Hello! I’m Ethan Lazuk, an SEO/GEO strategist and VP of digital marketing based in New York City.
My approach to SEO/GEO, and marketing generally, is user-first, meaning it’s based on timeless fundamentals with modern AI-driven knowledge and approaches.
What drives my enthusiasm for SEO/GEO and marketing is a passion for learning and exploring while also helping brands — and their users and customers — achieve their goals.
In my view, creating high-quality results for the end user is the real reward — to benefit someone’s business or personal wellbeing by approaching SEO/GEO and marketing the right way, that matters to me.
You can learn more about me on this page, or get in touch by text or call to 1-813-557-9745, email at ethan.lazuk@gmail.com, or on any of these social platforms:
This page was last updated on:
Quick facts.
| Occupation | VP of Digital Marketing | SEO/GEO Strategist |
| Hometown | Helena, Montana (USA) 🐻 |
| Started in marketing | 2015 |
| Alma maters | Northern Arizona University, UConn, University of Montana, Johns Hopkins |
| Pets | Wuffiyah (rescue dog) 🐶 |
| Music of choice | TOOL, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Mars Volta, RHCP 🎧 |
| TV/films of choice | The Wire, Fargo, Big Lebowski, There Will Be Blood 🍿 |
| Google KG Entity ID | /g/11fyz0c8bm |
| Fun facts | Vegan, born in small-town Montana, studied anthropology and Arabic in college |
About my website.
This is my personal website. It used to be my business website as well, back when I was consulting, but now I just use it as a playground for exploring new SEO/GEO tactics.
Blogging.
I’m always tinkering with my blog’s content, either by adding or updating articles or exploring new ways of sharing information.
A “writer” — in quotes 😉 — my whole life, I’ve always enjoyed sharing my thoughts, experiences, and hypotheses about topics. Digital marketing is such a dynamic field, there’s always new learnings to share.
Something you’ll notice about my blog posts is they often have experimental elements, whether it’s the topic, formatting, or tangents.
But there’s a method to that madness.
These are my “playground articles,” where I try new things to see what results for user engagement and other metrics, and then apply those learnings (in a formal sense) to client work.
I’ve gleaned many valuable insights from experimentation that benefitted site owners I work with. 👈
That said, I always write about what interests me or that I’d want to read.
Passion is at the root of all good things. 😉
Social media.
I’m a firm believer that social media can be a force for good, leading to community building and knowledge sharing. Outside of publishing blog posts on this site, I also post content (and occasionally other stuff!) on X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Mastodon, Facebook, and Reddit.
I also have an Instagram profile, which is largely photos of Dania and me (and our dog Wuffiyah!) exploring the world.
That said, I also offer social media-related marketing services as a holistic consultant.
My biography.
I started in marketing in 2015 as a content specialist. Before that, I worked as a grant writer at a non-profit organization and was attending college.
My journey to become a dedicated SEO/GEO strategist, start a marketing consulting company, and most recently take an interest in machine learning (and AI broadly) had several twists and turns.
Buy the ticket. Enjoy the ride. 😉
Small town childhood.
I was born and raised in Montana until my early teens. Imagine a scenic place where people pride themselves on being independent minded. Where as kids, we’d bump Tupac while driving past cow pastures on our way to the skate park or to go snowboarding or play frisbee golf. That’s the vibe.
In the early 1990s, Montana wasn’t like it is today. When I attended elementary school, I was living in a small town with a population of around 1,000 people.
Playing sports and traveling for games was how I got introduced to the wider world and ideas like hard work, pressure, and being part of a team. Skateboarding and snowboarding were later how I learned to explore avenues of independence.
After freshman year of high school, I moved from Montana to Phoenix, Arizona, where I went from a school of a few hundred students to one with over 4,000. It was a culture shock, and for some odd reason, that experience got me introduced to history and politics — like shaking Obama’s hand once at an event. That paved the way for my later interests in cultural anthropology and the social sciences in college.
University days.
I always loved learning, but the classroom was one of my least favorite places, especially in high school. I soon developed my own outside interests in art, history, and writing and found other opportunities for growth, like contributing to the newspaper in Phoenix.
When I started college at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, I studied Arabic language and cultural anthropology. I then transferred to the University of Connecticut to focus on politics, and lastly I went to the University of Montana, where I graduated in 2012 with a focus on Middle Eastern studies. I also did some interesting things like an internship in Washington, D.C..
Studying Arabic is how I also met my wife, Dania, who came to Montana as an exchange student to study English.
Early professional life.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in the social sciences, I struggled to find a job. Miscellaneous jobs I had included editing film for a local TV show in Phoenix, sweeping up popcorn at a movie theater in Washington, D.C., teaching English as a second language (my first business), and I think I bagged groceries at one point, a throwback to my early jobs in high school.
My first real job was as a grant writer for Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida. I got a call from a recruiter at Cox Automotive out of the blue asking if I’d be interested in joining the content team at Haystak Digital Marketing. The office had ping-pong tables, free Red Bull, and, most importantly, the hiring managers liked my whimsical writing sample. It was a good vibe.
Haystak later merged with Dealer.com, and both were cool jobs. My focus was content creation in support of SEO strategies, but I also learned HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript, which partly led to this website. 🙂
I had already begun an M.A. program at Johns Hopkins by then, so I figured digital marketing would be a quick gig before I worked in government or the nonprofit sector as a career. I left marketing a few times to work for nonprofits, including living in a homeless shelter in Key West, Florida, both before and after Hurricane Irma.
I eventually went back to digital marketing at an agency in Gainesville called Jumpem, where I learned more on-page SEO and how to use tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs.
At a certain point, I realized the SEO part was what most interested me, so I became an SEO specialist at Bayshore Solutions in Tampa. That’s where I really developed a passion for SEO.
The SEO bug takes hold.
Bayshore Solutions was the best agency job I had. I was promoted to a strategist role after a year and really got an appreciation for the breadth of SEO knowledge.
The agency was absorbed by Spinutech during the pandemic. I stuck around, left, came back, and then eventually left again to join an agency called Sagapixel, where I worked remotely.
After several years of remote work, I missed the experience of working alongside colleagues, so I relocated to Orlando and joined an agency called Designzillas (now called Avenue Z). I worked there for a while, but realized it was time to help clients directly.
In January of 2024, I started Ethan Lazuk Consulting, LLC:
It is my full-time focus and passion. I’ve since broadened from SEO to generalized marketing and brand-building strategies. 😉
New business adventures.
I started my consulting business with the help of my wife, Dania. We also got buy-in from our rescue dog, Wuffiyah.
The first thing I did was work for free. No, really.
I offered free marketing help to nonprofits and charities as well as artists, creatives, and musicians. Several people got in touch with me.
I ranked well in my local Orlando market:
But later I broadened my services beyond just SEO to include holistic marketing strategies focused around brand storytelling and other digital marketing services like social media and PR.
Basically, I decided to go all in on my vision.
That led me to GEO.
SEO awards judging.
I’ve been privileged to be a judge for the US Search Awards, Global Agency Awards, and other SEO awards.
This has given me a front-row seat to some of the best work happening in our industry right now. But if there’s one takeaway I’ve had, it’s that there are no shortcuts or hacks in SEO/GEO. What works is applying the fundamentals at a high level.
The GEO bug takes hold.
I was initially one of those “GEO is just SEO” people. I still largely believe that. (I mean, even Google says so.)
But to succeed at GEO, one must also have a solid grasp of natural language processing and semantic search. There’s also a bigger focus on earned media, like digital PR, reddit threads, and other third-party validation.
Also, I believe GEO strategies are more multimodal, with a bigger focus on video content. There’s also the preference for listicles (though not spammy, self-referencing ones) and comparison posts.
I’m privileged to use Profound at my current job, and I’ve taken their academy courses to become a power user. That’s gotten me more interested in influencing AI visibility for brands.
Life away from my desk.
SEO/GEO and marketing have long been my passion, but lately I’ve been nerding out over deep learning and other AI topics.
I’m a big fan of music who listens to TOOL or Pink Floyd every day. I’m also building a nice vinyl record and CD collection, which has changed my listening experience like crazy.
I also love rewatching my favorite shows and movies, namely HBO stuff like The Wire, Sopranos, Entourage, and of course Coen Brothers and Sergio Leone spaghetti western movies.
With Montana roots, I also grew up hiking and camping and enjoy taking nature walks with Dania and Wuffiyah.
Get in touch!
Thanks for checking out my about page. If you’ve gotten this far, you probably know more about me than I do about myself! Joking. 😉
Whether you’re interested in SEO/GEO, just have a question, or need to reach out for any other reason, I’m available to chat!
Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing!
