We interviewed Richard Fenning, Director SEO at Sherlock Communications (former SEO Manager at Lojas Americanas, SEO Team Lead at Mercado Libre).
With Richard, we talked about:
• Enterprise SEO
• • Marketplace SEO
• • How to get things done in big companies
• • SEO Team Management
• • Markets prioritization
• • Strategies to get SEO buy-in in large companies
• • SEO Communications in big companies
• Career Path
• • Opportunities coming from broader network
• • Being the right one to hire
• Evangelizing SEO
• • Building SEO Culture
• • Smart Strategies to get other teams on board
• Agency SEO & In-house SEO (marketplaces)
• Big SEO projects vs Small SEO Projects
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Where to find Richard Fenning:
– https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardfenning/
– https://richardfenning.com/
– Not in twitter any more
– In Ireland 🙂
Where to find José Rivolta:
– https://linkedin.com/in/jose-luis-rivolta
– https://twitter.com/jocherivolta
– https://joserivolta.com.ar
More about The Inbound:
– https://theinbound.net/
– https://theinbound.net/podcast
– https://newsletter.theinbound.net/
In this episode, we cover this topics (WIP):
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Referenced:
– Mercado Libre ( https://mercadolibre.com/ )
– Lojas Americanas ( https://www.americanas.com.br/ )
– Sherlock Communications ( https://www.sherlockcomms.com/ )
– The Tipping Point from Malcolm Gladwell
– Measure What Matters from John Doerr
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The Inbound Podcast. Conversations with Industry Experts.
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Transcript Begins (AI – Work in Progress):
Richard [00:00:00] So for me, if I look at kind of how I got started in SEO, it was really kind of like I think I mentioned that you had jobs like worked in all of those jobs, like have gotten through kind of networks and networking. And what I’ve learned by that is most of the time when it’s through your networks, it’s not necessarily the people who are closest to you. It generally tends to be kind of your wider networks. It’s often people that you meet once or twice at an event where a friend of a friend is a generating. Generally the people who kind of opens doors for me when it’s come for opportunities. And Malcolm Gladwell talks about this where he mentions weaker ties in his book, I think it’s a tipping point. He kind of speaks at length about that much. Certainly seen that concept by actually my.
José [00:00:56] At the Inbound podcast. Today we have Richard Fanning, director CEO at Sherlock Communications, former CEO team leader Mark O’Leary as your manager at Laertius Americana and more, we’ll talk about enterprises, CEO, actionable ideas on how to communicate internally to stakeholders in management and actionable tips to help you in your career path. Hey return. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Richard [00:01:36] Hi Jose im great. Thanks. Are you doing.
José [00:01:38] Doing great, man. Doing great. Thank you for. For being here. I’m really excited to have you here, Richard. I TV a little context in general. We first met, but back in, I don’t know, 2018. 2019. Back in merrcado libre’s offices,here in Buenos Aires. Um, but I want to start with a with a simple question, which is what do you think that what they think is the number or the metric that can cut? Anyone size how big medical waste it can be, a SEO related performance business or whatever to pick the one you like.
Richard [00:02:21] I find Mercado Libre is just a beast like it’s the real Latin American success story. And I think the one thing that I look at is still the one she like metric of excellence is that it’s in the not stacked top 100. So it’s been viewed as one of the most important tech companies in the world. It’s obviously on the New York Stock Exchange where we saw it at number of years ago. Its stock price is maybe all in a little bit. But for me personally, if I was to look, I would value debate priority based on market cap. I think more anecdotally, if you said we met MercadoLibre offices in 2018, the image of my friends working right is it’s huge, huge range and it just growing so much as the company that a lot of people in digital works there. It’s it’s huge. Back in terms of echo stuff, the two things that really impressed me in terms of SEO estimate pages that they have indexed, I think it’s something about, you know, it’s 100 million pages indexed just in Brazil and hundreds and hundreds of billions of business across to the Latin American, the 19 markets. Mercado Libre Operating. So yeah, if that’s the answer to your question, I probably see it in terms of market cap, this huge, huge success story. I think the company started in 1999 until today is just now growing and, you know, complete transparency. I own some shares in related brand. I got a very positive future company. Yes, I think we all do. Well, yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s a beast and it’s really well-run as well working slightest you got to tell you, the people the fashion moves there and they’re terrible junky awesome awesome.
José [00:04:03] Yeah it’s a it’s a it’s crazy their size and how fast they grow. So I totally agree with you. And it’s funny because different people over to the company perhaps they said I don’t know they sell a few hundred products a seconds or whatever so you want full on market cap. So I like that. It’s it’s good to know. Well, Richard, I am I have lots of things to talk with you, but I think I had to to to just pick some of them. So the main idea today is to talk about Enterprise SEO, perhaps not that on the technical part, but but but on the business by itself, then things related to team management, because I know you are a seasoned professional, you’ve manage different teams over different companies and different countries also and career path and many other things. But before that, um, do you want to, to make an intro on your site and perhaps to tell us a little more on how did you get there?
Richard [00:05:14] Sure. Sure. So, yeah. Obviously, Richard, I’m from Ireland, and and in about 2012, I took the step to move slot in America, but it wasn’t really a decision. It’s just something that happened. I was traveling, kind of backpacking around in Latin America. i landed on Buenos Aires. I really liked the city. And then the challenge for me was how can I stay in Buenos Aires? How can I make this work? So I went, I’m sort of working various different companies, but always related. In the area of digital. I worked first in an agency, was a digital marketing agency. I went and I worked an app, which was then kind of mobile growth world recarga pay to basically guess new users for the app in front of was growth marketing before gross marketing thing and then I. Actually. Then I did start up and then I ended up inside Mercado Libre working in SEO. So in total, I spent about ten years Buenos Aires and then a number of years ago, about three or four years. I took new from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro. So to go obviously from Spanish speaking Portuguese fishing America, I continue working in in Brazil. And they recently the last year I worked previously in Lojas Americanas and then a year ago I started working in an agency or a little branch, the agency which is called Share Communications, where we were also doing SEO for for clients. So it’s really been kind of, you know, fallen in love with Latin America continent, where I feel very much home. I’ve been looking to adventures and found jobs and challenges as a profession.
José [00:06:53] Awesome. Awesome. So you are more than more than welcome to to come back here to to the city you want here in Latin American awesome awesome and more going into more that the professional part. Do you want to tell me more about. Um. I don’t know the teams you’ve managed or perhaps what you are doing right now in Trello.
Richard [00:07:17] Sure. Sure. So for me, if I look at kind of how I got started in school, it was really kind of luck. I think I mentioned that you had jobs like worked in all of those jobs, like have gotten through kind of networks and networking. And what I’ve learned about that is most of the time when it’s through your networks, it’s not necessarily the people who are closest to you. It generally tends to be kind of your wider net networks as often people who you meet once or twice at an event or a friend of a friend, these are generally the people who kind of opened the doors for me when it’s time for opportunities. And Malcolm Gladwell talks about this where he mentions weaker ties in his book, I think it’s a tipping point. He kind of speaks at length about that. I’ve certainly seen that concept play out in my own career. And then when it comes to SEO, I think that’s something which obviously fascinating. SEO is obviously search engine optimization now about SEO is basically how do we present our web pages or our products in the best possible way for Google to be able to read an index and position news for, for users to get the best positions inside Google searching. And and I basically fell into SEO that people have all sorts of different profiles ratio my profile is a little bit different. I did a master’s in the science of marketing in an art into that I ended up working in digital so I wouldn’t be exactly a typical background for somebody with a technical background while I started working in in SEO. And I absolutely love Fascinate. So I think that and my background is starting to warm the communication side of got working in all I think it’s been about 6 million I’d recommend it and.
José [00:08:54] Awesome awesome And it’s very curious what you mentioned because someone could say, okay, in order to manage a whole list team in companies that have, I don’t know, hundred million pages, as you said before, you have to be technical. Yeah, you have to it it’s like the common becoming idea on that. But I like your approach on being perhaps a. I don’t know. More interesting in the communication part A which can help. I don’t know understand your service users needs contents and not that in the I don’t know crawled budget optimization or not analysis or different things so following that which are for you just the main challenges. Okay in for example moving from. Agency SEO. So, um. I don’t know. In houses you’re in big companies. Um, and I know you mention you started in agency, then in house, and now you’re back in your own agency, right?
Richard [00:09:58] Sure Yeah, it’s a really interesting point and it’s something that I think about a lot. Broadly speaking, I would describe it in the following way. I think agency is very, very good for people, especially when they’re starting career things agency. It can seem an awful lot of time to deal with different clients, different projects and different problems. And so in maybe one or two or three years in an agency, you will encounter a huge amount of variety of work. And this is in your work will be in any other area of digital marketing or even marketing in general, just gives you this huge kind of breadth of experience. And for, you know, in the morning you could be dealing with one client which can generate and you’re dealing with agencies is dealing with problems or opportunities. You’re dealing with one opportunity, one client in the morning, you’re dealing with something pretty different in the middle of the day and then the evening you’ve got something up. So it’s a huge variety of work, which is absolutely fantastic. I think one of the challenges, one of the difficulties with working in agency is it can lead to kind of throwback Sometimes here people are dealing with a lot of stuff. The the demand of work can be quite high a lot of times if you don’t at the time, you need to be able to go in and deal with a client in depth. You’ve got a certain amount of hours and below the clients. I think that that’s one of the challenges. But again, an agency, you can see that huge opportunity to learn a lot and also I think to really stay at the cutting edge because clients are always looking for, hey, what’s, what’s the newest seeing or what’s, you know, what what’s coming out for a different the the trends for you know what’s what’s new in our industry in parallel or in like I think working in-house I found the working in-house was it was much more about dealing with communication inside the company dealing with different teams and and you also needed to go much deeper. You might have had done much less projects. You might do three or four projects in a semester and you got very, very deep and hadn’t had much more rounded solutions. So for me, it sort of worked like that. Working in the agency before I went to Meredith or we started my career most luckily I was able to learn a lot that I went in-house, if you like, where I was able to, to manage teams and much more work on communication skills. And then I’ve gone back to working in agency, which has given me part of integrate into that and bring my skills up to date. And they also deal with another area of of an agency which is going right and then looking for for clients.
José [00:12:17] Awesome. Awesome. So you gave a second chance chance to the agency, but with a different approach, different experience, right?
Richard [00:12:28] Yeah, exactly. It’s for me, it’s really cool. I think both of them kind of work very, very well. I think it depends what are your objectives and also where you are if you’re looking to to learn. For me, the best way to learn the best kind of university is an agency kind of practical experience. And that’s very neat. You’ll get.
José [00:12:44] I found really interesting what you mentioned about working in-house. You have to communicate a lot. You have to deal with different, I don’t know, team leaders. You have to collaborate between different parts of of of the industry, of the company. So I don’t know if you want to specify or perhaps perhaps being journal um, different examples or scenarios in mainly in in Americanas about how you dealt with for example, not having what you needed. For example, you wanted to implement something or change something or bring a new project. How, how do you create all that flow in order for things to get done?
Richard [00:13:32] Sure. So every company is very, very different. So I talk about my experience, which is in MercadoLibre and in Lojas Americanas So MercadoLibre, we all know, is an e-commerce company, which is obviously huge in Latin America. Lojas Americanas is basically one of the competitors of MercadoLibre. But just in Brazil, it’s a massive horizontal e-commerce company, just based in Brazil, and it’s one of the largest in Brazil. So Brazil is a little bit unique in terms of e-commerce environment where there’s five big players in Brazil. Interesting to see what happens over the next couple years. We expect that the market will consolidate. There’s five big players and those American as one of five big players. So they’re quite kind of similar companies. And by then the culture, incredibly different companies and the CEO culture was also very, very different. So let’s talk a little bit about how to rewrite the story. So between we had had a rewrite, which for a highly conscious and experienced SEO professionals. So you got for people who are dealing with 19 markets and I was leading that. So as you as you can tell, I see that there’s a small amount of people and a huge amount of work to do. So what we basically did in recovering, probably following, we prioritized our main markets. So our main markets were Brazil, Mexico and Argentina and a little bit Colombia. We got four markets. And then everything else is just a job on the secondary plate. However, one of the beauties of that system of MercadoLibre is one of the challenges with SEO, in my opinion. There’s a lot of challenges in SEO, but one of the large challenges in SEO is the time that everything takes. You know, things take a long time. It’s just the nature of SEO. We need a long time to get the results. One of the other issues, some of the other challenges with SEO, it’s an it’s difficult to be able to understand the potential risks and potential challenges so you can help make a change. So something very, very basic. Let’s say that we have an e-commerce product page. We want to make a change on the page one on how to text. If we’re in MercadoLibre, we can take a secondary market and say, for example, Chile, and we can then implement this this change in Chile and in the Chilean market. We can see what happens in this. You know, is it a neutral result, Is a positive result or is it a negative result? I mean, at this results in the experiment in, let’s say, for example, Chile successful would rather like Colombia, then Argentina and Mexico and finally Brazil. So we had kind of a system we were able to do experiments based on. Hallmark actually worked very, very well. What I stand in Libya, as I said, we had people who were kind of you know, they worked in SEO for a long time. We were also quite lucky. Whereas in How to Liberate, Yes, the team was based inside the marketing division. We actually sat beside all the technical ones. So this was in the time before COVID and we were actually sitting beside the the catalog team. We were sitting beside the search team. We were sitting beside different technical teams who obviously over time you get to know these people and then you basically just do a lot of projects together. So MercadoLibre, we had very good working relationships with different technical teams and especially helped us implement everything when it came to South Africa.
José [00:16:46] Mm hmm.
Richard [00:16:47] When it came to Lojas Americanas, he was just a different set of emotions. Americanos. We had a team of ten people tweet, you know, a lot more out of people. So we could do a lot more stuff. And we had also very experienced professionals, people as well, and a lot of experience. One of the challenges we had in Lojas Americanas was that the team and those use our commitments dispersed. We had some people who worked our offices, states in Rio de Janeiro, some people who worked in the city of Sao Paolo, which some people who work in the countryside of Sao Paolo. These were big offices and there wasn’t really a culture of SEO in Lojas America. One of the first things that we did in August Americanas, was to go out and to educate people on SEO. And that literally meant that on Thursday and it was Thursday at 5:00, we would sit down in an auditorium, we would present a presentation on SEO every single Thursday. And different teams would come in or we were trying to do we were trying to build a culture that firm people were launching a new project that they would call back first so we could help them with the SEO from the beginning, as opposed to sadly, what happens in companies is a lot of time they launch a project when they they didn’t have an improved SEO. So to build up that culture, but that’s what we did. We started literally going out and making presentations. I also went to the site pilot for office in Sao Paolo where we did an awful lot of events. We went to our catalog team, which was based in a large distribution center in the countryside, like Halo. We gave them different kind of workshops on SEO, explaining very different concepts of SEO, so they would have SEO in the top of their mind when they were creating web pages. So they were launching projects and we also got very much involved. One of the challenges that I, I had, I’m sure it’s a challenge for other people who work in this. He’s hiring the right people, the nephew. So maybe some of your viewers today why they want to work at a CEO where the managers want to hire people in the CEO and to challenge boss to try and create that match between the right candidates and the right jobs. So one of the things that we did in Lowe’s, just very honest when we were there is we set up echo meet ups. We did about three or four of the meet ups. We did them in our office in the evenings. You know, we would bring in a few, you know, Coca-Cola, some food, a few beers, and we would get in some very high, well known speakers who would speak. We would invite people from the community into our office. Now, I did this for two reasons. Number one was obviously to help the community. And one thing that CEO was very good at is the community. But I also did it as a way to hire people. We would get everybody in. They would see our office. We would be able to talk to them. And then when I was looking to hire people, I would need to wreak havoc. People I could contact that I could hire. So we had a like a plant inside the company of going around and talking to people. Then outside, the company do meet ups. We also set up WhatsApp groups, LinkedIn groups, just to kind of create this community, which then helps me if I need to hire people or if I needed some help with the community type down the line, which personally from from my side. That’s funny. My favorite aspect of SEO is an SEO. One of the challenges is that we are not told by Google what is correct. We will never say this is correct, this isn’t correct, which is difference in ad rates. If you work in Dubai, if you can go in to the offices in Google, they will bring you for lunch. They’ll send you everything in SEO. If you work in SEO, Google never want to tell you anything, but after lunch they’re going to be just, which is totally understandable. But then in response to that, we’ve got really good community people.
José [00:20:15] This is really interesting to me. Um, you mentioned lots of lots of great things, but the one that most resonated to me is you mentioned that. You ended up working in Morocco, Libya, and perhaps any number of gynecologists americanas out of black, out of, um, working with the broader network you created. And then when you were in those companies, you did the same in order to create as your meet ups or there perhaps for others to have the same that that you had. So it’s awesome. And I also like the your approach on getting to know people because I don’t know as your meetups they they occur I don’t know once a year or perhaps a few times a year. But then there are different meetups and I don’t know, in a year perhaps you get to know and you get to to speak to and to see how they think about specific things. And perhaps, I don’t know, ten times with a candidate that that is not a candidate now, but perhaps next year you end up working together. So it’s awesome. Really interesting. Yeah.
Richard [00:21:31] I completely agree. One of the things that I most look for in the people who I work with my team is passion. So if someone is willing to give up their Thursday night and come to an event to meet up, it shows me that they have passion for SEO. I think that if someone has has passion, they’re willing to work at a problem a little bit longer. They’re willing to do more creative solutions or they’re willing to, you know, just, just just have passion in the office. You’re just be kind of a passionate, happy person. So if I’m looking to hire someone, I would often look much more than their technical skills or their knowledge. What is their personality and what are their their bodies? I think many things passion. If someone can demonstrate that by, you know, being composite to meet ups and stuff like that. So yeah, I personally got a lot of passion for SEO. I noticed I was lucky that when I worked in America, us, that they shared that and they were willing to put no budget aside. They wanted to invite people into the office and do something that works great, great.
José [00:22:26] Yeah, very clear. Especially things that that are not directly impacting their their performance their ratio but will in a way in some time will do it. So it’s a it’s very good. And also I, I found interesting the specific differences you, uh, you, you made or you highlighted from, I don’t know, my colorist team and the one off, uh, largest American has a different headcount. Um, the problems are or or, or the easy steps perhaps been all together and the differences. So these are all really interesting approaches and perhaps a little related to these, uh, and to the idea of, Okay, how did you make to, to, I don’t know, logistic or kind of to, to put aside the budget in order to to do what you wanted. So my question here is how I do manage. Perhaps you already gave a, uh, gave me a few ideas, but how do you manage to evangelize? Let’s say evangelize aso within a company. You mentioned as you made out perhaps from people outside the company, then presentations. You said every every Thursday, but directly, if you had 2%, I don’t know, two directors, let’s say more, more like the cold numbers. Um, what’s your approach on that to direct either direct or C levels or front people?
Richard [00:24:03] So at my level, which was basically being my idol, was the manager of SEO in America. That was the biggest challenge we had was, if you like, awkward communication for SEO versus what we’re trying to to do and why we are doing it. Because normally when you’re speaking to a director, what you’re doing is you’re asking for the budget. And obviously if someone’s in a director role, what they’re really focused on in the results. The challenge to be had in SEO was two things. One of them was I mentioned earlier on the time that is needed, the Okeechobee results. And then the second challenge is it’s often very difficult in SEO to create a direct line between inputs and the outcomes. So between the work that you do and the results that you get, why is that is nobody understands speak about.
José [00:24:50] What’s happening.
Richard [00:24:52] Exactly. It’s we call it the black box. Now, at the same time, I’m not saying that SEO is black magic. It’s it’s not there. It’s obviously quite scientific. But, you know, Google has, as we know, making for wonderful lighting what might be some idea of what needs are. But we don’t 100% know. So what I’m speaking to a director, one of the things that they always want is they want to know, you know, what’s the cost, what are the results and how long would it take? So if if she like, I can tell them what I want, it’s going to cost. I can give my idea on the results and it’s gonna take a long time. So one of the things that I do is, first of all, when is to try and get buy in from people and to explain to them what we are doing and why we are doing. To explain my, my logic field with understanding thing that takes a bit more time. It takes a bit more on a trust. And in Latin America specifically and I business is done in relationship setting, which is really cool. See how you get to other people every time you go the relationship and then you need to be done. What I often do is we have what I call the fast track and slow track. So the fast track or specific things which can be done quickly and are much more achievable. So one of the areas and worked on an awful lot in both North Carolina right and the measures Marikana since the up the application. So in both companies there is an Android and iOS app so we spent an awful lot of time working on and so app store optimization. One of the reasons why I really liked App Store optimization. Industry would show results much quicker. So we worked we had much more control over how the results for OSR would go. Why? Because although it was a much simpler algorithm than the others, it’s very similar, but it’s just more simpler. So what I would do, my fast track would involve certain projects which I knew would take 1 to 3 months where I could show concrete results. I would use these concrete results basically to win, if you like, trust. Then in parallel, I would be working on projects which I knew would take 6 to 9 months. So projects it takes 6 to 9 months. For example, if you go and you navigate in an e-commerce site and you see breadcrumbs. So let’s say you go from the home to the category page and you go to the subcategory and you go to the product page. We go from home and we go into cellular cellular phones. There we go on to iPhones and eventually go to the iPhone pro max product. Exactly. Yeah. So this is a user. It’s very, very simple works, right? CEO on for a boss. It’s very, very interesting in terms of how the bot will go and it will find this page if we want to make a change in how this flow takes place. You can do something very difficult, which can involve six or seven different teams and the results and the implementation could take six, six, six months for us to implement this, let’s run a test. So it’s a very costly project. So when I have a big, costly project like this, I want to implement in parallel, I’ll do a very simple project which normally would be around app, or it could be around one specific category to show, Hey, we as a team, we know what we’re doing. Is it as the results of one project? Now we’re going to try to use this to get the results. So it’s maybe looking a little bit around in the with that is kind of how I would go about trying to show the value of Ezio specifically to directors. News. Unknown interests. You go back.
José [00:28:08] Yeah very clear. And I get the point that you try to simplify everything and it’s kind of relatable to what you mentioned before. You won’t make big changes in the Brazil Brazilian website. You started by the Chilean one and then you start, I don’t know, you use it as a staging environment in a way, and then you start moving up in order to get to their real one to to the impactful one.
Richard [00:28:37] So it’s but it he’s actually pretty clever at, well, some sometimes specific needs. You have websites like in the case of MercadoLibre or Lotus Markham or talking about needs of of pages, you know, millions and millions and sometimes making a change in one element can cause complications or turbulence in other areas. And sometimes it’s very difficult to understand why. So we try to minimize these issues. We would always try and have, you know, staging environment. You know, we try to control the best we can. It’s just one of the pleasures of the what the challenges of working.
José [00:29:14] But very clear. Pretty clear. Awesome. So I want also I want to get, um, you mentioned the idea of working alongside different teams. Okay. Within a company with other teams. So I wanted to ask you, what are the talking to specifically about marketplaces, which I think they’re both more than relatable. Um, obviously established marketplaces. What do you think are. Other teams that are important or the ones that are more near to echo perhaps content research or I.T., because I think if they are near you, you have to have a good relationship. You have not always to ask for them, but sometimes you have to give things to them in case they need. So which they things are those teams.
Richard [00:30:12] You’re a ton. One of the characteristics of FCO FCO team is the amount of people that FCO needs to work with. And this one of the big challenges with FCO is that when we talk to Iran, you want to basically evangelize FCO and make CubeSat successful evangelization. That means within a lot of teams will come and you can say, Hey, we’re launching this, this project, we need your help. This is fantastic, this is good. But then it leads to a point where you’re getting contacted by so many different teams that need to prioritize. So for example, let’s talk about Moses or chocolate. My problem, but I just wrote on the list of all the teams here. So we work with the content team, we do work with search team Frontend team Infinite’s team work with the ads team work with the branding team. There are seven which I can mention at the top of my head. Let’s let’s take two as an example. So the ads team. So in Lojas Americanas and in Libra, as you can imagine, huge amount of people just put into how are we going to advertise do advertising in the most successful way. One of the large advertising platforms are basically Facebook, the Instagram and Facebook ads, and then maybe ads in threads when they’re released. Or it can be Google’s Google ads are very interesting and you can analyze and what was the relationship between Google lots and between SEO. So a question which I don’t necessarily know once or two, if you are number one position in Google organic versus certain keyword and you also have an ad about that in the section, you know, we can talk about this or day if we were to and, you know, use the concept of Google chat. So we have our Google ads, traffic when we have our Google organic traffic, I was how are these two types of traffic relations Another so that’s the it’s one area we work closely with the team answering these questions, rolling casts, helping them sometimes with with reports or sometimes they would help us in terms of giving us information. One of the areas which is super interesting when we talk about kind of enterprise SEO and specifically in the world of e-commerce, is how is e-commerce dictated by these large events. So we talk about specific promotion. One of the big ones, which is in Brazil during the World Cup in Brazil, massive is Black Friday. So when we get actually a huge amount of advertising is put into writing. So our organic traffic is going to normally increase hugely around Black Friday because it’s meeting tonight to advertise. And then you can you can see that that also depends a lot on working with the branding teams. So took the branding teams for example out or anybody and might you and I will pick on the billboard at the time certain areas in the city of Buenos Aires barrio Cordoba etc. then we can do more. But it’s interesting for us in SEO to see, Hey, what is this done for you Make it. People who are searching for our branded keywords, the hourly rate in these specific markets we work with, the branding team are to help them to show how is top of mind increased, how search and encouraged will all these things. And I could go on and on. But the amount of teams that SEO team works with is is very large. I see that as being a good thing and at worst they can share in your team your very insular. If you’re just focused on your organic traffic, there’s probably something you probably should be working with a lot of other teams. The challenge with that is then party saying, Hey, what’s important where, you know, sometimes what what we would do is we would we did both companies, we would publish or SEO guidelines and our SEO SOP standard operating procedures in an internal company intranet, you know, so it’s all there. So another time these people came to us in civic demands and they weren’t part of our priority list. We could at least point to with an online resource and say, Hey, information you need is here, you know, try to go on.
José [00:34:04] While you were talking, I was resonating. The idea of recently I’ve been talking with Tom Tom Critchlow from the MBA. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, he said. So it’s a very cross-functional activity because there say it doesn’t create value at all because you have that. I don’t know that you see the experienced team, the content, the products, you have many things, but you have to help and get help by all different teams. And these are all the teams you just mentioned. So it’s very clear that SEO, it’s like crossing everything and helping build with a proper direction. Right.
Richard [00:34:49] You That’s the publisher. For SEO to be successful, you really need to be cross-functional. So if we look back at that, I got two results. In a typical kind of e-commerce company, your organic traffic should be about 30% to 30%. You traffic should be in organic. So thought that that’s a massive number and if you can drive it, you can create. Yet, quote unquote, free traffic notes. If you can increase that, it can be can really help you. And so, yeah, it needs to be cross-functional. And in the companies that I’ve worked in, I’ve seen SEO work the best. It’s not only when the company itself understands the volume or sounds, the importance of this, this problem, that should definitely be awesome.
José [00:35:33] Awesome. I think I have to to make this question after having worked, I don’t know, in Merkel Leverett in Lotus Americana. What do you think, especially regarding performance? What do you think are. Some important strategies or levers in order to get in order to grow. User acquisition.
Richard [00:36:00] Yes. The way I could if you asked me personally, and we mentioned earlier on that growth and kind of growth, marketing’s looking like a really interesting and crucial part of marketing at the moment. But I’m slightly more old school. So for me, marketing has always been about growth, but that’s what it is. And I view FCO as studying inside and the marketing branch and SEO is ultimately an acquisition channel. So we do SEO because we want to increase the amount of work alley visitors, organic users, working organic sales or whatever your metric is. But that’s what SEO sport is really drive that you’re in North Star and social media and it’s now when you’re going about forming an SEO team in a company, interest will need to understand, you know, what is our key metric, need to define what are key metrics. Everybody knows what every metric is and is ultimately about analysis. You know, what are the issues we need to do moment and then what projects can you do to solve these issues to ultimately increase our key metric. And if you look at that methodology, it’s a very similar methodology to high growth rates. You know, it’s kind of like short rather, to be kind of actionable projects. And the only difference, I would say, you know, SEO sometimes since projects can be longer term, but the methodology is more or less the same. I personally view SEO as being the most effective. It’s when it house a growth methodology. In a way, it’s part of the marketing mix and it is there to basically drive.
José [00:37:30] Also, I want to perhaps jump to another topic that that that is really important to me, which is time management. I know you mentioned a lot of things. We’ve already covered a lot of things here, but I want to ask you, what are to you the key skills you have to be an effective manager in order to create that team, in order to help it grow internally, like helping people to grow. Pick the one you like.
Richard [00:38:03] Sure. And if for me, you know, managing CEO teams has been some of the most enjoyable and kind of biggest challenges I’ve ever had in my career. The main thing I would say is to be curious. And one thing that I feel there’s no definitive answer to when it comes to managing a team, it’s about kind of trusting people, trusting them to look at solutions and to have the strength to see to back them. So, you know, that’s that’s kind of how I’ve seen it in all the teams I worked with. We’ve had, you know, massive challenges because that’s how e-commerce a CEO works. It’s very, very competitive all the time. You need to kind of fight for those top positions. But if you have a team where things are working well and everybody is taking control, it makes it so much easier. And so, you know, looking back at kind of some kind of specific examples, there’s there’s but that one dimension you’re gonna blockfi you work in Brazil, black, white, Asian society. Huge moment here. We can sell more in Black Friday than we would had in months, even literally in one day you would in a month, and then everything just becomes more higher. Start. Yeah, it is. It’s it’s bizarre. So a lot of this basically comes down to them trusting your team that they know what the right thing to do it. And I was lucky. I was in Los Angeles before Black Friday. So we have a lot of experience doing this. And some of the results we had were spectacular. We were able to go in and win and or game and to number one position in the fighting for two years in a row. And this was patient down to the last how you trust in a team and then the teamwork they’re able to pull together. So, you know, the professionals who were in charge of the you said project work and engagement people, you try to build a team to get the results. So for me, when it comes to to meeting a team, I think it’s to just trust in the people. And then you just always be curious solutions because we’re, as you said, were working against Google’s algorithm, which is very dynamic changing online. So we we do the same thing every year. We will stay at the same place and we will decline. So we need keep trying new solutions up, new. I think that’s really, really fascinating. And as I said, I’m now not working in a market based on being interested to see what Google’s will have on a market basis that beta and looking more to jump through to try to get results and information on what products they buy. In my point of view, I’ve always been super invested in had content in healthy people when they’re on their buying journey, know what? At what point in the buying cycle do people want content? Often they not want content. Point and content get in the way of purchase are what point are people in the research phase? I believe that jockey. Will become a research to face ADC.
José [00:40:55] So yeah, to me it’s also really fascinating to to see, and I think I’m imagining lots of, uh, curious people curious Ben Durst trying to use had annoyed Chad Djibouti in order to create descriptions or whatever, in order to, let’s say, do so inside the commerces and also at scale. I think lots of change. A lot lot of things are going to change in in the near future. What do you think that the balance between soft skills, technical skills, I don’t know, business, strategic vision, how the balance should be.
Richard [00:41:38] Sure. Ideally, on an SEO team, you need both. I think so. Team is one of the few bases where you can have people with both set of skills. So in an SEO team, the CEO team emotions American Achievement. The CEO team in shared communications framework work at the moment is we have people who have very if you look at communicative and content and profiles, people who are very, very interested in communicating with people who can be doing more to the task, such as evangelizing and communicating with other teams as well as we can. Also people with very technical skills, not very hard skills. And these are people who tend to be much more focused on technical SEO. So if you like on this, on this line, people can fit in anywhere they they want. Ideally a transfer team management point of view. You have a balanced team, you’ve got people who are able to do the technical things and can deal with all these issues as well as people. Also do the communication side. And if you do have a and an issue and in balance, you need help from other teams. So you know someone who you can work more closely with technical. We mentioned earlier on by search teams, teams that are specifically in the search bar, which would be typical on this site. You know, you don’t have technical teams, you know, technical people on routinely to work closer with them. But technical people would help you in an echo sense in terms of fixing SEO errors, which you might have. They can also be useful for interacting with Google platform or other kind of Google products such as Google Search Console or Google Analytics or Google Analytics or AI to take in all the echo visitor data that you have on the cloud trends. And there’s a growing market, there’s a huge amount that’s the capital stock which involved training those people with hard skill. Obviously, the hearts and minds with people in programing skills where they would be database skills and then being data scientist skills analyzing training. So they’re kind of like the harder skills on the on the software side. And so obviously she automotive CEOs who make content know what content shoot should be, what’s the best content. And public relations is a hugely valuable part of SEO. How can we build up a. How can we gain more links like me getting more exposure? There are our pages in another area. And of course, you know, there there’s a huge amount. It’s all kind of really tied together. And I think for it to work well, that’s really what you need in order to work to work together. So I mentioned the you know, I mentioned the technical side of it. I mentioned public relations. I mentioned the content of and the data. The other one that we haven’t mentioned would be people with organizational skills. But I’ll be talking oflife today about SL projects. So we try to also have roles for people. Would be the trio of Ezio would be a project on there. You’ve got a certain project, people that work with different stakeholders to make sure the project is delivered on time. And the Third Lopes work so that the different profiles inside Ezio is easier to achieve. And I think it depends on what project in the company and also what profiles you can hire. So one of the challenges like how to manage your hiring like people. It’s, you know, there’s a huge opportunity out there for for your viewers that they’re interested in this yo you know companies people definitely finding.
José [00:44:55] Yeah, that is, that is a good thing you mention because just as a quick question, when you are in Merkel Europe back in 2018, 2019. You didn’t work at um, with, I don’t know, project owners or different parts which would be more relatable to a product. Right.
Richard [00:45:16] We did work very closely with, with the product teams and I think when it works well, it’s when these are shared kind of projects. So as opposed to being an associate project, it’s a shared project kind of. Yes. Yacht And working together with the the product team, it works very well also because the skills that these POWs have, you know, our they’re they’re very they’re very good at managing projects. So I think that that works very, very well.
José [00:45:43] To get things done in big companies, which is I think are mostly a place. Yeah. Um, I went for the last time. I want to get back to, to, to the skills part because you mentioned perhaps the different people that can be within a team, the technical ones, the content that they want to stay, the communication, but. If you have to reunite everything in one person, which would be, I don’t know your case. The manager did that. The director now am. So how would you balance things perhaps more technical or more on the business strategic vision?
Richard [00:46:26] Sure, I’d bring it back definitely to there. There’s a book I really liked, which is Measure Matters, The author. It’s inside of me, but it’s basically you build your key metrics and then what you can do in terms of reaching your key metrics, data, period. What are we trying to achieve? And. I’ve got the book here. I’ll give it to unite us and India. So what are your key metrics? And then I would assign priority and I would assign resources based on achieving these key metrics. So find managing the team. Yes, I need to bring all this together. Money to define the priority. The priority should always be defined based on whatever you’re trying to achieve. Sorry it’s measure what moderates which is by John to where I yeah that directory John awesome awesome book. I’ll send it to you.
José [00:47:22] Thanks for. I definitely. Yeah that is I. What I want you to do is perhaps to see that the two sides of the coin. Okay, you can create a huge team, but then you have to have someone managing everything. So I wanted to to know your opinion on both sides. Okay. And then finally, what I want here is to ask you for four specific, I don’t know, scenario or advice. Put it as you wish. I would be or how would it look like the the career path of, let’s say, of a senior SEO professional. Right. Because you have you can start as an analyst then. I don’t know specialist, you can be as your manager, then you can lead the team as a team leader, the issue director, depending on the company, on their needs budget and so on. And then what’s next after that? Because you have, let’s say you have a roof. You cannot be a VP of a CEO because a CEO, as I was saying before, as a thing, as a thing, it doesn’t have a structure because you have to work alongside other teams. So. Would you recommend moving product to marketing? I want to know your your vision on this tour.
Richard [00:48:48] Super interesting. So for me, I’ve always been very interested in where CEO should fit inside your organization. In and Mark had a leeway. For example, SEO was inside the marketing vertical, so the ACL reported ultimately to the marketing director Moses Maher comments. For example, ACL fit inside the technology, but he was reporting to the CTO, the chief technology officer in the GA. I’ve heard the fits inside product, so to.
José [00:49:18] Propagate.
Richard [00:49:19] This with the product. So I think it really depends on which or which kind of vertical you’re in, which from my personal point where some advice to your ear is yes, ultimately you will reach a certain point in scope when you can decide to go and work with the specialists and decide to become more of a deep specialist in whatever area. Maceo James we spoke earlier on. You can have more technical stuff, you can have some more content. Typically people would get specialization, which would be a bit more technical being the data side scientist it could be in and deep technical ACL could be in certain areas, it could be in cloud storage. Anything like would be kind of one side If you didn’t specialize in the other side of it. You don’t get more into management. If you’ve got more of a community profile, you can say, I want to start managing people. So the first thing to do that would be to start managing people in small projects, you know, see how that goes. And eventually you would probably go to some type of an intermediate job which would potentially be called supervisor or coordinator, which would kind of coordinate a team in collaboration with manager. And eventually you become a knight as an SEO manager. I think the only thing you can really do would be to try to incorporate some other team. So, you know, Scott is very complementary to, as I mentioned, one adds attention to the needs and treated content. I think something like that, since you’re in your managing block is your next step would be to either get involved with one of these other teams and ultimately I think you would want to then make it to the stack. You try to migrate to two teams at the same time. They can manage the SEO team at the same time, if any, all and get more. And then ultimately, I think if you were to try to go to director, as you said, you then need to try to expand your app. Although I do, yeah. I see a challenge in terms of going what just based on SEO to then go into another area because as you said, there would never be a Chief SEO, you know, eventually it would be a chief marketing officer, chief checking box or a chief product. And that’s just the nature of moving off in large amount. You just need to gain more flexibility into groups and you can do portability, you can shoulder often and continue to add to rise.
José [00:51:26] Tim Rice. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And also very, very clear to me am I here would be. What is your advice? I’m getting back a little bit on the main idea but with a different approach. What is your advice for an ISO, a professional that wants to move up in the ladder? Um, it’s a fast. What would you recommend?
Richard [00:51:56] Well, like all well, the standard things which we we didn’t like. I saw a little image on an India today, which I really liked, which shows that kind of the things, the general things that that the people need. And so that to me, what these ones were like being one time. Work ethic. Body language. Energy. Attitude. Passion. Being prepared. These are all kind of the basic thing. So I think that obviously to be a professional in any line of work need all these help. Great. Ignacio You need to basically show your skill projects are working and have good results. But one of the bits of advice I would give people, which I don’t see enough CEOs doing, is having your own personal site. So I myself, I’ve got my own personal site that I do little project. And on why you didn’t experiment. So why? Because if I’m working in an agency, I have my clients sites. I need to treat my clients like, you know, like a baby, you know, treated super well. You need to needs to work. Where if I’m working in a large marketplace, I can’t just take a risk. You know, as I mentioned earlier on, some clients we use in every year in Chile or a smaller market as a test and still cheating is a hugely important market for my country. I count now. I can’t make mistakes. You can do experiments. What I always recommend for people at any point in the always have a little practice or if where you can do things, you can try things, you can experiment. But if I’m interviewing somebody, I love to see me say how practical experience and if they if they’re doing something on their own. But we chose their their passion. But I don’t know if this is maybe a way too fast because as I said anything, it takes a long time. If you if you’re doing something on site, think it will really just again, looking for experience and what is it the things with SEO? Is it SEO the whole level or the whole idea of certifications and SEO don’t really know working out to, you know, that’s very rare to be a certification. I’ve heard that Google are launching the idea of a certification, but I would recommend if anybody wants to move up an SEO is to look at what is complementary to SEO. So I always think Etsy is very complementary with Google, you know? So if someone understands SEO and they start to have a strong understanding of Google ads, I think that that works very, very well. Echo is very complementary with databases. So if somebody works at SEO and then they got a very good understanding of SD, well, they can put together a databases. Some fantastic. If somebody has a good understanding of UX and you have that, you know, how can we do a beta? That would also be very complementary that SEO. So depending on where you are with your SEO knowledge, if you reach the expert builder strong senior in SEO, my recommendation, you look for something complementary, fit accordingly. In my opinion, the best way to reach kind of Senior SEO Institute. Obviously in parallel to the work you’re doing and the great results you’re showing at work, have some kind of a private project or some kind of personal project yourself where you can do things from three tests, things without any fear, fail or trying your.
José [00:54:58] Awesome, awesome, awesome. And very clear. And yeah, no, they mention it. Um, one of the things that I that, that get to surprise me are, let’s say, personal projects or different things that some people can say, okay, I’ve done this and you say, okay, you get to understand the logic and the intention and, and the workflow. So yeah, it’s very, it’s very interesting. But here this is more like a personal question and it’s, uh. What’s next for Richard Fanning?
Richard [00:55:38] Well, I feel that MCO as an industry just keeps growing. And so, you know, I mentioned earlier on about John Jeep, Jeep and there’s all these things going on. So from my side and I never feel like I’m the original in CEO about working in share like I want to provide great SEO or clients like person want to shoot growing and I know while I give you know I feel very very lucky to work in this digital marketing area for so many years. And I myself personally, I want to keep working. Michelle actually trying to understand this. I feel that the more I understand that, the less I know now, okay, There’s still so much I want to learn and I myself am trying to kind of improve my skills around and stuff like database and stuff like tech, you know, all the things I mentioned today. I’m not lecturing you guys, you know, I’m on that that you’re in. So at the moment, yeah, working with some of the largest clients that are trying to enter Latin America with Sherlock, you know, really, really enjoy the role. I continue to continue to work.
José [00:56:42] Awesome. Awesome. So you just have to come back here to Titus or or Sao Paolo and that would be awesome. And are you planning so are you planning to stay perhaps in the agency side or you have like that each to getting back to to change house to and more like enterprise in that yeah.
Richard [00:57:02] I spent part of about eight years like in in-house working in these massive websites and it was a huge challenge but I really like it the moment in 18, the dynamic nature of the.
José [00:57:16] Speed.
Richard [00:57:16] And you know exactly it’s yeah, we’re dealing with it. And I personally think that it takes a number of years to, to learn things. You know it’s well we are obviously very interested in 3D, but to really understand things and get a good feel for I think it takes kind of three years and only view my kind of career to shoot. I think three year ago. And she was just like the other company, right What you over three years in motion Smart got us I think in like more or less three years in the agency side to to learn it. And that seems like a natural and like chapter so but more than halfway through a three year cycle, I mean kind of a year and a half. So more or less in about a year’s time, I think I’ll start looking for the next challenge. I’m I think that the the challenge of part of the other, as you mentioned, to go back in to in-house kind of working at SEO Enterprise or you going out a smaller niche website trying to expand the directing agency, we can help not define. We’re going to look at lodging. So I think there’s a huge amount that you better opportunity in Latin America in terms of launching new flights. And we’re very, very interested in helping you take, you know, a new website, our website, this not doing hiking the truth to that before I can prove that isn’t happening monetize this. This website that can be modified should be e-commerce monetized with content monetizes and finished in huge amounts of ways to monetize a website. I think that with the skills that I have and the steals, the other people working with you are very, very well positioned to read and work on the website monetization. So it’s nothing new. They’re kind of not have projects. I’m super invested.
José [00:58:56] Awesome. Awesome. So you have. I’d probably check again, if not before, in a year and a half to see Where are you? What are you? Are you focused on? Awesome. Awesome. Richard So finally.
Richard [00:59:13] We can schedule another catch next.
José [00:59:16] Year. Yeah, absolutely. The episode probably, I don’t know, 30 or 40 and we can, we can discuss how to in there now. Yeah, absolutely. And Richard, where can people reach out to you?
Richard [00:59:30] Sure. So the best place to inject me in in Lincoln, which is basically just linking dot com and slash I and slash Richard Banning. I’ll always answer messages on LinkedIn. Anything to add CEO gibberish in anything significant digital marketing or drugs anything I thought means to me and associated agents the best way to reach me also have my own little apps like percentage which have been incom or do little test. So the always want to drop in there. Well, what am anything to neuraxial please give me a shameless you can give me help indicts infringing on a church. You’ll be looking for a job I hope you can want you actually work like my network going help back with that. The best maps. I’m no longer really active on Twitter. Okay.
José [01:00:16] Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Richard. Thanks a lot time and I said, as I said before, I’m really happy to have you here to to to speak with you and. Well, thank you. Thank you. And let’s talk to him, right.
Richard [01:00:31] Drink plenty of pleasure. You.
José [01:00:33] Bye bye.
