach it like they did 22 years ago. It's like, oh, I want an authoritative link from an authoritative website. So they focus on these links and the metrics around the links of like, oh, that's a good link, because it comes from a media site. That's a good link, because it comes from a.edu, an educational site. Nevermind the fact that it comes from a student's personal blog that has no visibility on the internet. So they focus in on these wrong metrics. So I would just ignore that entire concept of links and really think about PR, like, how do I get the message out about what I do? And do they include a link in that? So is it a, is it an article about what I do in the media, and there's a link to it? That's great. Because even if the search engines and Google decide that link really doesn't matter from the search standpoint, however, people read that article, and now they're more aware of what you do. That's good, right? So your draw, I would drive towards that. So I think that's, you know, a final big mistake I see people make when it comes to SEO, really all comes down to the same thing, not having an overarching goal for their SEO efforts.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] There's so many good things that you said there. And I think that the term authority is something that we're all ingrained in with SEO, right, like we need to build authority and trust with the search engines. But I think the thing that you said is, it's really about building authority and trust with our users. Because if we can continue to build that, then that's going to continue to generate traffic to our website that's also going to continue to generate that referral traffic of people sharing our information with their friends and family. So I think what you're saying is we think about SEO so much from like the robot perspective, but it's more and more moving to, we have to think about it from our users and like you've mentioned so many times, are we trying to talk to the right people? Because if we're not doing that, then it doesn't matter what else we do.

[Eli Schwartz] Absolutely. And I think that's, you know, another new thing that has come up in the content space is AI written content, like it's this, like, magic sauce that like we're gonna have AI written content. And it's going to use GPT Three, and it's using these new technologies. Forget the fact that we're writing towards users. So if you're trying to talk to users, but a computer is writing it, what's the point? You're lacking any of the real, like, yes, you can create a lot of scale content, and it's cheap. And I saw a great tweet the other day, if you expect a $10 piece of content to sell to a $1,000 an hour person, then you're completely misguided. So like, that's, there's no real secret here. It's really around users, and speaking to the users and not taking shortcuts, because the shortcuts aren’t shortcuts in the end anyways.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, I think that's so true. So like, if you I mean, I kind of asked this in a different way earlier, but like, I know, you mentioned like, we don't necessarily need to measure great content, if we're talking to the right people, which I agree with. And I think if you are then running Google ads, through that great content that's talking, right, that will be measurement enough for you. But consistency is key here. And so like, I mean, we need to continue to do this, like this is a long term strategy for like the overall growth and, and viability of our organization. Don’t you think like, it's not like a one and done quick thing that we're just gonna, like, pop some things up, we're gonna get some organic search, and then we're gonna go on our merry way.

[Eli Schwartz] Yes, absolutely. So this is a long term strategy. And it's an iterative strategy, which means that you're going to do something and make a hypothesis around something, and you want to make sure that you build upon it and learn from it and keep going.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah. So kind of what key like, so if we've already been doing this core content stuff, and we're doing all of the things that you've talked about, kind of what is the next step from there? Like, what would we do next? Or is it just kind of what you talked about, and just being consistent with that?

[Eli Schwartz] Being consistent is really important, really, if you, it depends how you're doing SEO. So say you have an outcome that you want to be the largest nonprofit in the world at a certain space. So you want to lay out the plans of how to reach that. And that shouldn't be two weeks worth of work, that should be an 18 month plan, a two year plan. So what comes next after two years? Well, you have two years to really, you know, continuously learn and figure out what's the end of the two years. So it's not one and done. Like it could be one and done if you just need to slap up a homepage and one piece of content about what you do. But if you should have bigger goals than that, you know, no one wants to say, well, you know, I started this nonprofit, it's just going to kind of run itself and I'm going to hang out at the beach, like motivated by something. And you exactly, you want to have this longer view. And there's a number of things that get you to that longer view. So I typically work with, you know, larger businesses where things don't happen very quickly. So we need to lay things out and say, What are we going to do in q4 to achieve this goal that we have for the end of 2023. Based on what we're going to do in q4, that defines what we need to be doing in q3, because we need to build this foundation that allows us to do the q4 work. And that q4 work sets us up for success at the end of next year.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love that. And that kind of leads me to the final thing I wanted to make sure we chatted about which was we started this conversation with if you are already creating content. So if we're a newer organization, or maybe we've been around a while but we haven't started creating regular content or doing any sort of SEO strategies. Is there anything that we would want to take in mind as a brand new organization versus somebody who's been at it for a while and now trying to add an SEO strategy.

[Eli Schwartz] So I think that someone who is newer at this should be, is a lot smarter, because they're not going to waste as much time with doing the wrong kind of SEO. So I would say, if you're newer at this marketing effort, you have a brand new nonprofit, brand new business, you can probably ignore SEO for the time being, because SEO is, it's a long term effort. In many cases, it could take a year, 18 months, and I know like you know, probably some people I've talked to SEO agencies may say, Oh, two to three months, you know, you'll see results. Up to three months, you'll see inklings of, like, oh, this is working. This is a good idea. But if you have this goal of like, well, I have I want to be servicing this amount of people. We're going to be selling this amount of people. That's probably not going to happen before a long time. So that's when I would take a pause on SEO and say, Well, I've started this nonprofit, I've raised this money, flip back around, and that's when you're going to use your Google money. And you're going to run ads and try to scale that way. Because now you're building that user base, and you're learning from that user base. And that will define what you want to do from the SEO front. And I see this all the time, when I talk to businesses, especially startups, they don't really understand the motion, and the user that and why they convert. So it's hard to say, oh, build, let's build an SEO strategy for what we think is the right thing without any data. But when you use these other channels, like paid marketing channels, or other advertising channels, now, you know, you get users in, you have more of an instant gratification of like, this is the thing that works. And this is why users come back to us. And this is why customers buy from us. And now you can build SEO around that, rather than this is the idea I came up with, you know, with my team in the meeting. And this is our 18 month SEO effort. Because you know, what’d be terrible is to build for the 18 month SEO effort to innovate two months and say, You know what, we made a mistake.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and I think I like what you're saying too, and that at the beginning of your organization, a lot of I mean, I have been in business for just over five years, and I have gone through three, four iterations of what it is that I'm, you know, what I'm targeting, and who I like, it's been a learning process. So at the beginning of your business, you're really, you think you know who you're going after, but you really have to learn and develop and figure that out. So I like what you're saying, the honesty and that of, give it a minute, and just see what's happening, and then really put your effort into it. And I know that the 18 months might scare people. Um, but I mean, I hope that what you're doing is not a hobby, it's a business that you're trying to create, and you want to be in business for the long term. And so there are strategies that we implement, I think nonprofits tend to get into this reactive mode all the time. I think one of the things that I love about SEO is it is a proactive, ongoing strategy to help with the sustainability of your business.

[Eli Schwartz] Exactly. Yes. I mean, this is a long term effort. And it should be something that you only focus on, because you know what's the right thing, and don't guess and don't do it because someone told you to do it.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah, no, I appreciate your honesty and your transparency. Eli, if there was any last takeaway, or something that I didn't ask you about in this episode about SEO that you just think people need to hear about, what would that be?

[Eli Schwartz] So I said a lot about what people shouldn't be doing. And you know, how, why they shouldn't do SEO. And obviously, I wrote a book. And that's why we're having this conversation. So my focus, and what I loved with companies is doing something I called product lead SEO, which is when you take this concept of what a user is looking for, and you scale that up into a product. And so you're taking information. And instead of you know, we talked a lot about manual content and the things that people need to do to create content for a specific topic and a specific user. But what if there's something that you see over and over again, and now you can create a product on its own to allow people to get information? So bringing this over to nonprofits, which is not typically the conversation I have, but say there's a, there's no good website that exists that help people understand where the shelters in every single city across America. If there's a natural disaster, I can't even imagine what website would have that. That becomes a product on its own. So you figure out all the inputs of where do you need to get that information. Is it the Red Cross? Is it every city government? Is it every state government? I don't even know. Is it a list of every public school that exists in every city? And that becomes a product. And the search terms around that is not really where do I go if there is a tornado in the city of Chicago, and I'm gonna write a long blog post about that. The product is where do I go if there is A in the city of B, and now you're building a product. And that's the kind of consulting I do. And that's what I really wrote my book around, which is, that's what SEO is for. This is a use case that shouldn't be addressed from a scaled perspective, from a product standpoint. The example I use in my book, which is not a nonprofit, of course, is Zillow, but it's Zillow builds this product of understanding home valuations, they scaled it across the entire country. They don't do marketing and advertising to each individual page 123 Main Street, they built something that fits the use case of I want to know what the valuation of this home on that block in this city is. And I think that exists for many, many spaces. So if someone has understood there isn't a large base of people looking for that, at this specific thing that they do, and they can scale it up, there's a massive amount of potential and there's the only way to do and you're really addressing a huge need, you know, the example I gave around shelters, that's an obvious need. The example I gave around, what's the likelihood of a natural disaster happening in blank and now you can get that for every city in the country, and you can feed that in from all different datasets, now you're creating a product that doesn't exist. And you can serve us a larger audience with your SEO. And if you're looking for donors, and if you're looking for people to service, that's how they're finding it. So we talked a lot about that content. But if there is an opportunity in your space to really do that, and this is what this could take you two years before you really have full penetration. But it's a wide open space, because no one else is addressing it, if that's something.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So it's how do I take the problem that I solve and turn it into a formula that is scalable in search, just like fill in the blank, Mad Libs kind of thing?

[Eli Schwartz] Exactly. But not not again, not AI written content? I've heard it referred to as mad libs. It is sort of babblers, but the content itself is useful. You want to know that if you're putting out a list of public schools and every city that could be a shelter, you want to base that information. And if anybody out there is listening to it and wants an idea, you can actually take all the voting locations where people vote in every cities and use that to qualify as cryptos also become shelters. That's a list that already exists. But again, the harder this is to build, the messier this is, the better product you have the potential building, because it scares everyone else away.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] That's a good point. And like you said, not something that's super saturated. Well, Eli, I think you've given us a lot of great things to think about with how we choose or choose not to do SEO right now. I love your transparency around that. If people want to find out more about you, how do they do that?

[Eli Schwartz] So you can search me on search engines, Google in particular, but you can find, you can find my LinkedIn, I'm always happy to connect to anybody, except on LinkedIn connections, of course, check out my book on Amazon. My book, you know, if SEO is not for you, then this will be the only SEO investment you ever have to make. So I love that. I want people to not do SEO, if it doesn't make sense for them to not, and not to create content, not to have the wrong expectations. And then my personal site is Elischwartz.com.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love it. And I'll link up everything in the show notes at thefirstclick.net/158. So you can check everything out there as well. Well, Eli, thank you so much for joining me today.

[Eli Schwartz] Thank you so much for having me.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, what’d you think? Are you going to be implementing seo into your strategies, beefing it up or taking a pause for a little bit? I got a lot of perspective from this episode as well. And so I always love that I get to learn some new things alongside you. If you loved this episode, make sure you subscribe and rate us wherever you listen. We appreciate it or share it with somebody that you think might be able to benefit from the topic today. Otherwise, I'll see you in the next one.