SEO Optimization for Small Business Afluencer Podcast

I had an awesome time joining the Affluencer Podcast to talk about one of the biggest questions everyone keeps asking me: Are Google’s new AI updates killing small-business SEO… or opening the biggest opportunity we’ve ever seen? 👀

In this episode, I break down exactly what’s actually working right now — even with AI Overviews, featured snippets, and Google crowding the top of the page with ads. I share how I’m blending SEO + paid ads for faster traction, how I build backlinks that truly move rankings, and what the future of SEO with AI really looks like from my front-row seat in the industry.

We also dig into remarketing tricks, keyword research strategies I rely on, and why SEO today is more of a “test-and-adapt” game than ever before. If you’re running a small business, starting something new, or just trying to make sense of what Google is doing… this episode will save you months of guesswork. 🚀

Had a blast recording this one — hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

🎧 Tune in now!

#SEO #DigitalMarketing #GoogleAI #SearchOptimization #SmallBusinessMarketing #Backlinks #PaidAds #Remarketing #ContentStrategy #BrandonLeibowitz #SEOOptimizers

Transcript

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Are Google's AI updates killing small businesses SEO, or are they creating the biggest opportunity we've ever seen? I'm Brandon Leibowitz from SEO Optimizers. In this episode of the Affluencer podcast, we break down what's actually working right now for small businesses that want to stay visible in search, even with Google's new AI overviews, featured snippets and, and paid ad dominance. I share how to blend SEO with paid ads for faster results, how, to build backlinks that actually move the needle, and what the future of SEO looks like with AI. Stay tuned. You don't want to miss this one. Welcome to the Affluencer podcast. We're talking search engine optimization today. So we've got SEO expert Brandon Leibowitz. He's the founder, president, owner of SEO Optimizer. So Brandon's here to talk about a variety of SEO topics, but with a special focus on what's working today. I know it's getting confusing out there with, Google integrating a lot of its own AI tools into search. And now you're starting to see the top half of the search page is all ads. So we wanted to bring Brandon on to find out what exactly are we supposed to be doing today in terms of search engine optimization. So, Brandon, welcome. And can you give us a little layout in terms of how the SEO landscape looks from your perspective today? Yeah, thank you for having me on. And SEO is constantly changing. Google's constantly changing the way the search results look as well. And they've been integrating, like, the featured snippet, that little box that appears, giving you an answer maybe around 10 years ago. And, like, that's kind of similar to AI, where it's like, trying to pull content together and give you a little answer. Now Google's thinking about putting AI and search results. I mean, they have been doing it. We'll have to see what happens if they keep doing it, or are they just gonna, phase it out? But we'll have to see. It's really that magic ball at trying to figure out what's going to happen in the future, but it is so, so dynamic right now. There really is no change. It's just constantly evolving and evolving, and I mean, there's no content. It's constantly changing. Yeah, I haven't seen it move this fast before, I guess from my perspective, and I've been in it just as a business owner and someone who's always, you know, working with people like yourself and sort of, on the SEO side. And I I can't recall, you know, time when, when change was this fast when I went to Google. And, like you said, between the feature snippet and whether Gemini is handling the search result or not, it just seems like it's different and it seems like it's going away from getting the click to your site. Is that your perspective as well in terms of, hey, if you're going to get the feature snippet or if you're going to get in the Gemini answer, you better make it worth your while in terms of, having to say what you want or, mention your company by name because you may not get the link to your site. Am I thinking about that correctly? Yeah, I mean, most of those questions or those searches are just questions. And Google knows, hey, if we. All you're looking for is an answer, those type of searches are definitely losing traction. Like, especially like, how old is somebody? Or when did somebody die? Schemas, pull it in from Wikipedia and give you that answer right there. Or if you like watching a basketball game, you get to see what the, like what the score is in real time without having to go to the NBA's website. And Google is just trying to essentially keep you on Google, I feel like, longer that way. You do a search that hopefully has ads, because if you're just searching like, what's the score of this basketball game? Probably not going to be ads. But if you look at the score and then you're like, all right, I'm a big fan of Lakers. Let me search for Laker jerseys. Then Google's like, all right, we'll show you some ads. We'll show you some other stuff in there and try to get you to only click on those ads. But in terms of organic, Google knows they have to have that organic because if it's just ads, nobody would go to Google. But their ultimate goal is not to get you to click on the organic. They just do that because it needs to be there to keep people using Google and not jumping off to Bing or DuckDuckGo or some other search engine. That's a funny way of putting it. So it's kind of like a necessary evil from their perspective, where they've got to have the organic listing so that they can still get you to go to Google and then ultimately click on the ads, which is what still drives that business. It seems like after 20 or so years. I know in our notes before you'd mentioned that paid ads are still, important, from your, again, vantage point, how so in terms of If I've got a new site, a relatively new site, let's say it's within the last year, I've got a new e commerce site and I'm kind of thinking about, okay, well am I going to spend the multi year investment working on SEO? Do I need to get some paid ads going? what would your advice be for someone in that perspective, in that time in their life cycle early on, do the paid ads matter in terms of getting that initial traction? Do they help with the SEO? I know they're not supposed to, but do they? What's your take on the paid stuff? Yeah, paid ads are good in the short term because if you're waiting for Google to rank you, it's going to take months, sometimes longer than that depending on how competitive those keywords are. And in the meantime you might want to supplement that with paid ads just to get that immediate traction. And I mean as long as you're making more than you're putting in while you're making a positive roas return on ad spend and getting a positive return on investment, I would say there's no real need to really turn the ads off ever. But you don't want to rely on them because they are expensive and once you stop running those ads they just disappear. I really like remarketing ads. Those I feel like are everybody should be running. So if somebody goes to your website, looks at a product or even looks at a service that you offer and doesn't contact you or buy, you get to follow them around. Those are really effective because it's like warm leads. People have been to your website but something distracted them where maybe they were on their cell phone, they got a phone call and they were about to buy that product but then they got distracted and then they forgot about the website. But then you send them an ad of that same product that keeps you top of mind and also another touchpoint builds trust up for the user. So I think those ads are really invaluable that a lot of people don't really utilize them. But in general like cold ads, depending on the keywords they can be pretty expensive. But then you have lots of other options like Google owns YouTube, Gmail, display ads and all those are going to be a little bit cheaper and it's worthwhile testing them all out to see what works and then push more money to that money away from. It's not working. Same with like the ads looking at different age groups and demographics and income levels and you can really get big granular Google Ads and in terms of helping with SEO, Google says ads don't help out with SEO, they would get a lot of trouble. I think they might have done that in the past. But Google does look at how much traffic you get and you're getting more traffic. That's always a good thing. If people stay on your website, they just click on the ad and then hit that back button. I might not be the best thing, but they click on that and go to your website and stay on there. That just gets you more traffic and should help a little bit. I mean it wouldn't have the biggest impact, but it might slightly help out with SEO a little bit. Okay, so that's how it factors in because I know they always say that the ads are independent, but in my experience as soon as we start running ads, especially on a new site, it helps your SEO. So that makes sense from getting that initial traffic, especially if it's a I mean it could be a meaningful portion of your traffic early on if you're not getting it organically, yet. Talk to me about the remarketing cause that's interesting and I haven't done remarketing myself and I mean it's been years since I've been in there. So are you doing that through and I'm probably dated here but what used to be the Google display network where you're putting the code on the site and then you're following around and it's Google's running it through their properties then where they're following around the, the users who are on your site before we have pretty much just targeting your old traffic or your traffic and sending them and segmenting them into different audiences. So like if someone's added, gone to your website and your e commerce website and didn't go to the shopping cart, you could serve them more. M General ad. If someone has gone to the website, added a process shopping cart, but didn't check out a cart abandoner, maybe you sent them a discount because they were that close to buying. We send them like a 10% off discount that keeps you top of mind and also entices them to follow through and hopefully make that purchase. But you also do it for like service based businesses. Myself I do SEO and I could, I have different audiences. I offer classes so I do free classes. So come to my website and don't take a free class. I'll follow you around with my free class. And if you take my class but haven't signed up for like a free consultation, I'll follow you around with that saying, like, book a time for a free consultation. So try to just differentiate your audience and not just serve in one general ad, which is okay. Then it's a good starting point. It's better than not running remarketing. But really, you want to try to think of each audience along the buying funnel, the, funnel of where they are in that buying phase, different levels, and what they've seen on your website. If you're offering an ebook, maybe you could offer ads giving away that ebook. Someone's read your ebook but didn't call you or fill out a form, hit them with some other ads, maybe with like testimonials and reviews. And you can run this on Google Display Network, which is Google banner ads. And Google's pretty much partnered with almost any website that does show banner ads. You could also do it on YouTube. So if anyone goes to your website, then if they open up YouTube, they'll see your video ad. Those are pretty nice. But you have to make a video a little bit more barrier to entry, and then you can run them on, like, social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, pretty much any platform that allows ads. I would look into running remarketing just because the more touch points you have, especially if you sell something higher ticket, the more trust and credibility you build for yourself. Yeah, that's very cool because you need the multiple touch points, as we know. And usually it's more than you think. Right? It's the 7, 8, 9, 10 touch points before you get a hold of someone. on the other platforms, and I know Facebook, they've got their own little conversion code or tracking code, so you're putting that on the site. Is it the same with Twitter and the other social media platforms where you're putting code on your site and that's what's letting them then identify the visitor and then track them around when they're on those platforms? Yeah, for the most part, yeah. You just got a little track and go to show that you own the website. This is your traffic otherwise. Or you can upload email lists as well, and there's a few other ways to do it. Gotcha. what are you doing right now, Brandon, in terms of keyword research? What are your favorite tools for that and I guess your general methodology in terms of working with your clients? How are you thinking about keywords today? I like the Google Keyword Planner. It's from Google and it's a free tool. You could buy a tool if you want, but Google gives you the keyword Planner. And that really is a good starting point to, just try to figure out what keywords get the most search volume. And using the tool, it's going to help you not just guess and give you the data of which keywords get the most searchifying. Like, one of my clients is a lawyer, and they do personal injury law, and they want to figure out do I want to write for personal injury lawyer or personal injury lawyers. Little personal injury lawyers, I think got 20,000 searches. Personal injury lawyer, Singular, got 200,000 searches. And just by removing one letter, they're going to get 10 times more traffic. That's where you got to do the research and not just guess at it. Because a lot of people are just like, I think this is right, but the data is there. And the nice thing about Keyword Planner is it'll give you hundreds of other keywords just from one keyword. I mean, the more you put in there, the better. Now try to make your own list first. Not just rely on the Keyword Planner to give you their ideas, but make a list of as many keywords as possible. Throw them into the Google Keyword Planner or other tools not paid for a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs or there's a bunch of other paid tools out there that are good, but Keyword Planner is from Google, so I like that one a little bit more. Yeah, the authority, right? Yeah, I use Semrush, for, for our stuff. I should get any keyword planner I've met in there in a while. That's hilarious. I'm getting rid of an S, and it makes that big of a difference on that side of things. what's the timeline in terms of all this stuff working today? In terms of, I mean, and I'll hear that from, from the brands that we work with. Right? And we don't do SEO, but we just kind of talk through all their marketing channels with them and figure out where influencer stuff might fit in. But I, I do get that question. How long does it take for SEO, to start working? What's your experience, today with, whether it's a personal injury attorney or, just a new business starting up. You start today, you're posting all that content. What type of timeline are we looking at? That one just varies depending on the competition, how competitive those keywords are, and really how much SEO you've done on your own website versus your competitors. The more competition you have, the more, what are called backlinks these websites probably have, and the more Backlinks you have, the tougher it's going to be because essentially it's kind of like a popularity contest. Google wants to see other websites talking about you. The more websites, that talk about you, the more popular Google sees you as and the higher they rank you. And what you need to do is build what are called backlinks. What is a backlink? Backlink is a clickable link from another website that points to your. So let's say you're reading an article on like the newyorktimes.com in there. It says Brandon Leibowitz and you click on it and it goes to my website. I would be getting a backlink from theneworktimes.com. the more websites that link out to you from sites that are related to what you're doing, the more trust and the more authority Google's going to give to you and the higher they are like you. And that really comes down to figuring out how many backlinks do you have using tools like Ahrefs or Moz or Semrush to look at your backlinks versus the competition. The more backlinks your competitors have, the more time it's going to take. Usually it takes about six months on average, but it could be faster and it could also take longer, just depending on how many backlinks you have versus the competition. Does link exchange stuff still work? do you have to be careful about that in terms of, hey, I want to build up some backlinks and the best way to get them is to kind of do some exchanges. But I know I got to be smart about it because I just can't have random sites. They got to be in my neighborhood. In terms of getting the backlinks coming my way, what are your thoughts in terms of that? In terms of ways, you know, white hat ways to go about the link building today, the best way is getting one way links inbound to you. Because if I link to you and you link to me, Google knows that we're just helping one another out and that becomes a reciprocal backlink and that really cancels it out. And what you want is just a website linking only to yours. And usually to do that you have to offer something free or of value. Just ask for a backlink. No one's gonna say yes. But if you offer something of value, like your time or maybe you're write a blog for them or you get an interview done on their website, that will usually get you backlinks. But you have to offer like if you're an E commerce website. You could offer product samples to influencers that have blogs and like, hey, I want to give you a product. If you write about it on your blog, usually they'll give you a backlink, but it's all about getting creative and using tools like Ahrefs or Moz or Semrush, one of those paid tools to look at your competitors backlinks and see exactly where all their backlinks are coming from. Because if they're on page one of Google, it's more than likely those backlinks that help them get there. And if you could build similar ones looking at their backlinks, that's going to help you get there too. So you can look at what are competitors and see are they doing like blogs or press releases or are they doing sponsorships or they join like a chamber of commerce? Do they join Yelp or MapQuest or whatever they've done? You could see exactly what they've done and go after the ones that come from sites that are related to what you're doing. Don't just grab every backlink because not every backlink is created equally. And what you want to do is find sites that are related to what you're doing and site setup authority. That's really the two more important things is relevancy and authority, not just going after any backlink because some actually do more harm than good. Yeah, I got you. Because the algorithms are Google smart up now to kind of ferret them out in terms of the difference. I guess getting back to my initial question then about AI, and this is more speculative I guess, but I'd love your opinion on it. When you've got a tool like Gemini or Search GBT coming out and they're deciding what's important. Sort of my theory was that they're going to use SEO concepts because what else is there for them to use? They'll have to go to like backlinks like, like you're mentioning and determine because they got to source their information from somewhere. And how do they source. Well, it's gotta be determined by authoritative sites which has to go off of the backlinks. have you thought about that? And just where do you see that going in terms of the AI stuff? Do you see them leaning on these SEO concepts that you're describing in terms of the backlinks and being like, well this is the future. It's not going to be, it's not actually going to be that different from today. You're going to still want These principles in place when these tools are rolling out there, in mass. Yep, that's kind of what I was thinking a couple or past month because a lot of people kept saying search GPT is coming out. And I'm always thinking, all right, how is AI working? It's just reading content. And, and if it's not looking at backlinks, how does it know what's real? And AI does those AI hallucinations where it makes up the answer if it doesn't know the answer. And Google's not gonna do that because I mean Google might say we don't know the answer, but I've never really seen that happen. And that's where we just gotta figure out like, how is AI gonna be used in the future? Is it just gonna be reading content? Because AI can write content. You could say, write me a hundred articles if you're a lawyer about personal injury law and write about every different type of law, any type of injury that could happen. Hit all the topical relevancy so you get all that content, interlink those pages together, have good like title tags and meta descriptions and header tags and do all the proper on page SEO. But all that stuff could be just coming from AI and it could be just those AI hallucinations. Google said we don't care who writes the content nowadays because they can't differentiate AI versus human. But as long as it offers value, it's accurate. That's what matters. And that usually comes down to backlinks kind of solidify content, saying, hey, this other website is looking to this blog post because they think it has some good information in there. But we'll have to see how these tools work. I don't think they've really talked about how their algorithm works, but we'll have to see and test. And that's really what SEO is all about, is testing and seeing what works. Because Google's not going to really tell you what works. But people done tests and see like, hey, putting keywords here or removing keywords here because Google thinks it's spammy. Let's do these tactics, let's try this out and see what works to just help get that lift in traffic. Interesting times. Yeah. In SEO land where all these moving parts and like you said, the only way really to know is to test, and to figure it out. So thanks so much for joining us, Brandon. This has been a real great conversation and SEO is always a hot topic. How can people find you and SEO optimizers and maybe contact you about a consultation or your courses or all the, products offering services that you, that you offer. I create a special gift for everybody and anyone that's listening. If you go to my website at s e o optimizers.com that's s e o O P T I M I Z E R s dot com, you can find that gift there. Along with my contact information and a bunch of classes I've done over the years. I've thrown them for free so you can see step by step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about. And also if they want a free website analysis, they could book some time on my calendar there as well for free. Perfect. Thanks Brandon. We will get the backlink to your gift site on the show notes also below the video here. So SEO optimizers.com gift gift to get Brandon's gift and to schedule time on his calendar. And again we'll get the link below so that they can like, whether you're watching this on YouTube or, or Spotify or, or wherever, we'll get that, out there so you can connect with Brandon. Brandon, thanks again. This has been really fun conversation. Thank you for having me on.