Olga & Gus
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. It's Olga Zarr from SEOSL. Welcome to the SEO Podcast by SEOSLY. Today my guest is Gus Pelogia. How are you doing?
[00:00:15] I'm doing very well. How are you? I'm well as well, and I think it is, I often record in the evening. It'll be, I think one of the few episodes with daylight, so that's good. Okay, GU, so can you briefly introduce yourself for people who don't know you, , who are you up to when it comes to S u s E O?
[00:00:36] Where are you based? Uh, sure. Um, hi everyone. I am Gus Pelogia. I've been doing SEO for 11 years now. I'm from Brazil and I started jumping countries. I did a bit of SEO in Argentina, and then I did a few years in Holland. And the last six years I've been in Ireland and I did a bit of everything in seo from agency to in-house to link building to content.
[00:01:03] And what I'm doing now, uh, I work as an SEO product manager at Indeed, and it's definitely the most exciting SEO role I ever had. Wow. Wow. So I, I'm pretty sure your SEO story will be very interesting because this is what I would like to focus on today. So can you tell me way back into your beginnings, how did you start with s e o?
[00:01:27] How, how did it all happen that you landed in the SEO world? And when, when exactly did you start? Yeah. So I actually graduated in journalism and I thought my life would be in the newsrooms. I wanted to be a music journalist, uh, you know, travel with bands, interview bands, even wrote a book. Um, Like Rolling Stone style, uh, interviewing different, you know, people from the, the punk rock scene.
[00:01:56] Mm-hmm. Uh, from musicians to, uh, producers and you know, everyone in between. And I was for sure that that was my dream career. But at some point I also wanted to leave abroad for a little bit, even if it was, you know, three months and then come back. I, I had that desire. Mm-hmm. And it's been, uh, quite some time now, 11, 12 years.
[00:02:21] Can't even remember. Um, but, so I moved from Brazil to Argentina to learn Spanish and stick for a few months and see what would happen. And I started meeting people. I got a, an internship at the Spanish school. And the person that was my boss, um, right there, he started, you know, talking about SEO and saying, oh, you know, there's this thing about links and there's a bit of, you know, you should write a couple of blog posts about this and that.
[00:02:51] And that was my first introduction to it. Um, In that same school, I was an intern for three or four months, uh, learned Spanish properly and moved on. But I got, uh, very close with, uh, one of the owners and he knew people at, uh, an OTA and an online travel agency that it, it was, or maybe still the biggest one in, in South America at the time.
[00:03:15] So one time he just brings me to play football and say, Hey, this, uh, you know, this guy is looking for a job. And introduced me to a, to a director. And a couple of months later I got my first, uh, SEO role. And again, it was like, I think that was the first moment that I, I made a connection with both things that had studied in life.
[00:03:36] Uh, I did journalism school, but in high school I did a bit of it. So like the, the foundation for coding, foundation for hardware, like all the, the very basics. And H M L is one of those things. So for me it was, oh, so if I look at the code, I can't understand what the page is about and I can, you know, so those ideas about the page titles and descriptions and, and links, uh, those things.
[00:04:04] I, I had done a bit of, you know, uh, hand handwriting or, uh, hard coding, so of this thing. So for me, it was putting together both things that I had said before. Uh, I. Was very confident in me, in my ability to create stories, to get links and understanding as well that I could make a few changes on the page and see how, how they would perform.
[00:04:26] So, um, it was very exciting to find a new career that happened to involve the only two things I had said in life. Until then, Uhhuh Uhhuh. Okay. And can you tell me more about , your first SEO job? What exactly you were doing there? What were the Yeah, so it was a, it was a com it was a company called, uh, despegar.com or in, in Brazil was de.com and just means takeoff.com.
[00:04:56] Um, and I was doing a bit of content, so on, on all, all the landing pages we had like, uh, Uh, there was one specific keywords that it was 50% of all the revenue we would get from seo. So essentially you spend most of the time just monitoring one keyword and. There were a lot of things that we would do.
[00:05:21] Like maybe you'd get a, a couple links and you look back the next day, people say, oh, we're number one again. Okay, we fixed this. And then as you get a little bit more into SEO and you learn how, how things work and see different scenarios, you look at it, it's like, oh, actually that link just made no difference at all.
[00:05:41] Like Google was just testing, you know, whatever. It's just bouncing back every other day. We could. You know, we could be on the holidays, we would go back to position one. And so mm-hmm. It was interesting to see the, the excitement and the certainty people had about things and later just reflect on the actual impact, um, you are having.
[00:06:01] Um, but I do remember doing a campaign that got some links on, on big, um, big publications. And even the c e O came to email me about it, which was, uh, we wanted to show, it was an infographic. Uh, back in the days graphics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, it was how much it was, um, a price of how much would cost to watch all of the, it wasn't even the World Cup was some football competition, I think, uh, uh, ations Cup or something.
[00:06:35] Uh, how much would cost to travel to see, uh, Brazil in all the, in all the games? Mm-hmm. So it was simply just, uh, you know, here's a price estimation of light between the city and that city, and how much is the average ticket for it? For the match. So, And it was, it was an interesting thing because after we spent a lot of resources making the infographic and whatnot, some publications made their own infographic.
[00:07:01] And then I kind of realized, actually, maybe I didn't really need the infographic at all. It, the story is, is what mattered here. Really? Mm-hmm. Like people wanted to know, okay, so if I wanna see Brazil and all of this matches in this competition, this is how much money it costs. Like, okay, that, that's interesting.
[00:07:21] But the infographic was just a way to display that. It wasn't really the. The main source of information, right? Uhhuh Uhhuh. Okay. So, so can you tell me more about like storytelling telling and link building, because I think you, you that as well. Yeah, so I, I think my, my first years in SEO were quite a lot about this because that was the knowledge that I had like as a journalist who would be getting press releases, uh, all day long, you know, get the PR people calling me and trying to convince you about things and.
[00:07:56] Yeah, I think for me it was always interesting to try to find stories on something. Like you can get some boring information and turn into something exciting. And I did another campaign many years later, um, about things that people lose at the airport. And the, the story actually happened because I lost a Kindle.
[00:08:14] Um, In a trip to Italy and I started checking with all the, the airlines and the airports to see if they had a loss and found, and one airport actually had, uh, a list of everything that people lost, um, in there. So they were classify o passport id, driver's license or computer phone, tablet, and, you know, so I essentially just bundled together into fewer categories and put into percentages and say, here are the things that people.
[00:08:44] Uh, tend to lose at the airport, and it got some good coverage as well. The information was already there. Um, I just packed on on a different way and having myself, the experience of losing something, I realized that that was an interesting story to put together. So I think it's about looking for stories on places that, you know, maybe the, the information's already there, you just need to package in a different way.
[00:09:11] Okay. Okay, awesome. And can you tell me more about your current, , current job and indeed what exactly you do there? Because I think this is going to be interesting. Yeah. So it is completely different from everything we've discussed until now. Um, I joined Indeed as, as an SEO manager. Um, so I would be looking after some of the content.
[00:09:35] We'll be writing on the, the product that I work for. And, and things like that working with, uh, with writers. But then the person that was doing the product management for us decided to leave, and this was maybe less than two months that I was in the company. So my boss asked me, Hey, you seem to be very interested in, uh, a lot of the technical things that we do, and you know how to explain.
[00:10:01] Uh, SEO lingo into something that is more manageable for, for people that are not in our universe. Are you interested in taking his role? And that's where we are. So, uh, it just opened a whole avenue for me into thinking like a product manager. And so yeah, like on, on day to day, what I try to do is I pitch ideas for things we want to develop and the impact they would have in seo.
[00:10:29] And once the, that pitch, uh, is approved by my manager or, or by other stakeholders, then we spend a couple of months developing, uh, certain features for the website. Okay. And can you, can you name some of the features you have developed so far? Yeah, so, uh, we did something on, on internal linking. So there's, um, No, there are always different ways to surface things.
[00:10:58] Um, but the product that I have has, um, um, hundreds of thousands of pages and we noticed that, yeah, a lot of, a lot of those wouldn't really get a lot of, uh, internal link value or internal link love. And once you get into a a certain size, it's very difficult to. Find spaces and say, okay, let's just go one by one here and, and keep adding links.
[00:11:23] So we found different modules to, to bulk it up how we distribute that link equity. Uh, maybe like one the way we did was, uh, category based. So if you have, let's say, articles that belong to. Finding a job, uh, essentially found a way to rotate, uh, those links that needed, uh, those articles that needed more, most attention into that, uh, sort of a fooder that we have.
[00:11:50] Um, sometimes you do things together with different teams, right? So, um, I do, I, I spotted a few cases where I wanted to do something. And UX was already doing it, so I just joined. Mm-hmm. Something that they were doing. So we wanted to do some work on, uh, a clustering content. So, okay. Those articles are similar to those other ones.
[00:12:16] How can do it? And before into, before we got into any seo, there was someone from UX saying, okay, semantically, it makes sense to connect, connect these articles because. This will improve the user experience when they're reading an article about, uh, you know, how to behave in an interview, probably the next thing they, they want to do is, um, um, how to a, uh, a group interview or how to introduce yourself or, or things like that.
[00:12:44] So some of the steps will happen or should happen without any SEO in mind. So I kind of just joined forces and said, okay, I have engineering resources to. Help you with the implementation of this while U UI is taking care of the, the business idea behind it, Uhhuh, and regarding those link optimizations, internal linking, can you share some results you got got from that?
[00:13:13] Yeah, I mean, I think it's, um, you'll be, um, The numbers won't necessarily make a lot of sense if you are not in, in the product Uhhuh. Uh, but we do have, um, a few things in, in terms of millions. So like one of these modules, uh, got us uh, an increase of 2 million sessions per month. Oh, I think that's sounds funny.
[00:13:36] Which is which, which is very nice. Uh, but something that I find it very interesting with, with indeed in general and maybe other companies do something, uh, things that are similar to this as well, but I, I haven't seen before, working in smaller places, is that we have, uh, a separate team that, uh, that's called marketing science.
[00:13:59] And they are looking to impacts of different initiatives. So, you know, how necessarily it's very difficult to say, right, oh, this is happening because we added 50 links Yeah. To this page. Like, well, it could have been a Google update, it could have been a competitor that, uh, messed up on something. Could have been anything.
[00:14:16] Exactly. But they do a lot of work with creating tests and control groups. So they'll look into, they'll consider seasonality, they'll consider. Different factors along. As long as one, one group had a change, another group didn't have it, they're able to compare what is the impact that that change had. So I can actually pinpoint and say, you know, this, uh, feature was responsible for 20% of the traffic increase, or 10%, or whatever it is, and that calculation happens without SEO in mind.
[00:14:56] Which I think is really good because otherwise we'll tend to say, oh, this only happened because we did this. But they can, you know, they look into statistically on a way that is outside of our universe and also take a lot of the SEO lingo out of it and just give a, like a packed number to say, this is what happened.
[00:15:17] This is a percentage increase in traffic and in, you know, account creates or reach, or whatever you wanna call it. Uh huh. Okay. And what are, um, can you name like the biggest challenges in your current job? Except for SEO being like hard to a assess actually its impact. Yeah. I think, uh, one thing that is, that is difficult is to measure, uh, actual the, I would say probably measure the potential impact of certain features before, let's say if I, if I do another, Version of this internal linking, uh, play.
[00:15:57] We did already have a benchmark, so I can say I expect this or that, but if you're doing something completely new, that initial impact is hard to predict. Mm-hmm. So let's say if you wanna do something on, let's say we did a, we did a piece of work on HR flying, um, finding a way to automate that work with the writers.
[00:16:22] So once we give them a brief, they already find, uh, an equivalent on our product, on a, on a different language, and we are able to connect all of this. So I don't have to go and manually add HR fla, but my editors already doing that. Mm-hmm. Uh, even outside my cms. Okay. Um, But that's hard to measure the impact, right?
[00:16:47] Uh, so I think when, when it comes to really big initiatives and because from time to time I will be pitching this, you know, our plans and what, what we want to do to, to, to a director or to my, you know, head of product. And I have to convince that person without any SEO lingo, what is the potential impact that something's gonna have.
[00:17:14] And like, I've been even trying to do things like, um, getting the, the total search potential for a page instead of looking to cures. Mm-hmm. And then I, I realize, oh, I have this information, but I'm missing, you know, information for 10,000 pages that I can't find anywhere else. So my estimations will be much lower than why, than what I really expect that we can reach.
[00:17:39] But I can, I can't just go and say, well, we don't have a, you know, we are underestimating this or we are overestimating this. So convincing people of the impact to really large initiatives, I think that's the the biggest challenge that I have right now. Uh huh. Okay. That's, that's interesting. And now can you tell me what's the favorite part of A C O U you like the most, the favorite part of your job?
[00:18:07] I think, well, so this, and why I think this changes from time to time. Uhhuh, when I worked in, in, in agencies before I would have six months that I would only think about technical skill. And then I wanted really to get, uh, you know, both visits and understand what was happening there. And then for six months, my whole life, Sorry.
[00:18:32] Then for six months, my whole life will be local scl. Like, okay, everything you can optimize on GM B, how can you automate, uh, how can you get more reviews? You know, are this pictures right? And how can we, um, you know, uh, verify all of these locations in bulk at once. And then for six months, it's link, whichever area that I see.
[00:18:53] There is an opening that I'm interested and I look around and there's nobody around me that really. Owns that area. I will spend a few months just doing that and that's where I am now with product. So I am trying to connect everything from uh, s e o ux and we have an activation team, which is essentially the conversion thing.
[00:19:23] So how can we work together? Um, And how the SEO initiatives actually will make sense, not just because SEO wants to do, not just because we're gonna bring more people to the website, but how all of these interactions and all these different teams can work together. It can be something very silly. Like I was, um, we were doing something on, again, internal linking again, and I was talking with, uh, with, with, uh, UX and say, oh, so we see all of these opportunities in, in content.
[00:19:55] Those, those pages are not, uh, interlinked with, uh, with the proper anchor and. Comes back to me and say, well, can I take a look at these anchors before we change, you know, before you change hundreds of them? Because I spotted something here that a user would expect to go to a job page, to a job search page instead of going to another article, which was an interesting thing because although, I mean, this is pretty obvious, right?
[00:20:26] Someone is reading an article and they get into a page. It's like, oh, what this means? They go to, they click and go to the next page. But SSOs, we tend to think, oh, I wanna rank this page for this keyword word. Mm-hmm. So lemme put a link with this in here, but like, the ultimate goal, it's not necessarily people going to the next article, right?
[00:20:48] Like we, we want them, we want to do that internal link, um, get all of that internal link power. But for the user, they want to find information. So, I, I kind of realized, wow, actually this anchor doesn't make sense if I'm thinking about the people that are on this page. So, or I changed my anchor, or I actually get that anchor to link to the page that matters for the user, not necessarily the page that matters for me as an seo.
[00:21:17] So you kind of need to put like those things together or, um, like we are. Working on a feature that both SEO and, and the conversion teams can, can use. Um, but you know, it, it's interesting mm-hmm. To, to put all of these things together and make sure that what we are doing is not just for seo, but it's actually for the user.
[00:21:42] And even if you want to think. On a smaller scale to make sure that all of the teams that are contributing for, for something can actually have their, their opinion and contribute the, the best way possible. Yeah. Yeah. That's very, very, very interesting. , that you mentioned conversion and s e and that they sometimes like to clash.
[00:22:04] I think recently someone, , ran a poll on Twitter asking if we, SEOs should also be responsible for conversions. And I think the majority said yes, but I still think that a lot of SEOs don't necessarily think about conversions. Can you maybe share some tips for, for SEOs regarding how to increase their awareness of that, how to, how to be a better s e o with, with that in mind?
[00:22:34] Yeah. Um, I mean, conversion is, it's the reason why we do things right. Uh, just bringing people to Page doesn't pay. Yeah. And it, it's, I I think I started getting a lot of that awareness when I, I became, uh, on, on a previous job, I became a, an account manager and. I would be working with, with clients a bit of on on the SEO strategy and getting someone in the team to execute and also working with the social PPC and so on.
[00:23:08] But when I will talk with a client once a month for half an hour, I. They don't care about the, you know, that Google Bots started visiting those pages? Yeah. Or that we added structure data. Oh, Google's picking up the F FAQ that we put in, or create a new about page and you explain e a t, they wanna know, am I making money?
[00:23:30] Yeah. Are you bringing the people that I need? So, You know, I'll convert them offline. I have a system for it, but I need to find the people that are interested in this first. And so once you take that, uh, once you put that hat, that your goal is not just to, uh, bring numbers to page, but transform that into something else, transform that into business and into money, um, that, that's when your mindset also also changes and you stop looking to.
[00:24:01] Sure. Traffic is nice, you know, we can be aligned there. Uh, there is a correlation, more traffic, more or you know, more conversions, but it's not always the case. So you need to start looking for, you know, ways to, to make that connection. Yeah, yeah. Maybe look into, you know, what are the types of pages that will have more, more conversion for you.
[00:24:24] Maybe, um, you know, blogs tend to have a lower conversion. Uh, but you know, could you have maybe test different CTAs on, on a page that you have a lot of traffic, um, we already, you already have the people in. Is there a way to, you know, filter them or turn them into from a, I dunno, free trial into, uh, an nql or, you know, what are, I dunno, what are the goals that, that you might have but transform the traffic into something else?
[00:24:54] , sure. Like sometime ago, I, I was auditing a site and I think this site , , had, a lot of GA goals and when I looked at conversions, it looked like awesome, like 100 or 200 conversions every day seems awesome. But then when I. Kind of analyzed it more deeply. It looked like the conversions were like totally irrelevant that they didn't even matter.
[00:25:18] I don't even remember what was, but basically almost anything counted as conversion, kind of any action, whether it was relevant or irrelevant. So I would say the definition of what is really a conversion for us is also an important thing in addition to. Tracking it correctly and, and, and track tracking the traffic.
[00:25:40] Yeah. Big time. Big time. Yeah. I've, and sometimes you have to take things really, like completely offline. Uh, yeah. I worked with a, with a company on the. On the, the medical universe. It's like a private clinic for, uh, men's Health Uhhuh. And we would have like a lot of conversations about they, they knew very little about online marketing.
[00:26:04] They, you know, was just a, a doctor who, uh, wanted more men with problems for him to, to deal with. And we, like, we had long conversations. They would sometimes get like a, a nod. Um, lead that didn't really make sense and they would be mad at us, like, oh, I keep getting once a month. There's this lead from, uh, Ireland where I, I happen to be based, uh, as well, Uhhuh and, uh, we, when we call back, they don't, uh, they never pick it up.
[00:26:36] I can see this is a fake lead and it would come, I dunno why it would come like every same day of the month. Something like this would happen. So after a lot of conversations with them, we started filtering, uh, what we would count as a, as a lead under some other criteria that they have. And at the end of the day, the leads wouldn't just be on Google Analytics anymore, they would just be on a sheet and mm-hmm.
[00:27:04] You know, talking with them, they started saying, oh, you know, they usually think. Somewhere between three and six months from the moment someone gets in touch with us until they come to the clinic and they make a payment or they start a treatment and, and then we start incorporating that into our process as well.
[00:27:24] So they would report back to us to say, oh, mm-hmm these leads became patients. So we were able to say, okay, the money you're spending here, it's turning to money on the other end. And because then the volume wasn't too big. Who could actually go back and match. This is a person that came through at C or PPC and you know, they spend, I dunno, 10, 20 grand with you.
[00:27:51] So sometimes you can take a bit of the technology out and mm-hmm go offline or, you know, take another, another place to find where things are actually happening and answer, transform that into something that is meaningful for your client. Yeah, sure. And I also have an interesting case. , it was a bit different, but, , a company came to me and they ended work with their previous agency.
[00:28:18] And the moment they ended work in Google Analytics, they lost practically all of the traffic, most of the traffic. And at, at first it, it took a bit odd because they lost organic traffic. So I was wondering what, what happened, what's going on? And then my, I, I didn't, , solve it 100%, but what I think happened is that they had someone hired who was simply clicking, like making a search on Google for top two or three keywords every day, and they simply stopped that the moment they ended.
[00:28:52] And this was the kind of traffic they were having. Like, I don't remember a couple of hundred visits per day, but they were like totally useless, right. And not converting. Yeah. Yeah. That's another way like to, to show that traffic. Sometimes it's just meaningless. No, but yeah, that, that's very, that's very sneaky of them.
[00:29:12] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, do you work remotely or, , do you go to the office? I go to the office once in a while. Uh, but I mostly work remotely, remotely. Um, my, my team is also, also remote, but most, mostly in us. I have two colleagues in Ireland, uh, which also means that sometimes I work the other hour, um, in the evening, uh, special, have sprint plannings and, and things like that.
[00:29:42] But I do have a lot of freedom. I can start. At, uh, 8:00 AM or I can start at 10 or 11. Mm-hmm. Uh, today I went to, uh, bring the car for a, for a, a check-in, you know, checkup. So I'm, I'm only started working, uh, later in the day, but I know I'm gonna work, uh, a little bit in the evening as well, which is fine.
[00:30:03] And yeah, I kind of lo I do miss the office a little bit. Um, I go sometimes for the, Free food and, uh, barista and just to be on a different place, like take a little while, listen to a podcast. Uh, on my way there, Uhhuh. But yeah, mostly just work from home. Yeah, I, I transitioned from office to like fully being fully remote, I think around four or five years ago.
[00:30:30] And the moment I managed to do that, I, I never really missed going to the office. Yeah. I think for, yeah. Also what changed for me as well is that I moved outside Dublin, so mm-hmm. Getting to the office is maybe a 40 minutes drive trip when before would be a. 10 minutes walk to the office. Mm-hmm. And I also have a one year old.
[00:30:52] Oh. Oh yeah. So, so, you know, you never know, you know, like we, we were talking before we start recording today. My day started 5:00 AM and it was like, you know what? We slept from nine to five. This is actually good sleep. I feel refreshed. So Uhhuh baby went, went back asleep for another hour, was like, I might just start my day.
[00:31:13] Uh, I rather start on my own terms instead of sleeping for another 20 minutes and then I start getting deep asleep and I have to wake up and uhhuh, you don't feel refreshed anymore. So it's like, you know what? I'm gonna have my coughing piece and. Enjoy this little hour that I have in the morning. Yeah.
[00:31:32] Awesome. So my next question was supposed to be like, what does your day look like in this remote environment? Yeah. So I was listening to some of the other podcasts, uh, I think with Alydia. Mm-hmm. And as I was listening, I think you asked her the same question and I started already thinking like, oh, what, what, what would I answer?
[00:31:55] And the first thing that I like to do in the morning that gets me very excited for the day is to get those Jira updates on my email. So I know that tickets that I've been waiting for were completed. Mm-hmm. So I'll say, okay, I'm waiting for, I dunno, this a structured data to be implemented or for this change that we expect is gonna impact the paint being okay.
[00:32:18] Oh, this was done. Okay. I'm excited to go and start tracking the results. So if I see that there is an important ticket that was complete, my date's already, uh, uh, you know, I already started the day. Very excited. And, but yeah. Um, a bit of work in the morning, uh, different times. I can sometimes start at five, sometimes start at 10, and I have.
[00:32:44] Pretty much, you know, uh, heads down time until three or 4:00 PM and then meetings start from four to six or uh, three to five and then eight to nine, or there's often, there's, uh, something in the evening, one hour or so. Um, But yeah, that, that's kind of my day. Often I think, oh, this day is really quiet. Um, not much to do, not a lot of, you know, pressure to deliver something today.
[00:33:11] And then you think, oh, things are too quiet. I, I should find something to get myself busy. Uhhuh. And when you realize it's at 4:00 PM and then everybody's online, and all the questions, all the slack messages I sent to people when they were sleeping, they started answering. And then at 6:00 PM I'm like, I have so much to do.
[00:33:29] It's very similar with me because Yes, I'm also like in the European time zone, and most of my clients are in the us. So like, yeah, until five, , until 3:00 PM I am mostly like free. And then usually things start, start to happen. Now everything happens. Exactly. And then I, I want to finish. I want to finish today.
[00:33:51] I may be, uh, you know, feeding my baby or cleaning the, the house or something, and then a message pops in. I'm like, if I answer to this now, they can't finish this tonight. Yeah. Instead of waiting for another two days. So I end up. Doing a bit of extra, uh, end up being, uh, you know, a little extra work on my phone.
[00:34:13] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I also do some work on my phone. Okay. So can you tell me how do you stay up to date with seo? How do you learn seo? Yeah. Um, so. I'm, I'm not sure how people do, uh, on, on this. So I have two methods. One, I, I need to have a milestone board, daily SEO or competitor read. So, or spend some time on a competitor website, even if it's just like reading, you know, something that they publish or looking at a, a job posting, uh, not necessarily with, uh, with SEO in mind.
[00:34:51] But just to understand the experience, uh, to stay up to date on how they're doing things, or I have a daily SEO read search engine land, uh, get an email every day at, uh, 10:00 AM or 9:00 AM now because of, uh, daylight savings, um, seo, fomo. Once a week. Um, but I, I do tend to just like do have short reads from on, on this, on this daily thing.
[00:35:19] And from time to time if I really find a problem that I can't solve or something that I've been postponing for a while, suddenly I might spend one or two full days just reading, reading. So I go, you know, how do you connect all of these pieces of structure data? So I'm gonna read different blog, I'm gonna write a bit of code myself and put it together and start developing my own theories.
[00:35:41] So, you know, I might just do like a two days print on reading, reading, reading, reading. And then I forget about it for weeks and then I go back on. In a very intense reading for a short period or for six months, or for six months. That's interesting because I think it gives you , a bit of deeper knowledge on basically all SEO aspects because like for, for me, I always was about, like more about technical seo, SEO, auditing, and I still.
[00:36:13] Think that, for example, when it comes to local seo, , I should, I should do this deep dive for six months or something yeah. I feel like if I don't do this deep dive from, from time to time, you might just end up repeating what other people are saying. It's like, okay, well sure. Google said that this is, uh, What's happening.
[00:36:33] Okay. But, you know, on the steep dive, like, like, I dunno, things that now I do all the time that I learned from the steep dives would be, you know, use a co custom extraction or custom search on screen frog. So mm-hmm. It's something that I discover in one of these, uh, deep dives years ago, and now we use every other week, like I want to say, oh.
[00:36:58] Do these, are these guys using alters? You know, what's the percentage of pages that they have with alters versus not? Or how many mentions we have to this anchor on, on, on our website and things like that. Um, but, and I keep showing to people, you know, every, I dunno, every couple of months I show to someone else, oh, you can do this Screaming frog.
[00:37:21] Like, oh, really? And it, it would only, you know, I only worked on it because of one of the steep dives that I actually like. Okay. You know, I tried, uh, the rejects and it didn't work five times until you finally get it, right. Mm-hmm. Or sometimes I'm googling the same thing again, but I, I already responded.
[00:37:40] Oh yeah. I was on this website before. It was, this page had the answer for me. And you, I see myself doing the same steps again. Um, but because I already know the hard way, you know, I, I know where the, I, I started researching and then I, I know where the next step is. And are you now introducing chat G p t into your, into your SEO tool set?
[00:38:02] Uh, personally, not too much. Uh, my wife is using all the time. Uh, she works in, in product marketing, uh, uh, products. Uh, marketing management and she's very excited about it. And I'm, I'm, I'm playing a little bit with Bing, uh, to understand what would be the impact, uh, straightaway. And it's interesting. I, I dunno what the real impact, uh, will be.
[00:38:32] Uh, a lot of people question the. The answer is, and you know, because it's so open, it's very easy to find a lot of examples where things are not going well. Mm-hmm. And you always will. Right. You know, we can format a question, you can ask the same questions in 10 different ways until we find one that has a problem.
[00:38:52] Say, oh, look at this. Nobody can trust this. But I how people will use it on the day to day. I'm, I'm curious to see it, um, as everybody else. I am a little bit worried, but also aware that it's not a choice. I, you know, it's something you have to embrace. Uh, if I'm worried or not. If I say good or bad things about it, it doesn't really matter too much if people are using in, you know, in, in a high scale or you join the game or you're not playing the game anymore.
[00:39:25] Yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And what would be your tips for someone just starting out in seo? , what should they be doing? What shouldn't they be doing? I think as, um, I, I mean, I, I gave this advice a lot of, a lot of times, and I, I've heard from a lot of people as well, is that you just have to go and test things yourself.
[00:39:47] Um, If you're starting seo, maybe you are a junior at an agency or you just got an internship, um, pick a topic that you like, create your own website. Start looking at, uh, you know, search console and seeing things that are happening on a place that you can just do whatever you want. Um, because if you're, you know, if you're working with a client and you wanna make a change, you need their approval.
[00:40:13] You need, there's so many layers until something gets done. And it might not get done the way you want. So like in one of those deep dives years ago, I'll be on, okay, I really want to understand how the structure data thing works. So I wouldn't start copy and paste the code and it wouldn't work. And, but I, you know, and, and I made it work at the end, um, but only because I had my own website, so I could just create something there if a page broke or if something disappeared for whatever reason.
[00:40:46] It's okay because it's, you know, it's not anybody's, uh, uh, resource or anybody else's money. Um, so you can have the place to, to do things the way you want. And I think there's a different meaning as well for you. Um, like have, I have my SEO website, I publish every, I dunno, 3, 4, 6 months. Mm-hmm. For once in a while I publish an article and.
[00:41:13] It's, it's has a different meaning when you look at, uh, GA and say, oh, I got this many visits. Oh, what, who are the referral sources? Like, oh, I'm on this newsletter that I didn't know. And, and it has a much different meaning than it just look at a client, oh yeah, you had a hundred percent increase, uh, month to month on MQ ls.
[00:41:31] Uh, are you interested in, uh, spending some more money on PPC or yeah, giving them a different opportunity. You're just so proud of what you achieved that people are interested on. Purely your thoughts and not, uh, you representing someone else. Um, and it makes you a lot more excited about, uh, trying new things and, and building things.
[00:41:52] So my advice is start your own, your own website on. Any topic that you are passionate about. That's a great insight. , I can honestly say that nothing makes me as happy as seeing a spike in GA for my own website or, or gsc. It's nice. Yeah, it's very nice. Uh, who would you like to gi to give a shout out to?
[00:42:16] Who should we start following? So I'm gonna give a shout out to three people. Um mm-hmm. One is, uh, Linda Soce. Um, she already got shout outs here before, but I think she's such a nice person. She, as lady said on her, uh, podcast, she should just brings people up, you know? Yeah. Like she gives shout out to a lot of people.
[00:42:39] She gives opportunity to a lot of people to, you know, make their names and, and highlight. So, and it's very nice when you see someone on the top. That is bringing a lot more people, uh, to, to join them. And Barry Adams, I mentioned his name many times as well. Uh, some people love him, some people hate him, and he has, I love him.
[00:43:01] Always been, he has always been so nice to me. Uh, you know, from, I dunno how many years ago, the, the day I met him, he invited me to write for State of Desto. And I was on a transition considering moving to Dublin. And a lot of things happened around that period that made me very excited about taking the, the leap and, and moving and just meeting him and it's like, oh, this is like a top seo.
[00:43:28] And it's, you know, giving me attention. We are having a chat and I'm learning a lot, and he's inviting me to, to write for a website that he manages. Uh, and every other time that I ask him something, he would give me a good answer. So, uh, you know, I, I like Barry very much and I want, uh, I would like to give a final shout out to my boss actually.
[00:43:51] Mm-hmm. Not just because he's my boss, uh, but because he's honestly very good manager. Um, he knows how to manage things that maybe other people won't get a bit too stressed about, and I don't see him even when something start going the right in the right direction. Uh, I can see he is really good talking with different stakeholders within SEO and outside seo and putting a plan together.
[00:44:17] And from, I, I had a, I worked, I only had very few cases where I had a, a really bad manager. Um, but he's very open with me even when things are not the, you know, the, the best scenario he will tell me, actually, I dunno how to do this. Let's, uh, Try to find out, put someone else, maybe this person, that person in.
[00:44:39] I like that honesty. Um, on, on things in general. His name is Sam Brennan. Uh, by the way, I dunno if I mentioned before, but, uh, great. I think you haven't. Yeah.
[00:44:51] Okay. Awesome. So where can people find you and follow you? What's the best place? Yeah. Um, I am on LinkedIn Spilo. I am on Twitter as well, um, at Pelo. And after four years I will go, uh, again to Brighton in, in April. Oh, nice. It's, it's been. Quite some time since I've been to conference and, and I'm quite excited to meet in person.
[00:45:18] Um, people like contacts that I've made in, in the last few years that have been some, like some people even had video calls, but I have, I never actually met in person. Yeah. So I'm, I'm looking forward to it. Are you going to be a speaker? No, no, I, uh, I, I pitched a couple of times. Never got a yes. I will pitch again for me too.
[00:45:39] Me too. I also pitched and also didn't get there, but I am going as an attendee. I will, I will be ready. So my, my strategy now is I'm gonna have a pitch ready this month. And cause usually the day after, first the conference is when Kevin is saying, okay, we're looking for speakers. So I want to have that ready for the moment that they're looking Uhhuh at, uh, at the pitches.
[00:46:05] Mine is already there. Yeah. Yeah. , that's a good strategy. So let's see. I'm being a bit late and Yeah, me too. Less time. So that, that could be a reason. Yeah, that I didn't get in, but we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Awesome. Can use cross for us. Yeah, exactly. So thank you, thank you so much , for this talk.
[00:46:25] , it was super interesting. Well, thank you for inviting me. Hopefully the people that are listening, uh, also got something interesting from it. I'm pretty sure that's the case. So thanks everyone and see you in the next episode. Bye-bye. Great bye.
