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How To Turn SEO Traffic Into Leads and Sales With Brandon Leibowitz of SEO Optimizers

Brandon Leibowitz

How To Turn SEO Traffic Into Leads and Sales With Brandon Leibowitz of SEO Optimizers

Brandon LeibowitzBrandon Leibowitz is Founder and Operator of SEO Optimizers, a Los Angeles-based digital marketing agency specializing in SEO and AI search optimization. He has worked in search engine optimization since 2007, helping businesses increase their online visibility, attract qualified traffic, and generate leads without relying exclusively on paid advertising. Brandon’s expertise includes keyword research, technical SEO, link building, conversion rate optimization, social media marketing, and paid advertising. Through SEO Optimizers, he also teaches businesses how to build authority through podcast appearances and improve their visibility across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other search platforms.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • [1:24] How Brandon Leibowitz unexpectedly began his career in search engine optimization
  • [5:11] The transition from freelance SEO work to building a team
  • [6:08] Why organic SEO creates more sustainable growth than paid advertising
  • [9:40] The website problems that cause visitors to leave immediately
  • [12:10] Why B2B companies should diversify their digital marketing channels
  • [15:05] How long-tail keywords attract buyers with stronger purchase intent
  • [20:37] The growing role of AI platforms in digital search marketing
  • [23:32] How podcast guest appearances generate valuable backlinks

In this episode…

Online visibility is no longer about generating the largest possible volume of website traffic. Businesses must attract visitors with the right intent and provide a clear, persuasive experience that moves those visitors toward a purchase. How can companies combine SEO, conversion optimization, and emerging AI search platforms to produce sustainable revenue growth?

According to Brandon Leibowitz, who leads search engine optimization and digital marketing strategies for SEO Optimizers, businesses should begin by targeting relevant, high-intent keywords rather than focusing solely on broad traffic numbers. Once visitors arrive, companies must clearly communicate their value proposition, display calls to action and social proof above the fold, and continually test their pages to improve conversions. Brandon also recommends diversifying traffic across search, email, social media, remarketing, and AI platforms while using third-party mentions and backlinks to strengthen authority.

On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Chad Franzen welcomes Brandon Leibowitz, Founder and Operator of SEO Optimizers, for a conversation about sustainable SEO growth, buyer-intent keywords, conversion optimization, AI-powered search, backlinks, podcast guesting, marketing analytics, and deciding which business activities to delegate or outsource.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “Traffic is only step one; the next step is making sure those visitors trust you enough to become customers.”
  • “What sells people is not your introduction—it is the benefit they will receive from your product or service.”
  • “There is no perfect website, so you do not know what will improve conversions until you test it.”
  • “The more reputable third-party websites mention you, the more trustworthy you appear to search and AI platforms.”
  • “Podcast guesting creates visibility, authority, and backlinks that can help grow a business exponentially over time.”

Action Steps

  1. Target keywords with clear buyer intent: Prioritize specific, long-tail search terms that closely match what qualified prospects are ready to purchase.
  2. Strengthen the top of every webpage: Place a clear value proposition, benefits, testimonials, and a prominent call to action above the fold.
  3. Connect traffic data to business outcomes: Configure conversion tracking for sales, calls, forms, and leads rather than measuring success through visits alone.
  4. Build authority through valuable backlinks: Pursue podcast interviews, speaking opportunities, sponsorships, media features, and relevant websites that can mention and link to your business.
  5. Diversify your sources of visibility: Combine SEO with email, social media, remarketing, paid advertising, podcasting, and optimization for emerging AI search platforms.

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Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:04

Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 media, we feature top founders, executives, and business leaders from all over the world.

Chad Franzen: 00:20

Hi, Chad Franzen here, co-host of the Top Business Leaders Show, where we feature CEOs, entrepreneurs, and top leaders in the business world. This episode is brought to you by rise 25. We help B2B businesses reach their dream relationships and connect with more clients, referrals, and strategic partnerships and get ROI through done for you podcasts. If you have a B2B business and want to build great relationships, there’s no better way to profile the people and companies you admire than on your own podcast. To learn more, go to rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com.

My guest today is Brandon Leibowitz, founder and operator of SEO Optimizers, a Los Angeles based SEO and digital marketing agency. He’s worked in search engine optimization since 2007, helping businesses improve their online visibility and website traffic. He studied business at California State University, Long Beach. Brandon, thanks so much for joining me. How are you?

Brandon Leibowitz: 01:13

I’m doing well. Thank you for having me on.

Chad Franzen: 01:15

Hey, great to have you. Tell me, what led you to begin working in search engine optimization? Almost 20 years ago, in 2007.

Brandon Leibowitz: 01:24

I was not planning on it, just fell into it. After I graduated from college, got my degree in business marketing and 2007. And one of the first jobs I was offered back then was doing SEO, which they didn’t really teach you that in school. And I told the company that and they 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 classes and seminars, and did that for a few months and just realized that everyone is probably going to have a website in the future. SEO is a way to get free traffic.

And I thought to myself, who wouldn’t want free traffic? And that got me going on this journey, but just kind of fell into it at the right time, at the right place.

Chad Franzen: 02:05

How easy was it to learn? It seems like such a pain.

Brandon Leibowitz: 02:09

It’s constantly evolving and it was a little bit easier back then. Less competition. The more competitive these keywords are, the more people that are doing SEO, the more difficult it becomes. And Google’s also become a lot more sophisticated with their algorithm. But it is kind of that just trial and error at the beginning, just, just building like a dummy website, testing out things, seeing what works, what doesn’t work, and just trying to implement and take action.

Chad Franzen: 02:38

Do you, do you kind of constantly have to check on new trends or new things that are happening within that world? You know, maybe on a daily, weekly basis.

Brandon Leibowitz: 02:47

Especially nowadays where in the past with the AI, but in the past, Google kind of just ran the show and it was pretty straightforward. I mean, they make changes every day, but they’re really tiny. Every few months they make big changes. And that’s where I would want to look and see. Like, what are they looking at now?

Is it when mobile devices became popular? Google said, if you’re not mobile friendly, we’re not going to show you on mobile devices or page speed is now, one thing that they’re looking at is not the most important, but it’s kind of important to the search engines. So it’s making sure that you kind of check all those boxes off and make sure your website looks good. Like one of my clients, they had a mobile friendly website, but according to Google, they didn’t think it was mobile friendly because of the colors were I forgot the exact reasoning, but they weren’t shown on mobile devices and we just fixed that and their traffic almost doubled because now they were showing on mobile, which brings in over half the traffic nowadays. Sure, it’s the mobile friendly test or tool. 

 So if anybody wants to check.

Chad Franzen: 03:51

Mobile friendly tester tool. Hey, what what? So you started working for a company that taught you how to do SEO, and you learned it and everything. What led you to build SEO optimizers?

Brandon Leibowitz: 04:05

When I was at some of those first workshops and seminars with that original company, people would be speaking saying, I have ten different websites. I do drop shipping and affiliate marketing and all these other things. And it got me thinking that I could work full time at this job and also build up a little passive income or side hustle where I’m helping out non-competitive websites. So finding like a local doctor or dentist or a restaurant and trying to help them out because the company I was working at, they made 3D lenticular promotional products, very niche. They probably only have like 5 or 10 competitors in the whole world.

So it was easy for me to find non-competitive websites and did that. And over the years I worked at different advertising agencies as a director of SEO and before work, after work and on my lunch breaks, I work on my own company and eventually built that up to where I was able to quit my job and been doing that ever since, helping people tap into that free traffic.

Chad Franzen: 05:06

Nice. Very nice. How has the business evolved since you kind of started doing it full time?

Brandon Leibowitz: 05:11

At first when I was just doing it freelance, I was happy to get 1 or 2 clients here or there, but after doing it for a while, I was like, let me really try to push it and see if I could scale this up. And once I scaled it past what I was doing at the advertising agency, I decided to jump ship and built a team and have people helping me now, where in the past it was just me doing it as a freelancer, but now it’s grown a lot more and there’s a lot more hiring and staffing and SOPs and all these other things that weren’t really the most necessary when I was just myself doing it.

Chad Franzen: 05:46

So I’ve heard that SEO maybe drives more sustainable business growth, whereas something like paid ads or Google ads or something like that is more of a what do they call like immediate gratification? Is that true? And if so, how is that the case? How does SEO drive sustainable business growth rather than just a temporary increase in traffic?

Brandon Leibowitz: 06:08

Well, when you search, there are those paid ads you have to pay for every single click. If somebody searches clicks on your paid ad, you’re paying Google a couple cents per click, a couple dollars per click. It could even be a few hundred dollars for one click. Not one sale, just one visitor to your website. When you stop spending money, you just disappear.

So it’s good for the short run, but in the long run, you don’t want to have to pay for every single click, especially if it’s $50 a click. That adds up really fast because you might get a 1 to 3% conversion rate, meaning that you have to spend a lot of money just to get one lead with paid ads, whereas SEO, it’s more long term because once you get Google to trust you or the LMS to trust you, you start showing up getting that visibility and people also trust the organic more. If someone sees an ad and organic, they would prefer to click on organic, even though the ads sometimes blend in and they don’t know it’s an ad, which is what those platforms want you to do is not realize you’re clicking on ads, but people trust organic. And once you stop doing SEO, you’re not just going to disappear over time, your competition is going to probably do more SEO than you’ve done. And that’s going to mean that you’re just slowly dropping down. 

 But it’s not like with the paid ads where you turn them off, you’re gone completely. With SEO, it’s a lot more sustainable in the long run.

Chad Franzen: 07:38

I know when you when you Google something and maybe you’re looking to buy something or something like that, all the ads kind of pop up first. Do you find that most people, though, scroll down to see what what pops up first on their Google search. That’s not sponsored.

Brandon Leibowitz: 07:53

Most people, but not everybody. And that’s how Google is one of the wealthiest businesses out there, because people click on those ads all the time, and they’re constantly changing what it says next to the ad. So say like ad or sponsored results, or they’re constantly changing it. That way you don’t get trained just to ignore them. They want you to really click on those accidentally.

Chad Franzen: 08:16

How should a business connect its SEO strategy to its broader revenue and growth objectives?

Brandon Leibowitz: 08:22

SEO will get you traffic, but traffic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to convert into a sale or a lead or a phone call. When I was first doing SEO, I would just focus on ranking you for keywords, and then I’d be like, all right, that was my job. That’s all I was supposed to do. But over the years, I realized that traffic is step one. Step two is how do we make sure that traffic converts and looking at conversion rate optimization, how well is your website for a user flow and to get people not just to visit, but to call you or email you or fill out that contact form or buy your product.

And that is a whole nother area. But that is very important to make sure that you look at the SEO first to get the traffic, and then look at your website as a way to make sure that traffic that trusts you enough to want to buy. So you’re getting search engines to trust you, and then you’re getting people to trust you. People is a whole different one where people have emotions, and it’s a lot different than just showing a robot that you’re relevant to a keyword.

Chad Franzen: 09:26

So without giving away state secrets, let’s say you’ve got enough SEO to generate clicks, but the the people stay on there for 10s and then leave what is often the most, the most likely cause of that.

Brandon Leibowitz: 09:40

Well, in general, half your traffic is going to leave immediately pretty quick within the first, second or so. It’s called the bounce rate or engagement rate. Google analytics, that’s common, but that one, it’s inevitable where you got to figure out like, does my website load slowly on mobile or does it not look good on Safari or Internet Explorer or on the iPhone seven or the iPhone 15? Like, how does it look on all these screens and devices? Because your website’s going to look different on every single platform, but one of the biggest culprits is just not having a value proposition at the top of each page explaining like, what’s in it for me instead of just saying what you do, saying what that visitor is going to get by using your product or service, and trying to have as much information at the top of the screen without making people scroll.

Because that’s also the biggest issue is people aren’t going to scroll. So if someone comes to your website, doesn’t see what they’re looking for, they’re not going to start scrolling looking unless it’s something like really, really technical. But in general, they don’t see what they’re looking for. They’re hitting that back button. And there’s plenty of other options on Google or the LMS, and they’re just going to look at that next website. 

 So just really making sure it’s called above the fold, making sure whatever you see on the screen is, has as much information that you want to convey. Put some testimonials or reviews, put a call to action at the top of the page. Bullet points, maybe highlighting more benefits and just really trying to speak to the end user of what they’re going to get from doing whatever you’re promoting on your website, not just introducing yourself saying, hey, my name is Brandon Liebowitz. Like, that’s not what sells people. What sells people is what the benefit is. 

 What they’re going to get from it.

Chad Franzen: 11:26

Is that would there be a different approach if a website is selling, you know, products rather than services? Or is it all is what you said kind of a the strategy you should go for?

Brandon Leibowitz: 11:36

It’s for all websites, all pages. Because if you’re selling products, I mean, if you’re it just sounded like a t shirt. It’s a little different. Like, oh, this is the best t shirt, but maybe your t shirt is made from organic cotton. So you specify like organic cotton, softest feeling t shirts or something like that, trying to put more benefits into it of what they’re going to get versus just the product.

And just saying, this is a t shirt that size large color blue.

Chad Franzen: 12:04

What are the essential elements of a successful digital marketing strategy for a B2B company?

Brandon Leibowitz: 12:10

Then it is diversifying. SEO is great to get traffic, but you want to get traffic from as many places as possible from social media, from email marketing, maybe doing some paid ads, not too much paid ads. Like I like remarketing where if you go to a website, you don’t buy that product, those ads follow you around. So I B2B and if someone comes to my website and doesn’t sign up for my call to action, which is a free consultation. Then I’m going to follow them around with ads saying like, book a call with me or show them testimonials because they’ve already been to my website.

They just didn’t convert. And that’s just low hanging fruit. But trying to get traffic from as many places as possible, not just putting all your eggs in one basket because things change and you can’t control that like social media. A lot of people focus really on building a brand on social, which is great, but you don’t control that. And I had one of my pages from Instagram with over 339,000 followers taken down. 

 Never been able to get that page back. It’s completely gone. And just so that’s where it’s just a little stressful because there’s no real way to get Ahold of these platforms. They don’t tell you why it was taken down. It was a skateboarding page, which is one of my passions, and I would just post other skateboarding videos in there, but they took that one down. 

 And you want to really make sure you’re diversified that way. If something does happen, you’re not going to just tank or like Google. Everyone’s focused really on Google. But now there’s ChatGPT and perplexity and all these other platforms and making sure that you’re on Google Search, but also on the LMS.

Chad Franzen: 13:54

Can B2B companies create content that reaches decision makers at different stages of the buying process?

Brandon Leibowitz: 14:02

You could definitely target content around different audiences of who you can’t really control the decision buyer, like who’s going to be searching, but you’ve got to try to think like, if I was targeting the decision maker or if I’m targeting the HR person or whoever you’re targeting, what keywords, what content, what topics would they be searching for? And then writing content that specifically speaks to them because the CEO is going to be looking at different things than the HR director or vice versa. And just really understanding what they want to know, what they’re going to be searching for that’s going to help you create content around that. And that content could be blog posts, or it could be pages on your website. But just adding that content that speaks to them is going to really help resonate more and get more conversions.

Chad Franzen: 14:51

Is there a way to work with SEO or G, E, O or whatever to, you know, rather than targeting information seekers, targeting people who are ready to buy like that bottom of the funnel type customer.

Brandon Leibowitz: 15:05

Yeah. You can target your content from informational to transactional to commercial to there’s all these different categories that you could put content into. And upper funnel is more just generic information for people to find you, which is usually like a blog post where it’s just top of funnel, just give them some basic information, hope they search for it, they come to your blog, they read the blog post, and then they want to learn more about your product or service. But commercial buyer intent are always the ones that we want to target specifically, especially for SEO, is making sure we’re not just getting you traffic because like we were talking about earlier, traffic doesn’t really mean much like traffic is great, but a lot of that traffic is just going to leave immediately. So we want to try to find that commercial, that transactional audience that’s really going to hopefully want to buy.

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