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For 20 years, the SEO industry sold one promise: rank #1 on Google and the traffic will come.

Eli Schwartz is the man telling everyone that promise is dead.He's consulted for Tinder, WordPress, SurveyMonkey, and Mixpanel. He wrote the book on product-led SEO. And in this episode, he doesn't hold back on what AI has actually done to search and why most SEO agencies are about to get wiped out.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

→ Why ranking #1 on Google is now worthless (and the data proving it)

→ How one company lost 60% of their traffic but kept their revenue

→ Why the $5K/month blog post retainer is officially dead

→ The "search market fit" framework most startups completely miss

→ The brand signals AI is actually paying attention to (it's not what you think)

→ Why eBay lost the SEO war to Amazon — and what every business can learn from it

→ The $30,000/month link-building mistake Eli made early in his career

→ Why your SEO agency might be lying to you (and how to tell)

→ What agencies need to sell instead of rankings to survive 2026

If you're a founder, marketer, or agency owner who's watching AI Overviews eat your traffic — this is the episode that explains what's actually happening and what to do about it.Eli isn't sugarcoating it. Most agencies won't survive this shift. But the ones that adapt are about to win bigger than ever.⏱

👤 ABOUT ELI SCHWARTZ

Eli Schwartz is an SEO consultant and the author of Product-Led SEO. He has consulted for Tinder, WordPress, SurveyMonkey, Mixpanel, and dozens of high-growth companies. His upcoming book Customer Intelligence (Wiley) explores how businesses can actually understand their ideal customer.

📩 Follow Eli on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schwartze/

📬 Subscribe to his newsletter: https://www.productledseo.com/🎙

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We help digital agencies, franchisors, and MSPs scale profitably, deliver better outcomes for local businesses, and grow long-term revenue with less manual effort.

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