In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jesse McDonald, Senior SEO Director at Siege Media. Our wide-ranging conversation covered Jesse’s fascinating journey from graphic design to SEO, the increasingly blurred lines between UX and SEO, and practical approaches to optimization in today’s evolving search landscape.
“SEO is a two-algorithm world. You have the crawler algorithm and the user algorithm. If you’re just satisfying the crawler, people will get to the site, but they can’t do what they want to do. If you’re only satisfying the user, the crawler can’t get to it.” — Jesse McDonald
From Graphic Design to SEO: Jesse’s Origin Story
I started our conversation by asking Jesse to share his background and how he found his way into SEO after beginning his career in graphic design.
Jesse revealed that he initially wanted nothing to do with web design: “My running joke has always been that by the time I graduated and got my bachelor’s, I’ll never work in web. My God, that sounds like a nightmare. I just want to work in print.“
His ambition was to work with musicians on album layouts and magazine designs. However, after moving to Austin for better job opportunities, he applied for a design position at an agency that saw potential in him and offered him a chance to learn SEO and PPC alongside design work.
When the company grew and departmentalized, Jesse had to make a choice between different departments. He chose SEO because it allowed him to exercise his creativity while preserving his passion for art outside of work: “Let’s stick with SEO. I think this could be cool. It scratches an itch because there’s that usability side of things.“
The Marriage of UX and SEO
I asked Jesse to explain how he leveraged heat mapping, which is traditionally seen as a UX tool, for SEO purposes.
“The roles of SEO and UX are almost becoming a bit blurred… Even more so now, usability is really kind of a key factor. It’s not just the words on the page that are being looked at when that algorithm is making its assessment and ranking analysis.” — Jesse McDonald
Jesse described their approach around 2014: “We came up with this talking point of SEO being a two-algorithm world. You have the crawler algorithm and the user algorithm.” He explained that satisfying only the crawler would get people to the site but they wouldn’t be able to do what they wanted, while focusing solely on users meant the crawler couldn’t find your content.
I referenced a presentation by Japanese SEO blogger Kenichi Suzuki who demonstrated how changing an image that was causing users to stop reading resulted in significant ranking improvements.
Jesse noted how this approach has become even more relevant today: “Now in this kind of helpful content, incredibly smart AI-forward algorithm sort of space… there’s a lot of studies going around now, post helpful content, that are showing that usability is really kind of a key factor.“
At Siege Media, Jesse leads both the SEO team and the UX team, ensuring they work together to complement each other. This integrated approach highlights how the lines between traditional SEO and UX continue to blur.
Testing and Experimentation in SEO
Our conversation shifted to the importance of testing in SEO rather than just following established guidelines.
“I think intuition and that gut instinct is something that we kind of devalue because it’s hard to quantify… but at the same time too, sometimes there’s something kind of magical about, ‘I just have a feeling if we try this, it’ll work.'” — Jesse McDonald
Jesse encouraged SEOs to test out new strategies: “Let me see if that works for the site or sites that I’m working on. And if it does, fantastic, then I have an idea. And if it doesn’t, then I can pivot.“
I mentioned my interview with Gus Poloja from Indeed, who uses tests not just to see impact but to get buy-in from stakeholders—something that Jesse acknowledged is “crazy” especially when working in-house at large corporations like IBM where he previously worked.
Communicating SEO to Different Stakeholders
I noted that when working in-house, it’s important to “ditch a lot of the SEO talk” because discussing technical aspects like anchor text in executive meetings is “bringing a water pistol to a gunfight.”
Jesse agreed and shared advice for agencies working with large companies: “Try to get their business conduct guidelines as tough as that is to like sit through a couple of hours of that sort of module training. You can kind of understand what you can and can’t do.”
For example, at IBM, they weren’t allowed to do any link building or outreach whatsoever due to legal liability concerns.
When it comes to different stakeholders, Jesse emphasized knowing what each cares about: “Your executive, they care about the dollar at the end of the day and what you’re bringing into the business through your channel.”
Finding Interest in “Boring” Clients
I asked Jesse how he approaches clients with seemingly boring products, like “waste oil heater recyclers” or asphalt companies.
Jesse credited his grandfather’s influence: “That man would just read the encyclopedia all the time. He just found the world interesting and wanted to know more about it.” He applies this mentality to his work, believing there’s always something interesting about even the most boring topic.
“Figure out what makes that product different than its competitors. And then from there, you can kind of start building your own enthusiasm for the kind of relatively boring thing.”
He shared his experience joining IBM’s cloud business unit without much knowledge about cloud computing. Through internal trainings and conversations with the sales team, he built enough knowledge to be effective.
“A thirst for knowledge will help you regardless in your current situation and in the long term.“
SEO in the Age of AI Search
I brought up the challenge that AI tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude are eating up more of the top-of-funnel question space and asked how Siege approaches this changing landscape.
“It’s not search engine optimization anymore. It’s more like search experience optimization because there’s so many different things now that we’re optimizing for.” — Jesse McDonald
Jesse acknowledged that while they’ve become less focused on top-of-funnel content, he encourages clients not to abandon it entirely: “Throw in one of those early learn every now and then, because it has a couple of different levels of value, even if it’s not traffic.“
He mentioned the potential to be cited by AI search engines, which helps build brand awareness. Additionally, “feeding that type of information into the LLM itself gives them a better understanding of your branding, which then gives you more opportunity to rank for relevant searches within their system.“
“If we’re building it for the brand in mind, as well as rankings and traffic… we can then build that brand authority so that when someone is in that mid funnel where they’re trying to figure out how to solve a problem or that bottom funnel where they know how to solve a problem and they’re just ready to make a purchase, we’re top of mind.” — Jesse McDonald
Jesse referenced an article by Wil Reynolds that Rand Fishkin shared about “traffic down, revenue up” – suggesting that while traffic might decrease, focusing on brand authority can still drive positive business outcomes.
I added that focusing solely on acquisition misses part of optimization: “It’s not just you’re optimizing for search, but that’s also internal search.” I emphasized the importance of site structure and content organization beyond just ranking.
Jesse agreed, noting that SEO isn’t dying but evolving: “It’s not search engine optimization anymore. It’s more like search experience optimization because there’s so many different things now that we’re optimizing for.”
Siege Media’s Secret Weapon
To wrap up, I asked Jesse to share one actionable process that Siege consistently uses to win.
Jesse described their “keyword to opposition and benefit analysis” which goes beyond standard keyword research by incorporating multiple data sets:
“It takes the term and you get your general metrics of keyword difficulty, CPC, volume, et cetera. But then it starts showing you other things of what’s the trend of the volume over the last X amount of time.“
The analysis also looks at:
- Whether images are commonly featured in SERPs
- What SERP features are present (videos, etc.)
- How frequently top-ranking pages are updated
“So using that at a very top level gives you that idea of, this is what we need for all of these terms that we’re starting with,” allowing them to prioritize content gaps and address them strategically.
To learn more about Jesse McDonald and his work, follow him on social media as “JesseSEOGeek” across platforms, with Facebook, Blue Sky, and LinkedIn being where he’s most active. You can also check out Siege Media for more insights and resources.
For more episodes of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, visit unscriptedseo.com or connect with me at SEO Arcade or Community Clean Links.