When Charles Taylor first got into SEO, it was out of desperation rather than inspiration. He was selling products online in the early days of Amazon and eBay when he ran into some issues with his PayPal account. Frustrated, he decided to build his own ecommerce website to sell products directly to customers.
The problem was, he didn't know anything about driving traffic. He added Google Analytics to his site and was surprised to see a bucket of "organic traffic." What was this free traffic showing up from search engines? That began his journey into the world of SEO over 15 years ago.
In the beginning, Charles took more of a black hat approach, building a network of sites in niches like law and real estate. He soon realized there had to be an easier way as he struggled to maintain rankings across so many properties.
When an opportunity came up to do SEO in-house for a large legal publishing company, Charles jumped at the chance to get paid to learn. That job transitioned him from struggling entrepreneur to Enterprise SEO, where he's excelled ever since.
These days Charles leads SEO strategy across the Fox media properties as a senior director. He still maintains his working knowledge as the co-host of SEO Fight Club, a weekly web show diving deep on search engine optimization.
Throughout our conversation, Charles broke down SEO into four key pillars: technical, content, authority or links, and user metrics. He approaches every strategy or obstacle through the lens of those pillars.
On the technical side, Charles emphasized that large companies face issues of scale. If there's a technical SEO issue, they will know right away because of the heavy crawling and indexing of Enterprise sites. The challenge is getting fixes implemented across so many pages and various systems. Prioritization and consensus building become crucial.
For on-page content, Charles said the biggest mistakes stem from page owners not wanting to use keywords out of brand guidelines or legal concerns. He stressed the importance of bringing those teams into the process early so everyone understands what's needed for optimization.
For backlinks, Charles focused more on internal linking at an Enterprise scale. External links can come easy from press releases and news coverage, but training writers on proper anchor text is key. Overall, inefficient internal linking can drain authority rather than magnifying it.
Finally for user metrics, Charles isolates statistics that the business stakeholders already track like impressions and conversions. Demonstrating the value of "free" SEO traffic vs. what they pay for similar types of traffic opens their eyes.
Speaking on Enterprise SEO budgets, Charles has a technique for comparing the impressions or clicks from SEO efforts to what it would cost to get similar numbers through paid advertising. Suddenly they understand the monetary value generated, which is what executives care about most.
Managing large properties or a network of sites comes down to building consensus without leaving key stakeholders behind. Charles starts by moving the needle for smaller niche sites first. As he doubles or triples traffic to those sites cost effectively, it builds trust to drive larger wins across the main properties.
For anyone looking to get into in-house SEO, Charles advises starting at a small company or agency first to get experience. Once you have wins under your belt, it gets easier to transition into those Enterprise roles.
However you get into SEO, Charles stresses the importance of monetizing your own sites first. Going through the process of making money online gives you more empathy for business stakeholders later. You understand SEO means nothing unless it drives revenue.
Throughout our talk, Charles demonstrated deep expertise at navigating complex organizations to drive growth through search. His insights apply equally to large companies or agencies partnering with clients. Focusing on communication, consensus building and speaking the language of business are just as important as your technical knowledge.
The key is building trust by delivering step-by-step wins that add value. Charles knows how to tailor data-driven SEO strategies to the priorities of individual brands and properties. Rather than dictate strategies, he guides stakeholders to arrive at the right solutions for themselves.
That's how you create allies rather than adversaries. With the support of key leaders, Charles can scale ambitious growth despite all the inherent challenges of Enterprise SEO.
It was fascinating to speak with Charles and tap into his seasoned perspective. If you get the chance to hear him speak at an SEO conference, I highly recommend doing so, even if it means scraping together the budget as he once did early in his career.
Investing in your SEO knowledge pays dividends for years to come. Charles Taylor has extracted so much value for leading brands over the past 15 years. And yet in this ever-evolving space, he's as hungry as ever to test assumptions and push the limits of what's possible.
That perpetual curiosity and data-driven approach serve him incredibly well. Thanks for listening today as we unpacked some key lessons from the SEO master himself, Charles Taylor.
