October 11, 2023 • 45 mins
About This Episode
Gus Pelogia is a journalist turned SEO, conference speaker, and once-in-a-while blogger. He is currently an SEO Product Manager at Indeed, the #1 job site in the world, with over 250 million unique visitors every month. Gus has worked in-house and at digital agencies in Argentina, the Netherlands, and Ireland. He spent five years as an Account Manager and Team Lead at agencies such as Spark Foundry (Core) and Wolfgang Digital, working with clients from travel, e-commerce, and professional services, winning several industry awards such as Digital Media Awards, The Drum Search Awards, and Irish Content Marketing Awards. Currently, Gus is also a judge for the EU Search Awards.
This episode is for you if you’re curious about the following:
- How thinking like a product manager could help your developer relationships.
- Tips for pivoting your career toward product management.
- How to tell your story effectively to sell through your SEO tests.
- How to present your story effectively to win awards.
"The idea of putting stars together, it's something that you take with you as a journalist, no matter what you do." - Gus Pelogia
Join us as we delve into an enlightening conversation with Gus Pelogia, the SEO Product Manager at Indeed, who brings his journalistic background to bear on his current role. Gus shares his wisdom on how adopting a product manager's mindset can align people effectively with a marketing strategy and how transitioning to product management can be a game-changer in your career. A wealth of tips and insights from Gus await you in this episode.
Tune in for a captivating conversation with Gus Pelogia!
Connect With Gus
- Connect with Gus on LinkedIn
- Follow Gus on Twitter
- Learn more about Gus on his website
- Find Gus on Growth Mentor
- His BrightonSEO slides
Loved this episode?
Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Tweet and tag us @dmvictories and @kwatier!
Here's how you can support this podcast if you’re enjoying the episodes and finding them useful:
You can send me a donation at buymeacoffee.com/DMVpodcast. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our email list so that you don't miss any news about the show or new episodes.
Get 15% off when you sign up today for PodUp or PodAllies with code [DigitalMarketingVictories15]!
Leave Feedback
Your feedback matters to us! Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts on the podcast and how we can improve it.
👉 Leave feedback
Get In Touch
- Tweet us at @dmvictories
- Email us at admin@wostrategies.com
If you’d like to know more about change-makers in digital marketing, celebrate their wins, and discover how they built a breaking ground career, subscribe, share
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories
podcast, a monthly show where wecelebrate and learn from the
change makers in digitalmarketing.
Great digital marketersunderstand that people are the
most challenging part of doingtheir jobs, and this show
focuses on the people part ofdigital marketing wins what
tactics or skills the guests useto align people with their
marketing strategy.
(00:21):
I'm your host, catherineWatzie-Yong, the owner of WO
Strategies LLC.
We focus on increasing organicdiscovery for enterprise-sized,
science-focused clients.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's get into it and celebrateour victories.
So today we're joined by GusPalosia.
He's a journalist, turned SEOconference speaker,
(00:43):
once-in-a-while blogger.
He's currently an SEO productmanager at Indeed, which is, as
you know, the number one jobsite in the world.
He with over 250 million uniquevisitors every month.
Gus has worked both in-houseand at digital agencies in
various spots around the worldArgentina, the Netherlands,
ireland.
He spent five years as anaccount manager and team lead at
(01:05):
agencies such as Spark Foundry,wolfgang Digital, working with
clients from travel, e-commerce,professional services, and he's
won several industry awards,such as the Digital Marketing
Awards, the Drum Search Awards,the Irish Content Marketing
Awards, and currently he's ajudge for the EU Search Awards.
So this episode is going to beperfect for you if you're
(01:27):
curious about the following howwould I think like a project
manager and how that might helpyour developer relationships,
how you could pivot your careertoward product management, how
to tell your story effectivelythrough the SEO test you're
running.
And how to present your storyeffectively to one awards.
So, gus, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to have thisconversation.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Great thanks for being on.
So why don't we get started bytelling a little bit more to the
listeners about your background, how you got started in SEO and
how you did the switch toproduct management?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Sure, so I started SEO back in Argentina in 2012.
Even though I'm from Brazil, Ihad to move countries to
discover a new profession that Itook on and changed my life,
and before that I was actually ajournalist.
I went to journalists school.
I published a couple of books.
I worked for big news portalsdoing a bit of everything,
(02:27):
mostly entertainment.
I loved writing about music, soI would try to get any
freelance gig.
Sometimes I would just work forfree for the same publication
that I was working full-time butdoing other types of journalism
Because I always wanted to finda way to put my passion there
as well and develop that.
And when I moved to Argentina,I got a job at a Spanish school
(02:52):
and someone introduced me to SEO.
I was very lucky that the ownerof the school knew some other
people that we went to playfootball one day and he was like
, hey, this is the guy that Iwas talking about.
So after a soccer match, I gota job interview at one of the
biggest online travel agenciesin South America at the time.
(03:12):
Got a job and that's how Iactually started doing SEO
professionally, full-time.
It was a combination of the twothings that I had studied in my
life Journalists it was theside of how to pitch stories to
journalists how can I explainsomething on an interesting way
and find this to get backlinks.
(03:35):
And on the other side, in highschool I also had done some IT
studies, so I knew very littleabout computer hardware and HTML
building websites.
It was very basic from what wedo now, but essentially at that
time, the first time, I wasreading the Moz guide to SEO and
(03:55):
they started talking about sohere's how you look at the HTML
code and it's like wait a minute, I know this.
So it was an easy start.
It was a profession thatcombined the two things I knew
and I somehow just stumbled uponof it.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So I have a couple not related SEO questions
actually.
So the first one is so, whatare the books that you've
written?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, so my graduation project from college
was a book called Giado Di Paoco, like a stage diary, something
like that, and it was 10interviews with musicians and
music label owners and that kindof people more or less like a
Rolling Stone style, kind ofgoing on detail about who they
(04:42):
are and trying to framesomething about their day.
So someone one musician, I wenton a trip with the other one.
I picked him up and at hishouse and we took the subway
together, went to his full-timejob on that it was on the side
of heavy band and that kind ofstuff and the other one I was
already living in Argentina anda Brazilian band was going to
(05:04):
play there for three, four daysand I just joined them on on
this trip, used this as anopportunity to discover a few
new places in the country and Iturned that into a story.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That's awesome.
So one of the previous membersof my team at Ketchum actually
he was singing at the Apollo andnow he well, for a moment there
he's working as the digitalmarketing manager at Sony Music
Entertainment, but now he's offat YouTube Music, so I have a
history of connecting to peoplethat are doing music stuff.
I'm also a band groupie, assome people, some listeners,
might know.
(05:36):
My husband plays in thepresident's own Marine Band at
the White House.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So I'm a bit of a music groupie.
Okay, yeah, you have aninteresting world around you, so
.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I'm curious about this reporter background, though
, because not all SEOs kind ofend up there with such a strong
writing background, so is thereany bit of that that you think
you're currently using?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I know you're doing product management, but I think
I use a lot of this and I usethroughout my career the idea of
, like, putting stars together.
It's something that you takewith you as a journalist, no
matter what you do.
So if I'm pitching something toa client, it has to make sense
(06:22):
for them.
Or if they ask me something, orif I have a big meeting, I will
naturally just look at okay, sothis is what we discussed, I'm
gonna work on this, you're gonnawork on this.
Unless this part is done byperson A, none of this can
happen.
So you have to turn anythinginto a cohesive story and to do
(06:45):
that, as a journalist, I thinkit's.
You use those skills in SEO anddigital marketing as well.
So, yeah, I think putting starstogether make sure that it's
clear for everyone what has tobe done, what we are expecting
from them was something that Ihad to do before and I still do
it now.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
So can you describe to the listeners the difference
between the product managementmindset and an SEO manager
approach?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, so I think something that changed a lot for
me before.
I would just put a list ofthings and say, okay, we can, we
do an audit, we see what'swrong and we start working on to
fix a lot of things on thewebsite and we would just hope
that some of these things willwork.
(07:34):
Some of them usually work andyou start getting results for
the client.
But there was never an approachbefore to say is this happening
because of this project orbecause of that project?
We are just running a lot ofthings at the same time and
hoping those results will helpthe client.
You can have some directions,say, we spent a lot of time
(07:56):
putting nice links this month sowe can see that those pages are
growing, but we can't reallymeasure necessarily.
Was this growing more than thewebsite, that the pages that we
didn't build any links to, or isthis actually what is driving
results or not?
And I think, as a productmanager now, you think a little
(08:18):
bit different.
First, I'm not just fixingproblems.
I'm spending most of my timebuilding new things.
In fact, if I have to spendtime, fixing a problem is a bit
disappointing.
You have to do.
We all have bugs and stuff, butfixing a bug won't bring me
closer to actually bring moreresults.
It might fix other things.
(08:39):
Let's say, if something's notlooking nice on the website, of
course users will be happierthat this is working again.
Or if there's a problem, theCMS that the editors can't do
something, I'm solving theirproblem, but I'm not bringing
more traffic or bringing moreresults because of that.
So I tend to spend most of mytime building new things and
(09:04):
also comparing what should bedone first, because before we
would kind of ballpark oh thisseems easy, we'll just do this
month, but because now we doprojects that are a lot longer,
a lot more complex, you willneed to find ways to compare is
it worth doing this versus thatone?
So having that mindset intocomparing projects and testing
(09:27):
things and releasing an MVP tosee if things actually is
working the way we intended isactually bringing results before
you go full on and spend sixmonths developing something.
I think all of these things arepart of the product mindset
that I started adopting after Istarted working on this role.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
But that's helpful.
So are there any other tipsthat you have about how to pick
the project, sell through thatproject, to do a test, that kind
of stuff?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So I start everything with a PRD product requirements
document and at first I wasdoing those because I needed to
pitch this idea to someone elseand make sure that they would
have their buy-in, but over timeI realized that often they
would help me to clarify my ideaas well.
(10:20):
So a PRD will be a long formtext document where you're gonna
explain this the backgroundfrom a project.
This is what we wanna do, theseare the results we expect to
get.
These is the technical depth,those are teams that need to be
involved and everything thatsurrounds it.
Those are the deadlines.
We wanna release this on thisday.
(10:41):
We expect to test results afterfour weeks, six weeks and so on
.
And this document usually givesme a lot of confidence and
clarification on what I'mactually building, because it's
very easy to get out of thedirection.
The developer might understandthat something is different, or
(11:03):
it might be in a way that doesnot allow the second thing you
wanna do, but maybe you nevermentioned this before, so the
clarity is not there.
So I get very excited when Ihave to write a PRD, because I
spend days and weeks doingresearch, looking at different
types of websites and looking atthe potential problems this
(11:25):
might cause, and kind of puttinga very strong idea together
before I bring it to otherpeople and they might say this
doesn't work or we can only do Aand B and that kind of stuff.
So I think that really helps meclarify the idea and get the
buy-in from other people,because as much as I can say
(11:50):
that I have great ideas, theyare compared to ideas from
different teams and differentpeople.
So if the UX is not on board,if the editor is not on board,
if the engineers are not onboard, the idea might just not
never become a reality.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So do you have an example of a PRD for the
listeners that never played?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, so this is one that I'm going to present at
Brighton SEO actually.
So it's not a completelyre-occased of something that we
did, but I think you can get theidea from it.
So, let's say, you want tobuild an automated link module,
so you want to.
Every time there is a mentionto a specific word in an article
(12:36):
or in a page, you want thatphrase to link to another page.
So let's say, every time thatyou mention digital marketing,
victors podcast, you want thatlink to, ultimately to create
that link.
So that's very simple on paper,but once you start doing it,
you might realize do you haveenough mentions of this phrase
(13:00):
in different articles?
Maybe you only have fivementions, so you don't need to
build a tool for this.
Do you have already manuallylinked to this page throughout
your content?
So you need to find yourfeature, must read the content
and see if there's already alink there.
Are you putting too many linksnext to each other?
Are they disturbing what theuser should be doing on this
(13:24):
page?
Maybe they start clicking onthis link instead of doing what
they actually want to do on thispage, so you're actually
causing a problem to do this, ifthat makes sense.
So putting all those thingstogether and also the impact
right, why you're doing this.
You want to build a featurethat might take three to six
(13:46):
months to be done.
And how are you going to provethe impact?
Because we all like to do shinythings and it's very exciting
to build things in SEO, buteverything that I do in a few
months down the line I have tojustify if that was successful
or not.
And if it was not, can we stillmake changes and make it
(14:06):
successful?
Have you learned from this?
How can we solve this?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I like your explanation of how much time
this might take to pull together.
So when you're finding I'massuming there's some case
studies and some other stuffbecause you mentioned, like what
happens if this goes wrong,kind of thing so do you have
places that you go for the casestudies?
And, in relation to the impacton other people's work, do you
talk to folks before you finishup your PRD?
Do you like literally talk tofolks internally?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yes.
So the first question about theimpact If you already have
something that we've doneinternally, that's usually my
reference.
If I don't have that, I canlook at an external case.
If I don't have that, I canjust say this is the amount of
traffic we are traffic orconversions that we are trying
(14:57):
to surface with this.
So what is the very best casescenario?
And then, with that in mind,you can say, okay, we forget all
of this.
This is the number we would get.
Let's see.
Are we at 10% of this, 20% ofthe best case, and you try to
see which is an acceptablenumber for what you're trying to
(15:19):
do and for what the businessexpect as well.
And then the second questionwas about if you talk with other
stakeholders.
Absolutely yes.
So before the PRD is done oronce you have a good, decent
amount of information there, Ialso have a question, a section
(15:40):
that is about open questions.
So at that point I'm going tobring all the stakeholders to
see does this make sense for you?
Does this fit your timeline aswell, because maybe I was doing
something with editors last yearand I would need a lot of have
lifting from them to talk withdifferent people in the company
(16:03):
to make sure that we have allthe information we needed about
people that were writingarticles about how to get a job,
and I could create the feature.
It exists on the CMS, it existson our analytics, but if the
editors do not have the time orif they don't believe in the
project to say, okay, I can'thunt all of this.
(16:26):
Hundreds of people to get theirbiographies and pictures in
there, thumbs up to put this newinformation on the page, then
your PRD doesn't make any sensebecause you're not going to
achieve what you're always goingto achieve.
So I do bring everyone on board.
I let them critique mydocuments.
(16:47):
There are lots of questionsthat you will think oh, this is
very clear.
It's not clear because they'recoming from a different
perspective and they will lookat things for a different reason
.
So you need to make things very, very clear as well.
One classic example that I'vebeen playing with is on internal
(17:09):
links, and every time that weget outside of SEO and say
present something about aninternal link strategy, they
will say okay, so we want toknow how many people are
clicking on these links.
That's how we're going tomeasure the impact, and I say
not necessarily if people areclicking, great, but we might be
doing it for a different reason.
(17:30):
So you want to make sure thatcertain pages do get visibility
across the website, or they haveinternal links so they can rank
better, and that's a balancethat you need to find.
So, as an SEO, I would thinkeverybody knows why we do
(17:50):
internal links, but people thatdo not live on our bubble they
will not know that, and makingit clear will help them to do
the things that the way youexpect as well.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, that makes tons of sense.
So, okay, so you're leaningheavily on an internal team to
kind of validate your PRD beforeyou even present it to say,
like the dev team, so it becomespart of the queue.
So how did you go aboutbuilding those relationships?
Did you have them when you werean SEO manager?
Did you start building themthen, and do you have any tips
(18:23):
about how to build thesecross-functional team
relationships?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, I started building once I took the role.
I was at Indeed for a fewmonths and the person who was
doing this job decided to leaveand they offered me to take it
over and, to be very honest, atfirst I thought I was just going
to do technical SEO and fixbugs and after a few weeks I
realized that I found somethinga lot more exciting and I've
(18:50):
been loving the job since then.
It's by far the best job I'veever had and I think that goes
part of that is also because ofthe relationships that have been
built in there.
So you have to find your way.
So working, being part of theengineering landscape, I would
say, is very important.
(19:12):
I sit in marketing, but I'm ondaily stand absolute engineers.
I'm on the triage meetings, I'mon the sprint planning meetings
, so I understand to some extentwhat they're doing and how much
space we have for SEO.
Let's say, if they have to dosome platform improvements, I
(19:32):
already know that before ithappens and I can go back and
say, okay, we all have space forthis number of tickets, what
can we do with this print?
So I will play around and bringsomething that is reasonable
for them as well and, I thinkbeing part of the daily
stand-ups it's being veryhelpful because it's a limited
(19:55):
amount of time but it helps youto build a bit of those
relationships, and I always tryto find who are the friendliest
people around, and there are afew engineers that are very nice
.
So one of them, I think even inmy first week, I remember
asking do we only need to updatethis thing for this new future
(20:17):
to go live?
I said, yeah, doesn't this justtake five minutes?
Yeah, can you show me how to doit?
And he goes yeah, sure.
So we jumped on a call and heexplained me how to do it and
something that maybe would siton the backlog for several weeks
or a few sprints, becausepeople are are doing different
things and they don't know thatthis is necessarily a priority
(20:38):
for SEO, and me just starting onthe position would take a while
to figure that out as well.
So noticing like those are wherethe people that will be open
for you to come in and ask youknow the, the non-technical
questions or a common language.
That is like I have no ideawhat a nestry bucket is, but can
(21:02):
you explain me how we can dothis?
Do I need a nestry bucket toget this done?
Oh, yeah, you need.
Okay, so how can we do thisticket?
How you know?
And then you start developingthose.
I try to be as friendly and asopen as I can.
We do a on daily stand up.
We have a question of the day.
(21:23):
I'm sure plenty of other teamsdo that, but that's an
opportunity to kind of discoverdifferent things about people as
well.
So I try to develop thoserelationships outside the
transactional moment and I findthat those things are very
helpful to you to build a goodrelationship.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Do you think maybe your job is a little bit easier
because you're working on awebsite that probably has web
traffic as part of its DNA?
And I mentioned that because Itend to work with big websites
that are like, what's SEO?
And then they come to methey're like oh, we need web
traffic.
But you know, indeed, it waslike the mission is for people
to find jobs online.
Right, that's part of the DNAof the business.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, it is definitely easier because people
have this mindset and they knowwhy we're doing these things,
so it is easier to sell than itwas on different moments.
But I do look back at my careerwhen I was at the agency side in
different roles, and if I hadthis experience that I have now,
or if one day I have to, youknow, go back I'm not, indeed,
(22:32):
indeed, anymore, for whateverreason, and I go back to my
previous agency or anything, Iwould still bring a lot of those
, those learnings, and, you know, try to frame things the way
that I frame now, and especiallywhen you work with clients that
also have agencies on the otherside, I feel that things like a
PRD or some type of testingthat you can do will bring them
(22:57):
on my side and explain okay,this is exactly what we want to
do, and I think things will bewill be different.
As you know, with any job thatyou get more experience and once
you go to a new place, youbring that with you as well and
you try to to do things better.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Do you really think the PRD has really helped you be
more persuasive currently inyour current role and would and
would help you if you I don'tknow you used it as a consultant
or something.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yes, oh, big time, big time.
I think before I would justhave things on.
We want to do this for acertain reasons and that would
not be clear enough or a fewurgent enough and by for a CMO
or a director or even anengineer to say, oh okay, we
(23:44):
have to really have to do thisbecause I wouldn't.
I would be very afraid to putnumbers behind it or to estimate
actual potential on things, andthis is a different way to look
at things, and I actually askedon on LinkedIn this week if
people spend more time pitchingthings on slides or on written
(24:05):
documents and the polls torunning.
But most people and do thoseslides from what we can see both
in-house and on the agency side, and I used to do that as well,
but now I realize that Iprobably would spend half of the
time just making these slidespretty, which is it's important
to sell the idea.
But having having the ideasactually written down, it kind
(24:30):
of makes it easier for you toform a full idea.
It lives less space to hideinto, you know, something visual
and fancy that people might notfully understand, but it looks
interesting, so they will, theywill go for it.
So actually forgot what was thequestion?
Speaker 1 (24:48):
but that's okay you you provided this perfect
opening for me to plug the newAI thing I've discovered that I
try to tell everybody because Ithink it's the hottest thing
ever.
So you can take a writtendocument, because I also default
to a lot of written documentsto feds like those, like those.
So you know a written document,you can upload it to Microsoft
365 online and then you canexport it as PowerPoint and it
(25:09):
will create slides for you withgraphics that is very
interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
That is, that is actually very good timing,
because I literally just paidfor PowerPoint today oh see,
there you go.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
So there's a little AI tip for today.
I just have a yearly plan.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
So I will, I'll give it a try yeah, it works
relatively well.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I've used it for one.
So we have talked about thisprd, but we the bit of it is
clearly measuring ROI, so let'spivot and talk about the testing
you've been doing.
So what is your testing processlook like?
And, for other people that wantto start testing, what are your
suggestions?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
yeah, so we do testing using this methodology
called call zone analysis, andI'm not a data scientist or or a
mathematician, but I will do mybest to explain how it works
from the way I learned from fromthese people.
You basically look back sixmonths or a year in traffic and
(26:10):
you're gonna have a test group,which are the pages that you're
applying a change.
So, let's say, if you are doinga page title change, so you
want to see if adding the yearon the title actually helps
people to click on it or not, soyou're gonna do this test on a
thousand pages.
That is your test group andthrough this methodology you're
(26:32):
gonna go back six months, a yearin traffic and you're gonna
find a control group that'sbeing performing on the same
level as your test group, sothey don't need to have exactly
the same traffic, but they needto move up and down together.
So that's how you know thatthose groups are equivalent.
And then you have your, yourtest date.
So that's when you released allof these changes on your titles
(26:54):
and then you can see over twoweeks, three weeks a month, how
much did one group grow morethan the other, because you know
both groups could just grow andyou would say, oh, we got
results because we made thischange.
But you're not looking in thewhole picture because maybe you
know you, one competitor, didsomething wrong and they lost
(27:17):
their traffic, or there was analgorithm update that is
happening now and your wholewebsite got benefited from it,
or something else out of yourcontrol happened and it wasn't
really a consequence of the testthat you do.
So you go there and say we'regonna update all the tiles now
and you don't get the sameresult.
(27:37):
So that is kind of how how wedo things, and there are a few
tools that I haven't testedmyself.
Search pilot I've seen inaction looks very interesting,
but we didn't sign up for it andbecause we already have a team
that does this, so we don'tnecessarily need an external
(27:59):
team to or an external companyto come in and do that work for
us.
But I think split signal isanother one, seo testing is
another one, so I haven't testedthose myself.
I've checked their websites andit seems that what they do is
also an SEO aid test and theylook for a control and test
group.
(28:19):
So it might be similar to you,to the way we do things.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And how much traffic does your site need to get in
order for a test to be valid,because I know it doesn't work
on smaller sites.
Smaller traffic sites.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, I think I can't remember now, but I think you
need pages that have at least 50sessions, 50 to 100 sessions a
day, and that has to beconsistent for a while.
But if I were on a smallerwebsite then I didn't have all
of this.
I would still try to look formaybe pages that have similar
(28:55):
search potential to see ifthey're moving differently, or
compare the pages that I'm doinginitiative versus the whole
website.
Are they growing more than therest of the website?
So there might be other waysthat are not as scientific, but
they could still work if youdon't have all the resources out
(29:16):
there.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Okay, so we talked a little bit about how you made
this transition pretty quicklyfrom a SEO manager to product
manager.
So how did you ramp yourself?
Because you didn't have productmanagement experience?
I don't think so.
How'd you ramp yourself up, anddo you have other resources or
courses or whatever that youwould recommend other people
take advantage of if they arealso in that same situation
(29:37):
where they get flipped to aproduct manager?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yes.
So in terms of courses, I wouldrecommend to you.
So Reforge has some veryinteresting things and it's an
expensive platform.
I think you pay a yearly feeand I'm also doing a free course
from Pendo.
I think it's from Pendo andMind the Products Product
Management Basics.
I am actually doing this rightnow and, even though I've been
(30:02):
on this role for over a year,I'm actually learning a few
things or a few technologiesthat I haven't heard before.
So that course I would startwith that one because it's
shorter and it might give you abetter view on which direction
you're going, and Reforge willget a lot more advanced and the
course are a lot longer as well.
So try the MVP first, see ifyou like, and then you can
(30:25):
invest on a separate platform.
I think the transition for me itwas hmm, it wasn't that hard.
I had to be honest, I think.
Working as an account managerbefore in SEO, I had to put a
lot of pieces together becauseit would have clients that were
(30:48):
doing SEO, ppc, content andsocial, and I wouldn't be living
on those accounts all the time.
I just knew the results weregetting from social, where I had
an idea of the strategy for PPC, but I still had to bring all
of this together and translateit into a decent story for the
clients when once they wouldlook at a report or once we
(31:10):
would have a meeting.
And it's funny, I think Ilearned at home to always think
about the next step.
So my mom is always worriedabout the next bad thing that's
gonna happen and how we canprevent that, and I took that
from her as well.
So before I do anything, I'mlike, oh, but what if it goes
(31:31):
wrong?
Okay, if this goes wrong, thoseare the ways I'm gonna mitigate
this problem.
So I tried to be ahead of timeon that and the first few months
there were already a fewprojects that were moving, so I
just took over what was there.
There were tons of tickets thatwere already written, so I had
a bit of time to understand themand see what was going on.
(31:54):
Ux was a great partner justwhen I started, because the
person that it was running theUX side on my first or second
week she booked a meeting withme and she blasted a lot of
ideas and I was like why is thisgirl talking to me Like I
(32:15):
haven't seen her before?
I didn't really get what wasgoing on.
And a few days later I realizedthat, looking at all their
documents from SEO, part of thetransition that SEO was pitching
something that she was pitchingas well from the UX perspective
and shortly I realized that heridea was way advanced versus
(32:39):
the one that SEO had.
So I was like it's a smart.
The best thing you can do hereis just let her lead this
project, not try to interfere ornot try to own it, because
she's already proposingsomething better than what we
had written.
So there were a few projectsthat were already moving, so it
(33:02):
was easier.
I had a bit of time to settlein and just move with the things
that were there, until Ilearned how to write tickets,
how does this print work, how tobreak down certain things in
different activities and so on.
So there was a bit of time toplan about things.
But if someone is starting onthis now and just have a blank
(33:25):
state, I would say only run afew projects at a time.
There are always bugs to fix,there are always new things you
can do.
But if you try to do five ofthem at the same time when you
start, they are not gonna work.
I have three, four thingsrunning at the same time at max,
and some of them are just on aresearch phase, while others are
(33:49):
on more advanced phase.
Also, if you break down to toomany things, your engineers
won't have time to do all ofthem, so you're gonna have
several things moving slowly.
You won't have anythingexciting to report because
you'll all be half done for along time and they might just
all get done at the same time.
And then you have anotheroverload of things that you have
(34:11):
to prove impact for all thesedifferent things at the same
time.
So do a few things at a timeand do them well.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So for SEOs that are new to the sprint sort of format
, is there any tips that youhave for people to understand
how sprints work?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah.
So a sprint will work untilusually it's a two weeks sprint.
So one day, at the start of thesprint, you and your engineers
will look through the backlogand say those are the things we
wanna do this sprint.
They might have differentmethods to know what is more
important and what is thecapacity they have to take, the
(34:52):
amount of work they can take onthose two weeks.
So after a few sprints, whenyou learn, okay, this is the
general space they have for SEO,okay, what can I bring to every
sprint.
So one day, one or two daysbefore the sprint, I'm already
asking around and say, okay, howmuch space we might have, what
(35:15):
are the things that we arealready doing here?
And I already send a list aheadand say, okay, can we do?
Here's my plan.
I want those six things thatthey're already in order of
priority, the first three.
They must be done because theyare bugs or because Whatever
other reason.
So we might have 50 things onthe backlog that we want to do.
(35:37):
I know only five or six will getdone the sprint.
So I try to get those veryclear and very prepared ahead of
time.
So actually, once we get tosprint planning, my tickets are
already on the, on the sprintlist, and they know like, okay,
gus talked about this, this,this, this one.
He didn't mention this one.
(35:57):
It seems that is not important.
I'm I'm usually there on thesprint planning as well, so we
kind of know what, what can wedo?
And having this done in advancealso helps me to know how far
we can go.
I helps me to report to mymanager what can be completed on
the next two weeks or fourweeks.
(36:18):
And you know it's.
It's a matter of like talking alot of people and setting up,
yeah, their expectations in yourown expectations as well.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Hmm, okay, so Just pivoting one more time.
So I know you judge searchawards and I want to pick your
brain the tiniest bit about that.
Yeah so, based on your becauseI think it's also related You've
got a reporter background.
You've talked quite a bit abouttelling stories.
So, based on your experience,what tips would you give people
that want to effectively winsearch awards?
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, thank you very much for this question because I
think I have a few things in myheart about award entries and
the best award entries that Ialways see and the ones that I
usually see winning.
They tell a very good story.
So you can do all the things inthe world, but if your entry
(37:12):
does not have a good flow thattells a challenge that you had,
the problems you had and how youovercome all of this, your
entry will not.
You'll not be a winner.
So I've seen entries sometimesthat will say things like we
made 10,000 SEO changes on thewebsite.
(37:33):
Like right, well, what are10,000 SEO changes?
Or Our visibility went up 40%.
Like well, I don't know whichkeywords you track, I don't know
what what visibility means toyou.
I don't know which software didyou use to calculate visibility
.
So those things are kind ofmeaningless at this stage.
But if you tell me a good storyabout how you overcame a
(37:56):
problem, that is a completelydifferent thing.
And there is an entry.
I didn't judge this one.
I was still working at Wolfgangand this is something an entry
that they put together and thatwas one of the moments that I
had a click about how to writethis entries was about.
It was a Christmas campaign forsupermarket and they had to
sell.
The goal was to sell 800turkeys online.
(38:18):
So you know, if people want toget closer to Christmas, the
Turkey price goes down a littlebit because they have to sell it
or people won't buy it afterthat, and the earlier you sell,
the better price they can.
They can get from itself theycan.
The goal of the campaign was tosell 800 turkeys or the
(38:40):
equivalent in other products.
So you're already telling me astory, right?
You could say you know, thegoal of the campaign is to sell
10,000, 20,000 Euros like okay,well, everyone can sell 20,000
euros, like okay, you're puttingme on Christmas, you're putting
me on a scenario that a lot ofpeople are familiar with and
(39:02):
foods that we all have.
It Okay, now ready to hear thestory.
So they were going after peoplethat were searching for recipes
and letting on the blog andSaving them to retarget them on
different channels later.
So this was, you know, a crosschannel campaign and had a very
clear goal, and they didn'tactually get to 800.
(39:23):
They sold the equivalent of 785or something like that.
It was very close, but eventhat, that is like we almost got
it, but the client was superhappy and you know, and that's
just a very good story and thegoals were there.
You achieve things, you.
You talk about the problemsthat you had.
So it is very honest and anopen entry and I don't remember
(39:47):
which awards it won, but he wonloads of them.
I did one One time was one forthe trauma words.
That was my, my entry, I, itwas my idea and I I wrote it as
well.
It was a migration that we didfor for an airport website and
(40:07):
the whole.
It was a normal migration.
It got delayed, as migrationsand websites get delayed, and
Everything went fine at the end.
But the hook of the story wasthe website had to go live as
soon as possible and it happenedto go live on the business week
of summer.
So if something went wrong there, if that website was not
(40:29):
working, if people could notpart, book their parking places
or find their departure orarrival flights, you are and you
know you're very close to chaos.
So that was a story.
Like if this migration hadhappened two months before, I
would have no story, but becauseof problems that delayed that,
(40:53):
I had a very good story to sayEverything went fine.
It was the most profitableweekend for for the parking
business from the airport and soon.
And you know website was up100% of the time.
People could find it andeverything was alright.
But you know it's just to findthat hook that might be
somewhere in the story that willwill get a judge Really looking
(41:16):
at you and say, okay, this,this was nerve-wracking and you
solve it.
Well, this, this is exciting toyou to be there for a play to
you.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, I, early on, when I was at Katam, I figured
out that a word entry winningaward entries has a lot to do
with the writing of the awardentry.
Because they had one woman,fran, and she worked on every
award entry.
Because I, I, technic, my team,one of you, but it's, it's
because of Fran.
She took our input and shewrote a story With a hook.
(41:48):
She, she touched every singleone.
Nobody submitted an awardwithout Fran looking at it.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
So anyway, yeah, she knew it, she knew it.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
She was the intel behind how to craft the story.
Yeah, so this has been awesome.
So much useful information, andhow can people learn more about
you?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, so you can find me on my website, gus Peloja
calm that I just released on onthe new domain and you can find
me on Twitter or X I don't wantto call it anymore.
It's at Peloja P E L O G I A oron Lickenden, gus Peloja.
(42:29):
I also do a bit of mentoring onbroke mentor and you have to be
a member of the platform, butthe call it means free, so if I
can help you with anything atsome point, you just become a
broke mentor member and most ofthe mentors there give their
time for free.
I'm one of them, so we can havea chat there as well.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That's.
That's great and for folks thatdon't know, when he does get a
chance to blog, he's got somegreat tips in relation to
writing tech tickets and someother things, with some nitty
gritty details that I foundsuper helpful.
In fact, you're gonna be in mynext newsletter, so thank you
very much for being on the showand helping all of us get a
little bit closer to workingwith developers successfully.
I think these tips are gonna begreat.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, thank you, catherine.
I hope that the people that arelistening found this useful as
well, and if I can help withanything else, just Just come
say hi and let's be in touch.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Thanks so much for listening.
To find out more about thepodcast and what we're up to go
to digital marketing victoriescalm and, if you like what you
heard, subscribe to us on iTunesor wherever you get your
podcast, rate us, comment andshare the podcast, please.
I'm always looking for newideas, topics and guests.
Email us at digital marketingvictories at gmailcom or DM us
(43:47):
on Twitter at DM victories.
Thanks for listening.
I.
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories
podcast, a monthly show where wecelebrate and learn from the
change makers in digitalmarketing.
Great digital marketersunderstand that people are the
most challenging part of doingtheir jobs, and this show
focuses on the people part ofdigital marketing wins what
tactics or skills the guests useto align people with their
marketing strategy.
(00:21):
I'm your host, catherineWatzie-Yong, the owner of WO
Strategies LLC.
We focus on increasing organicdiscovery for enterprise-sized,
science-focused clients.
Thank you for joining me.
Let's get into it and celebrateour victories.
So today we're joined by GusPalosia.
He's a journalist, turned SEOconference speaker,
(00:43):
once-in-a-while blogger.
He's currently an SEO productmanager at Indeed, which is, as
you know, the number one jobsite in the world.
He with over 250 million uniquevisitors every month.
Gus has worked both in-houseand at digital agencies in
various spots around the worldArgentina, the Netherlands,
ireland.
He spent five years as anaccount manager and team lead at
(01:05):
agencies such as Spark Foundry,wolfgang Digital, working with
clients from travel, e-commerce,professional services, and he's
won several industry awards,such as the Digital Marketing
Awards, the Drum Search Awards,the Irish Content Marketing
Awards, and currently he's ajudge for the EU Search Awards.
So this episode is going to beperfect for you if you're
(01:27):
curious about the following howwould I think like a project
manager and how that might helpyour developer relationships,
how you could pivot your careertoward product management, how
to tell your story effectivelythrough the SEO test you're
running.
And how to present your storyeffectively to one awards.
So, gus, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Thank you very much for having me.
I'm excited to have thisconversation.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Great thanks for being on.
So why don't we get started bytelling a little bit more to the
listeners about your background, how you got started in SEO and
how you did the switch toproduct management?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Sure, so I started SEO back in Argentina in 2012.
Even though I'm from Brazil, Ihad to move countries to
discover a new profession that Itook on and changed my life,
and before that I was actually ajournalist.
I went to journalists school.
I published a couple of books.
I worked for big news portalsdoing a bit of everything,
(02:27):
mostly entertainment.
I loved writing about music, soI would try to get any
freelance gig.
Sometimes I would just work forfree for the same publication
that I was working full-time butdoing other types of journalism
Because I always wanted to finda way to put my passion there
as well and develop that.
And when I moved to Argentina,I got a job at a Spanish school
(02:52):
and someone introduced me to SEO.
I was very lucky that the ownerof the school knew some other
people that we went to playfootball one day and he was like
, hey, this is the guy that Iwas talking about.
So after a soccer match, I gota job interview at one of the
biggest online travel agenciesin South America at the time.
(03:12):
Got a job and that's how Iactually started doing SEO
professionally, full-time.
It was a combination of the twothings that I had studied in my
life Journalists it was theside of how to pitch stories to
journalists how can I explainsomething on an interesting way
and find this to get backlinks.
(03:35):
And on the other side, in highschool I also had done some IT
studies, so I knew very littleabout computer hardware and HTML
building websites.
It was very basic from what wedo now, but essentially at that
time, the first time, I wasreading the Moz guide to SEO and
(03:55):
they started talking about sohere's how you look at the HTML
code and it's like wait a minute, I know this.
So it was an easy start.
It was a profession thatcombined the two things I knew
and I somehow just stumbled uponof it.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So I have a couple not related SEO questions
actually.
So the first one is so, whatare the books that you've
written?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah, so my graduation project from college
was a book called Giado Di Paoco, like a stage diary, something
like that, and it was 10interviews with musicians and
music label owners and that kindof people more or less like a
Rolling Stone style, kind ofgoing on detail about who they
(04:42):
are and trying to framesomething about their day.
So someone one musician, I wenton a trip with the other one.
I picked him up and at hishouse and we took the subway
together, went to his full-timejob on that it was on the side
of heavy band and that kind ofstuff and the other one I was
already living in Argentina anda Brazilian band was going to
(05:04):
play there for three, four daysand I just joined them on on
this trip, used this as anopportunity to discover a few
new places in the country and Iturned that into a story.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
That's awesome.
So one of the previous membersof my team at Ketchum actually
he was singing at the Apollo andnow he well, for a moment there
he's working as the digitalmarketing manager at Sony Music
Entertainment, but now he's offat YouTube Music, so I have a
history of connecting to peoplethat are doing music stuff.
I'm also a band groupie, assome people, some listeners,
might know.
(05:36):
My husband plays in thepresident's own Marine Band at
the White House.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So I'm a bit of a music groupie.
Okay, yeah, you have aninteresting world around you, so
.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
I'm curious about this reporter background, though
, because not all SEOs kind ofend up there with such a strong
writing background, so is thereany bit of that that you think
you're currently using?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I know you're doing product management, but I think
I use a lot of this and I usethroughout my career the idea of
, like, putting stars together.
It's something that you takewith you as a journalist, no
matter what you do.
So if I'm pitching something toa client, it has to make sense
(06:22):
for them.
Or if they ask me something, orif I have a big meeting, I will
naturally just look at okay, sothis is what we discussed, I'm
gonna work on this, you're gonnawork on this.
Unless this part is done byperson A, none of this can
happen.
So you have to turn anythinginto a cohesive story and to do
(06:45):
that, as a journalist, I thinkit's.
You use those skills in SEO anddigital marketing as well.
So, yeah, I think putting starstogether make sure that it's
clear for everyone what has tobe done, what we are expecting
from them was something that Ihad to do before and I still do
it now.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
So can you describe to the listeners the difference
between the product managementmindset and an SEO manager
approach?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, so I think something that changed a lot for
me before.
I would just put a list ofthings and say, okay, we can, we
do an audit, we see what'swrong and we start working on to
fix a lot of things on thewebsite and we would just hope
that some of these things willwork.
(07:34):
Some of them usually work andyou start getting results for
the client.
But there was never an approachbefore to say is this happening
because of this project orbecause of that project?
We are just running a lot ofthings at the same time and
hoping those results will helpthe client.
You can have some directions,say, we spent a lot of time
(07:56):
putting nice links this month sowe can see that those pages are
growing, but we can't reallymeasure necessarily.
Was this growing more than thewebsite, that the pages that we
didn't build any links to, or isthis actually what is driving
results or not?
And I think, as a productmanager now, you think a little
(08:18):
bit different.
First, I'm not just fixingproblems.
I'm spending most of my timebuilding new things.
In fact, if I have to spendtime, fixing a problem is a bit
disappointing.
You have to do.
We all have bugs and stuff, butfixing a bug won't bring me
closer to actually bring moreresults.
It might fix other things.
(08:39):
Let's say, if something's notlooking nice on the website, of
course users will be happierthat this is working again.
Or if there's a problem, theCMS that the editors can't do
something, I'm solving theirproblem, but I'm not bringing
more traffic or bringing moreresults because of that.
So I tend to spend most of mytime building new things and
(09:04):
also comparing what should bedone first, because before we
would kind of ballpark oh thisseems easy, we'll just do this
month, but because now we doprojects that are a lot longer,
a lot more complex, you willneed to find ways to compare is
it worth doing this versus thatone?
So having that mindset intocomparing projects and testing
(09:27):
things and releasing an MVP tosee if things actually is
working the way we intended isactually bringing results before
you go full on and spend sixmonths developing something.
I think all of these things arepart of the product mindset
that I started adopting after Istarted working on this role.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
But that's helpful.
So are there any other tipsthat you have about how to pick
the project, sell through thatproject, to do a test, that kind
of stuff?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
So I start everything with a PRD product requirements
document and at first I wasdoing those because I needed to
pitch this idea to someone elseand make sure that they would
have their buy-in, but over timeI realized that often they
would help me to clarify my ideaas well.
(10:20):
So a PRD will be a long formtext document where you're gonna
explain this the backgroundfrom a project.
This is what we wanna do, theseare the results we expect to
get.
These is the technical depth,those are teams that need to be
involved and everything thatsurrounds it.
Those are the deadlines.
We wanna release this on thisday.
(10:41):
We expect to test results afterfour weeks, six weeks and so on
.
And this document usually givesme a lot of confidence and
clarification on what I'mactually building, because it's
very easy to get out of thedirection.
The developer might understandthat something is different, or
(11:03):
it might be in a way that doesnot allow the second thing you
wanna do, but maybe you nevermentioned this before, so the
clarity is not there.
So I get very excited when Ihave to write a PRD, because I
spend days and weeks doingresearch, looking at different
types of websites and looking atthe potential problems this
(11:25):
might cause, and kind of puttinga very strong idea together
before I bring it to otherpeople and they might say this
doesn't work or we can only do Aand B and that kind of stuff.
So I think that really helps meclarify the idea and get the
buy-in from other people,because as much as I can say
(11:50):
that I have great ideas, theyare compared to ideas from
different teams and differentpeople.
So if the UX is not on board,if the editor is not on board,
if the engineers are not onboard, the idea might just not
never become a reality.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So do you have an example of a PRD for the
listeners that never played?
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, so this is one that I'm going to present at
Brighton SEO actually.
So it's not a completelyre-occased of something that we
did, but I think you can get theidea from it.
So, let's say, you want tobuild an automated link module,
so you want to.
Every time there is a mentionto a specific word in an article
(12:36):
or in a page, you want thatphrase to link to another page.
So let's say, every time thatyou mention digital marketing,
victors podcast, you want thatlink to, ultimately to create
that link.
So that's very simple on paper,but once you start doing it,
you might realize do you haveenough mentions of this phrase
(13:00):
in different articles?
Maybe you only have fivementions, so you don't need to
build a tool for this.
Do you have already manuallylinked to this page throughout
your content?
So you need to find yourfeature, must read the content
and see if there's already alink there.
Are you putting too many linksnext to each other?
Are they disturbing what theuser should be doing on this
(13:24):
page?
Maybe they start clicking onthis link instead of doing what
they actually want to do on thispage, so you're actually
causing a problem to do this, ifthat makes sense.
So putting all those thingstogether and also the impact
right, why you're doing this.
You want to build a featurethat might take three to six
(13:46):
months to be done.
And how are you going to provethe impact?
Because we all like to do shinythings and it's very exciting
to build things in SEO, buteverything that I do in a few
months down the line I have tojustify if that was successful
or not.
And if it was not, can we stillmake changes and make it
(14:06):
successful?
Have you learned from this?
How can we solve this?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I like your explanation of how much time
this might take to pull together.
So when you're finding I'massuming there's some case
studies and some other stuffbecause you mentioned, like what
happens if this goes wrong,kind of thing so do you have
places that you go for the casestudies?
And, in relation to the impacton other people's work, do you
talk to folks before you finishup your PRD?
Do you like literally talk tofolks internally?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yes.
So the first question about theimpact If you already have
something that we've doneinternally, that's usually my
reference.
If I don't have that, I canlook at an external case.
If I don't have that, I canjust say this is the amount of
traffic we are traffic orconversions that we are trying
(14:57):
to surface with this.
So what is the very best casescenario?
And then, with that in mind,you can say, okay, we forget all
of this.
This is the number we would get.
Let's see.
Are we at 10% of this, 20% ofthe best case, and you try to
see which is an acceptablenumber for what you're trying to
(15:19):
do and for what the businessexpect as well.
And then the second questionwas about if you talk with other
stakeholders.
Absolutely yes.
So before the PRD is done oronce you have a good, decent
amount of information there, Ialso have a question, a section
(15:40):
that is about open questions.
So at that point I'm going tobring all the stakeholders to
see does this make sense for you?
Does this fit your timeline aswell, because maybe I was doing
something with editors last yearand I would need a lot of have
lifting from them to talk withdifferent people in the company
(16:03):
to make sure that we have allthe information we needed about
people that were writingarticles about how to get a job,
and I could create the feature.
It exists on the CMS, it existson our analytics, but if the
editors do not have the time orif they don't believe in the
project to say, okay, I can'thunt all of this.
(16:26):
Hundreds of people to get theirbiographies and pictures in
there, thumbs up to put this newinformation on the page, then
your PRD doesn't make any sensebecause you're not going to
achieve what you're always goingto achieve.
So I do bring everyone on board.
I let them critique mydocuments.
(16:47):
There are lots of questionsthat you will think oh, this is
very clear.
It's not clear because they'recoming from a different
perspective and they will lookat things for a different reason
.
So you need to make things very, very clear as well.
One classic example that I'vebeen playing with is on internal
(17:09):
links, and every time that weget outside of SEO and say
present something about aninternal link strategy, they
will say okay, so we want toknow how many people are
clicking on these links.
That's how we're going tomeasure the impact, and I say
not necessarily if people areclicking, great, but we might be
doing it for a different reason.
(17:30):
So you want to make sure thatcertain pages do get visibility
across the website, or they haveinternal links so they can rank
better, and that's a balancethat you need to find.
So, as an SEO, I would thinkeverybody knows why we do
(17:50):
internal links, but people thatdo not live on our bubble they
will not know that, and makingit clear will help them to do
the things that the way youexpect as well.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Yeah, that makes tons of sense.
So, okay, so you're leaningheavily on an internal team to
kind of validate your PRD beforeyou even present it to say,
like the dev team, so it becomespart of the queue.
So how did you go aboutbuilding those relationships?
Did you have them when you werean SEO manager?
Did you start building themthen, and do you have any tips
(18:23):
about how to build thesecross-functional team
relationships?
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, I started building once I took the role.
I was at Indeed for a fewmonths and the person who was
doing this job decided to leaveand they offered me to take it
over and, to be very honest, atfirst I thought I was just going
to do technical SEO and fixbugs and after a few weeks I
realized that I found somethinga lot more exciting and I've
(18:50):
been loving the job since then.
It's by far the best job I'veever had and I think that goes
part of that is also because ofthe relationships that have been
built in there.
So you have to find your way.
So working, being part of theengineering landscape, I would
say, is very important.
(19:12):
I sit in marketing, but I'm ondaily stand absolute engineers.
I'm on the triage meetings, I'mon the sprint planning meetings
, so I understand to some extentwhat they're doing and how much
space we have for SEO.
Let's say, if they have to dosome platform improvements, I
(19:32):
already know that before ithappens and I can go back and
say, okay, we all have space forthis number of tickets, what
can we do with this print?
So I will play around and bringsomething that is reasonable
for them as well and, I thinkbeing part of the daily
stand-ups it's being veryhelpful because it's a limited
(19:55):
amount of time but it helps youto build a bit of those
relationships, and I always tryto find who are the friendliest
people around, and there are afew engineers that are very nice
.
So one of them, I think even inmy first week, I remember
asking do we only need to updatethis thing for this new future
(20:17):
to go live?
I said, yeah, doesn't this justtake five minutes?
Yeah, can you show me how to doit?
And he goes yeah, sure.
So we jumped on a call and heexplained me how to do it and
something that maybe would siton the backlog for several weeks
or a few sprints, becausepeople are are doing different
things and they don't know thatthis is necessarily a priority
(20:38):
for SEO, and me just starting onthe position would take a while
to figure that out as well.
So noticing like those are wherethe people that will be open
for you to come in and ask youknow the, the non-technical
questions or a common language.
That is like I have no ideawhat a nestry bucket is, but can
(21:02):
you explain me how we can dothis?
Do I need a nestry bucket toget this done?
Oh, yeah, you need.
Okay, so how can we do thisticket?
How you know?
And then you start developingthose.
I try to be as friendly and asopen as I can.
We do a on daily stand up.
We have a question of the day.
(21:23):
I'm sure plenty of other teamsdo that, but that's an
opportunity to kind of discoverdifferent things about people as
well.
So I try to develop thoserelationships outside the
transactional moment and I findthat those things are very
helpful to you to build a goodrelationship.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Do you think maybe your job is a little bit easier
because you're working on awebsite that probably has web
traffic as part of its DNA?
And I mentioned that because Itend to work with big websites
that are like, what's SEO?
And then they come to methey're like oh, we need web
traffic.
But you know, indeed, it waslike the mission is for people
to find jobs online.
Right, that's part of the DNAof the business.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, it is definitely easier because people
have this mindset and they knowwhy we're doing these things,
so it is easier to sell than itwas on different moments.
But I do look back at my careerwhen I was at the agency side in
different roles, and if I hadthis experience that I have now,
or if one day I have to, youknow, go back I'm not, indeed,
(22:32):
indeed, anymore, for whateverreason, and I go back to my
previous agency or anything, Iwould still bring a lot of those
, those learnings, and, you know, try to frame things the way
that I frame now, and especiallywhen you work with clients that
also have agencies on the otherside, I feel that things like a
PRD or some type of testingthat you can do will bring them
(22:57):
on my side and explain okay,this is exactly what we want to
do, and I think things will bewill be different.
As you know, with any job thatyou get more experience and once
you go to a new place, youbring that with you as well and
you try to to do things better.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Do you really think the PRD has really helped you be
more persuasive currently inyour current role and would and
would help you if you I don'tknow you used it as a consultant
or something.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yes, oh, big time, big time.
I think before I would justhave things on.
We want to do this for acertain reasons and that would
not be clear enough or a fewurgent enough and by for a CMO
or a director or even anengineer to say, oh okay, we
(23:44):
have to really have to do thisbecause I wouldn't.
I would be very afraid to putnumbers behind it or to estimate
actual potential on things, andthis is a different way to look
at things, and I actually askedon on LinkedIn this week if
people spend more time pitchingthings on slides or on written
(24:05):
documents and the polls torunning.
But most people and do thoseslides from what we can see both
in-house and on the agency side, and I used to do that as well,
but now I realize that Iprobably would spend half of the
time just making these slidespretty, which is it's important
to sell the idea.
But having having the ideasactually written down, it kind
(24:30):
of makes it easier for you toform a full idea.
It lives less space to hideinto, you know, something visual
and fancy that people might notfully understand, but it looks
interesting, so they will, theywill go for it.
So actually forgot what was thequestion?
Speaker 1 (24:48):
but that's okay you you provided this perfect
opening for me to plug the newAI thing I've discovered that I
try to tell everybody because Ithink it's the hottest thing
ever.
So you can take a writtendocument, because I also default
to a lot of written documentsto feds like those, like those.
So you know a written document,you can upload it to Microsoft
365 online and then you canexport it as PowerPoint and it
(25:09):
will create slides for you withgraphics that is very
interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
That is, that is actually very good timing,
because I literally just paidfor PowerPoint today oh see,
there you go.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
So there's a little AI tip for today.
I just have a yearly plan.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
So I will, I'll give it a try yeah, it works
relatively well.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I've used it for one.
So we have talked about thisprd, but we the bit of it is
clearly measuring ROI, so let'spivot and talk about the testing
you've been doing.
So what is your testing processlook like?
And, for other people that wantto start testing, what are your
suggestions?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
yeah, so we do testing using this methodology
called call zone analysis, andI'm not a data scientist or or a
mathematician, but I will do mybest to explain how it works
from the way I learned from fromthese people.
You basically look back sixmonths or a year in traffic and
(26:10):
you're gonna have a test group,which are the pages that you're
applying a change.
So, let's say, if you are doinga page title change, so you
want to see if adding the yearon the title actually helps
people to click on it or not, soyou're gonna do this test on a
thousand pages.
That is your test group andthrough this methodology you're
(26:32):
gonna go back six months, a yearin traffic and you're gonna
find a control group that'sbeing performing on the same
level as your test group, sothey don't need to have exactly
the same traffic, but they needto move up and down together.
So that's how you know thatthose groups are equivalent.
And then you have your, yourtest date.
So that's when you released allof these changes on your titles
(26:54):
and then you can see over twoweeks, three weeks a month, how
much did one group grow morethan the other, because you know
both groups could just grow andyou would say, oh, we got
results because we made thischange.
But you're not looking in thewhole picture because maybe you
know you, one competitor, didsomething wrong and they lost
(27:17):
their traffic, or there was analgorithm update that is
happening now and your wholewebsite got benefited from it,
or something else out of yourcontrol happened and it wasn't
really a consequence of the testthat you do.
So you go there and say we'regonna update all the tiles now
and you don't get the sameresult.
(27:37):
So that is kind of how how wedo things, and there are a few
tools that I haven't testedmyself.
Search pilot I've seen inaction looks very interesting,
but we didn't sign up for it andbecause we already have a team
that does this, so we don'tnecessarily need an external
(27:59):
team to or an external companyto come in and do that work for
us.
But I think split signal isanother one, seo testing is
another one, so I haven't testedthose myself.
I've checked their websites andit seems that what they do is
also an SEO aid test and theylook for a control and test
group.
(28:19):
So it might be similar to you,to the way we do things.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
And how much traffic does your site need to get in
order for a test to be valid,because I know it doesn't work
on smaller sites.
Smaller traffic sites.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, I think I can't remember now, but I think you
need pages that have at least 50sessions, 50 to 100 sessions a
day, and that has to beconsistent for a while.
But if I were on a smallerwebsite then I didn't have all
of this.
I would still try to look formaybe pages that have similar
(28:55):
search potential to see ifthey're moving differently, or
compare the pages that I'm doinginitiative versus the whole
website.
Are they growing more than therest of the website?
So there might be other waysthat are not as scientific, but
they could still work if youdon't have all the resources out
(29:16):
there.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Okay, so we talked a little bit about how you made
this transition pretty quicklyfrom a SEO manager to product
manager.
So how did you ramp yourself?
Because you didn't have productmanagement experience?
I don't think so.
How'd you ramp yourself up, anddo you have other resources or
courses or whatever that youwould recommend other people
take advantage of if they arealso in that same situation
(29:37):
where they get flipped to aproduct manager?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yes.
So in terms of courses, I wouldrecommend to you.
So Reforge has some veryinteresting things and it's an
expensive platform.
I think you pay a yearly feeand I'm also doing a free course
from Pendo.
I think it's from Pendo andMind the Products Product
Management Basics.
I am actually doing this rightnow and, even though I've been
(30:02):
on this role for over a year,I'm actually learning a few
things or a few technologiesthat I haven't heard before.
So that course I would startwith that one because it's
shorter and it might give you abetter view on which direction
you're going, and Reforge willget a lot more advanced and the
course are a lot longer as well.
So try the MVP first, see ifyou like, and then you can
(30:25):
invest on a separate platform.
I think the transition for me itwas hmm, it wasn't that hard.
I had to be honest, I think.
Working as an account managerbefore in SEO, I had to put a
lot of pieces together becauseit would have clients that were
(30:48):
doing SEO, ppc, content andsocial, and I wouldn't be living
on those accounts all the time.
I just knew the results weregetting from social, where I had
an idea of the strategy for PPC, but I still had to bring all
of this together and translateit into a decent story for the
clients when once they wouldlook at a report or once we
(31:10):
would have a meeting.
And it's funny, I think Ilearned at home to always think
about the next step.
So my mom is always worriedabout the next bad thing that's
gonna happen and how we canprevent that, and I took that
from her as well.
So before I do anything, I'mlike, oh, but what if it goes
(31:31):
wrong?
Okay, if this goes wrong, thoseare the ways I'm gonna mitigate
this problem.
So I tried to be ahead of timeon that and the first few months
there were already a fewprojects that were moving, so I
just took over what was there.
There were tons of tickets thatwere already written, so I had
a bit of time to understand themand see what was going on.
(31:54):
Ux was a great partner justwhen I started, because the
person that it was running theUX side on my first or second
week she booked a meeting withme and she blasted a lot of
ideas and I was like why is thisgirl talking to me Like I
(32:15):
haven't seen her before?
I didn't really get what wasgoing on.
And a few days later I realizedthat, looking at all their
documents from SEO, part of thetransition that SEO was pitching
something that she was pitchingas well from the UX perspective
and shortly I realized that heridea was way advanced versus
(32:39):
the one that SEO had.
So I was like it's a smart.
The best thing you can do hereis just let her lead this
project, not try to interfere ornot try to own it, because
she's already proposingsomething better than what we
had written.
So there were a few projectsthat were already moving, so it
(33:02):
was easier.
I had a bit of time to settlein and just move with the things
that were there, until Ilearned how to write tickets,
how does this print work, how tobreak down certain things in
different activities and so on.
So there was a bit of time toplan about things.
But if someone is starting onthis now and just have a blank
(33:25):
state, I would say only run afew projects at a time.
There are always bugs to fix,there are always new things you
can do.
But if you try to do five ofthem at the same time when you
start, they are not gonna work.
I have three, four thingsrunning at the same time at max,
and some of them are just on aresearch phase, while others are
(33:49):
on more advanced phase.
Also, if you break down to toomany things, your engineers
won't have time to do all ofthem, so you're gonna have
several things moving slowly.
You won't have anythingexciting to report because
you'll all be half done for along time and they might just
all get done at the same time.
And then you have anotheroverload of things that you have
(34:11):
to prove impact for all thesedifferent things at the same
time.
So do a few things at a timeand do them well.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So for SEOs that are new to the sprint sort of format
, is there any tips that youhave for people to understand
how sprints work?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah.
So a sprint will work untilusually it's a two weeks sprint.
So one day, at the start of thesprint, you and your engineers
will look through the backlogand say those are the things we
wanna do this sprint.
They might have differentmethods to know what is more
important and what is thecapacity they have to take, the
(34:52):
amount of work they can take onthose two weeks.
So after a few sprints, whenyou learn, okay, this is the
general space they have for SEO,okay, what can I bring to every
sprint.
So one day, one or two daysbefore the sprint, I'm already
asking around and say, okay, howmuch space we might have, what
(35:15):
are the things that we arealready doing here?
And I already send a list aheadand say, okay, can we do?
Here's my plan.
I want those six things thatthey're already in order of
priority, the first three.
They must be done because theyare bugs or because Whatever
other reason.
So we might have 50 things onthe backlog that we want to do.
(35:37):
I know only five or six will getdone the sprint.
So I try to get those veryclear and very prepared ahead of
time.
So actually, once we get tosprint planning, my tickets are
already on the, on the sprintlist, and they know like, okay,
gus talked about this, this,this, this one.
He didn't mention this one.
(35:57):
It seems that is not important.
I'm I'm usually there on thesprint planning as well, so we
kind of know what, what can wedo?
And having this done in advancealso helps me to know how far
we can go.
I helps me to report to mymanager what can be completed on
the next two weeks or fourweeks.
(36:18):
And you know it's.
It's a matter of like talking alot of people and setting up,
yeah, their expectations in yourown expectations as well.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Hmm, okay, so Just pivoting one more time.
So I know you judge searchawards and I want to pick your
brain the tiniest bit about that.
Yeah so, based on your becauseI think it's also related You've
got a reporter background.
You've talked quite a bit abouttelling stories.
So, based on your experience,what tips would you give people
that want to effectively winsearch awards?
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, thank you very much for this question because I
think I have a few things in myheart about award entries and
the best award entries that Ialways see and the ones that I
usually see winning.
They tell a very good story.
So you can do all the things inthe world, but if your entry
(37:12):
does not have a good flow thattells a challenge that you had,
the problems you had and how youovercome all of this, your
entry will not.
You'll not be a winner.
So I've seen entries sometimesthat will say things like we
made 10,000 SEO changes on thewebsite.
(37:33):
Like right, well, what are10,000 SEO changes?
Or Our visibility went up 40%.
Like well, I don't know whichkeywords you track, I don't know
what what visibility means toyou.
I don't know which software didyou use to calculate visibility
.
So those things are kind ofmeaningless at this stage.
But if you tell me a good storyabout how you overcame a
(37:56):
problem, that is a completelydifferent thing.
And there is an entry.
I didn't judge this one.
I was still working at Wolfgangand this is something an entry
that they put together and thatwas one of the moments that I
had a click about how to writethis entries was about.
It was a Christmas campaign forsupermarket and they had to
sell.
The goal was to sell 800turkeys online.
(38:18):
So you know, if people want toget closer to Christmas, the
Turkey price goes down a littlebit because they have to sell it
or people won't buy it afterthat, and the earlier you sell,
the better price they can.
They can get from itself theycan.
The goal of the campaign was tosell 800 turkeys or the
(38:40):
equivalent in other products.
So you're already telling me astory, right?
You could say you know, thegoal of the campaign is to sell
10,000, 20,000 Euros like okay,well, everyone can sell 20,000
euros, like okay, you're puttingme on Christmas, you're putting
me on a scenario that a lot ofpeople are familiar with and
(39:02):
foods that we all have.
It Okay, now ready to hear thestory.
So they were going after peoplethat were searching for recipes
and letting on the blog andSaving them to retarget them on
different channels later.
So this was, you know, a crosschannel campaign and had a very
clear goal, and they didn'tactually get to 800.
(39:23):
They sold the equivalent of 785or something like that.
It was very close, but eventhat, that is like we almost got
it, but the client was superhappy and you know, and that's
just a very good story and thegoals were there.
You achieve things, you.
You talk about the problemsthat you had.
So it is very honest and anopen entry and I don't remember
(39:47):
which awards it won, but he wonloads of them.
I did one One time was one forthe trauma words.
That was my, my entry, I, itwas my idea and I I wrote it as
well.
It was a migration that we didfor for an airport website and
(40:07):
the whole.
It was a normal migration.
It got delayed, as migrationsand websites get delayed, and
Everything went fine at the end.
But the hook of the story wasthe website had to go live as
soon as possible and it happenedto go live on the business week
of summer.
So if something went wrong there, if that website was not
(40:29):
working, if people could notpart, book their parking places
or find their departure orarrival flights, you are and you
know you're very close to chaos.
So that was a story.
Like if this migration hadhappened two months before, I
would have no story, but becauseof problems that delayed that,
(40:53):
I had a very good story to sayEverything went fine.
It was the most profitableweekend for for the parking
business from the airport and soon.
And you know website was up100% of the time.
People could find it andeverything was alright.
But you know it's just to findthat hook that might be
somewhere in the story that willwill get a judge Really looking
(41:16):
at you and say, okay, this,this was nerve-wracking and you
solve it.
Well, this, this is exciting toyou to be there for a play to
you.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, I, early on, when I was at Katam, I figured
out that a word entry winningaward entries has a lot to do
with the writing of the awardentry.
Because they had one woman,fran, and she worked on every
award entry.
Because I, I, technic, my team,one of you, but it's, it's
because of Fran.
She took our input and shewrote a story With a hook.
(41:48):
She, she touched every singleone.
Nobody submitted an awardwithout Fran looking at it.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
So anyway, yeah, she knew it, she knew it.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
She was the intel behind how to craft the story.
Yeah, so this has been awesome.
So much useful information, andhow can people learn more about
you?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, so you can find me on my website, gus Peloja
calm that I just released on onthe new domain and you can find
me on Twitter or X I don't wantto call it anymore.
It's at Peloja P E L O G I A oron Lickenden, gus Peloja.
(42:29):
I also do a bit of mentoring onbroke mentor and you have to be
a member of the platform, butthe call it means free, so if I
can help you with anything atsome point, you just become a
broke mentor member and most ofthe mentors there give their
time for free.
I'm one of them, so we can havea chat there as well.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That's.
That's great and for folks thatdon't know, when he does get a
chance to blog, he's got somegreat tips in relation to
writing tech tickets and someother things, with some nitty
gritty details that I foundsuper helpful.
In fact, you're gonna be in mynext newsletter, so thank you
very much for being on the showand helping all of us get a
little bit closer to workingwith developers successfully.
I think these tips are gonna begreat.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Yeah, thank you, catherine.
I hope that the people that arelistening found this useful as
well, and if I can help withanything else, just Just come
say hi and let's be in touch.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Thanks so much for listening.
To find out more about thepodcast and what we're up to go
to digital marketing victoriescalm and, if you like what you
heard, subscribe to us on iTunesor wherever you get your
podcast, rate us, comment andshare the podcast, please.
I'm always looking for newideas, topics and guests.
Email us at digital marketingvictories at gmailcom or DM us
(43:47):
on Twitter at DM victories.
Thanks for listening.
I.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.