Ethan Smith is the CEO of Graphite, a boutique growth agency that’s helped companies like MasterClass, Thumbtack, Robinhood, Medium, and Honey develop and execute their SEO strategies. SEO is one of the least-understood levers for growth, while also one with the biggest payoff. This episode is a true master class on all things SEO. Ethan shares a wealth of information, including when you should begin investing in SEO, how to build your SEO growth engine, how to build your SEO team. He explains the difference between topics and keywords, shares exact rules of thumb and tools that will help you be successful in developing and implementing your own SEO strategy, and also goes deep into how to advocate for resources for SEO.
Dec 4, 2022·edited Dec 4, 2022Liked by Lenny Rachitsky
Another phenomenal podcast. This is just so dense and rich! Love the specificity about AI, etc. Lenny, you did such a good job of refining and articulating Ethan's points. Would LOVE to see a follow up devoted exclusively to how to prep for SEO before you're getting 1k visits a day / building backlinks, authority, etc. For those of you who haven't listened to the whole things, there are some treasures aka "nuggets" at the end :)
This one definitely resonates. We had to build an internal tool to handle topic clustering too. We prioritize based on value not volume though. Love seeing other folks building their own internal tech to solve problems too!
This podcast is incredible. Reverse engineering of google algorithm/ SEO is difficult. Ethan clearly knows a tons about it and I got so much values out of this podcast. Thanks to Lenny as well for his great questions
This was a good podcast. I came across this when my teammate shared a LinkedIn post by Ethan on SEO content creation with the help of AI. Once I came to know that AI content gets flagged as plagiarism, my process went something like this:
- use Bard/Gemini to create a blog post (I give it a theme, sections with bullet points of what I want)
- use a GPT 4 (not chatGPT) prompt to edit the whole thing as per my audience and content goal
- take 30-45 min to edit the final piece myself, add keywords, do text alignment as per SEO guidelines, insert photos, add backlinks and publish.
Thanks Modulo! Yes good question re how to plan for SEO with a brand new site. There *are* ways, but it's a bit harder. The simple answer is to get traction on other channels via paid advertising and traditional PR. There are other ways such as doing viral content for link building (e.g. Thumbtack Small Business Friendliness survey), acquiring a domain with existing authority, working with a PR firm, working with a premium link building firm like Stacker.com, etc. There are lots of other unconventional strategies you can pursue.
This is the best podcast episode about SEO I ever listened to.
Lenny, Ethan, thank you very much for this long and satisfying episode!
Another phenomenal podcast. This is just so dense and rich! Love the specificity about AI, etc. Lenny, you did such a good job of refining and articulating Ethan's points. Would LOVE to see a follow up devoted exclusively to how to prep for SEO before you're getting 1k visits a day / building backlinks, authority, etc. For those of you who haven't listened to the whole things, there are some treasures aka "nuggets" at the end :)
This one definitely resonates. We had to build an internal tool to handle topic clustering too. We prioritize based on value not volume though. Love seeing other folks building their own internal tech to solve problems too!
A very useful episode for me, thanks guys!
This podcast is incredible. Reverse engineering of google algorithm/ SEO is difficult. Ethan clearly knows a tons about it and I got so much values out of this podcast. Thanks to Lenny as well for his great questions
This was a good podcast. I came across this when my teammate shared a LinkedIn post by Ethan on SEO content creation with the help of AI. Once I came to know that AI content gets flagged as plagiarism, my process went something like this:
- use Bard/Gemini to create a blog post (I give it a theme, sections with bullet points of what I want)
- use a GPT 4 (not chatGPT) prompt to edit the whole thing as per my audience and content goal
- take 30-45 min to edit the final piece myself, add keywords, do text alignment as per SEO guidelines, insert photos, add backlinks and publish.
It does help to use AI and save time.
Thanks Modulo! Yes good question re how to plan for SEO with a brand new site. There *are* ways, but it's a bit harder. The simple answer is to get traction on other channels via paid advertising and traditional PR. There are other ways such as doing viral content for link building (e.g. Thumbtack Small Business Friendliness survey), acquiring a domain with existing authority, working with a PR firm, working with a premium link building firm like Stacker.com, etc. There are lots of other unconventional strategies you can pursue.