Mastering SEO: How to Get Found Online Without Spending on Ads with Brandon Leibowitz

The mystery of SEO continues to baffle many business owners despite its incredible power to drive free, targeted traffic to websites. In this enlightening conversation with SEO expert Brandon Leibowitz, we unpack the fundamentals of search engine optimization in a way that's refreshingly accessible and immediately applicable.

Brandon shares a startling revelation about how changing just one letter in your keyword strategy could potentially increase your traffic tenfold. Using the example of "personal injury lawyer" versus "personal injury lawyers," he demonstrates how simple research can dramatically impact your visibility. The conversation demystifies keyword research through free tools like Google Keyword Planner and clever tactics like analyzing competitor strategies and utilizing Google's autocomplete feature.

Beyond keywords, we explore the critical role of backlinks—those digital votes of confidence from other websites that signal trustworthiness to Google. Brandon emphasizes that modern backlink building is about quality rather than quantity, and shares practical ways to acquire these valuable links through relationships and value-offering, including podcast appearances, guest blogging, and providing expert commentary. He explains why examining competitor backlinks can reveal opportunities you might otherwise miss.

What about SEO in the age of AI? Despite concerns that tools like ChatGPT might make traditional SEO obsolete, Brandon explains why optimization remains crucial. As long as people are searching somewhere—whether on Google, YouTube, or through AI interfaces—there are ways to improve visibility. For those looking to optimize for AI discovery, Brandon recommends focusing on answering common questions people ask about your topics.

Whether you're a business owner, content creator, or marketing professional, this conversation offers both foundational knowledge and advanced insights to help you harness the power of organic search. The most valuable takeaway? Patience. Unlike paid advertising, SEO is an investment that builds over time, rewarding those who consistently apply best practices with sustainable, free traffic that doesn't disappear when the ad budget runs out.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Brandon: SEO Expert Introduction
• 1:31 What Is SEO? Free Traffic Explained
• 4:07 Keyword Research Strategies
• 8:27 Building Quality Backlinks
• 18:13 SEO in the Age of AI
• 24:38 Final Tips and Free Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello there and welcome to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with you, with Brandon, and Brandon is an expert in SEO. Ooh, the very mysterious, but not really. But a lot of business owners seems to find it very mysterious SEO, and so, before I butcher what you do, brandon, I'm going to go ahead and let you take it away. Please, let us know who you are and who you help.

Speaker 2: 0:34

My name is Brandon Leibowitz and I help business owners or anyone with a website get more traffic to your website website get more traffic to your website. So if you have a website and you're looking to get more visibility and exposure to it, I make sure that people find you whenever they're searching, whether it's on Google or Yelp or Amazon or YouTube or ChatGPT, anywhere that someone's searching. There's ways to try to optimize to help you rank higher without spending money on ads. That's really the main goal of search engine optimization is to get you that visibility, but without having to pay for each click, because you can spend money to get up there. But those ads can be. They get expensive over time. Where it could be, you have to pay for each click. Each click could be a couple cents per click. It could be a couple dollars. I've seen it be a couple hundred dollars for one visitor. That's where it gets a little pricey.

Speaker 1: 1:33

But SEO is going to get you that free traffic? Yeah, absolutely, and I always encourage my clients. You know, throw money behind what works. And so we figure out what works through organic methods like SEO. And so if a keyword is working really, really well, then now we can superpower it with some ads and we don't have to experiment right, Because what gets really expensive is the experimentation with the ads. And then now we run into problems because you're like oh no, I didn't know that this was this plus this, plus all these other factors come in, and then at the end of're like, oh no, I didn't know that this was this plus this was all these other factors come in, and then at the end of the month, yeah, there's a lot of money in ads, but we don't have to go down that route. So can you give me a quick rundown? You know how do you explain SEO to your clients. Like what, what is it?

Speaker 2: 2:22

It is getting you on Google. Primarily, when you search, there's ads at the top. Those are all paid ads. Right below the ads are the organic, those free listings, and SEO is really getting you in those free listings on Google. But there's lots of other places that people search, so it doesn't just have to be Google. It could be anywhere that someone is searching. There's ways to try to optimize and make sure you get that visibility, because you want to try to be everywhere, but you don't need to be everywhere. You just need to be where your audience is and that's where you got to figure out are they on Google, are they on Instagram? Are they on YouTube? Are they on listening to TV, are they on print media? Where are they? And that's where you got to get in front of them at the right moments and that's where I try to help out with seo trying to get you in front of the people at the right moment, organically, without paying for those ads.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Yes, um, one of my like, I've had several people you know, you know as someone who is, you know, has taken courses in seo and SEO and used it and helped my clients get found. But they want to know the way that they phrase. It is like, okay, I want to put now, now that I have my website, I want to put SEO on it, and I try to explain to them. It's not like an additional thing. It's not like. It's not like something that you add on top. It's not like. It's not like something that that you add on top. It's not like this program that you just put on top of everything else. It's the keywords that you use in the content that you're sharing.

Speaker 1: 3:54

So can you talk to me a little bit about? You know what those keywords are and maybe if you have any tools to help us? You know, cause that's where the magic happens. Right Is finding those keywords and then using them. So do you have any tools to help us? You know, because that's where the magic happens, right Is finding those keywords and then using them. So do you have any tips for keywords as far as SEO goes.

Speaker 2: 4:12

Yeah, no, there's lots of ways to do keyword research but, like you're saying, seo it's not something you just do. You have to build it up over time because Google just doesn't trust anybody and getting Google to trust you does not happen overnight. There's no shortcut with that. Paid ads will get you that immediate traction, but SEO to get Google to trust you enough to rank you takes time of you just constantly showing them, sending them trust signals, which is usually done through third-party sites mentioning you, building backlinks. But keywords are very important because once Google trusts you, then they're going to look at those keywords and try to figure out what keywords are you targeting on your website. And there's free and paid tools that could help with keyword research. There's a free tool from Google and it's free and it's from Google and we're trying to rank on Google and I would recommend the Google Keyword Planner. But you could pay for tools if you want to buy a tool such as like Moz or Ahrefs or SEMrush or there's so many paid tools out there. But the Google Keyword Planner is a great starting point where you could put a keyword in there or put a list of keywords and it'll give you the search volume how many people search for that keyword every single month. So you can figure out should I use a singular or plural or synonym, because changing one letter could have a big impact on how many people search for that keyword.

Speaker 2: 5:34

One of my clients they're a personal injury law firm in Los Angeles. They want to rank for personal injury lawyers, which gets, or a personal injury lawyer, which gets, 20,000 searches a month, but the plural, personal injury lawyers gets 200,000 searches every single month. Just by changing one letter they could get 10 times more traffic. And a lot of people skip over keyword research because they don't know what to do and there's lots of tools out there. Every platform is different. If you're going to be on YouTube or Amazon or wherever you're trying to rank, there's different tools out there. But SEO is primarily for Google and the Google cured plan is a great starting point.

Speaker 1: 6:17

That is. That's an awesome tip. Yeah, and, like you said, if you're looking to rank on Google, you know what better place to go than you know Google and be like hey, what are people searching for? One thing that I have told my clients to do in the past is use the, the autofill feature on Google and start typing in you know the keywords that they're looking for and see what does Google suggest. Have you done that before in the past? Has that worked for you?

Speaker 2: 6:49

Yep, when you search on Google there's searches related to at the bottom as well. Also the autocomplete. You can look at your competitors. The blue clickable link is called an SEO title tag and that's where everyone else is putting keywords. So you could quickly look at your competitors and see if everyone's using a singular and you were thinking of using a plural but everyone on page one is using a singular version of that keyword. Then I'd probably go with the singular version. You could still double check it and I'd recommend double checking everything with the keyword planner or a tool to see search volume.

Speaker 2: 7:20

But you quickly get an overview of see what's going out there or what the competition's doing, what other people are using, and get ideas quickly and then see if they make sense and if they're good, incorporate them into your strategy. But if not, skip them over a lot of them if they're not good. Keywords from that auto-complete. Those are usually good blog post topics because they might not be mentioning a product or service that you're offering, but it's related to that and you can lead people in and then try to eventually, after they read that blog post, let them know and, by the way, I offer this product or service. It's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's similar and it might get them to then want to convert.

Speaker 1: 8:00

That's awesome, and I was going to ask you can you if you could give us some examples of ways that we can incorporate keywords? And blog post is a great, you know that's a great starting point. So can you give us a few other examples of where we can add our keywords or where we can use these keywords? You know?

Speaker 2: 8:17

like just in general the content on your pages is the most important place to put it. Every single page needs to have text and the more text you put on each page, the happier Google and search engines are going to be in sprinkling those keywords throughout that content on each page. Depending on what page or what keywords you're targeting for each page, they should all target different keywords. That way you don't cannibalize and become your own competitor. But adding keywords to your content doesn't require any coding and that's one of the more important places to put it. But if you want to get into the coding title tags and meta descriptions and header tags and schema and alt tags and making sure all the coding places have those keywords as well to help just assign relevancy but if you're not tech savvy, just add more text and that alone is going to make search engines very, very happy.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Yes, one of my favorite places to tell my clients to put your keywords. You mentioned the alt tags, like in the image descriptions and the image alt tags, because people also use Google image search and if your keywords are not on the images, google doesn't know to show that to people, and so that's one of my favorite little tidbits to add. Do you have any other favorite spots that you like that people tend to miss when it comes to keywords that you like to let them know? This is a great area.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Also with the backlinks. So when you're building backlinks on other people's websites, if you can get the clickable, the text, the anchor text it's called to be, to include keywords, that helps out a lot. So now Google sees another third party site has your targeted keywords with a clickable link that points to your website and then you have those keywords on your page. That helps even more with the relevancy side of things. You just don't want to overdo that, but if you get a couple backlinks with your keywords in that anchor text, that helps out. That's also very difficult to get and control what other people do when they link out to you. But if you can influence those backlinks, that is very, very helpful.

Speaker 1: 10:26

That is awesome, and you did mention backlinks, and backlinks are a big deal. Like you said, it's kind of like another website's giving your website a nod Like this is a safe place to go. Like I recommend this website, so can you give us some examples of how we can build up backlinks? Yeah, in general, for our website.

Speaker 2: 10:51

I like to look at my competition and see, just like with the keywords. Let's look at your competition. Let's also look at your competitors for their backlinks and using tools you have to pay for them. There's no free tools for backlinks. The more popular ones would be Ahrefs or Moz or SEMrush. They also do keyword research, which is nice. A lot of these tools are multiple tools all in one. So if you buy one for the backlinks, you're also going to get keyword research and be able to track your rankings to see what position you're in month over month and week over week.

Speaker 2: 11:24

And the backlinks are very, very important because now we can look at your competitors and see who's on page one of Google for your keywords.

Speaker 2: 11:32

Take those websites, put them in these tools and look at the backlinks and try to replicate the ones that are relevant and authoritative, because you don't want to go after every backlink. It used to be a numbers game. Now it's a quality over quantity with the backlinks, and quality backlinks to Google mean they're from sites that are related to what you're doing and have some authority and trust, and competitors aren't always going to have the best backlinks. Sometimes they might have some weird ones or sketchy looking ones, and if so, I would skip it over and just try to find the ones that make sense, that look trustworthy, look like they have some relevancy, as long as it's somewhat related, like I'm an SEO company. I'm not going to get SEO companies to link out to me because we're all competitors, but I could find other websites about marketing, about business, about entrepreneurship, about traditional marketing. As long as it's somewhat related to me, that's what Google wants to see.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Yes, Is another way of getting backlinks would that? Would be like like what you're doing now as a, as a guest expert, your guest speaker on my podcast. So is that a more active way of getting backlinks? Because, right like now, your links are going to live on my website because you're, you know, on my podcast, and so does that count too?

Speaker 2: 12:58

Yep. So there's lots of ways to build backlinks and usually when you're looking at your competitors, you're going to see that they might've started blogging on a lot of people's websites or press releases, or they're doing interviews, or they're being a guest on people's podcasts, or they're sponsoring events and trade shows or teaching classes and whatever it is. You can reverse, engineer and see exactly what strategies your competitors are using. But in terms of getting new backlinks, you're not going to be able to get everything that your competitors are getting. So then you have to start building new ones and doing your own outreach and kind of just getting that and pushing that needle and just reaching out to other websites that are related to what you're doing and try to figure out how can I get a backlink?

Speaker 2: 13:41

Because if you just ask someone for a backlink, they're probably going to say no, because they have to go in, they have to update their website. They might not know how to do that. They might have to ask their web designer or webmaster, and that's going to take time. To ask their web designer or webmaster, and that's going to take time. They're like why, what's in it for me? But if you offer something of value, then they're going to be a little bit more open to it. So if you offer content or blogs or your time for being interviewed or being a guest on podcasts and they publish you on their own website with a link back to your your website, then you're getting that backlink.

Speaker 1: 14:17

That's perfect Cause. When to the to, to the, to the regular person listening, maybe they haven't started their podcast or they're just starting their website we might be talking about things that they're like Whoa, like a backlink. That sounds like something else that I need. Like I didn't even know I needed that, like how do I find a backlink? But the way that you just explained it is beautiful because it's so simple, right, like it's not, it's not this random thing that we're just putting our website on some other website.

Speaker 1: 14:48

It's when you're a guest, when you're a guest blogger, when you provide graphics, when you are a guest speaker, when you get PR, when you do you know, summits and you're a guest on a summit, like all of those things. As long as they're linking back to your website, those count as backlinks. So they're just regular links, but they lead back to your page and so they have a fancy name called backlinks, and I remember that was something that was very confusing to me. I was like, well, what's the difference between a regular link and a backlink? And I was like there is no difference, except that it's it's, you know, like from website to website. And so, yeah, I love the way you explained it. It was just very clear and very easy to understand.

Speaker 2: 15:30

No, no, that is trying to simplify things, because I've been teaching classes since 2013. And my first classes were very complicated and confusing and I realized simplify it all because SEO gets very technical, like with the backlinks. What I talked about is important, but that just kind of scratches the surface on how to build the backlinks and how to make sure you have the right anchor text ratio and do you follow and no follow on all these technical things. But the most important thing is just try to just build good quality backlinks. Don't overthink it, don't worry about all these little technical nuances, but just focus on is this site related to what I'm doing? If so, then I would try to reach out to them and build that relationship and it's kind of like digital PR, but really for Google to see published on other people's websites.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Yeah, I love it. And for those of you that are listening, that you're authors, that you're coaches, that you're guest speakers, you probably have a bunch of backlinks and you might not even know it, just with all the work that you do, because that's kind of what we do every day. And when you are building these new audiences, right, you're borrowing audiences, just like Brandon's borrowing my audience right now, and he has credibility with my audience, because I said, hey, brandon's a cool dude, I'm gonna have him on my podcast, listen to what he has to say. And because we have a relationship, right, you, my audience, the people listening, you're gonna be like I'm gonna listen to what brandon has to say, and it kind of works the same way, but just with links, um, and so that's kind of cool that it happens. You know online and offline, um.

Speaker 1: 17:06

So can you tell us a little bit about how you? Um, how did you stumble in? You mentioned it a little bit, but how did you stumble into SEO? Can you tell us a little bit about that journey? Because SEO is just, it's so unique and it is so technical and so complicated. So I feel like there's just a good story there, and are your books hanging upside down?

Speaker 2: 17:33

I've got a floating bookshelf because-. That is pretty cool do a lot of the podcasts as a guest and the background was kind of plain for a while, so got some bookshelves and got to give it some color.

Speaker 2: 17:47

But yeah, it was too plain before and I'm writing a book about being a guest on people's podcasts and always talk about the background and making sure it's good and looks nice and looks professional and almost done with that book and it's all about the value of being a guest on other people's podcasts and getting those backlinks and getting social media content and subject matter expertise and all these other things which will be coming out soon all these other things which will be coming out soon. But just fell into the world of SEO back in 2007 after I got my degree in business marketing and one of the first jobs I was offered out of school was doing digital marketing SEO and I didn't really know much about it. They didn't really teach you that in school and I told the company that I said don't worry, we're new to this as well and we're going to learn with you and take you to different workshops and seminars and classes and did that for a few months and just realized that everyone is probably going to have a website. This is back in 2007.

Speaker 2: 18:48

And SEO is just a way to get free traffic because back then I was helping out with their social media, doing some paid ads, doing email marketing. All that stuff works. Seo is just free traffic. And I thought who doesn't want free traffic? And that's why I just decided to stick with that, working at different advertising agencies as a director of SEO, and before work and after work and on my lunch breaks I'd work on my own company and eventually I was able to build that up to be able to quit my job and been doing this ever since, just helping people really tap into that free traffic from Google.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Now that is amazing and I love how the evolution of technology because since 2007, you know like well, you know like it's it's light years where we, where we are like we couldn't have imagined having this conversation, you know, face to face, like this back then. But now, in our age of AI, where everything is AI and you did mention this, so I want, I want to come back to it Can you talk to me about the importance? Because you know some people are like SEO is dead because AI, but we still need to use SEO in AI. So can you tell me about a little bit, about that pivot and how you know it's still very relevant, even with AI out there.

Speaker 2: 20:09

Yeah, as long as people are searching somewhere, then there's ways to try to optimize and try to get that visibility, whether it is on Amazon, even YouTube, yelp I'm helping to rank you higher on there, so it just depends where you're searching.

Speaker 2: 20:26

And as long as people are still searching, then there's going to be ways to optimize, putting keywords on your website to help chat GPT or whoever's looking at it read that code and better understand what these pages are about. We'll have to figure out how they start ranking their algorithms. All these new large language models are going to be different, whether it's perplexity or chat GPT and Gemini and Claude, and just never ending new ones that keep coming out. So just trying to figure out what's going to happen Is Google's going to take over and just keep dominating, or chat TPT going to take over, or what's going to happen and it's kind of that unknown where, just trying to figure out or just trying to stay up to date with it all and just trying to make sure that you're shown everywhere which in the past that's always kind of the best practice is make sure you're showing up on Google, but also Bing and Yahoo and DuckDuckGo and whatever other search engine people are using. Now we've got to also accommodate for the AI.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Do you have any tips for people who do want to be found through AI, like any quick SEO tips? You know as far as getting found through AI, so like the AI can suggest you when people are searching for that usually questions and are like sentences versus just like keywords is how people usually search on google.

Speaker 2: 21:46

but with voice search and everything like that, it's become more sentences. And if you try to find out what sentences or questions people are commonly asking, you just go to google and search for your keyword you'll also see a section that says people also ask and these are all common questions that people frequently ask related to that keyword that if you could incorporate those onto your website and answer them, that will help you get like voice search and Siri and Alexa and also AI. It's a lot of that, also Google's feature snippet and the AI overviews and all that is really just having. If you can find out what questions people commonly ask and then answer it in your own perspective in a few sentences or a paragraph, then potentially you'll start showing up in there. But lots of content has to be helpful content. Ai could help write content, but then it's kind of like the never ending cycle. If it just rewrites content that's done with AI hallucinations and makes it all up. So just write for the reader and offer value and then hopefully that will get all picked up.

Speaker 1: 22:47

I love that and I think that it's important to note that. What exactly what you said is, if it's all AI content that's coming out, it will eventually cannibalize itself and it's not really going to make much sense anymore, and so it's very fatalistic to be like, oh, ai is taking over, that's it, like there's no more writing, because AI depends on our original stories, our original research, our ideas to be able to duplicate. Right, because all it is is a large language model, it uses language. So it's very important that we stay at the forefront of writing, of telling stories, of recording podcast episodes, you know, because when the dust settles, right, there's always a technology and then it gets very exciting and then it kind of settles. And you know, just the same way that the washing machine was introduced, there's a big hoopla and then, kind of like, now there's washing machines everywhere, right, and so I feel like it's kind of like that with AI.

Speaker 1: 23:50

But I think it's very important for us to keep the humanity in it and to keep writing, to keep sharing with each other, to keep telling stories, and then SEO is how we can find each other, how your audience can find you, and it's so powerful, like you said, because you can start for free. Like you can use social media to get found on Google, because Google shows TikTok videos, google shows Reddit threads, you know, and so when people search, even if you don't have a website, you can still get found, no matter really what you're using, as long as you are creating content. You have to be creating content, you know, and then using keywords and all that other stuff. So, yeah, this has been so helpful, so amazing. Brandon, you mentioned that you had a gift for the listeners, so can you tell us a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 24:43

Yeah, so I create a special gift for everybody. If they go to my website at seoptimizerscom forward slash gift. They can find that there, along with my contact information and classes I've done over the years I've thrown up for free so you could see step by step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about. And also, if they want a free website analysis, I'm happy to check out the website from an SEO point of view and they can book some time for free on my calendar there as well.

Speaker 1: 25:11

Cool, and that link will be down below, as well as a bunch of his social media, right Like we were just talking about. I know that we're going to have different ways that you can follow, brandon, so check down below in the show notes for that. And now, before we sign off, final tip what's like? That big SEO tip like the, you know, the one that gives your clients their biggest aha moment?

Speaker 2: 25:37

the one that gives your clients their biggest aha moment. Usually it's. The patience side of things with SEO is sticking with it and not just getting discouraged after a few months if you're not seeing traction, because it does take time. Seo is not immediate and, depending on the competition of those keywords, they could take six months or longer sometimes, or shorter too, if you have low competition keywords. But sticking with it and just looking for those little incremental growths, that's what SEO is all about. Sometimes they'll just go viral and just shoot up, but in general just want to see yourself moving up, looking at google analytics or google search console to track your progress. But stick with it and keep working with it, and google is going to keep rewarding you over time with more traffic.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Yes, absolutely. And all of this works on Google, on Pinterest, on YouTube, on all the social medias, anywhere where somebody is searching TikTok, chat, gpt, doesn't matter. Listen to this episode again. It is bare bones Like these are the fundamentals. So listen to this episode again. It is bare bones Like these are the fundamentals. So listen to this episode again, take notes, because everything Brandon's giving you is absolute gold in this episode, and be sure to go check out his free gifts and resources that are available to help you get found for free by your ideal clients without having to pay for ads. So yay, that is awesome. Thank you so much, brandon. This has been incredible, and thank you guys for joining us. We will catch you guys on the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast.

Speaker 2: 27:03

Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Thank you.