SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz

Strategic Overview & Market Trends

• SEO is definitively more critical in 2018 than in previous years due to rising costs and diminishing returns in alternative acquisition channels.
• Paid media costs are increasing significantly, with higher CPCs on Google AdWords and reduced organic reach on Facebook.
• Public Relations (PR) is becoming less viable for acquisition due to the modern demand for measurable ROI.
• Companies utilizing paid channels often discover "direct traffic" and "referral traffic" in analytics, identifying SEO as an untapped, high-return channel that requires intentional investment.
• GDPR regulations are expected to drive a shift from paid advertising to organic SEO, as privacy constraints make tracking paid campaigns difficult and reduce paid budget allocations.
• Paid search often cannibalizes organic search conversions; reduced paid spend may allow SEO to capture the full funnel of customer acquisition.

Technical Architecture & Crawlability

• E-commerce companies must prioritize site architecture before platform selection to ensure scalability (e.g., handling 10,000+ products without broken URL structures).
• Successful SEO requires that every page on a site is fully crawlable, with no "orphan pages" that lack internal links.
• Amazon is cited as the industry standard for discoverability, using a taxonomy where every product, even those with low sales volume, is cross-linked to ensure bot discovery.
• Internal linking strategies should be user-centric; arbitrary plugins that link unrelated items (e.g., a red sweater to a dog leash) can degrade user experience and relevance.
• Randomized internal linking for articles can be effective if the algorithm ensures every URL is connected to at least one other page, facilitating bot discovery without compromising user intent.
• Media companies excel at cross-linking older content (e.g., a story from four years ago) to current news, keeping evergreen content relevant to searchers.
• Hidden text used solely for ranking purposes is a violation of Google's guidelines and a "no-no," whereas hidden text for user utility (e.g., expanding text) is acceptable.
• Meta keywords are obsolete; search engines now use natural language processing and voice search capabilities to understand page context without manual input.
• YouTube keywords are useful for platform-specific ranking due to YouTube's limited ability to automatically transcribe video content, whereas Google Images relies on file naming, alt text, and titles.
• App Store Optimization (ASO) requires careful keyword selection in the "hidden" 100-character keyword field on iOS and strategic use of visible text on Google Play.

Content Strategy & Workflow

• Effective SEO content must include raw text; images, videos, or heavy JavaScript can handicap a page's ability to be indexed and ranked.
• Content volume correlates with traffic only when the additional text adds relevance through varied keyword usage, not when it contains fluff or repetitive filler.
• User-generated reviews can be a valuable SEO asset for e-commerce, though their impact on ranking requires testing to verify if Google treats them as high-quality content.
• Service-based businesses should build content hierarchies moving from immediate problem-solving (e.g., "unclog drains") to preventative maintenance and educational topics (e.g., "plumbing best practices").
• Keyword research should begin with Google Search Console data on impressions and Google Keyword Planner to identify gaps between current content and search volume.
• Performance tracking must rely on Google Analytics to measure conversions per URL, rather than solely focusing on keyword rankings.
• Optimization involves iterative testing: analyzing impressions vs. clicks (CTR) and clicks vs. conversions to refine underperforming pages.
• Images should be optimized with descriptive filenames (e.g., coffeemug.jpeg) and alt text, though Google's ability to interpret image quality and context is still evolving.
• Pinterest can act as a powerful intermediary for image SEO, but Google prefers direct access to the source page over third-party hosting.

Link Building & Distribution

• Link quantity is no longer a primary ranking factor; quality and relevance of a handful of links are more valuable than hundreds of low-quality links.
• Link equity from a high-authority site (e.g., Stanford University) can boost rankings for a related but distinct topic (e.g., plumbing) if the linking page establishes credibility.
• Effective link building is often a byproduct of PR-minded content creation, such as original surveys, infographics, or data studies that media outlets naturally want to cite.
• Guest posting is effective if the content provides genuine value to the host site (e.g., professors needing class notes) rather than being a spammy exchange.
• Distribution tactics include sharing content on social media to encourage organic sharing and listing businesses in local directories (e.g., Chamber of Commerce) to generate discovery and eventual links.
• Building links does not require a dedicated PR budget; it requires creating "interesting content" that motivates others to link back due to the inherent value of the material.

International & Local SEO

• International expansion is a significant opportunity but often hindered by the American-centric nature of existing content.
• To test international markets, companies can localize specific pages or CTAs in the target language (e.g., Chinese) rather than building entirely new websites.
• Subdirectories (e.g., ycombinator.com/zh/) are preferred over subdomains or new TLDs for international content to maintain domain authority and trust.
• Machine translation is acceptable only for low-stakes content; high-value pages should be translated by native speakers to avoid misunderstandings.
• A language selector implemented via HTML links (not JavaScript) is recommended to ensure search engines can follow the localization path.
• Ranking on China's Baidu requires local hosting and compliance with Chinese censorship laws; otherwise, penalties and slow load times are likely.
• Google dominates search in most regions, including Korea (where it has overtaken Naver), making a robust Google strategy sufficient for most international targets.
• Local SEO relies on geographic signals; adding a physical address allows local services to rank higher for location-specific queries (e.g., "unclog drains in San Francisco").

Measurement, Hiring, & Risk Management

• Hiring for SEO should prioritize creativity, curiosity, and analytical skills over a checklist of past tasks or specific tool certifications.
• A strong candidate should be able to formulate a growth strategy and hypothesis within 90 days, rather than just executing known tactics.
• Success metrics should focus on traffic growth and revenue generated from organic search, never on keyword rankings, which are outside the company's control.
• Expected growth rates vary: 100-200% for startups with no existing traffic, versus 10-20% for established companies with mature traffic.
• Google penalties (e.g., Panda updates) can cause traffic drops of 65% or more overnight due to low-quality content being devalued.
• Recovery from penalties often requires "ripping the band-aid off," removing poor content immediately, and rebuilding with high-quality assets to regain standing.
• Technical audits are best performed using crawlers like Screaming Frog or Xenu to identify metadata issues, redirect chains, and duplicate content.
• Keyword ranking tracking is discouraged in favor of monitoring actual traffic and conversion data via Google Search Console and Analytics.

Tools & Resources

• Google Search Console: Primary tool for seeing what queries drive impressions and traffic to the site.
• Google Analytics: Essential for tracking conversions and identifying high-performing URLs.
• Ahrefs: Recommended for paid keyword research and monitoring backlink profiles.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider: The industry standard for crawling sites to audit technical SEO health, including JavaScript, images, and redirects.
• Xenu Link Sleuth: A Windows-based alternative for crawling and finding broken links.
• Google Keyword Planner: Free tool for identifying search volume and keyword ideas.
• LinkedIn: Suggested as the primary channel for networking with SEO professionals.