In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, Jeremy Rivera sits down with Ernesto Ortiz, founder of Structural SEO. Ernesto came into the industry through an engineering background and immediately started running single-variable tests on his own domains — because he didn’t trust the conflicting advice he found online and wanted to confirm what actually moved the needle. He runs his agency entirely on month-to-month contracts, which means every client can leave at any time and every result has to be real.
The conversation covers algorithm updates as factor-weighting adjustments, why traffic is a proxy and not the goal, how to report SEO results in a way that actually makes sense to e-commerce clients, and the single biggest pitfall he sees in the industry right now.
Test-Driven SEO from an Engineering Mindset
Ernesto’s entry was empirical from day one. He didn’t trust conflicting information online, so he set up test domains to run controlled, single-variable experiments. Over time he built a set of things he’d confirmed worked — not things people said worked. This foundation drives his skepticism of trend-chasing and his emphasis on what holds up across multiple sites in different categories. If it doesn’t repeat, it’s not a tactic — it’s a coincidence.
Month-to-Month Contracts as a Commitment Device
Ernesto’s agency model: every client can cancel at any time. He describes this as being in his own interest — whatever he’s implementing has to work, because if it doesn’t, he gets fired on 30 days’ notice. The model aligns incentives in a way long-term retainers don’t. When pitching, it also functions as a trust signal: if he didn’t believe in the results, he wouldn’t offer an exit door on every invoice.
Algorithm Updates Are Dial Adjustments
Ernesto’s framing of algorithm updates: they’re adjustments to the weighting of factors that already exist. If your optimization is incomplete — relying too heavily on one set of signals because those signals were recently weighted high — a re-weighting will expose that incompleteness. If you’ve built a more complete signal picture across content, links, user experience, and technical health, an update has nothing to catch. You either go up or see no change. Going down is information about what’s missing, not evidence that SEO doesn’t work.
B2B Marketing Is D2C Ten Years Ago
Ernesto’s observation from his early e-commerce work: direct-to-consumer brands have had to fight for every conversion in a sea of competing products, so the best ones are remarkably good at UX, copy clarity, and reducing friction. B2B brands haven’t had to fight that hard — which means walking in with D2C-level clarity creates immediate differentiation. His first specialty was operable walls (acoustic partitions, $2,000–$10,000+). He built an e-commerce product page and checkout while every competitor had “submit a contact form.” That was the entire advantage.
Traffic Is a Proxy — Revenue Per Session Is the Goal
Ernesto’s distinction: for e-commerce businesses, traffic is a proxy for what you actually want, which is sales. A traffic decline that doesn’t affect revenue per session or total revenue isn’t a crisis — it might mean AI overviews are absorbing top-of-funnel queries that weren’t converting anyway. For publishers, it’s a genuine crisis because their business model requires page visits for ad impressions. If the AI answers the question before the click happens, the model has to change. The SEO question and the business model question are different problems, and conflating them produces bad decisions.
The Right SEO KPI for E-Commerce
Ernesto’s primary metric for e-commerce clients: non-brand organic traffic to category pages and product pages. Not blog traffic. Not total organic. Not branded search. Blog posts exist to support rankings on the pages that matter — category and product pages are where purchase intent lives. Reporting on blog traffic to an e-commerce client is reporting on the scaffold, not the building.
The Biggest Pitfall Right Now
Ernesto’s clearest warning: LinkedIn gurus selling AI-powered SEO systems to people who ranked their first website three weeks ago. The pattern he sees — someone gets a quick win, decides they understand SEO, builds a course or system around that win, and sells it to people who have no way to evaluate whether the methodology is sound. The AI tools make this easier to package and more convincing to buy. His test for any tactic: would you bet the future of your business on it? Most legitimate businesses answer no to most shortcuts.
Key Quotes
“Algorithm updates are just turning the dials on factor importance. If you go down, it’s because you’re incomplete — you optimized for the factors that were currently tuned up, and when they changed the dials, you didn’t have the rest. If you have a more complete situation, you either go up or nothing happens.”
— Ernesto Ortiz
“Traffic is a proxy. It always has been. If you see the graphs looking bad, ask: are you actually losing sales or are you just losing traffic? People still need to go and buy your thing. It’s irrelevant if they read your article or if the AI gave them the answer.”
— Ernesto Ortiz
“Would you bet the future of your business on this tactic? That’s the question. Most legit businesses will say no, because they want to ensure they stay around. That’s how I look at every risky approach.”
— Ernesto Ortiz
About Ernesto Ortiz
Ernesto Ortiz is the founder of Structural SEO, an e-commerce-focused SEO agency that operates on month-to-month contracts. He specializes in non-brand traffic growth for product and category pages, with a background in engineering and a methodology built on controlled single-variable testing rather than industry conventional wisdom.
