search engine optimization

also referred to as: seo

56 statements across 49 episodes · 31 bullish · 3 bearish · 46 people on the record · first statement Sep 26, 2016 by Gavin Zuchlinski · across every show →

Everything said about search engine optimization, oldest first

Sep 26, 2016 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zuchlinski gained Acuity's first paying user in one week via SEO
“During the first year I did zero marketing and within the only that I really did was a little bit of SEO and within a week somebody had signed up and actually paid me.”
Gavin Zuchlinski Sep 26, 2016 ▶ 4:11 EP 429: SaaS w/ 16,000 Customers, 2007 Launched to Help Schedule, with CEO Gavin Zuchlinski
Sep 29, 2016 positive
Disclosure
Ledgard: SEO from blog content is KickOffLabs' biggest customer draw
“One is the one is promoting content that we do, which has actually just been our biggest draw is just the SEO of the content we produce on the, on, on the blog and the website.”
Josh Ledgard Sep 29, 2016 ▶ 6:07 EP 432: Boostrapped SaaS Hits $75k MRR, Viral Campaigns, 1000 Customers with KickOffLabs CEO Josh Ledgard
Nov 1, 2016 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
RocketReach acquires 100 percent of its users through free SEO
“Most of our, in fact, like a hundred percent of our user acquisition now, Is through completely through SEO and it's free.”
Amit Shanbhag Nov 1, 2016 ▶ 9:56 EP: 465: 120,000 Customers, About $200k MRR, $10M 2017 ARR Goal with RocketReach.co CEO Amit Shanbhag
Nov 30, 2016
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Shakhnovich: PDFfiller manages 60M keywords and 4M monthly visitors
“We run sixty million keywords on top of SEO, SEM, And other digital marketing channels with tens of millions of landing pages that brings about four million people to the website on a monthly basis.”
Borya (Boris) Shakhnovich Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 7:06 EP 494: PDFFiller $10M+ Revenue, 200k Customers To make Document Signing/Management Easier with CEO Borya Shakhnovich
Feb 4, 2017 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benson: Word of mouth, SEO, and SEM are Badger Maps' top acquisition channels
“The biggest way they find this is, is through just word of mouth. That's the, we track that as being our, the best way that we find people. Second best is is SEO. Third best is SEM.”
Steve Benson Feb 4, 2017 ▶ 9:39 EP 560: Badger Maps Does $1.2M in 2016, $120k MRR, Looking to 3x with CEO Steven Benson
Mar 10, 2017 bullish
Disclosure
Klipfolio will focus marketing spend on SEO rather than paid advertising
“And then from the marketing side, we're actually not going to be pouring a lot of money into paid advertising. We're actually going to put a lot of effort into the content strategy, and we've had tons and tons of luck, and we know other small and mid-sized Foc…”
Allan Wille Mar 10, 2017 ▶ 9:07 EP 594: Klipfolio Raises $12M on $45M+ PreMoney Valuation with 7000 Customers, $500k+ in MRR Helping With Business Dashboards with CEO ALlan Wille
Apr 12, 2017 positive
Insight
Mader: Businesses Must Assign Fully Loaded CAC to SEO Content Campaigns
“Very often people say, is there, you can only assign CAC to something on which you're spending money, like an advertising campaign, but you should also do the same thing on your SEO campaigns. Who's actually writing the content.”
Mark Mader Apr 12, 2017 ▶ 16:45 EP 627: SmartSheet $70M Raised, $80M ARR, Helping 65,000 Customers with Project Management with CEO Mark Mader
Mar 27, 2018 positive
Insight
Hartert: JotForm customer growth is driven by problem-focused SEO
“So what we found is by dressing specific challenges that companies face and using that as our foundation on the SEO, that's where we're finding the growth is coming from because people have a particular problem that they're trying to solve and they pop it up a…”
Steve Hartert Mar 27, 2018 ▶ 7:42 976 How JotForm Passed 3m Users, $45m in ARR Without Raising Capital
Apr 2, 2018 neutral
Disclosure
Cirrus Insight cuts back conference marketing to focus on paid spend and SEO
“Historically, we've done a ton of conferences, so lots of traveling, lots of pressing the flesh, meeting folks on the conference floor, which has been great. I think toward the end of last year, we started to do less of that. There seemed to be diminishing ret…”
Brandon Bruce Apr 2, 2018 ▶ 16:28 982 Marketing and Sales Tech? He'll Acquire You!
Aug 19, 2018
Disclosure
Webinar Ninja paused all paid ads for six months to focus on SEO
“We actually have stopped doing paid ads for the last six months.”
Omar Zenhom Aug 19, 2018 ▶ 11:17 1121 Webinar King? "We grew 180% yoy Bootstrapped to $7.1m in ARR"
Dec 31, 2018
Disclosure
Goenka: GoPBN spends $2,500 monthly on SEO and $1,500 on content
“So currently we are spending approximately around 2500 dollars on SEO and approximately around a 1500 dollars on content that we draft every, every month.”
Udit Goenka Dec 31, 2018 ▶ 7:34 1255 How This 27 Year Old Went from $0 to $70k in MRR in 6 months
Feb 16, 2019
Insight
Real estate portals need public data to index 110M+ properties for SEO
“To keep your brand around and keep it relevant. You have to have really good SEO and being able to index What would be five million properties versus a hundred and, you know, ten, hundred and twenty million properties. You have to have good public record data …”
Josh Fraser Feb 16, 2019 ▶ 5:28 1302 Property Data API Using Cash Cow to Fuel SaaS Growth
Mar 6, 2019 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Over 80% of Webflow customers come through organic channels
“More than 80% of our customers are still coming through word of mouth SEO, things like that.”
Vlad Magdalin Mar 6, 2019 ▶ 12:20 1320 $14m in ARR on $2.9m Raised Inventing New Visual Way to Code Service 3000 Freelancers
May 29, 2019 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Half of Credo's clients seeking marketing agencies are acquired via SEO
“Most of our, these clients looking to hire an agency come through SEO. Half of them come through SEO.”
John Doherty May 29, 2019 ▶ 9:47 1404 He was fired then went all in, now $30k/mo
Jun 3, 2019
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mathrubootham: Most Freshworks Leads Are Inbound via SEO and SEM
“So we have very little outbound calling but like majority of our leads are inbound and primarily through SEO, SEM”
Girish Mathrubootham Jun 3, 2019 ▶ 18:11 1409 $1.5B Freshworks To IPO: Growing 40% YoY, Passes $100M in ARR, $250M Raised, 150,000 Companies Using
Sep 12, 2019 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Russell: Checkli receives 50,000 monthly visitors purely through organic SEO
“We're getting tens of thousands of people. I mean, we get 50,000 People to our site every single month now, and I've never done one piece of marketing. I've never done anything. I just did SEO.”
Marvin Russell Sep 12, 2019 ▶ 19:23 1510 Would You Compete In a Super Fragmented Space like Checklists Apps?
Dec 4, 2019
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Phorest Ranks Number One for 700 Salon-Related Search Terms
“Yes, we rank number one for 700 different items around salons, so things like yeah, really quickly top Salon signs. I think is an example of one.”
Ronan Percival Dec 4, 2019 ▶ 6:00 1593 Why His SMB Churn is 6% When Everyone Elses is 12% doing $12m in ARR across 5000 Salon Owners
Dec 23, 2019 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Resource Guru drives most of its customer acquisition through organic SEO
“It's mostly through SEO. That's kind of how we started in the beginning.”
Andrew Rogoff Dec 23, 2019 ▶ 3:11 1612 How He Used SEO To Scale To $150k MRR In Team Time Management Space
May 29, 2020 neutral
Disclosure
Refersion Acquires Users Exclusively Through SEO and Content, Running Zero Ads
“No, there's no advertising. It's just SEO and content creation. We invest in content to kind of teach users how to use the software.”
Shibo Zhu May 29, 2020 ▶ 22:44 Refersion.com: Bootstrapped SaaS Doing $1.5m in Cash Flow
Jul 21, 2020 positive
Disclosure
SEO has been QuestionPro's core business driver for years
“A lot of our work is through SEO and you know, that's kind of, that has been our driver for our business for a long, long time.”
Vivek Bhaskaran Jul 21, 2020 ▶ 9:56 QuestionPro Hits $20m Revenue, $5m Cash In Bank, Selling 60% Of Company For $50m Next?
Aug 4, 2020 positive
Insight
SEO beats social ads for stigmatized automation tools
“If you try to advertise on social media, you get eaten up. These people are in the comments like, this is garbage, like you're a bot, like nobody likes you. But by ranking on SEO, you're just getting the people that are looking for the thing that you're alread…”
Jordan O'Connor Aug 4, 2020 ▶ 8:39 Closet.Tools 1 Man Show, $250k Profits, $360k in Revenue, Wow!
Aug 19, 2020 negative
Insight
Baird Hall notes audiogram tool SEO fails due to medical keyword overlap
“And I think that's because it's hard for people to articulate what these types of videos are because they're kind of hard to define. Audiogram is like the best kind of term that's come up, but The average person doesn't really know what an audiogram is or what…”
Baird Hall Aug 19, 2020 ▶ 16:40 Wavve Hits 9k For Audio Video Tool, $70k Monthly Profits!
Sep 13, 2020 positive
Insight
Dimitrov: Written blog posts outranked automated landing pages for NightEye
“Essentially writing the blog post and posting it just outranked everything else. The automatic stuff, it didn't work for us.”
Stanislav Dimitrov Sep 13, 2020 ▶ 10:20 NightEye App Lands 2500 Customers Using Unique SEO Fiverr Writing Stratetgy
Oct 17, 2020 positive
Insight
Patrick: Basic on-page SEO usually secures top-three rankings in rural markets
“H one tags, backlinks a good site structure, Google best practices when you build the site is going to go get you usually a top three.”
Patrick (Pat) Oct 17, 2020 ▶ 10:05 UBIweb Makes $1.7m/year Helping Plumbers Launch Websites
Nov 4, 2020 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Venture-backed competitors cannot defeat Penji with paid ads due to SEO
“I don't think that that would work because at the end of the day our SEO in particular and our just brand recognition is going to speak for itself.”
Jonathan Grzbowski Nov 4, 2020 ▶ 28:49 Penji Hits $4m Revenue Helping 1000 Customers With Unlimited Design Work
Jan 23, 2021 neutral
Disclosure
Racki: Proposify manages SEO across 12-person marketing team without dedicated staff
“We don't really have anyone dedicated to SEO, but our marketing team sort of factors SEO work into all the work that they're doing. It's about a 12, 12 person marketing team.”
Kyle Racki Jan 23, 2021 ▶ 18:15 Proposify Hits $7m Revenue Driving Expansion Into 200 Enterprise Accounts with $10k+ ACV's
Jan 28, 2021 negative
Insight
Indig: Brand visibility matters more for SEO than backlinks
“Backlinks, still important in SEO, but the overall perception and visibility of the brand is much more important, right?”
Kevin Indig Jan 28, 2021 ▶ 15:36 SEO Secrets from Shopify, G2 Head of SEO Strategy
Mar 7, 2021 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Koziej: Zety Grew to Almost 4M Monthly Visitors via SEO
“We focused on on SEO and we went from zero to almost four million users monthly. I mean, actually visitors. So so, so Zeddy went through this.”
Kuba Koziej Mar 7, 2021 ▶ 2:34 Resume Building Tool Hit $10m in Revenue, 100% YoY Growth after Acquired
Jul 6, 2021 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Organic search drives 40% of ConvertKit's new user accounts
“Search is really like just that anchor that we've, I don't know, gradually invested in over time. And now it pays off in a big way... Yeah, so it drives about 40% of all of our new accounts. Is from search.”
Nathan Berry Jul 6, 2021 ▶ 32:04 ConvertKit Raising at $196m Valuation?
Feb 21, 2022 neutral
Disclosure
Paré: DashThis must adopt sales because SEO landscape is growing competitive
“The business has grown because of SEO, because of inbound marketing. And now we have to switch to sales because the company, the market is getting competitive. It's a more of a competitive landscape.”
Antoine Paré Feb 21, 2022 ▶ 11:33 How this Reporting Tool Bootstrapped to $4.2m ARR, 2600 Customers
May 3, 2022
Insight
SEO success depends on competitor positioning rather than absolute content quality
“SEO is a game of not how good you are, but how everybody else is playing that game, really, right?”
Vivek Bhaskaran May 3, 2022 ▶ 6:19 He Acquired Companies through Whatsapp. Bootstrapped with $30m in revenue today.
Jun 4, 2022 positive
Disclosure
Over 90 percent of The Plot's customers come from organic SEO
“All of my, essentially, I'd say 90 to 95% of my customers are all SEO.”
Adrian Thompson Jun 4, 2022 ▶ 5:54 He'd sell this side project for $100,000. Is that the right price?
Jun 28, 2022 positive
Insight
Validate keyword intent via paid AdWords before writing organic SEO content
“So, first of all, I would recommend what we did is do AdWords, do paid search, find which keywords you rank for, find the competitiveness of those keywords on paid search, and then translate them over to content writing in organic, in the SEO search.”
Adam Sandman Jun 28, 2022 ▶ 5:20 He's the Real Unicorn: Bootstrapped to $10m, Owns 100%, Shares Profits with Team
Aug 24, 2022 positive
Insight
Knowledge Graphs Represent the New Sitemap for Modern SEO
“A knowledge graph is kind of a starting point for your AI strategy, but it's also important for Google because it represents a new sitemap. In terms of, you know, what are the concepts that matter for the business? How do we index them? What is the data, you k…”
Andrea Volpini Aug 24, 2022 ▶ 2:06 Bootstrapped SEO SaaS Hits $1.8m ARR, 28% Profits!
Nov 26, 2022 bullish
Disclosure
Geisel: PlanLeave is focusing most of its budget and attention on SEO
“SEO to be very candid. That's where most of the money's focused right now. And that's where most of the attention is focused.”
Andrew Geisel Nov 26, 2022 ▶ 10:37 He acquired a company for under $100k, lead engineer kept 20%, what's his GTM plan?
Jan 22, 2023
Insight
Latka: The primary moat for top QR code companies is SEO
“The flip side to this is the largest QR code companies in the world. Their number one moat is SEO. Like they have free QR code builder. Like they just fricking dominate.”
Nathan Latka Jan 22, 2023 ▶ 12:30 CMO at 106 year old Wine Brand Launches QR Code, Tipsy on ARPU!
Apr 26, 2023 positive
Insight
Suski: Startups should wait until $1M+ profit before investing in SEO
“If you're profitable over one million dollar a year, you do invest in SEO, so we just waited for some time.”
Lucjan Suski Apr 26, 2023 ▶ 6:41 How we grew to $15M with less than $1M marketing spend
May 12, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Siu: Marketers still spend hundreds of thousands monthly on SEO backlinks
“When it comes to links, people are like, oh, SEO's dead, links don't work anymore. I'm telling you, I have a lot of friends, they, they're spending like a couple 100,000 dollars a month on links because it works.”
Eric Siu May 12, 2023 ▶ 15:27 SaaS SEO Shortcuts That Drive $10M+ ARR, Building A Media Moat, & More!
May 12, 2023 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Siu: Associate's single SEO webpage generates $1M in annual pure profit
“Key thing is this page drives about a million dollars a year in profit, right? You can call it profit, you can call it a little different than EBITDA, it's pure profit though, ok? So I want to tell you a story around this, and I'll kind of dovetail it into a l…”
Eric Siu May 12, 2023 ▶ 8:15 SaaS SEO Shortcuts That Drive $10M+ ARR, Building A Media Moat, & More!
Oct 10, 2023 bullish
Insight
Volpini: Enriched knowledge graph data forms the foundation of an enterprise AI stack
“Of course, the data that you bring in, it's the first asset, but we have to improve it because otherwise there's no SEO value. But once we improve it, then there is not just SEO value. You have something way more valuable, which is you're going to build your A…”
Andrea Volpini Oct 10, 2023 ▶ 8:52 AI Tool Profited $70k Last Month on $195k of Revenue. Plans to hit $3m ARR By December then Raise $5m.
Oct 18, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Poyar: PLG companies acquire roughly 40% of users via organic search
“When we look at how PLG companies acquire users it tends to be through organic search and SEO, that represents about 40% of new users, and then product viral loops, right, product invitations that's about 16%, and then you've got paid marketing, partnerships, …”
Kyle Poyar Oct 18, 2023 ▶ 6:05 How to Grow Faster with $0 CAC
Jan 2, 2024 positive
Insight
Vandenberghe: Chili Piper growth is driven by virality over SEO
“So it's more the viral aspect than the SEO that's working for us. SEO, to be a candidate, I think we can do better, and we get back to it next year.”
Nicolas Vandenberghe Jan 2, 2024 ▶ 19:51 How to Double Your Company From $16m to $30m Revenue Using Multiple Product Lines with Chilipiper CEO
May 16, 2024 positive
Insight
Martin: Prioritize Marketing Channels by SEO, Paid Ads, Then Email
“Do SEO, paid ads, and email in that order. If your CMO tells you to do anything different, they don't know what they're talking about.”
Liam Martin May 16, 2024 ▶ 13:03 13 Lessons I Learned Bootstrapping to $20m in Revenues
Jun 13, 2024
Insight
Lauris: One-to-one link exchanges are dumb compared to circular link networks
“It's really dumb to do, like, one-on-one the same week or the same day, link exchange, but you build networks, and then you build circles that, you know, I give backlink to you give backlink to someone else, you give a little this, and we do it in circles.”
Rytis Lauris Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 12:04 $50m Bootstrapped CEO Shares His First SEO Hire, Growth Tactics and Playbook
Jun 13, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Omnisend treats every single website page as an SEO page
“Every page on our website is an SEO page. There can't be like, you know, SEO pages and other pages. Every page, every landing page, every product page, every block, Boast is an SEO page. So our SEO team writes, writes a brief for any page on Omnisend, and anyo…”
Rytis Lauris Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 14:38 $50m Bootstrapped CEO Shares His First SEO Hire, Growth Tactics and Playbook
Jun 13, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lauris: SEO drives 10% to 15% of Omnisend's new quarterly revenue
“SEO is a part important part for new revenue driving, and so now it's quite of a quarter of rise, but it drives us, like, 10 to 15% of all new revenue that is coming to Omnisend every quarter”
Rytis Lauris Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 1:46 $50m Bootstrapped CEO Shares His First SEO Hire, Growth Tactics and Playbook
Jun 13, 2024
Insight
Lauris: SEO Is a Repetitive Factory Rather than an Art
“In our philosophy, SEO is not an art. If, like, you would compare, if it's more a factory, or art studio, it's more a factory. So there are just a lot of repetitive processes, which sometimes could be quite boring, but you just have to do that. You have to out…”
Rytis Lauris Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 5:57 $50m Bootstrapped CEO Shares His First SEO Hire, Growth Tactics and Playbook
Jun 13, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lauris: Omnisend's monthly organic visits grew to 120,000 since 2019
“We started doing SEO in 2019, so not so far way ago, And you see that was kind of like zero traffic, zero organic traffic, now it's 120,000, ah, organic visits every month.”
Rytis Lauris Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 2:00 $50m Bootstrapped CEO Shares His First SEO Hire, Growth Tactics and Playbook
Oct 15, 2024
Insight
Omnisend CEO Rytis Lauris: Content SEO fails unless you buy backlinks
“You could be a good writer, but if you don't buy backlinks, if you don't buy referring other domains, it will not work.”
Rytis Lauris Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 7:39 Genius SEO Hacks This 34 Year Old Used to Bootstrap to $55m Revenue with Omnisend CEO Rytis Lauris
Oct 15, 2024 neutral
Insight
Omnisend CEO Rytis Lauris argues SEO relies on math, not creativity
“And SEO is the math. It's not much creativity there. There is a lot of calculations. There is a lot of analysis, keyword analysis, competition analysis, and then very, very pure calculation.”
Rytis Lauris Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 5:29 Genius SEO Hacks This 34 Year Old Used to Bootstrap to $55m Revenue with Omnisend CEO Rytis Lauris
Oct 15, 2024 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Omnisend CEO: AI tools like ChatGPT will make SEO attribution harder
“Being able to set to attribute SEO effort will be more challenging, just because if someone search on ChatGPT or Gemini and then enters your direct link into your browser it's very hard to Attribute.”
Rytis Lauris Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 19:38 Genius SEO Hacks This 34 Year Old Used to Bootstrap to $55m Revenue with Omnisend CEO Rytis Lauris
Nov 7, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Levy: Document Crunch relies on website leads and events, not SEO
“It's not SEO. It's based on leads to our website. I mean, SEO is a part of it, but our far and away, our biggest lead source is just leads coming through our website and field marketing for industry events and stuff like that.”
Josh Levy Nov 7, 2024 ▶ 17:13 42 year old lawyer convinces 200+ Construction Companies to Pay $4k+ Per Year for his Legal Software
Jun 12, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rush: Ranking top on Google will solve LLM search visibility long-term
“I think you should bet on one thing that all LLMs will end up searching internet before they produce any results, and they will end up searching internet in a very similar way. So basically, as long, so if you think that Google is the best search on the intern…”
John Rush Jun 12, 2025 ▶ 28:02 Bootstrapper Hits $3.5m, 0 Team Members using new 3x Growth Formula
Dec 10, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Romain Torres: Arcads will focus on enterprise sales and SEO to scale
“I think enterprise sales will be a big one. So I want to focus much more on that. We are just like scratching the surface when it comes to that SEO has been proven to be very important also for people in our space. So we are going to be doing more of that. And…”
Romain Torres Dec 10, 2025 ▶ 29:11 From $5K to $10M ARR: The ArcAds Founder's Playbook
Jan 14, 2026
Disclosure
Siordas: Flipsnack employs about three people on template SEO
“Not a lot. I think three people right now. It's not that big, but they're not doing exclusively SEO, but they have extensive know how about, you know, what to do in order to become SEO friendly, I would say.”
Gabriel Siordas Jan 14, 2026 ▶ 14:17 Bootstrapped to $15M ARR: How Flipsnack Scaled Digital Publishing with SEO & $200K ACVs
Jul 10, 2026 negative
Opinion
Wachs: Search engine marketing does not work for Handwrytten
“Because SEM doesn't work, we've done, we've gone the SEO route.”
David Wachs Jul 10, 2026 ▶ 11:00 Handwrytten Sends 6 Million Fake Handwritten Notes a Year and Makes $10M
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