20 Years of SEO with Jeremy Rivera: What Changed, What Didn’t, and his Podcast Link Building Strategy You Can't Fake or Buy

Jeremy Rivera discusses how SEO has shifted from a fringe tactic to a mainstream corporate budget line as Google became the dominant search engine, while the core fundamentals—site structure, content, and links—remain. He argues recent changes like Google’s Helpful Content Update were less about rewriting for “quality” and more about favoring real businesses with brand signals and authority, forcing many publishers to pivot to newsletters, subscriptions, and paid acquisition. Jeremy critiques declining search quality, the growth of paid SERP real estate, and rapid AI rollout, noting widespread overtrust in LLM outputs despite their probabilistic nature. He explains how AI has driven executive “shiny object” budgeting decisions. Finally, he outlines a podcast-based link-building approach that generates unique, trust-based links and a content engine for small businesses.

Follow Ernesto Ortiz on Social Media:

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Webesite: https://structuralseo.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/100778951/

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Jeremy Rivera's:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyriveraseo/

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SEO podcast: https://unscriptedseo.com/

White Label Link Building Service: https://seoarcade.com/

SEO Consulting Services: https://jeremyriveraseo.com/

Semantic SEO for E‑commerce: Product Pages, Topical Maps, Merchant Center & Popular Products with Pontus Vippelius & Ernesto Ortiz

In this episode, Pontus Vippelius & Ernesto Ortiz explain how SEO evolved from keyword-only tactics to a semantic seo framework focused on increasing the chances of success. We discuss how semantic SEO applies to e-commerce by building entity–attribute structures across category and product pages, using scalable templates for large catalogs and deeper content for small DTC assortments. The discussion covers what to add to PDPs (attributes, FAQs, unique brand information, reviews), how AI Overviews and “popular products” can drive PDP visibility, and findings from a Swedish study showing review volume and solid ratings as key correlates for popular product inclusion. They also discuss Merchant Center/feed completeness, title conventions, navigation and crawl-trap prevention, competitor analysis by business priorities, and why product data and free listings may be central for AI-driven shopping discovery.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernesto-ortiz-seo-expert/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbhjjBiyM1RBS_GZcZx30gw https://www.instagram.com/theernestoortiz/

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https://structuralseo.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/100778951/ https://www.youtube.com/@UCmJc1vbm1UnC9ACMPMuVFQg

https://x.com/StructuralSEO

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https://vippelius.com/

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https://vippelius.se/

https://www.adrelevance.se/

Semantic SEO in 2026: Site Structure, Brand Signals, and Visual Semantics with Luis Salazar Jurado

Luis Salazar Jurado explains that semantic SEO is not dictionary meaning but structuring information so search engines and LLMs can understand pages faster and at lower “cost of retrieval,” creating an advantage over competitors with more content but worse structure. He contrasts old keyword-to-document SEO with today’s query-to-answer model, longer searches, multiple SERP interfaces, and AI layers, arguing SEO now requires holistic site, brand, and cross-platform consistency. They discuss entity disambiguation (e.g., a jewelry brand sharing a name with a butterfly), the importance of brand searches/mentions, and using targeted PR/ads and social profiles to drive “brand + product” searches (query augmentation). Salazar highlights visual semantics and UX details (H1 placement, e-commerce signals above the fold), warns about canonical confusion attacks, and suggests learning user language via real customer conversations and SERP patterns, while revisiting strategy regularly without changing URLs.

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https://structuralseo.com/

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https://x.com/StructuralSEO

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https://www.dailysemanticseo.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@luissalazarjurado-consulto5749

https://www.seotecnico.com/

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Former Google Search Quality Engineer Pedro Dias on Spam, Manual Actions, and SEO Strategy in the AI Era

Pedro Dias, a former Google Search Quality/spam-fighting team member explains how search quality work ranges from reviewing algorithmically flagged sites to investigating spam reports, link networks, and content farms, with decisions often made by committees and driven by market context and intent rather than single superficial factors. He describes clear spam signals like low-effort pages with heavy monetization, notes that techniques like cloaking can be legitimate depending on purpose (e.g., geolocation), and discusses how manual actions can be visible or silent, including cutting a site’s ability to pass PageRank. Dias outlines why Google prioritizes impactful spam, the tradeoffs in penalizing, and why SEO is fundamentally product and technical strategy focused on creating real value and aligning human and machine needs, including for AI retrieval, while cautioning against unchecked automation and overconfidence in AI-era measurement tools.

Follow Ernesto Ortiz on Social Media:

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Follow Ernesto's SEO Agency, Structural SEO:

https://structuralseo.com/

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https://x.com/StructuralSEO

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https://theinference.io/

https://visively.com/

Pavel Klimakov, a world class Semantic SEO Specialist, shares why keyword research is limiting, and how to build SEO around users, index signals, and visual semantics. In this interview, Pavel Klimakov (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavel-klimakov/) joins Ernesto Ortiz (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernesto-ortiz-seo-expert/) to discuss content strategies for new and existing websites, including:

- Why old school SEO is very limiting

- Keyword volume is a myth, search console is limited but the best information

- How to find topics everyone else is missing

- What content to write first

- How to find the best opportunities looking at indices

- How to know if a query deserves a page, a heading or a sentence

- Different content strategies for new and existing websites

- How to launch content for new and existing websites

- Our observations on publishing frequency and momentum

- Auditing existing websites process

- Human effort and the value of design, interactive tools and presenting information in the best way possible

- Google might have been right all along about: just focus on the user

- Understanding true intent, the most important question you have to ask yourself

- Content boundaries: when you're going to deep on a topic

- Google’s increasing adoption of LLMs for ranking and retrieval

- Future of the web

Follow Ernesto Ortiz on Social Media:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernesto-ortiz-seo-expert/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbhjjBiyM1RBS_GZcZx30gw https://www.instagram.com/theernestoortiz/

Follow Ernesto's SEO Agency, Structural SEO:

https://structuralseo.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/100778951/ https://www.youtube.com/@UCmJc1vbm1UnC9ACMPMuVFQg

Follow Pavel Klimakov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavel-klimakov/ https://www.youtube.com/@UCsYe9dKTwDvNtXDZQhQ3zZQ