In this episode of the Unscripted SEO Podcast, host Jeremy Rivera interviews Jesse McDonald, Senior SEO Director at Siege Media. With 11 years in the SEO industry under his belt, Jesse shares his unique pathway from fine art and graphic design to becoming an SEO expert.
The Unexpected Career Path
Jesse’s journey began far from SEO – as a graphic design student with a bachelor’s in fine art.
“I always said, I’ll never work in web. My God, that sounds like a nightmare. I just want to work in print,” Jesse recalls.
His original dream? Creating album layouts and magazine designs for musicians.
But after moving to Austin for better opportunities, a job application led to an unexpected offer: learning SEO and PPC alongside design work. Within months, Jesse had to make a choice between design and SEO.
“Let’s stick with SEO. I think this could be cool. It scratches an itch because there’s that usability side of things,” he decided, wanting to keep his passion for art separate from his day job.
The Two-Algorithm Philosophy
Early in his career, Jesse developed what he calls a “two algorithm” approach to SEO:
- The crawler algorithm
- 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,” Jesse explains. “If you’re only satisfying the user, the crawler can’t get to it.”
This philosophy helped bridge his design background with SEO principles, focusing on creating experiences that satisfied both search engines and humans.
The Merging of SEO and UX
Jesse emphasizes how SEO and UX have become increasingly intertwined:
“Even more so now, the roles of SEO and UX are almost becoming a bit blurred.”
At Siege Media, this connection is formalized in the organizational structure – the UX team reports directly to Jesse, ensuring alignment between user experience and SEO strategy.
Jeremy references Japanese SEO expert Kenichi Suzuki’s research showing how UX improvements directly impacted rankings – simply changing a problematic image in an article dramatically improved completion rates and subsequently, rankings.
Testing and Innovation in SEO
Both Jesse and Jeremy advocate for bringing back the culture of testing in SEO:
“Back in the day, we used to test everything under the sun,” Jesse notes. “But as things have gotten more sophisticated, people are just kind of following.”
He encourages SEOs to trust their intuition more:
“I think intuition and that gut instinct is something that we kind of devalue because it’s hard to quantify.”
Jesse recommends testing new approaches even with underperforming content – “you might as well give it a shot. Cause you’re not going to necessarily hurt it realistically.”
Stakeholder Communication
A critical skill both Jesse and Jeremy highlight is communicating effectively with different stakeholders:
“It becomes crucial to know what they care about,” Jesse explains. “Your executive, they care about the dollar.”
He recommends tailoring your communication based on who you’re speaking with:
- For executives: Focus on revenue impact
- For product teams: Discuss rankings and traffic
- For clients: Identify their North Star metric upfront
Finding Interest in “Boring” Industries
When Jeremy asks how to approach seemingly dull industries, Jesse shares his philosophy:
“There’s always going to be something interesting about even the most boring topic in the world.”
He recommends finding what makes a product unique compared to competitors and building enthusiasm from there. Jesse also describes how he tackled the complex world of cloud computing at IBM by immersing himself in trainings and speaking directly with sales teams to understand the technology beyond marketing jargon.
Navigating the AI Search Evolution
The conversation shifts to how SEO strategy must adapt as AI search tools like Claude and ChatGPT capture more top-of-funnel queries.
Jesse references Will Reynolds’ observation: “Traffic down, revenue up.”
This suggests that while traffic numbers might decrease, the quality of traffic is improving. Jesse advises not abandoning top-of-funnel content entirely, as it still provides value:
- Potential citations within AI search results
- Feeding your brand information into LLMs
- Strengthening topical silos that lift performance of all related content
“It’s not search engine optimization anymore. It’s more like search experience optimization,” Jesse explains.
Siege Media’s Secret Weapon
When asked for Siege Media’s most actionable process, Jesse reveals their “keyword to opposition and benefit analysis” approach:
This comprehensive analysis examines:
- Standard metrics (volume, difficulty, CPC)
- Volume trends over 12-18 months
- SERP feature analysis (images, videos)
- Update frequency of top-ranking content
“After I started at Siege last April, I thought, ‘Wow, this is super cool, I’ve never really considered it this way,'” Jesse shares.
Connect with Jesse
Jesse can be found on social media as “Jesse SEO geek” across platforms, though he admits to scaling back his online presence for mental health reasons and to spend time with his daughter. For those wanting to connect, he recommends Facebook, Bluesky, and LinkedIn as the best options.
“The true benefit of having a billion Jesse McDonalds in this world is you have to lean into a brand name,” he jokes.