The SEO Sprint Podcast Adam Gent

This week I interview Gus Pelogia an SEO Product Manager at Indeed.

Gus has worked both in-house and at digital agencies in Argentina, the Netherlands, and Ireland. He spent 5 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.

In this podcast, we talked about:


Getting into SEO


Getting into product


Product Requirement Documents


Engineering Buddy


Discovery with developers


Cross-team collaboration tips


Insight into working on projects


Why future-proofing ideas get buy-in


Product and engineering team structure


Delivery process and procedure


Importance of ownership in teams


Conways Law in large organisations


Raising problems is also about raising solutions


Writing effective SEO tickets


Importance of planning tickets


Prioritising SEO initiatives and bets


MVPs in SEO


Learning from Product Managers


SEO Forecasting and SEO A/B Split Testing



Listen now on Apple, Overcast and Spotify.

Recommended top three skills:

Gus would recommend the following skills to learn:


Business Acumen - Understand how to handle business situations and sell your ideas to other teams.
Technical literacy - Learn to code and better understand technology so you can build confidence to work on custom-built websites.
Ownership - Learn to own projects and conversations, don’t be afraid to speak up.

Where to find Gus:


Website
Twitter
LinkedIn

Note: Gus is speaking at BrightonSEO in September 13th / 14th.

This week I interviewed Abby Gleason, an SEO Product Manager at Scribd. Abby leads the organic search strategy for Scribd, a reading subscription service with millions of ebooks, audiobooks and more.

Abby has a wealth of experience working with content, business and technical teams working in agencies. As an SEO moving into a product role, Abby has learned to adapt and embrace many engineering practices to get things done.

In this podcast, we talked about:


Getting into SEO
Getting into product
Combining user and Google experience to drive results
Why Googlebot is a user
The full process of getting things done with developers
Working with designers and developers
Designers are a superpower
Meeting facilitation and product managers
Product manager = communication
Process of writing briefs for developers
Importance of collaboration anchor points
Conversation > Documentation
Communicating Problems > SEO Solutions
Devs asking for solutions vs Devs asking for problems
Why SEO specialists matter in development teams
Why SEO PMs need to prioritise ruthlessly
Why listening matters
Prioritising and SEO Product Roadmaps
Creating SEO Product Strategy
Four Types of SEO Strategy
Communicating to the management team
Forecasting process
How to say no in an internal team
Release planning process + ruthless prioritization
Retrospective

In this podcast, we talked about:

Listen now on Apple, and Spotify.

Recommended top three skills:

Abby would recommend communication broken down into three parts:


Clear written communication - Avoid a wall of text in Slack, email or documents, and use on-page SEO and readability best practices.
Show your personality - You must show your personality at work in your communication as it helps people remember you.
Internal networking - You need to meet with people, have one-on-ones and listen to get a better understanding of the business problems.

This week I spoke to Malte Landwehr, the Head of SEO at idealo internet GmbH who has been the VP of Product at Searchmetrics and a former management consultant.

Malte has A LOT of experience working and getting things done in product teams. He climbed the career ladder in the product team at Searchmetrics and became the VP of Product in a successful B2B enterprise SaaS company.

Now he works in an SEO leadership role at idealo, the largest European comparison website, applying what he learned in product and business consultancy to get SEO initiatives executed.

In this podcast, we talked about:


How Malte got into SEO and Product
Product Marketing Manager role
Communication strategy in product
How to get adults to learn something new
Communication lessons applied to SEO
Go-to-market strategy in a B2B product team
Release plan example at Searchmetrics
Feature flagging and releasing
Product and development team structure
SEOs in product and engineering teams
Moving into the VP of Product role
Product teams getting buy-in
Explain the product vision
How to work with developers
Setting the SEO vision
SEO Strategy Stack
Product Roadmaps
SEO and Now/Next/Later Roadmaps
B2B Product Management Rabbit Hole
Adam rants about Log File Analysis in SEO
Applying product strategy to SEO
Building trust in an organisation

Listen now on Apple, and Spotify.

In this podcast, we talked about:

Recommended top three skills:

For product managers:


Learn to say no - You need to learn to prioritise ruthlessly and keep your team focused.
Learn how to say no - You must learn how to say no because it is key to building relationships.
Sales-led is key - In B2B enterprise SaaS, the sales-led approach is important to drive revenue (despite what all the books say).

For SEOs working with product managers:


Problems > Solutions: You need to bring problems to the product team and work with them on the solution.
Always bring a solid why: You need to write down a problem and focus a lot on the WHY to help you and the team to prioritise your work ruthlessly.

Where to find Malte:


LinkedIn
Twitter

References:


SEO Strategy Stack
Now/Next/Later Roadmap
Feature Flagging Explained

This week I speak to Areej AbuAli the founder of Women in Technical SEO & an Independent SEO Consultant who has worked at companies like Zoopla and Papier.




In this podcast, we talked about:


How Areej started working in SEO
Getting Tech SEO Implemented using a bespoke framework
The experience with Terry the Product Manager
Getting tickets implemented in a marketing team with developers
How Areej learned to prioritise recommendations to tech teams ruthlessly
The reality of getting tech SEO implemented in an enterprise organisations
Getting buy-in at a large organisation
Working with tech teams to plan SEO recommendations
The move to Papier because the role was in a product team
The structure of the product team at Papier and how SEO sits in it
How SEO tickets were implemented and validated with the tech team
How to build trust in the team
How to add SEO recommendations to the product roadmap
The difficulty of needing work from marketing
Creating a team SEO slack channel for the whole team
Communicating the wins and shoutouts to the team
Being the only SEO in the product team
Planning, scoping and slicing SEO recommendations into tickets
Future-proofing websites and making them SEO-friendly
The power of retrospectives in tech teams
Why Tech SEOs should sit in the product and engineering team
Technical problems = people problems
80% of your recommendations won’t get implemented, so keep focused
The three top skills to work effectively in product and engineering teams



Areej’s recommended top three skills:


Keep recommendations concise - Make sure that anything you communicate to the development team is clear, simple and easy to digest (tickets, emails, documents, etc.)
Future-proof a website - Work with the tech team to build a functionality that solves problems at scale, not putting plasters on the website.
Fight to move SEO into tech - When working in-house, fight and get buy-in to move the SEO team into the tech team (product and engineering).

Where to find Arrej


Website: https://www.areejabuali.com/
Website: https://www.womenintechseo.com/

References


The RPI Framework
Product Managers
Retrospectives
Writing tickets
Sprints

This week I speak to Pedro Dias a Technical SEO Consultant & Product Manager who has worked with companies like eBay, Dell and Reach PLC.

He has a wealth of experience working in engineering and product teams, including working at Google in the Web Spam team building internal tools, and as the Director of Web Development at apis3, building websites for enterprise organisations. Recently, he’s worked at Reach as the Head of SEO, and with eBay working with engineering and product teams.

In this podcast, we talked about:


How Pedro got into SEO
Pedro’s experience at Google in the Web Spam team


How Google built internal tools in the Web Spam team
The actual reality of releasing internal tools at Google
The biggest challenges of tech execution in a web development team
How Pedro made core web vitals a priority at Reach PLC
How Pedro created a core web vital monitoring and debugging prototype
How Pedro worked with engineering to start to solve the CWV problem
The technical SEO work Pedro is doing at eBay
How Pedro prioritises and approaches technical SEO work within eBay
How Pedro communicates with different teams at eBay
Top three things Pedro would wish they knew when they started in product

Pedro’s recommended top three skills:


Don’t wait to fix things - Don’t wait for people to put things on your lap, and be proactive in fixing things or solving problems.
Over-communicate - Always over-communicate what you’ve done and what you want from people; don’t be afraid to shout about what you’ve done.
Daring - Be daring, and don’t worry about what other people think (especially if you think you are not good enough, everyone is bumping around).

Where to find Pedro


Website: https://en.pedrodias.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pedrodias
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrodias

References


Objectives and Key Results
MoSCoW method
SEO & UX Library
Reach PLC
eBay

This week I spoke to Tory Gray, the CEO of Gray Dot Company, and Heather Kaeowichien the Product Management Director at Gray Dot Company.

They both have a wealth of experience working in product and engineering at companies like Craftsy, Custom Song and YourMembership. They now use their experience in product and engineering teams to get SEO strategies and roadmaps executed at organisations like Spark, Strapi and Uncorked Kitchen.

In this podcast, we discuss:


How they both got into SEO
How they both found themselves working in product
How they crafted product roadmaps
How they communicated projects to developers
How they worked with developers to get things done
How they’ve applied what they’ve learned at The Gray Dot Company
The top 3 skills they’d teach themselves if they could do it all again

Tory’s recommended top three skills:


Data analysis - How can we use data to tell stories that resonate with an audience and prioritize our recommendations based on business impact?
Communication - Being able to communicate with multiple stakeholders in the business.
Storytelling - Crafting a story to meet your audience's needs and get it to resonate with them.

Heather’s recommended top three skills:


Minimal Viable Products (MVP) - Ensure you’re not letting perfection hold you back; releasing things into the world lets you improve.
Showcase your work - Constantly communicate what you’ve done to different teams; don’t just get stuck at your desk.
Insert yourself - You are in a role where every team’s work impacts your work, so don’t be afraid to step in and understand what teams are doing.

Where to find Gray Dot Company

Website: https://thegray.company/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrayDotCo

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/graydotco

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrayDotCo