€90M HOME24 SEO PLAYBOOK | Federico Cutillo, Head of SEO @ home24 | #8

00:00:00: I'm super happy to introduce today's guest, which is Federico Cotillo, who is head of SEO at home, one of Europe's leading home and living e-commerce platforms, competing with giants like IKEA and Wayfair.

00:00:17: What makes Federico particularly fascinating is his seven plus year tenure leading SEO at home.

00:00:25: He joined about a year before the IPO and helped shape the global SEO strategy for six markets.

00:00:33: Federico, first of all, thanks so much for joining today.

00:00:37: Can you give a quick intro about your role at home?

00:00:43: Thanks a lot for your introduction.

00:00:44: And before starting, let me say that I very much like what you're doing.

00:00:50: And thanks a lot for having me as a guest of your talk today.

00:00:55: Yeah, I joined like on, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, like, on, due to some, let's say, blackact asia tactics and they almost disappeared live from Google search.

00:01:17: So my biggest challenge at the beginning was to be like a culture and trust about the channel.

00:01:28: It was like tough and it took me some time because at the beginning I was seen like the guy for to reach out for meta description and page titles.

00:01:38: And I was trying to explain to my colleagues that SEO is rather a way of optimizing the shop life for users and search engines.

00:01:49: Meanwhile, having like some workshop and try also to establish again, like a better understanding about the channel.

00:02:06: And after almost eight years, I'm still here.

00:02:10: I'm still enjoying the journey with the company.

00:02:15: A lot of things happened, like, since I joined, there was no SEO team.

00:02:24: And I joined as the one-man show, I would say.

00:02:28: But we were able basically to rebuild like a team, to growing like the domain, let's say, priorities were no longer only responsible for SEO, but we extended our domain like to taxonomy and product data.

00:02:50: So a lot of things happened, like, and that's also the reason why I'm still enjoying my time at Tone.

00:02:59: Yeah, I can imagine that over the course of seven years, there are probably some key milestones that are to be remembered.

00:03:09: So maybe you can share a little bit with me and the audience some things that you remember from the time where you feel like this is particularly interesting or that you particularly remember.

00:03:23: Sure.

00:03:24: So as mentioned, Again, my biggest challenge at the beginning was to rebuild a culture and a trust about the channel.

00:03:35: And it took some time, took some effort, but it was nice to basically share my view about SEO with the rest of the company, educate different teams, different stakeholders about the importance of SEO.

00:03:58: One of the biggest mindsets I reached over the time was, again, to rebuild like the team, an international team.

00:04:07: Cozom.com is currently operating in six different markets in Europe.

00:04:13: And we also have this sister company in Brazil.

00:04:17: But it was like building everything from scratch.

00:04:20: So from there in process, to define the different strategies to move forward or along with company priorities.

00:04:32: Plus, as I said, our focus changed also over the time.

00:04:39: We got more stuff to take care of.

00:04:44: We completely rebuilt our taxonomy structure and also, in parallel to that, a completely new structure of our product data.

00:04:56: So, as said, we're focusing on the main issue aspects, but at the same time, we're basically facing new challenges every day, and the team is growing like, having different, let's say, knowledge or growing like the knowledge over the time over different aspects.

00:05:20: Cool.

00:05:20: Can you share a little bit about how the team is structured?

00:05:23: Like it's you obviously at the head of but then how many people Work for you or work in your team and what are the different roles of the people?

00:05:32: Sure.

00:05:33: I mean like the team is structure basically Considering also the different aspects or the different priorities.

00:05:40: We have like an CEO team with the senior CEO manager was managing like four live content writers focusing on the main countries where room twenty four is operating.

00:05:56: We have a technical SEO lead plus a person who's totally dedicated to product data and also supporting me with enlarging like or growing our taxonomy vertically and horizontally.

00:06:16: Interesting.

00:06:17: Let's maybe dive into some numbers quick to give the people watching or listening a little bit like of an perspective about the size of home twenty four.

00:06:27: So I think the last time the financial results were publicly disclosed before the XXX Slot's group basically purchased home twenty four.

00:06:39: I think it was around six hundred million something in revenue total.

00:06:45: I guess that's about right.

00:06:47: And in terms of SEO, um, KPIs, according to Samrush, at least home, twenty-four gets about one point six million organic visitors per month.

00:07:01: Does that sound about right or?

00:07:03: Yeah, I mean, like.

00:07:04: as for any other business, also the furniture business is highly impacted by seasonality.

00:07:10: We have our own way of attributing a wide traffic to the different channels.

00:07:16: But I would say that figures from SEMrush are not far away from reality.

00:07:24: Okay, that's all I can ask for for you to share.

00:07:29: Concerning total revenue generated, can you share just an estimate about how big the contribution of SEO is?

00:07:38: Yeah, without going that much in details because it's something that I'm not allowed to share.

00:07:43: I would say that SEO is contributing between the ten and fifteen percent of the total company revenue.

00:07:52: And something that I always have as a topic also with clients is attribution or measurement.

00:07:57: So a lot of people are asking me or coming to me asking, hey, how can I measure the success of SEO and also the contribution to revenue?

00:08:06: Do you have like, do you work with specific attribution models or can you share a little bit about how you try to measure the impact?

00:08:16: Like what are the key KPIs you're looking at?

00:08:19: Yeah, sure.

00:08:20: We have our own attribution model.

00:08:22: The attribution model has changed like over the time, also after the adoption of universal analytics.

00:08:35: Well, I would say that we're also facing the transition and the old metrics that we used to use like to evaluate also SEO are changing like as well.

00:08:54: At the beginning, I would say that SEO or the channel was primarily evaluated like considering the traffic, how much organic traffic, how much traffic organic traffic was growing like over the time.

00:09:09: Now also the after like the advent of AI and large language models, it's less about how much traffic is growing, but also how the traffic is contributing to the overall company revenue.

00:09:32: Less about the KPI, about traffic and more about conversion.

00:09:41: I think that's something that a lot of companies are currently experiencing.

00:09:45: I recently had a talk with, for example, the marketing leader at Sethdesk.

00:09:53: So it's a B to B SaaS company, but he openly shared that they have lost about twenty to thirty percent of their traffic, but they haven't seen a downturn in conversions.

00:10:05: So let's talk about traffic first or like at least the visibility, traffic, everything that comes down to that.

00:10:14: How big has been the impact of AI overviews?

00:10:18: catch up to user growth, et cetera, for you.

00:10:22: I mean, like considering our business and considering that AI overviews in general are triggered mainly from informational, educational content, not much.

00:10:36: Not much because our business is primarily like an commerce business.

00:10:40: Therefore, transactional keywords have been not much.

00:10:48: impacted by the launch or the raise of AI Overviews.

00:10:53: I would say that, yeah, we're also facing a loss of organic traffic, but mainly cause there was an increase in competition.

00:11:06: Interesting.

00:11:07: And not simply or not purely due to the fact that Google launch like AI Overviews or let's say, the market was slightly also navigating through these LMS models.

00:11:28: Interesting.

00:11:29: So competition in terms of new players emerging in the market and being more visible?

00:11:35: Yeah, exactly.

00:11:36: Plus, I mean, like I'm noticing, it's a trend I'm noticing over the time.

00:11:42: There are niche websites about like one specific, let's say, Nishi vertical which are definitely gaining like visibility and traffic And it's a trend I start observing like Over the past couple of years with Google giving like more visibility to Nishi website.

00:12:03: compare light to large commerce covering light different verticals at the same time.

00:12:09: So for example a website that is purely dedicated to lights or purely dedicated to bats or something like that

00:12:17: exactly

00:12:18: Exactly.

00:12:19: So do you feel like, I mean, obviously you are, you try to compete with them and probably doing a pretty good job.

00:12:28: But do you feel like these Nishi websites, so they still have a shot against a big player such as home-twenty-four due to this preference from Google that they like this?

00:12:41: so let's say topical focus or Is it something that is just like a temporary thing?

00:12:50: I don't believe it's a temporary thing.

00:12:52: I believe it's the it's the new reality, I would say.

00:12:56: And of course, there was a rise in competition given like to this more niche niche and small players competing against like more generic e-commerce like on twenty four.

00:13:09: Interesting.

00:13:10: I don't see I don't see it as a as a. I see as a permanent, let's say, trend, let me put it this way.

00:13:22: Interesting.

00:13:22: That's a temporary aspect.

00:13:28: Got it.

00:13:29: And did you also think about maybe branching out certain categories onto their own domains and create these, I mean, in a way, artificial, but niche websites where it's like Light Expert by Home-Twenty-Four or something like that?

00:13:47: Well, not really.

00:13:50: I thought about it in the past, but I mean like already managing such large commerce as in twenty-four, as in twenty-four we've like so many different categories, so many different verticals, it's already quite challenging, plus it's something that will require time investment and I prefer life focusing my attention on on on on twenty four rather than like trying out this kind of approach.

00:14:23: Understood.

00:14:24: I'd like to tap into one thing you mentioned quite early, which is the international dimension of home twenty four.

00:14:32: So you're operating in a lot of different countries.

00:14:36: And so it's it's European, but then it's also South American.

00:14:43: What I feel like, so it gave me strong rocket internet vibes where there are always these stories of a company being big in Europe and then being big in South America or Southeast Asia, so this really interesting place.

00:15:02: But I think would be super interesting to hear your thoughts about how you structure your approach to SEO for such diverse markets or if it's just like our belief that these markets are so diverse and in reality they are more similar.

00:15:19: So yeah, fair question and let me be honest with you, I'm not much involved in the operational or the strategic planning of our sister company in Brazil.

00:15:34: I mean, I'd like regular chats or chat in the past to support them with some technical challenges they were facing, but they're running as an independent business.

00:15:45: Talking about the core markets, we're on twenty four is operating.

00:15:50: Yeah, we're trying to have as much as possible a kind of specific approach because I truly believe that each country has its own set of rules.

00:16:02: Culturally, countries are different.

00:16:04: For example, what we're trying to do, it's always to have a country-specific approach when it comes to define our taxonomy and site architecture, opening certain categories in certain countries and avoid the same categories in countries where the demand is very little.

00:16:24: But as always, it's always a matter of priorities and resources.

00:16:30: And our main focus is to become like the final destination for Omen furniture specifically in the dark area.

00:16:41: So the dark area is our main focus, which doesn't mean that again, we're not trying to improve our visibility also in the other countries where Omen is operating.

00:16:56: But it's also something going like end in end with with the company focus.

00:17:02: And of course, like SEO, it's also functioning in a way that should facilitate and prioritize, let's say, the company priorities.

00:17:14: But what would you say to someone that comes to you and says, hey, Federico now with AI and translations getting better and better?

00:17:26: Can we just do the site structure and the content and whatever once in German?

00:17:34: And then we just let AI translate it to Italian and to French and to Spanish.

00:17:39: I mean, this should work super well, right?

00:17:42: What would you say to someone that proposes that?

00:17:45: Well, as for any technology, I believe that it's the way how you use the technology itself.

00:17:54: AI in general, it's a good tool to leverage to basically automate certain tasks or faster certain tasks, but I wouldn't rely under percent on the AI.

00:18:10: We're using AI as a tool also when it comes to, you know, faster, certain tasks, especially when it comes also to decide on the structure of our taxonomy, what could work best in one country versus another, but I wouldn't rely under percent on the AI to build up, let's say, a complete set taxonomy and also when it comes to translate or create the content from scratch.

00:18:41: Let's dive into another topic, maybe, and you already mentioned this at the beginning a little bit, so AI Search, LLMs, obviously, and I think a lot of people in the e-com space noticed this a couple of months ago.

00:18:55: ChatGPT introduced product recommendations, and I can imagine that this is something that you also watched closely.

00:19:03: So can you just share a little bit about your observations?

00:19:06: Like, did you find it interesting or do you feel like, hey, the amount of traffic that's coming from these sort of things is like, it's not relevant to us.

00:19:15: Just to hear your thoughts a little bit on that.

00:19:18: Sure.

00:19:18: I mean, like, I've noticing like... traffic coming from alarmist models with charge ADPB on top of them, incremental increasing over the time, especially starting from January this year.

00:19:34: But when it comes to real numbers compared to traffic still sand-like by Google, we're still talking about small figures.

00:19:46: I mean, there was and there is like up to forty line month-over-month increase from traffic coming from large language models, but it's still like a tiny one compared to the usual traffic send by Google.

00:20:02: The question is how this pattern will grow in the future.

00:20:07: I'm pretty sure that with people getting more used also to this new kind of search, or like we've used it like LMS model more often in the future.

00:20:21: This will keep increasing, but it's hard to predict.

00:20:28: As of now, traffic is growing, but again, we're far away from eating white traffic coming from Google.

00:20:38: Yeah, it's interesting.

00:20:39: I see the same growth across a lot of verticals, and I feel like it's not what it's conveyed on LinkedIn.

00:20:46: On LinkedIn, you get a very different impression.

00:20:49: Is it just my feed or is it also your feed?

00:20:52: No, man, it's also my feed, I guess, that ran out.

00:20:56: with this hype going on about SEO is dead.

00:21:01: And I often read articles about SEO.

00:21:06: that start by saying like, I see always that is the checklist to optimize and make sure that you're gonna be found on large language models like ChagGDP.

00:21:20: While

00:21:22: I still believe that, I mean, having... a strong modern SEO foundation will be enough to still fairly competing like in the traditional search environment and be eligible to appear like in large language models like ShadGDP.

00:21:42: It's just a hype, I mean like.

00:21:43: I've been around this industry since more than thirteen years and I've heard like SEO is dead like so many times in the past.

00:21:54: Of course, SEO is changing, it's evolving, but I wouldn't differentiate or distinguish between like, or coming up with a completely different, say, strategy when it comes to the usual traditional search and optimizing whatever it means for large language models.

00:22:23: Yeah, it makes total sense.

00:22:24: I feel like there are a lot of people like veteran SEO people also open-minded ones.

00:22:33: So not only like people who say, yeah, I don't want to be part of this AI movement.

00:22:41: So people that are very open to it, but still feel like it's missing some common sense, you know, because there are all these GEO strategies, etc.

00:22:51: But basically, Eighty percent of this new geo strategy comes down to the things that we did anyway in a modern SEO playbook.

00:23:01: So, yeah, I'm not too sure about that.

00:23:04: But one thing that I find interesting is and I like try to ask more and more people around me about this.

00:23:12: How do you use Chatchapiti or Google?

00:23:15: So do you already search for products on Chatchapiti or do you mostly still use Google for?

00:23:22: I don't know, searching for a new lamp or searching for a new sofa.

00:23:26: I don't know which purchase you have planned.

00:23:30: It's an interesting question.

00:23:33: Well, I would say that it's rather a mixed approach.

00:23:41: I still rely and start my search journey on Google, especially when it comes to buying a new product, whatever it is.

00:23:55: from light shoes or to new furniture.

00:23:58: But when it comes to more informational queries or when I have just to confirm my hypothesis, I'm definitely starting my journey on ChargedDP or Gemini or Copilot.

00:24:17: I'm not sure if that's something also related to my to my position and to my job, but I'm observing like this switch.

00:24:32: So again, like for confirming my hypothesis or deep in dive on certain topics, I would say that eighty percent of the times I start my journey on large language models, Middle Asia GDP.

00:24:51: But when it comes to product comparison or when it comes to looking for buying like Again like could be like a pair of shoes or whatever Google's still like my preferred search engine.

00:25:08: Hmm

00:25:10: like.

00:25:11: I can totally relate to that.

00:25:13: I also feel like that for some aspects, chatGPT or Gemini, Cloud are really cool, like understanding general concepts.

00:25:24: What I, for example, like to use a lot is explain this really complicated concept to me, like a five-year-old or a ten-year-old, because then I can also break it down to really simple principles.

00:25:37: I like that.

00:25:38: But I also see Google making big progress with AI mode, et cetera.

00:25:44: And I can imagine them basically rolling this out from time to time also as the default search experience, which then probably won't be called like Google search anymore, but more like it will have a different name.

00:26:03: But now people are basically trying to convince us of the idea that Google is still ten blue links.

00:26:11: But I mean, we both know that Google hasn't been ten blue links for quite some time already, like with all the different SERP features, etc.

00:26:18: Right.

00:26:19: So, yeah, I mean, but covering this point, like more informational educational stuff.

00:26:26: So as Home, you obviously have a really big product portfolio, but I see a lot of e-commerce shops and online retailers also creating more information.

00:26:41: inspirational content, maybe around decorating their homes, etc.

00:26:48: I just like to understand a little bit better.

00:26:50: How do you balance this?

00:26:53: So how big is this whole educational, inspirational content thing for you compared to bread and butter product and category pages?

00:27:04: Educational, informational content is definitely an asset of our editorial content strategy.

00:27:15: We do have a dedicated section on the shop called Berating organizes in different subsections by topic where we're trying basically to answer to usual customer pain points about buying certain products or competing by certain products versus others.

00:27:37: We also try to get real customers, users questions from our customer service and make sure that we are not building like a strategy only based on trending topics or what we believe is hyping at the moment, but also considering like the user or putting like the user at the center of our strategy.

00:28:08: Then it's always a matter of priorities and resources and a satellite.

00:28:22: we're always trying also to support the overall company strategy.

00:28:28: I strongly believe that one of the challenges we're facing at the moment is how we can make sure that traffic coming from more educational informational content will start converting better.

00:28:46: Cause what's the point of bringing like people like to your pizza place if nobody's buying a pizza in the end?

00:28:55: So it's also true that we're not like evaluating like this kind of content having like conversion as the driven metric by again, like one of the challenge or what we're currently doing at the moment is basically increase the chance that someone will buy a product after landing or visiting like a more educational content type.

00:29:23: And can you share maybe just some ideas that you have around how to convert them better from educational content?

00:29:33: I mean, we're currently trying different approaches.

00:29:35: It's more about the page layout itself, placing or not placing like a product grid in a certain like... space of like the page, having or not having like a button, making sure that we not only provide information or general information, but we did dive also on different products that someone could buy on on twenty-four fulfilling specifically its needs.

00:30:12: It's always a matter of trying different approaches, test them and see what works best.

00:30:19: Really cool.

00:30:19: I also noticed I was just scrolling through some of the guides or some of the content you have on the page.

00:30:27: I noticed that you are heavily interlinking between your educational guides and then the product categories.

00:30:37: or not?

00:30:38: red, but I skimmed this one guide around mattresses, where there are mattresses with different, how do I put it, like strength levels?

00:30:48: I don't know the exact English term, but let's say strength levels.

00:30:52: And instead of just answering that very generically, you're then interlinking to the specific category page you have for the different mattress strength, which seems like a very smart approach to me.

00:31:04: How important is this whole internal linking stuff for you?

00:31:08: It's super important and I strongly believe that it's something that usually is underrated while internal links are still playing the key roles when it comes to make sure that Google can more easily discover pages that are thematically related, especially for an e-commerce of these sizes with so many different categories vertically and horizontally.

00:31:37: It's super important that you build up a very well thought internal linking strategy, considering which, I will say, products are thematically related, but also considering the users and putting some effort in defining categories that might be relevant for across internal linking or that are cross related.

00:32:08: to each other.

00:32:09: And when it comes also to the informational content, again, like our main purpose is to solve, let's say, issues or pain points for our customers by the same time where we have like a so broad assortment covering like different use cases that it's also important to internally link our editorial content to our category pages.

00:32:35: You already mentioned the the sheer size of the site and with so many categories, so many products.

00:32:45: I can imagine that you are not just sending like all products, all categories, everything just to Google and don't think about indexing or crawl budgets, etc.

00:32:57: But that you are probably evaluating which sites are important, etc.

00:33:02: Is that right?

00:33:03: And if so, like how do you approach this?

00:33:06: Is there are other certain thresholds or like, how can we imagine the index management of home to be?

00:33:17: So, corollability and indexability are definitely one important aspect and topic and we are also actively checking over improving why the way I'll Google not only crawl but also indexed our pages.

00:33:40: But

00:33:41: crawlability, to me, and crawl-budget, which is related to that, it's also kind of a myth.

00:33:49: Meaning that, I mean, for medium-sized e-commerce like on.com, there is enough crawl-budget to make sure that all the most important pages are crawled as expected.

00:34:07: So yeah, I mean, we have certain rules when it comes also to indexation.

00:34:13: We are also actively checking pages that shouldn't be indexed because they're not much relevant to the end users.

00:34:23: But in general, again, I would consider this entire topic more as an hype than reality.

00:34:35: We're actively working on improving and fixing, let's say, the most important crawl errors.

00:34:45: But again, as of now, everything is working as expected, I would say.

00:34:54: interesting interesting i always like when people call out shiny object syndrome so kudos for that because there's a lot of hype going on all the time and there are some myths that are just like retold all the time because there's someone with supposedly credibility talking about this and then suddenly other people feel like.

00:35:18: hey.

00:35:19: this should be a topic right so we have to discuss it.

00:35:22: but for folks that are listening to this or watching this and if they have like a medium size or a big e-commerce site what would you say like?

00:35:32: what is the threshold?

00:35:34: so the amount of pages where you feel like?

00:35:38: oh well where you would say if you would for example be hired as a consultant would you say like if you have.

00:35:45: a hundred k pages you should care about crawl about it.

00:35:48: or is it only if we are reaching five hundred k pages or a million?

00:35:53: just to get an idea

00:35:55: i mean like.

00:35:55: there is no an exact formula there is not an exact like precise number but i would say i mean like for a website with a hundred thousand of pages.

00:36:07: uh crawl budget shouldn't be such a topic.

00:36:12: and As you mentioned, there is this topic about crowd-budget going on also for stakeholder or webmaster running a website with a couple of hundreds of pages.

00:36:26: Shouldn't be their priority.

00:36:29: They should be working on making sure that the content is easily discoverable, that they're writing life for the end users, that the shop itself is well organized, well structured, and care less about crowd-budget.

00:36:44: Interesting.

00:36:45: And did you do anything specific to increase the likelihood of your products or categories being correctly crawled by AI crawlers?

00:37:00: So for example, the open AI bots, because I checked your robots txt and I saw that you You do not specifically mention the open AI bot.

00:37:14: So you do not Keep it out.

00:37:18: So you're it's it's allowed in Whereas if I'm not mistaken the Amazon bot for example, it's disallowed.

00:37:27: So it's not allowed in.

00:37:28: just Can you give us a little bit about you're thinking about that?

00:37:32: So because there are a lot of people again that feel like, hey, the open AI crawlers work completely differently to Google has nothing to do with each other.

00:37:42: And I'm a little bit skeptical about that.

00:37:44: And I feel like some people are also skeptical about that.

00:37:47: So did you do anything specific here?

00:37:52: Honestly speaking, we don't.

00:37:58: As you mentioned, we are not giving any precise exclusion or inclusion rules to.

00:38:10: There was also this interesting discussion going on some time ago about creating like a specific LLMS Robox TXT and there was also some hyper around this topic with people suggesting that having like dedicated LLMS Robox TXT would have increased like the chance that or improve the likelihood that LMS board would have a better color, like the side of the shop.

00:38:51: I don't see the need at the moment of creating an additional Robox TXT.

00:38:59: Everything can still be managed through the usual Robox TXT.

00:39:04: but at tone-twenty-four we're not like setting up specific rules when it comes to including or excluding the way how LMS boats are accessing, including, let's say, our shop.

00:39:27: Or not yet.

00:39:28: let me put in this way, not yet.

00:39:29: Of

00:39:30: course, of course.

00:39:31: Yeah, I mean, it's a. it's a. it's a quickly changing environment.

00:39:34: So if there's a new development coming up that where we see it being beneficial, probably, we wouldn't close our eyes to that.

00:39:46: But I think it's in line also with another talk I did in this series with Malte Landwehr, who was at idealo before and now moved to pki and he basically so he actually got a little angry about the llms txt because he felt like people are hyping this so much and he feels like so.

00:40:12: the point he was making is it's generally a good concept but people misuse it so much that it's that it's already burned.

00:40:23: So the good idea is already not present anymore.

00:40:28: Yeah, I agree.

00:40:28: I totally agree with this statement.

00:40:31: Plus, it was officially shared by Google that they are not following like this additional LLMS robots.txt.

00:40:42: So what's the point?

00:40:44: I'm not saying that we're not going to be needing the future of creating this additional LLMS Robox TXT.

00:40:57: what I'm saying is that at the moment there is no need and unfortunately as for many other topics there is a lot of noise going on and it's not always easy for someone who doesn't have a clear view and understanding about I mean like I see you in general to differentiate between you know what it's purely like not topic or what is something that I should be really take care of.

00:41:40: Yeah I mean it's something I said this I think in another episode that sometimes we have to not only be like the people acting like setting up SEO strategies, doing action plans, etc.

00:42:03: or being service provider, being a consultant, whatever, but we also have to be an educator.

00:42:08: So like cutting through the noise and giving people an as unbiased as possible view about what's actually going on in the ecosystem i think do you also feel like now we have this new role like we have to educate internal stakeholders.

00:42:26: sometimes you also have to calm people because they are like that.

00:42:30: i mean i get it.

00:42:31: they have fear that.

00:42:33: the acquisition channel they have built up with SEO will now suddenly burn down to the ground.

00:42:40: It almost feels like business therapy, what we are doing currently.

00:42:44: Yeah, I'm totally on this topic and today it's super important to educate the other stakeholders about what's going on at the moment and be able also to fear less Some business owners about this AI hype because of course they're feeling about like dropping dropping.

00:43:16: they're feeling like about you know less revenue and Sometimes they also fear about like losing their job.

00:43:26: Yep.

00:43:26: We're human beings.

00:43:27: It's it's it's.

00:43:29: I guess that it's It's it's normal.

00:43:34: So yes, it's extremely important nowadays to rebuild or build like clear expectation about SEO saying that yes, I mean like the industry is changing, SEO is changing, SEO is not dying, SEO is evolving and what you have been doing till now, it's still important, it's still matter.

00:44:01: That's also why I mean I'm not sure if I if I already mentioned it but I'm not differentiating between like a traditional modern SEO foundation and a strategy to be found or cited like in large language models like LGDP.

00:44:23: Makes total sense.

00:44:25: So if you would now step out of your shoes at home, and let's imagine you would start a fresh e-commerce business today, whatever this is.

00:44:38: Maybe you have a specific product category that you like particular, but and you would be tasked with building the foundation of SEO and discoverability on judgeability, etc.

00:44:56: How would you approach that?

00:44:57: What would be like your first steps?

00:45:00: Well, first of all, as mentioned, I wouldn't differentiate between a traditional approach and whatever strategy to appear on large language models.

00:45:14: But well, there are three major steps I would consider doing before initiating any strategy operationally.

00:45:30: Okay.

00:45:32: So first of all, I would try to understand as much as possible about the business and the market, not only from a pure perspective, but getting a really precise idea about the business, the company's operating, knowing like my competitors, benchmark my competitors.

00:45:57: get to know my product or service better, see how my product or service is helping people like solving certain pain points and whatsoever.

00:46:11: Second step, get a really good understanding about my audience.

00:46:15: Who are my customers?

00:46:18: Who are my potential users?

00:46:20: How my product service will help them.

00:46:24: you know, having like an easy life.

00:46:28: And after I have built my knowledge about the business, about the market, I have a clear understanding about my users and potential customers, maybe also built up like personas.

00:46:45: I will start thinking about.

00:46:47: as a third point or as a third step, I will start thinking about developing like a strategy, which is also or let's say which is considering also what are the goals for the company because I believe that SEO as for any other marketing channel should support the company achieving like its goals.

00:47:14: What's the point of developing something which is maybe also bringing some good as your results, but it's not aligned with the company goals.

00:47:27: Very good point.

00:47:27: I feel like this has been lost a little bit over the last years for some people.

00:47:35: They have their own set of metrics, which is visibility, etc.

00:47:39: and they judge everything based on that, but it has to be rooted in business results for the company.

00:47:45: And this is a very good reminder for that.

00:47:51: Thank you so much for the talk.

00:47:53: I think you shared some really valuable insights.

00:47:57: And I think home-twenty-four is a really cool example of an online retailer with a very strong SEO foundation from Germany.

00:48:10: So I wish you all the best.

00:48:13: for the future, for the future work, etc.

00:48:17: So if people feel like they found it interesting, maybe they even want to support you guys at home, how can people reach out?

00:48:30: I mean, they can reach out through my LinkedIn contact.

00:48:38: directly on LinkedIn.

00:48:40: There is also my personal email address.

00:48:46: So yeah, I mean, I feel free to shout out.

00:48:50: And coming up also with questions related to the business itself, I will be happy to answer you.

00:49:02: And thanks a lot to UniClass for having me today and for the... the effort you're putting also to give some people extra visibility, especially nowadays where there's a bit of crowd and it's not as possible to share opinions and openly discuss the future and the present of search and what's going on at the moment in the industry.

00:49:38: So really well done and I very much appreciate the job you're doing and keep doing.

00:49:44: Thank you so much.

00:49:44: And if there is an open, if there is, if you are hiring for SEO at home, I think people will probably see on the home for LinkedIn profile also, right?

00:49:58: If they feel like, hey, I've always wanted to work for a big e-commerce site and I'm passionate in SEO.

00:50:05: So I guess you guys, if you are hiring at any point in the future, people should keep an eye on the LinkedIn page.

00:50:14: jobs, right?

00:50:16: Sure, Laiwer.

00:50:18: actively sharing like open position LinkedIn plus our career portal.

00:50:24: It's always updated with the open positions.

00:50:28: So yeah, if you're interested in joining like on twenty four in its journey of becoming like the home and leading final destination, keep an eye open on the on the on the open positions.

00:50:45: Very nice.

00:50:46: So then, Federico, thanks so much and all the best to you and keep crushing it at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at

00:50:52: home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home,

00:50:54: at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home, at home,