The SEO Sprint Podcast

By Adam Gent

Do you want to work more effectively with product and engineering teams to get SEO projects executed? It all starts by shifting your mindset.

I’m Adam Gent, an Independent Product Manager and Technica... more

· Business

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FAQs about The SEO Sprint Podcast:

How many episodes does The SEO Sprint Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 7 episodes available.

The SEO Sprint Podcast episodes:

July 27, 2023Lessons from Indeed | Gus Pelogia
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.
...more
1h 5min
July 20, 2023Lessons from Scribd | Abby Gleason
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.
...more
1h 6min
July 13, 2023Lessons from Searchmetrics | Malte Landwehr
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
...more
1h 8min
July 06, 2023Lessons from Zoopla and Papier | Areej AbuAli
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
...more
57min
June 29, 2023Lessons from Google, Reach PLC and eBay | Pedro Dias
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
...more
1h 10min
June 14, 2023Lessons from Craftsy and Custom Song | Tory Gray & Heather Kaeowichien
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
...more
1h 2min
May 31, 2023 The SEO Sprint Podcast
Welcome to episode 1 of The SEO Sprint Podcast.
A podcast that interviews SEOs who work in product and engineering teams to uncover actionable and practical advice on how to get things done.
This podcast isn’t about SEO tactics or strategies. Instead, I want to understand the lessons that other SEOs have learned from working in product and development teams.
For now, this podcast is an experiment. So it is just a limited series for now. Let me know if you find it useful!

Website: https://www.theseosprint.com/
...more
3min

FAQs about The SEO Sprint Podcast:

How many episodes does The SEO Sprint Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 7 episodes available.