The Truth About Backlinks Still Matters

In this week’s episode of The Breakout Growth Podcast Sean Ellis and Ethan Garr chat with Kevin Indig, who at the time of the interview was the Director of SEO at Shopify. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an important growth driver for startups, but it is an easy channel to misunderstand and get wrong.  We wanted to talk to someone who is best-in-class in this field to separate truth from fiction and find out how growth leaders can support, leverage, and embrace SEO in their businesses. 

Fortunately, Kevin brought his “A” game to the conversation and did a great job of demystifying SEO for our listeners. He explains why SEO is a must-have for some companies, but just a nice-to-have for others.  Then he describes why, when SEO is a necessary channel for growth, companies should invest early and heavily to maximize their potential. 

In the past, SEO could feel very “hacky” and there were definitely a lot of bad actors in the space.  Kevin shows us why today’s SEO is won with a deep focus on delivering value, why it needs to be validated like any other channel, and why elements like backlinks continue to be important. 

While you shouldn’t expect to leave this conversation as an SEO expert, you will very likely be in a much better place to support, guide, and set up your organization for SEO success after you hear Kevin share his knowledge and experience.  This is one of our more directly practical discussions and one we really enjoyed.  

So click that play button and jump in with Sean and Ethan as we look to better understand how to drive growth through Search Engine Optimization with Kevin Indig. 

The Breakout Growth Podcast is also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-K_CY4-IrZ_auEIs0j97zA/featured

We discussed:

* The two dimensions of SEO at Shopify (04:09)

* Who wins with SEO: Aggregators versus Integrators (07:05)

* Misconceptions and constants in a murky world (18:49)

* Practical implementation; how to get started in SEO (34:39)

* Building SEO into a growing organization (36:26)

* Differentiation; why this is a channel that requires specific effort (50:20)

And much, much, more . . .