SEO is Dead: The New Way to Get Traffic | Mark Manson
Mark Manson explains why YouTube now beats traditional SEO for traffic, sharing how his channel grew to 1M subscribers and 2.5-3M monthly views. He breaks down his content strategy across platforms, his team structure, and reveals he spends roughly $60K-$80K monthly on production.
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YouTube is the most important platform today, bar none. SEO is never going to be the way it was before. The organic website traffic is probably just going to go down forever. Twitter and Instagram, it almost feels like the algorithm is working against you. A fucking newsletter platform is expensive as fuck. And so YouTube was the first thing that it just felt like there was a massive tailwind on that. It's that personal connection much, much more strongly. Best algorithm, best discovery, way better monetized.
You're just saying, hey, YouTube is the biggest the biggest opportunity probably in the next decade, which is why you're all in on it. So let's start with that first.
Yeah, in my opinion, if you are in a creative field or in a content business, YouTube is the most important platform today, bar none. First of all, just best algorithm overall, best discovery. You know, like TikTok has a great algorithm, but the format of the videos on TikTok, it's so short and punchy and it's impersonal that it's much harder to build a strong brand that people identify with.
You don't remember the people you watch on TikTok.
Exactly. You can spend 30 minutes on TikTok and not remember a single thing you just saw. Whereas on YouTube, like, there's something about the long-form video. It's higher resolution, it's higher, you know, it's larger. It builds that personal connection much more strongly. It's also like way better monetized. The CPMs on YouTube are significantly better than any other platform. Google is just better at figuring out which ads to put where. It's also still growing. It's the fastest-growing platform. Not only is it the fastest-growing just on the internet, but it's fastest-growing on televisions. If you look at, like, survey data of pretty much anybody under 25, like, 99% of 'em are on YouTube, 70% on Netflix, and then, like, maybe 50% watch TV.
Is that your behavior? So when I eat lunch sometimes, I'm just watching stuff on YouTube. Like, is that what you do?
Totally.
Yeah.
And that was actually what what kind of tripped me off on it is I noticed maybe 2, 3 years ago, I was like, wow, I kind of just spend all my free time on YouTube. And like, I don't even open Netflix unless I already know what I'm gonna watch.
Yeah.
You know? And that got me kind of curious. I mean, it was a combination of that. And then there was another thing, which was in 2020 during the pandemic, my team and I, we decided to just kind of repurpose some old content in video form. It was just kind of like a little side project to do, 'cause we were just doing a lot of that at the time. Didn't think anything of it. And put it on YouTube, and not only did YouTube just blow up so much faster than any other platform, but it was the only platform that we repurposed content on, and it was actually bringing in new people who had never heard of me before.
Yeah.
And that had not happened in like 5 years, and I was like, holy shit. This algorithm is still finding new people out there that have been, you know, so like that's pretty insanely powerful.
How big's your YouTube right now? Like more so how many views are you getting per month? And then subscribers, less of a big deal.
Yeah, so it's about 1 million subscribers. And then I think we're doing between 2.5 and 3 million views each month.
Do you have like a primary growth channel?
My content, my brand, it just seems to be YouTube. So I started out as a blogger primarily. And that was great up until probably the late 2010s. That has been drying up very slowly. It's been a very long attrition process. But it was pretty clear, you know, probably back in 2020 that it's like, okay, SEO's never gonna be the way it was before. People don't click off, they don't click on links. Like, none of the platforms promote links anymore, right? So it's like you're never gonna get that organic website traffic. Like, the organic website traffic's probably just gonna go down forever.
Yeah.
and then 10 years it'll be gone. So accepted that. So in 2020, I started going really hard in the other social platforms. So Instagram, Twitter, Facebook to a lesser extent, LinkedIn. And we got some, like Twitter and Instagram, we got some pretty decent traction on, but it just, it always feels like you're climbing up a hill.
Mm-hmm.
Like it almost feels like the algorithm's working against you. Like on the Facebook platforms, they're absolutely working against you 'cause they want you to pay for reach. And then Twitter, I don't know, there's just some kind of weird mismatch between brand and the audience that it just feels, uh, it feels like I'm just walking into a huge headwind. And so YouTube was the first thing that it just felt like there was a massive tailwind at my back. Like, it's just new people started showing up for the first time in like 3 or 4 years.
So how were you— were you just growing, you're just writing, and then it just started to compound on its own? I'm assuming you're not doing any link building or anything. It's just, you know, good-ass content.
Any, any like kind of more formal SEO attempts that we made over the years of like link building or whatever didn't really pan out. I had a lot of just natural virality. Like, I had a very— I had a period like 2012 to like 2016, I had a bunch of articles go super viral. So I like my backlink profile is pretty damn robust naturally.
Well, but is it because you're pushing on Facebook and Twitter and it just started going viral and everyone just started linking to it? Is that okay?
Yeah, primarily my big competitive advantage early on that I attribute a lot of my success to is I think I just figured out before most people, you know, Facebook rolled out their newsfeed in 2011, and I think I figured out before most people that you, the same way you optimize a thumbnail and a title on YouTube, like you can optimize a title and a cover photo on Facebook to get a lot of shares and clicks. And so I started writing my articles very specifically to optimize Facebook virality and just took advantage of it for a few years.
It's like BuzzFeed back in the day.
It's exactly what BuzzFeed did. Upworthy was another one back then. Upworthy was actually the one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because I remember seeing them pop up in so many spots and I was like, it was clear they were doing it on purpose and like kind of manufacturing it. And I was like, huh, I wonder like if I did that for my blog, like what would that look like?
How much traffic were you getting to the blog each month?
At its peak, I think it peaked in like 2014 or 2015. At its peak, it was It's like 2, 2.5 million uniques each month, and I think probably 6 or 8 million page views a month.
It's a lot. And the reason I even ask right now is just because you started with that and you focused on that before deciding to move into another area.
Yeah, I actually think it took me longer to move into other areas because I was so— like, because the blog had been so successful, like, I was very hesitant to move away from it. Like, I actually kind of like was fighting against the tide, trying to like keep it going instead of building a podcast or a YouTube channel or something.
How do you— how's your marketing team? How's the content team right now structured? And how much, roughly, how much do you think you're spending a month on this?
The content team right now is— I'm trying to separate video from everything else. So everything else, honestly, I could probably run everything that's not YouTube or video production related or podcast related, which we're gonna launch next month. If you remove all that stuff, I could probably run everything else with 2 people. As soon as you add podcasts, that probably gets to 4 people. And then once you add video, like really high quality video, now you're talking probably another 4 or 5 people just for the video side. Right now we're at 8, and I'm scrambling to hire more people. So we'll probably end up at 10 to 12.
Got it. So similar to Hormozi and Cody, I have to assume you're spending anywhere from like $80,000 to like $150,000 a month, something like that. I'll just throw a range out there.
On just on people or people plus content?
Just content in general.
Are we counting hosting and shit like that, or no?
No.
OK. Um...
Should we?
I mean, well, that's the funny thing, is like... these days, a fucking newsletter platform is expensive as fuck. I mean, if you've got a list of like a million people...
They'll getcha.
Yeah, dude, that's tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah.
Um, I would say if you add everything together, all the video production, video team, I don't think we're over $100K. I'd say I would ballpark it probably $75-ish, probably between $60K and $80K, somewhere in there.
Yeah. And I keep asking this question just so people understand that, hey, to build this content team, it's not free. It's like, oh, well, I don't spend on paid ads. Okay, you're still spending on your content team.
Oh, for sure.
It adds up.
