Eli Schwartz

SEO & Growth Advisor · 1 appearance on the record.

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authoroperatorexecutiveanalyst@5le ↗LinkedIn ↗elischwartz.co ↗

Eli Schwartz is an organic growth advisor and author of Product-Led SEO. Previously the Director of SEO and Growth at SurveyMonkey, he advises technology companies on organic search and discovery strategies.

32statements → 12claims → 11claims resolved → 82%fully supported → 3.72/5average certainty → 2.09/5average debate potential →

9 supported 0 partly supported 2 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 9 assertions · 5 opinions · 15 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 11 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Eli argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Schwartz: Local businesses have a Google ranking advantage over national competitors

“You don't really need to rank on unclogged drains anymore, because Google is very local. So if you're in San Francisco, and you're a plumber, and someone searches unclogged drains, you now have a much higher chance of ranking on unclogged drains than Roto-Root…”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 13:53 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Schwartz: Paid ad budgets will suffer substantial cuts under GDPR

“The other big advantage is that paid budgets are now going to take a huge hit. Because of GDPR, we've gone to this nightmare scenario where you don't know if your paid budgets are working because you can't track users until users Agree to be tracked.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 40:25 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

75% certainty 4

none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

What they said32 Episodes1

Everything Eli Schwartz said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Schwartz: Startups should target 100% to 200% SEO traffic growth

“If it's a startup, you can have things like a hundred to 200% growth. If this is a existing company with already has tons of organic traffic, maybe it's more manageable to have 10 to 20%.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 47:26 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Insight

Schwartz: Learning SEO requires practical experimentation over formal courses

“So no courses to take really. It's a creative pursuit. You have to, you know, start drawing art in order to be an artist.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 50:11 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Assertion Supported

Schwartz: Google Play ranks apps based on all visible text fields

“So on Google, the way they rank an app is based on all the visible text. So it's the name of the app, which is sort of like the title. The short description, which is forget how many characters, but a shorter page description of the app, which you see right ab…”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 10:02 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Prediction Held up

Schwartz: Google will eventually understand images directly without alt text

“Google eventually will figure out what images are, and they're getting closer to figuring out what images are.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 18:53 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Assertion Contradicted

Schwartz: Ranking on Baidu requires local Chinese web hosting

“In order to rank on Baidu, you actually need Chinese hosting.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 37:37 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Assertion Supported

Schwartz: Meta keywords are completely obsolete for SEO

“Meta keywords is a great example of something that's no longer useful. And the reason meta keywords existed is because Google and other search engines actually were relevant at the time, didn't have a really good way of understanding text.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 8:29 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Assertion Supported

Schwartz: The iOS App Store has a 100-character hidden keyword field

“On iOS, there are keywords, and I think you have a hundred characters hidden.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 10:25 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Assertion Supported

Schwartz: Mesothelioma was the most expensive AdWords keyword

“At the time, and it might still be true, the most expensive AdSense keyword and AdWords keywords was mesothelioma, the lung cancer related to asbestos.”

Eli Schwartz Sep 27, 2018 ▶ 50:20 SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
SEO Advice from SurveyMonkey Director of SEO and Growth, Eli Schwartz · Y Combinator	Sep 27, 2018	39m

Eli Schwartz

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Their most notable contradicted claim

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

Appearances (1)

Turn any episode into a week of clips.