Gagan Ghotra

From my recent podcast with Edward Strum!

Key Points

Optimizing for Google Discover

• To understand what Google Discover’s algorithm values, it’s effective to run tests and analyze the “edge cases.”
• By identifying what works through testing, you can work backward to develop a strategy and offer insights to clients through audits.

The Role of Testing and “Black Hat” SEO

• Gagan Ghotra advocates for pushing the boundaries with testing, even to the point of “burning a site to the ground,” to gain valuable, real-world insights.
• This aggressive testing, including “parasite SEO,” can reveal meaningful information that can then be applied to “white hat” (more conventional and approved) SEO strategies, Gagan Ghotra thinks.

SEO as a Long-Term Strategy

• Effective SEO should be viewed as a long-term investment, akin to drinking water for long-term health, rather than expecting immediate returns.
• Many clients, especially small businesses, have unrealistic expectations, hoping for significant results in just a few months.
• The best approach to SEO is to plan for the long game (a 5-10 year perspective), which ironically often leads to better short-term results as well.

We discussed this from 57:23 – 01:02:48 in the video below!

Of course, here is the cleaned-up transcript with the word repetitions removed.

Gagan Ghotra
but what I mostly try to do with that is like trying to understand like what actually Google Discover is valuing.

What does Google discover algorithm want.

So, by running these kind of the tests, you can learn the edge cases and you can try to work backward from those edge cases to identify that, okay, this is what Google Discover want to or look for into a site and use that those insights to actually sell it to the clients as Google Discover audits and say that this is what we need to do on a particular site to get it into Google discover.

But what I generally recommend to anyone is that you have to test the edge case to get real insights. So even if you are doing parasite SEO, go to as edge as possible, tested it out, burn the site to the ground and then only you will learn something meaningful which you can use in white heart.

Edward Sturm
Burn the site to the ground. Now, that’s interesting.

Gagan Ghotra
Yeah.

Edward Sturm
And um so Harpreet, I think you follow him as well. Uh he’s he’s great on next. So he came onto the show and we kind of talked about doing like really crazy things uh with Black hat SEO and and what we said is um like if we’re going really crazy, we might actually isolate a site in its own Google Search console using a different email address.

And so I think um it’s just an interesting thing with Black hat SEO that a lot of people don’t because like uh this is still like one of the craziest things that I’ve seen and it was uh this woman on X called niche site lady. and this was in May 2024. Google wanted to make an example of all of these sites that were using AI generated content. And so niche site lady shared that one of her sites used AI generated content. but like she I guess she had like four sites on her GSC and the other three sites did not use AI generated content. All four sites were penalised because they were all sharing the same Google Search console.

Gagan Ghotra
Simple.

Edward Sturm
Yeah. So I think it’s so crazy.

Gagan Ghotra
Um I think uh like sorry to jump in but I think it these kind of things are somewhat conspiracy theories kind of thing like because it might be possible that that Google wanted to create an example or something, but it might just be a coincidence, you know, like if you have four websites in one search console and one site is really bad or you want to hit that, why would Google be like going ahead with

Edward Sturm
Oh, this was like huge news. Google like Google wanted This was actually the reason why we didn’t with this site that had all this UGC stuff, we were going to use AI to to like expand the UGC and this was one of the reasons we didn’t do it because um Google was getting vindictive with this was I mean this was May 2024 uh and people were starting to really go hard at this time with AI generated content for SEO. And uh it actually maybe it was even earlier than that, maybe it was even like March or something.

And and um yeah, so Google wanted to make examples of people. So I think if you’re doing Black hat SEO, it’s better. I’m just like a better safe than sorry type of person, especially because like when it comes to search engine optimization, the way to win is to play the long game. The way to win is to actually take a 5 to 10 year approach with SEO. And if you take the 5 to 10 year approach with SEO, you’re also going to get better short-term results, which is something that a lot of people don’t realize. But if you are taking the 5 to 10 year approach with SEO and you want to try to mess around with shortcuts that are against the rules. I’m just and the shortcuts are really black at then it’s like uh I don’t know, it’s safer to do it on a separate GSC.

Gagan Ghotra
Yeah. Like even like whenever I’m talking with like really small businesses, they are like uh we can invest like this amount in SEO, but we want this return in like two, three months. And then I just tell them like like SEO is more of like water. Like there is no immediate ROI like if you drink it, but that is what you need to survive in long term. So spending small amount, monthly amount or quarterly amount on SEO is something that you should not expect a immediate ROI out of it. It’s almost like expecting to drink a bottle of water and getting the energy to run like 100 kilometers.

Edward Sturm
Yeah, it’s it’s I mean, some people have completely unrealistic expectations just because they don’t really know how SEO works. but um I mean, the results that you can get with SEO in the long term are insane. The results you can get with SEO in the long term are insane, but like expecting those results just because you’re going to put in a lot of money at the beginning. It’s like you said, you put in a lot of money at the beginning, but it’s like you can’t you can’t put up if you’re not if you have a habit of making a page.