0:42

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories podcast

0:45

, a monthly show where we celebrate

0:47

and learn from the change makers in digital marketing

0:49

. Great digital marketers understand

0:51

that people are the most challenging part of

0:53

doing their jobs , and this show focuses

0:56

on the people part of digital marketing wins what

0:58

tactics or skills the guests use

1:00

to align people with their marketing strategy

1:02

. I'm your host , catherine Watzie-Yong

1:05

, the owner of WO Strategies LLC

1:08

. We focus on increasing organic

1:10

discovery for enterprise-sized , science-focused

1:13

clients . Thank you for joining me . Let's

1:15

get into it and celebrate our victories . So

1:19

today we're joined by Gus Palosia

1:21

. He's a journalist , turned SEO

1:23

conference speaker , once-in-a-while blogger

1:25

. He's currently an SEO product manager

1:28

at Indeed , which is , as you know , the number

1:30

one job site in the world

1:33

. He with over 250 million

1:35

unique visitors every month . Gus has

1:37

worked both in-house and at digital

1:39

agencies in various spots around the

1:42

world Argentina , the Netherlands , ireland

1:44

. He spent five years as an account

1:46

manager and team lead at agencies such

1:48

as Spark Foundry , wolfgang

1:50

Digital , working with clients from travel

1:52

, e-commerce , professional services

1:54

, and he's won several industry

1:57

awards , such as the Digital Marketing Awards

1:59

, the Drum Search Awards , the Irish Content

2:01

Marketing Awards , and currently he's

2:03

a judge for the EU Search Awards . So

2:06

this episode is going to be perfect for

2:08

you if you're curious about the following how

2:10

would I think like a project manager and how that

2:12

might help your developer relationships , how

2:15

you could pivot your career toward product management

2:17

, how to tell your story effectively

2:20

through the SEO test you're running . And

2:22

how to present your story effectively to one

2:24

awards . So , gus , welcome

2:26

to the show .

2:28

Thank you very much for having me . I'm excited

2:30

to have this conversation .

2:33

Great thanks for being on . So

2:35

why don't we get started by telling a little bit

2:38

more to the listeners about your background

2:40

, how you got started in SEO

2:42

and how you did the switch to product management

2:44

?

2:45

Sure , so I started SEO

2:47

back in Argentina in 2012

2:49

. Even though I'm from Brazil , I had to

2:52

move countries to discover

2:54

a new profession that I took on

2:56

and changed my life , and before

2:58

that I was actually a journalist . I went to

3:00

journalists school . I published a couple

3:03

of books . I worked for

3:05

big news portals

3:07

doing a bit of everything , mostly

3:10

entertainment . I loved

3:12

writing about music , so I would try

3:14

to get any freelance gig . Sometimes

3:16

I would just work for free for the

3:18

same publication that I was working

3:21

full-time but doing other types of journalism

3:23

Because I always wanted to

3:25

find a way to put my passion there

3:28

as well and develop that . And

3:30

when I moved to Argentina , I got

3:32

a job at a Spanish school and someone introduced

3:35

me to SEO . I was very lucky

3:37

that the owner of the school knew

3:39

some other people that we went to play

3:41

football one day and he was like , hey , this

3:44

is the guy that I was talking about . So

3:46

after a soccer match , I got

3:49

a job interview at one of the biggest

3:51

online travel agencies in South America

3:53

at the time . Got a job and

3:56

that's how I actually started doing SEO

3:58

professionally , full-time . It

4:01

was a combination of the two things

4:04

that I had studied in my life Journalists

4:07

it was the side of how to

4:09

pitch stories to journalists how can I

4:11

explain something

4:13

on an interesting way and find

4:15

this to get backlinks . And

4:17

on the other side , in high school I also

4:20

had done some IT studies

4:22

, so I knew very little about

4:24

computer hardware

4:26

and HTML building websites

4:28

. It was very basic from what we do

4:30

now , but essentially at

4:32

that time , the first time , I was reading the

4:35

Moz guide to SEO and they

4:38

started talking about so here's how you look

4:40

at the HTML code and it's like wait a minute

4:42

, I know this . So it

4:44

was an easy start . It was a profession

4:47

that combined the two things I knew and

4:49

I somehow just stumbled upon

4:51

of it . That's awesome .

4:53

So I have a couple not

4:56

related SEO questions actually . So

4:58

the first one is so , what are the books that you've written ?

5:01

Yeah , so my graduation

5:03

project from college

5:05

was a book called Giado Di Paoco

5:08

, like a stage diary , something

5:10

like that , and it was 10

5:13

interviews with musicians and

5:15

music label owners and that kind

5:17

of people more

5:19

or less like a Rolling Stone style

5:21

, kind of going on detail about who

5:24

they are and trying to frame something

5:27

about their day . So someone one musician

5:29

, I went on a trip with the other one . I picked

5:32

him up and at his house and we

5:34

took the subway together , went to his full-time

5:36

job on that it was on

5:38

the side of heavy band and that kind of stuff

5:40

and the other one I was

5:42

already living in Argentina and

5:44

a Brazilian band was going to play there for

5:47

three , four days and I just

5:49

joined them on on this trip

5:51

, used this as an opportunity to discover

5:54

a few new places in the country and I turned

5:56

that into a story .

5:58

That's awesome . So one of the previous

6:01

members of my team at Ketchum actually he was singing

6:03

at the Apollo and now he well , for

6:05

a moment there he's working as the digital marketing

6:07

manager at Sony Music Entertainment , but now he's

6:09

off at YouTube Music , so I have a

6:11

history of connecting

6:13

to people that are doing music stuff . I'm also

6:16

a band groupie , as some people , some listeners

6:18

, might know . My husband plays in the president's

6:20

own Marine Band at

6:22

the White House .

6:24

So I'm a bit of a music groupie

6:26

. Okay , yeah , you have an

6:28

interesting world around you

6:31

, so .

6:31

I'm curious about this reporter

6:34

background , though , because not all SEOs

6:36

kind of end up there with such a strong writing

6:38

background , so is there any bit of that

6:40

that you think you're currently using ?

6:42

I know you're doing product management , but I

6:46

think I use a lot of this and I use

6:48

throughout my career the

6:51

idea of , like , putting stars together

6:53

. It's

6:55

something that you take with you as a journalist

6:57

, no matter what you do . So

7:00

if I'm pitching something

7:02

to a client , it has to make sense

7:04

for them . Or if they ask me something , or

7:06

if I have a big meeting , I will naturally

7:09

just look at okay , so this is what

7:11

we discussed , I'm gonna work on this

7:13

, you're gonna work on this . Unless

7:16

this part is done by person

7:18

A , none of this can happen . So

7:21

you have to turn anything into a cohesive

7:24

story and

7:27

to do that , as a journalist , I think

7:29

it's . You use those skills in

7:31

SEO and digital marketing

7:33

as well . So , yeah , I think

7:35

putting stars together make sure that it's clear

7:37

for everyone what has to be done

7:39

, what we are expecting from them was

7:42

something that I had to do before

7:44

and I still do it now .

7:47

So can you describe to the listeners the

7:49

difference between the product

7:51

management mindset and an SEO

7:53

manager approach ?

7:55

Yeah , so I think something that

7:57

changed a lot for me before

8:00

. I would just

8:03

put a list of things and say , okay , we

8:05

can , we do an audit , we

8:07

see what's wrong and we start working on to

8:09

fix a lot of things on the website and

8:12

we would just hope

8:14

that some of these things will work . Some

8:17

of them usually work and you start

8:19

getting results for the client . But there

8:21

was never an approach before

8:23

to say is this happening because

8:25

of this project or because of that project

8:27

? We are just running a lot of things at the same time

8:30

and hoping

8:32

those results will help the client . You

8:34

can have some directions , say

8:37

, we spent a lot of time putting

8:39

nice links this month so we can

8:41

see that those pages are growing , but

8:43

we can't really measure necessarily

8:45

. Was this growing more than

8:47

the website , that the pages that we didn't

8:50

build any links to , or is this

8:52

actually what is driving results

8:54

or not ? And I

8:56

think , as a product manager

8:58

now , you think a little bit different

9:01

. First , I'm not just fixing

9:03

problems . I'm spending most

9:05

of my time building new things . In fact , if

9:07

I have to spend time , fixing a problem is

9:10

a bit disappointing . You have to do . We

9:12

all have bugs and stuff , but

9:14

fixing a bug

9:16

won't bring me closer to

9:18

actually bring more results . It might fix

9:20

other things . Let's say , if something's not

9:22

looking nice on the website , of

9:24

course users will be happier that this is

9:27

working again . Or if there's

9:29

a problem , the CMS that the editors

9:31

can't do something , I'm

9:33

solving their problem , but I'm not bringing

9:35

more traffic or bringing more results

9:38

because of that . So

9:40

I tend to spend most of my time

9:42

building new things and

9:45

also comparing what

9:47

should be done first , because before we would

9:49

kind of ballpark oh this seems easy , we'll

9:51

just do this month , but because now we

9:54

do projects that are a lot longer

9:56

, a lot more complex , you will

9:58

need to find ways to compare is

10:00

it worth doing this versus

10:02

that one ? So

10:04

having that mindset into comparing

10:07

projects and testing things

10:09

and releasing an MVP

10:11

to see if things actually is

10:14

working the way we intended is actually

10:16

bringing results before you go

10:18

full on and spend six months developing

10:21

something . I think all of these things

10:23

are part of the product mindset

10:25

that I started adopting after

10:27

I started working on this role

10:29

.

10:31

But that's helpful . So are there any other tips

10:33

that you have about how to pick

10:36

the project , sell through that project

10:38

, to do a test , that kind of stuff

10:40

?

10:42

So I start everything

10:44

with a PRD product

10:46

requirements document and

10:48

at first I was doing those

10:50

because I needed to pitch this

10:52

idea to someone else and make sure

10:55

that they would have their buy-in , but

10:57

over time I realized that often

10:59

they would help me to clarify

11:01

my idea as well . So a PRD

11:04

will be a long form

11:06

text document where you're gonna explain this the

11:08

background from a project . This is

11:10

what we wanna do , these are the results

11:12

we expect to get . These is the

11:14

technical depth , those are teams

11:17

that need to be involved and everything

11:20

that surrounds it . Those are the deadlines . We

11:22

wanna release this on this day . We expect to

11:24

test results after four weeks

11:26

, six weeks and so on . And

11:29

this document usually gives me a

11:31

lot of confidence and clarification

11:33

on what I'm actually building , because

11:36

it's very easy to get

11:38

out of the direction . The

11:41

developer might understand that

11:43

something is different , or it might

11:45

be in a way that does not allow the

11:49

second thing you wanna do , but maybe you

11:51

never mentioned this before , so

11:53

the clarity is not there . So

11:56

I get very excited when I have to write a

11:58

PRD , because I spend days

12:01

and weeks doing research , looking

12:03

at different types of websites and looking

12:05

at the potential problems this might

12:07

cause , and kind

12:10

of putting a very strong

12:12

idea together before I bring

12:14

it to other people and they

12:16

might say this doesn't work or we

12:19

can only do A and B and

12:21

that kind of stuff . So I think that

12:23

really helps me clarify the idea and

12:26

get the buy-in from other people , because

12:28

as much as I

12:31

can say that I have great ideas , they

12:33

are compared to ideas from different

12:36

teams and different people . So if the

12:39

UX is not on board , if the

12:41

editor is not on board , if the

12:43

engineers are not on board , the

12:45

idea might just not never become

12:48

a reality .

12:49

So do you have an example

12:52

of a PRD for the listeners

12:54

that never played ?

12:55

Yeah , so this is

12:57

one that I'm going to present at Brighton SEO

12:59

actually . So

13:02

it's not a completely re-occased

13:04

of something that we did , but I think

13:07

you can get the idea from it . So , let's

13:09

say , you want to build an automated

13:11

link module , so you want to . Every

13:14

time there is a mention to a specific word

13:16

in an article or in

13:18

a page , you want that

13:20

phrase to link to

13:22

another page . So let's

13:24

say , every time that you mention digital marketing

13:26

, victors podcast , you want that

13:28

link to , ultimately to create that

13:31

link . So that's very simple

13:33

on paper , but

13:35

once you start doing it , you might realize

13:37

do you

13:39

have enough mentions of this phrase

13:42

in different articles ? Maybe you only have five

13:44

mentions , so you don't need to build a tool for this

13:46

. Do you have already

13:49

manually linked to this page throughout

13:52

your content ? So you need to find

13:55

your feature , must read the

13:57

content and see if there's already a link

13:59

there . Are you putting too many links next

14:01

to each other ? Are they disturbing

14:04

what the user should be doing on

14:06

this page ? Maybe they start clicking

14:08

on this link instead of doing

14:11

what they actually want to do on this page , so

14:13

you're actually causing a problem to

14:16

do this , if that makes sense . So

14:19

putting all those things together

14:21

and also the impact right , why you're

14:23

doing this . You want to build a

14:25

feature that might take three

14:27

to six months to be done . And how

14:30

are you going to prove the impact ? Because we

14:32

all like to do shiny things

14:34

and it's very exciting to build

14:36

things in SEO , but everything

14:39

that I do in a few months down

14:41

the line I have to justify if that was

14:43

successful or not . And if it

14:45

was not , can we still make changes

14:47

and make it successful ? Have

14:49

you learned from this ? How can we solve

14:52

this ?

14:53

I like your explanation of how much time this might take

14:55

to pull together . So when you're

14:58

finding I'm assuming there's some case studies

15:00

and some other stuff because you mentioned , like what happens if this

15:02

goes wrong , kind of thing so do

15:04

you have places that you go for the case studies

15:06

? And , in relation to the

15:08

impact on other people's work , do

15:11

you talk to folks before you finish up your

15:13

PRD ? Do you like literally talk to folks

15:15

internally ?

15:17

Yes . So the first question

15:19

about the impact If

15:21

you already have something that we've

15:23

done internally , that's usually my reference

15:26

. If I don't have that

15:28

, I can look at an external

15:30

case . If

15:32

I don't have that , I can just say this

15:35

is the amount of traffic we are traffic

15:37

or conversions that we are trying

15:39

to surface with this . So what is the

15:41

very best case scenario ? And

15:44

then , with that in mind , you can say , okay , we

15:46

forget all of this . This is the number

15:48

we would get . Let's see . Are

15:51

we at 10% of this , 20% of the

15:54

best case , and

15:56

you try to see which is an

15:58

acceptable number for

16:00

what you're trying to do and for what

16:03

the business expect

16:05

as well . And then the second question

16:07

was about if you talk

16:09

with other stakeholders . Absolutely yes

16:11

. So before

16:13

the PRD is done or once you have

16:15

a good , decent

16:18

amount of information there , I also have a question

16:21

, a section that is about open questions . So

16:25

at that point I'm going to bring all

16:27

the stakeholders to see

16:29

does this make sense for you ? Does this

16:31

fit your timeline as well

16:33

, because maybe I was doing something

16:36

with editors last year and

16:38

I would need a lot of have lifting

16:40

from them to talk with different

16:43

people in the company to

16:45

make sure that we have all

16:47

the information we needed about people

16:50

that were writing articles about how

16:52

to get a job , and I could

16:54

create the feature . It exists

16:56

on the CMS , it exists on our

16:58

analytics , but if the

17:01

editors do not have the time or

17:03

if they don't believe in the project to say , okay , I

17:06

can't hunt all of this . Hundreds

17:08

of people to get their biographies

17:10

and pictures in there , thumbs

17:14

up to put this new information

17:16

on the page , then your PRD

17:19

doesn't make any sense because

17:21

you're not going to achieve what you're always going

17:23

to achieve . So I do

17:25

bring everyone on board . I

17:27

let them critique my documents . There

17:30

are lots of questions that you will think oh

17:32

, this is very clear . It's not clear

17:35

because they're coming from a different perspective and

17:37

they will look at things for

17:39

a different reason . So

17:42

you need to make things very

17:44

, very clear as well . One

17:46

classic example that I've

17:49

been playing with is on internal

17:51

links , and every time

17:53

that we get outside of SEO and say

17:55

present something about

17:57

an internal link strategy , they

18:00

will say okay , so we want to know how many

18:02

people are clicking on these links . That's how we're

18:04

going to measure the impact , and I say not necessarily

18:07

if people are clicking , great , but

18:10

we might be doing it for

18:12

a different reason . So

18:15

you want to make sure that certain pages

18:17

do get visibility

18:19

across the website , or

18:21

they have internal links so they can rank better

18:24

, and that's a balance

18:26

that you need to find . So

18:28

, as an SEO , I would think everybody

18:30

knows why we do internal

18:33

links , but people that do not

18:35

live on our bubble they will not know that

18:37

, and making it clear

18:39

will help them to do the

18:41

things that the way you expect as

18:43

well .

18:44

Yeah , that makes tons of sense . So

18:47

, okay , so you're leaning heavily on an

18:49

internal team to kind of validate your PRD

18:51

before you even present it to say , like the dev team , so

18:54

it becomes part of the queue . So

18:56

how did you go about building those

18:58

relationships ? Did you have them when you were an SEO manager

19:00

? Did you start building them

19:02

then , and do you have any tips

19:05

about how to build these cross-functional team

19:07

relationships ?

19:09

Yeah , I started building once

19:11

I took the role . I was at

19:13

Indeed for a few months and the person who was

19:16

doing this job decided to leave and they

19:18

offered me to take it over and , to

19:20

be very honest , at first I thought I

19:23

was just going to do technical SEO and

19:25

fix bugs and

19:27

after a few weeks I realized

19:29

that I found something a lot

19:31

more exciting and I've been loving the

19:33

job since then . It's by far

19:35

the best job I've ever had and

19:37

I think that goes part of that

19:39

is also because of the relationships that have

19:41

been built in there . So you

19:44

have to find your way . So

19:47

working , being part of the engineering

19:50

landscape , I would say

19:52

, is very important . I sit in marketing

19:54

, but I'm on daily stand absolute engineers

19:56

. I'm on the triage meetings , I'm

20:00

on the sprint planning meetings , so

20:02

I understand to

20:04

some extent what they're doing and how much space

20:07

we have for SEO . Let's

20:09

say , if they have to do

20:11

some platform

20:13

improvements , I already know that before

20:16

it happens and I can go

20:18

back and say , okay , we all have space for

20:20

this number of tickets , what

20:23

can we do with this print ? So

20:25

I will play around and

20:27

bring something that is reasonable for them as well

20:29

and , I think

20:31

being part of the daily stand-ups it's

20:33

being very helpful because

20:35

it's a limited amount of time but

20:37

it helps you to build a bit of those relationships

20:40

, and I always

20:42

try to find who are

20:44

the friendliest people around

20:47

, and there are a few engineers that

20:49

are very nice . So

20:51

one of them , I think even in my first week

20:53

, I remember asking do

20:56

we only need to update this thing for

20:58

this new future to go live ? I

21:00

said , yeah , doesn't this just take five minutes ? Yeah

21:02

, can you show me how to do it ? And he goes

21:05

yeah , sure . So we jumped on a call and

21:07

he explained me how to do it and

21:09

something that maybe would sit on the backlog

21:11

for several weeks or a few sprints

21:13

, because people are

21:15

are doing different things

21:17

and they don't know that this is necessarily

21:20

a priority for SEO , and

21:23

me just starting on the position

21:26

would take a while to

21:28

figure that out as well . So noticing

21:31

like those are where the people that

21:33

will be open for you to come in and ask

21:35

you know the , the

21:38

non-technical questions or a common language

21:40

. That is like I have no idea

21:42

what a nestry bucket is , but can you explain

21:44

me how we can do this ? Do I

21:47

need a nestry bucket to get this

21:49

done ? Oh , yeah , you need . Okay , so

21:51

how can we do this ticket ? How

21:53

you know ? And then you start developing

21:55

those . I

21:58

try to be as friendly and as open

22:00

as I can . We do

22:02

a on daily stand up . We have a question

22:04

of the day . I'm sure plenty of other teams do

22:06

that , but that's an opportunity

22:09

to kind of discover different things

22:11

about people as well . So I

22:14

try to develop those relationships outside

22:17

the transactional

22:19

moment and I

22:22

find that those things are very helpful

22:24

to you to build a good relationship

22:26

.

22:26

Do you think maybe your job is a little bit easier because

22:29

you're working on a website that

22:31

probably has web

22:33

traffic as part of its DNA ? And

22:35

I mentioned that because I tend to work with big websites that

22:37

are like , what's SEO ? And then

22:39

they come to me they're like oh , we need web traffic

22:42

. But you know , indeed , it was like

22:44

the mission is for people to find jobs online

22:46

. Right , that's part of the DNA of the business .

22:49

Yeah , it is definitely easier

22:51

because people have this mindset

22:54

and they know why

22:56

we're doing these things , so

22:58

it is easier to sell than it was on

23:01

different moments . But I do look back

23:03

at my career when I was at

23:05

the agency side in different roles , and

23:07

if I had this experience that I have now , or

23:09

if one day I have

23:12

to , you know , go back I'm not , indeed

23:14

, indeed , anymore , for whatever reason , and I

23:16

go back to my previous agency

23:19

or anything , I would still bring a lot

23:21

of those , those learnings , and , you

23:23

know , try to frame things the way that I frame

23:25

now , and especially when you work

23:28

with clients that also have agencies

23:30

on the other side , I feel that things

23:33

like a PRD or some type

23:36

of testing that you can do will bring

23:38

them on my side and explain

23:40

okay , this is exactly what we want to do , and

23:43

I think things will

23:45

be will be different . As you know , with any

23:47

job that you get more experience and once

23:50

you go to a new place , you bring that with you as

23:52

well and you try to to do things better

23:54

.

23:55

Do you really think the PRD has really helped you

23:57

be more persuasive currently

24:00

in your current role and would and would help you if

24:02

you I don't know you used it as a consultant or something

24:04

.

24:05

Yes , oh , big time , big time . I

24:08

think before I would

24:10

just have things on . We want

24:12

to do this for a certain reasons and

24:14

that would not be

24:17

clear enough or a few urgent

24:19

enough and by for a CMO

24:22

or a director or even an engineer

24:24

to say , oh okay , we have to really have

24:26

to do this because I

24:29

wouldn't . I would be very afraid to put numbers

24:31

behind it or to estimate

24:33

actual potential on things , and

24:36

this is a different way to look

24:38

at things , and I actually asked

24:40

on on LinkedIn this week if people

24:42

spend more time pitching

24:44

things on slides or on written

24:47

documents and the polls to

24:49

running . But most people and

24:51

do those slides from what we can see

24:53

both in-house and on the agency

24:56

side , and I used to do that as

24:58

well , but now I realize

25:00

that I probably would spend half

25:02

of the time just making these slides pretty , which

25:04

is it's important to sell the idea

25:06

. But having having

25:10

the ideas actually written down , it kind

25:12

of makes it easier for you

25:14

to form a full idea . It lives less

25:16

space to hide into

25:19

, you know , something visual and

25:21

fancy that people might not fully understand

25:23

, but it looks interesting , so

25:25

they will , they will go for it . So

25:28

actually forgot what was the question ?

25:30

but that's okay you you provided this perfect

25:32

opening for me to plug the new AI thing I've discovered

25:35

that I try to tell everybody because I think it's the hottest

25:37

thing ever . So you can take a written document

25:39

, because I also default to a lot of written documents

25:42

to feds like those , like those . So you know a written

25:44

document , you can upload it to Microsoft

25:46

365 online and then

25:48

you can export it as PowerPoint

25:50

and it will create slides for you with graphics

25:52

that is very interesting

25:55

.

25:55

That is , that is actually very good

25:57

timing , because I literally just

25:59

paid for PowerPoint today

26:01

oh see , there you go .

26:04

So there's a little AI tip for today . I just have

26:06

a yearly plan .

26:07

So I will , I'll give it a try

26:09

yeah , it works relatively well

26:12

.

26:12

I've used it for one . So we

26:14

have talked about this prd , but we

26:16

the bit of it is clearly measuring ROI

26:18

, so let's pivot and talk about the

26:20

testing you've been doing . So what

26:22

is your testing process look like ? And , for other

26:25

people that want to start testing , what are your

26:27

suggestions ?

26:28

yeah , so we do testing using

26:31

this methodology called

26:33

call zone analysis , and

26:35

I'm not a data scientist or

26:37

or a mathematician , but I will

26:39

do my best to explain how

26:41

it works from the way I learned

26:44

from from these people . You

26:46

basically look back six

26:49

months or a year in traffic and

26:52

you're gonna have a test group , which are

26:54

the pages that you're applying a change . So , let's

26:56

say , if you are doing

26:58

a page title change , so

27:01

you want to see if adding the year

27:03

on the title actually helps

27:05

people to click on it or not , so

27:08

you're gonna do this test on a thousand pages . That

27:10

is your test group and through

27:13

this methodology you're gonna go back

27:15

six months , a year in traffic and you're gonna

27:17

find a control group that's being performing

27:19

on the same level as your test

27:22

group , so they don't need to have exactly

27:24

the same traffic , but they need to move up

27:26

and down together . So that's how you know

27:28

that those groups are equivalent . And

27:30

then you have your , your test date . So

27:32

that's when you released all

27:34

of these changes on your titles and

27:37

then you can see over two

27:39

weeks , three weeks a month , how much did

27:41

one group grow more than the other , because

27:45

you know both groups could just

27:48

grow and you would say , oh , we got results

27:50

because we made this change . But

27:52

you're not looking in the whole picture because maybe

27:54

you know you , one

27:56

competitor , did something wrong and they

27:58

lost their traffic , or there

28:01

was an algorithm update that is happening now

28:03

and your whole website

28:05

got benefited from it , or

28:07

something else out of your control

28:10

happened and it wasn't really

28:12

a consequence of the test that you do . So

28:14

you go there and say we're gonna update

28:17

all the tiles now and you don't get the same

28:19

result . So that

28:21

is kind of how how we do things , and

28:24

there are a few tools that I haven't

28:26

tested myself . Search

28:29

pilot I've seen in action

28:32

looks very interesting , but we didn't

28:34

sign up for it and because

28:37

we already have a team that does this , so we

28:39

don't necessarily need an external

28:41

team to or an external company to

28:43

come in and do that work for us . But

28:46

I think split signal is

28:48

another one , seo testing is

28:50

another one , so I

28:52

haven't tested those myself . I've

28:54

checked their websites and it seems

28:57

that what they do is also an SEO

28:59

aid test and they look for a control and test

29:01

group . So it might

29:03

be similar to you , to the way we do

29:05

things .

29:06

And how much traffic does your site need to get in order

29:09

for a test to be valid , because

29:11

I know it doesn't work on smaller sites . Smaller traffic

29:13

sites .

29:14

Yeah , I think I can't remember

29:16

now , but I think you need pages

29:19

that have at least 50

29:21

sessions , 50 to 100 sessions a day , and

29:24

that has to be consistent for a while

29:26

. But

29:28

if I were on a smaller

29:30

website then I didn't have all of this

29:32

. I would still try to look for maybe

29:35

pages that have similar search

29:37

potential to see if they're moving

29:40

differently , or compare

29:42

the pages that I'm doing

29:44

initiative versus the whole website . Are

29:46

they growing more than the rest of the website ? So

29:48

there might be other ways

29:50

that are not as scientific

29:53

, but they could still work if

29:56

you don't have all the resources out there .

29:58

Okay , so we talked a

30:00

little bit about how you made this transition pretty

30:02

quickly from a SEO manager to

30:04

product manager . So how did

30:07

you ramp yourself ? Because you didn't have product management

30:09

experience ? I don't think so . How'd you ramp yourself

30:11

up , and do you have other resources

30:13

or courses or whatever that you would recommend other

30:15

people take advantage of if they

30:17

are also in that same situation where they get flipped

30:20

to a product manager ?

30:22

Yes . So in terms of courses , I

30:24

would recommend to you . So Reforge

30:27

has some very interesting things and

30:30

it's an expensive platform . I think

30:32

you pay a yearly fee and

30:34

I'm also doing a free course from Pendo . I

30:36

think it's from Pendo and Mind the Products Product

30:40

Management Basics . I am actually

30:42

doing this right now and , even though I've

30:44

been on this role for over a year , I'm

30:46

actually learning a few things or a few technologies

30:48

that I haven't heard before

30:50

. So that course I would

30:53

start with that one because it's shorter and it might

30:55

give you a better view on which

30:58

direction you're going , and Reforge will

31:00

get a lot more advanced and the course

31:02

are a lot longer as well . So

31:04

try the MVP first , see if you

31:06

like , and then you can invest on a separate

31:09

platform . I think the transition

31:11

for me it was hmm

31:14

, it

31:17

wasn't that hard . I had to

31:19

be honest , I think . Working

31:23

as an account manager before in

31:25

SEO , I had to put a lot

31:27

of pieces together because it would have clients that

31:29

were doing SEO , ppc

31:31

, content and social , and I wouldn't be

31:34

living on those accounts all

31:36

the time . I just knew the results

31:38

were getting from social , where I had an idea of

31:40

the strategy for PPC , but

31:43

I still had to bring all of this

31:45

together and translate it into a decent story

31:47

for the clients when

31:50

once they would look at a report or once

31:52

we would have a meeting . And

31:56

it's funny , I think I learned at home to

31:58

always think about the next step . So

32:00

my mom is always worried about

32:02

the next bad thing that's

32:04

gonna happen and how we can prevent

32:07

that , and I took that from her as

32:09

well . So before

32:11

I do anything , I'm like , oh , but what if it goes

32:13

wrong ? Okay , if this goes wrong , those

32:15

are the ways I'm gonna mitigate this problem . So

32:17

I tried to be ahead of

32:20

time on that and the

32:22

first few months there were already a few projects

32:24

that were moving , so I just took

32:27

over what was there . There were

32:29

tons of tickets that were already written , so

32:31

I had a bit of time to understand

32:34

them and see what was going on . Ux

32:38

was a great partner just

32:40

when I started , because the person

32:42

that it was running the

32:45

UX side on my first or

32:47

second week she booked a meeting

32:49

with me and she blasted

32:52

a lot of ideas and I was like why

32:54

is this girl talking to me Like I

32:56

haven't seen her before ? I didn't really

32:59

get what was going on . And a few

33:01

days later I realized that , looking

33:04

at all their documents from SEO , part

33:08

of the transition that

33:10

SEO was pitching something that she was pitching as well

33:13

from the UX perspective and

33:15

shortly

33:17

I realized that her idea was way

33:19

advanced versus the

33:21

one that SEO had . So I

33:24

was like it's a smart . The

33:26

best thing you can do here is just let her lead

33:28

this project , not try

33:31

to interfere or not try to own it , because

33:33

she's already proposing

33:35

something better than

33:37

what we had written . So

33:40

there were a few projects that

33:42

were already moving , so it was easier

33:44

. I had a bit of time to settle

33:46

in and just move with the things

33:48

that were there , until I learned how to write tickets

33:51

, how does this

33:53

print work , how to

33:55

break down certain things

33:57

in different activities and so on . So there

34:00

was a bit of time to plan about

34:02

things . But if someone is

34:04

starting on this now and just

34:07

have a blank state , I would say

34:09

only run a few projects

34:11

at a time . There are always

34:13

bugs to fix , there are always new things

34:15

you can do . But if you try to

34:17

do five of them at

34:19

the same time when you start , they are not gonna

34:21

work . I have three

34:23

, four things running at the same time

34:25

at max , and some of them

34:27

are just on a research

34:29

phase , while others are on more

34:32

advanced phase . Also , if you break

34:34

down to too many things , your

34:37

engineers won't have time to do all of them

34:39

, so you're gonna have several things moving slowly

34:41

. You won't have anything exciting to report

34:43

because you'll all be half done

34:46

for a long time and they

34:48

might just all get done at the same time . And then you have

34:50

another overload of things that

34:52

you have to prove impact for all these different

34:54

things at the same time . So do a few

34:57

things at a time and do them well .

35:00

So for SEOs that are new to the sprint

35:02

sort of format , is

35:04

there any tips that you have for people to understand

35:06

how sprints work ?

35:09

Yeah . So a sprint will work until

35:12

usually it's a two weeks

35:14

sprint . So one

35:17

day , at the start of the sprint , you

35:19

and your engineers will look through

35:21

the backlog and say those are the things we

35:23

wanna do this sprint . They

35:25

might have different methods to know

35:27

what is more important

35:29

and what is the capacity

35:32

they have to take , the

35:34

amount of work they can take on those two weeks . So

35:37

after a few sprints , when

35:39

you learn , okay , this is the general

35:42

space they have for SEO , okay

35:45

, what can I bring to every sprint

35:47

. So one day , one

35:50

or two days before the sprint , I'm

35:52

already asking around and say , okay , how

35:54

much space we

35:57

might have , what are the things that we are already

35:59

doing here ? And I already

36:01

send a list ahead and say , okay

36:03

, can we do ? Here's my plan . I want

36:05

those six things that they're already

36:07

in order of priority , the

36:09

first three . They must be done because they are bugs

36:12

or because Whatever

36:14

other reason . So we

36:16

might have 50 things on the backlog that we want

36:18

to do . I know only five or six

36:20

will get done the sprint . So I

36:23

try to get those very clear and very

36:25

prepared ahead of time . So

36:27

actually , once we get to

36:29

sprint planning , my tickets are already

36:31

on the , on the sprint list , and they

36:34

know like , okay , gus talked

36:36

about this , this , this , this one

36:38

. He didn't mention this one . It seems

36:40

that is not important . I'm I'm usually

36:42

there on the sprint planning as well , so we

36:45

kind of know what , what

36:47

can we do ? And having

36:49

this done in advance also helps

36:51

me to know how far

36:54

we can go . I helps me to report

36:56

to my manager what can be

36:58

completed on the next two weeks or four

37:00

weeks . And you know

37:02

it's . It's a matter of like talking

37:05

a lot of people and setting up

37:07

, yeah , their expectations in

37:09

your own expectations as well .

37:11

Hmm , okay , so Just

37:14

pivoting one more time . So I know you judge

37:16

search awards and I want to pick your brain the tiniest

37:18

bit about that . Yeah so , based

37:20

on your because I think it's also related You've

37:23

got a reporter background . You've talked quite a bit about

37:25

telling stories . So , based

37:27

on your experience , what tips would you give

37:29

people that want to effectively win search

37:31

awards ?

37:32

Yeah , thank you very much for this question

37:35

because I think I have a

37:37

few things in my heart about award

37:39

entries and the

37:42

best award entries that I always see

37:44

and the ones that I usually see winning . They

37:46

tell a very good story . So

37:49

you can do all the

37:51

things in the world , but if your entry

37:54

does not have a good flow that tells

37:56

a challenge that you had , the

37:58

problems you had and how you overcome

38:02

all of this , your entry will

38:04

not . You'll not be a winner . So

38:06

I've seen entries sometimes

38:09

that will say things like we

38:11

made 10,000 SEO

38:13

changes on the website . Like right , well

38:16

, what are 10,000 SEO changes ? Or Our

38:19

visibility went up 40% . Like

38:21

well , I don't know which keywords you track

38:23

, I don't know what what visibility

38:26

means to you . I don't know which software

38:28

did you use to calculate visibility . So

38:30

those things are kind of

38:32

meaningless at this stage . But

38:35

if you tell me a good story about how you

38:37

overcame a problem , that is a completely

38:39

different thing . And there is an entry . I

38:42

didn't judge this one . I was still working at Wolfgang

38:44

and this is something an entry that they put

38:46

together and that was one

38:49

of the moments that I had a click about how

38:51

to write this entries was about . It

38:54

was a Christmas campaign for supermarket

38:56

and they had to sell . The goal was to sell

38:59

800 turkeys online . So

39:01

you know , if people want

39:04

to get closer to Christmas , the Turkey

39:06

price goes down a little bit because

39:09

they have to sell it or people won't

39:11

buy it after that , and the

39:13

earlier you sell , the better

39:16

price they can . They can get from itself they

39:18

can . The goal of the campaign was to sell 800

39:21

turkeys or the equivalent in other

39:23

products . So you're already telling

39:25

me a story , right ? You could say

39:27

you know , the goal of the campaign is to

39:29

sell 10,000

39:32

, 20,000 Euros like

39:34

okay , well , everyone can sell 20,000

39:37

euros , like okay , you're putting me on Christmas , you're

39:39

putting me on a scenario that a

39:42

lot of people are familiar with and foods

39:44

that we all have . It Okay

39:46

, now ready to hear the story . So

39:48

they were going after people that were searching

39:50

for recipes and letting on the blog and Saving

39:53

them to retarget them on different channels later

39:55

. So this was , you

39:59

know , a cross channel campaign and

40:01

had a very clear goal , and they didn't

40:03

actually get to 800 . They sold

40:06

the equivalent of 785

40:08

or something like that . It was very

40:10

close , but even that , that is

40:13

like we almost got it , but the client was super

40:15

happy and you

40:17

know , and that's just a very good story and

40:20

the goals were there . You achieve

40:22

things , you . You talk about the problems that

40:24

you had . So it

40:26

is very honest and an open entry and

40:28

I don't remember which awards it won , but he

40:30

won loads of them . I

40:32

did one One

40:34

time was one for the trauma words

40:37

. That was my , my entry , I , it

40:39

was my idea and I I

40:42

wrote it as well . It was

40:44

a migration that we did for for

40:46

an airport website and the

40:49

whole . It was a normal migration . It

40:51

got delayed , as migrations

40:53

and websites get delayed , and

40:56

Everything went fine at the end . But

40:58

the hook of the story was the

41:00

website had to go live as

41:03

soon as possible and it happened to

41:05

go live on the business week of

41:07

summer . So if something

41:09

went wrong there , if that website was not working

41:12

, if people could not part , book

41:15

their parking places or find

41:17

their departure or arrival

41:19

flights , you are and

41:22

you know you're very close to chaos . So

41:24

that was a story

41:26

. Like if this migration had happened

41:28

two months before , I would have no

41:30

story , but because of problems

41:33

that delayed that , I

41:35

had a very good story to say Everything

41:37

went fine . It was the most profitable

41:40

weekend for for

41:42

the parking business from the airport

41:44

and so on . And you know website

41:46

was up 100% of the time . People

41:48

could find it and everything was alright . But

41:52

you know it's just to find that hook that

41:54

might be somewhere in the story that will

41:57

will get a judge Really looking at you

41:59

and say , okay , this , this was nerve-wracking

42:01

and you solve it . Well

42:03

, this , this is exciting to you to

42:06

be there for a play to you .

42:08

Yeah , I , early on , when I was at Katam

42:10

, I figured out that a word entry

42:12

winning award entries has a lot

42:14

to do with the writing of the award

42:17

entry . Because they had one woman

42:19

, fran , and she worked on every award entry

42:21

. Because I , I

42:23

, technic , my team , one of you , but

42:25

it's , it's because of Fran . She took our

42:27

input and she wrote a story With

42:30

a hook . She , she touched every single

42:32

one . Nobody submitted

42:34

an award without Fran looking at it .

42:36

So anyway , yeah

42:39

, she knew it , she knew it .

42:41

She was the intel behind how to craft

42:43

the story . Yeah , so this has

42:45

been awesome . So much useful information

42:47

, and how can people learn more

42:49

about you ?

42:51

Yeah , so you can find me on my website

42:53

, gus Peloja calm that

42:55

I just released on on the new

42:58

domain and you

43:00

can find me on Twitter

43:02

or X I don't want to call it anymore

43:04

. It's at Peloja P

43:06

E L O G I A

43:08

or on Lickenden , gus

43:11

Peloja . I also do a bit

43:13

of mentoring on broke mentor and

43:15

you have to be a member of the platform , but the

43:17

call it means free , so if I can

43:20

help you with anything at some point

43:22

, you just become a broke mentor member

43:24

and most of the mentors there give

43:26

their time for free . I'm one of them , so

43:28

we can have a chat there as well .

43:31

That's . That's great and for folks that don't know , when

43:33

he does get a chance to blog , he's got some great

43:35

tips in relation to writing tech tickets and

43:37

some other things , with some nitty gritty details

43:39

that I found super helpful . In fact , you're

43:41

gonna be in my next newsletter , so

43:44

thank you very much for being on the show

43:46

and helping all of us get

43:48

a little bit closer to working with developers

43:50

successfully . I think these tips

43:52

are gonna be great .

43:55

Yeah , thank you , catherine . I hope

43:57

that the people that are listening

43:59

found this useful as well , and if

44:01

I can help with anything else , just Just

44:04

come say hi and let's be in touch .

44:07

Thanks so much for listening . To find out more

44:09

about the podcast and what we're up to go to digital

44:11

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44:14

like what you heard , subscribe to us on

44:16

iTunes or wherever you get your podcast

44:18

, rate us , comment and share

44:20

the podcast , please . I'm always

44:22

looking for new ideas , topics

44:24

and guests . Email us at digital marketing

44:27

victories at gmailcom or DM

44:29

us on Twitter at DM victories . Thanks

44:31

for listening . I .