Podcast / interview · May 11, 2023

# Effective SEO Management for Ranking #1 on Google (#505)

Paramus, NJ

[Book this talk](https://www.alexmelen.com/contact/)

Video: [Watch the talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M)

In brief In this podcast interview, Alex Melen, co-founder of SmartSites, explains how a digital agency grows to 400 employees by giving project managers full autonomy and building management layers, and argues that ChatGPT is a bigger disruption to SEO than any recession. Alex describes why SmartSites kept hiring through COVID and the big-tech layoffs: he believes Google, Facebook and Microsoft over-hired rather than reacted to a recession, and that continuous growth is the only way to create career paths for employees without waiting for someone to quit. He credits national hiring and a dedicated HR manager, hired when the company was already at roughly 300 people, with making five-to-seven hires a week possible. On management, he says the hardest step was going from 100 to 400, which forced the flat organization to put department heads in place and trust them. Project managers run their clients like entrepreneurs, backed by a 24-person design team and a 90-person content team. On AI, Alex uses ChatGPT daily for summaries, research, social posts and review responses, warns against pasting unedited AI copy onto websites, and predicts Google will eventually have to distinguish mass-produced AI content, drawing a parallel to how free web hosting collapsed once it was abused.

Key points
- SmartSites has over 400 employees and has doubled in size roughly every 18 months; Alex started the agency with his brother 12 years ago after founding T35 Hosting in 1997.
- Alex's Automotive Search Marketing book lays out his interpretation of Google's ranking signals, exactly what SmartSites does for clients at different budgets, and a chapter comparing an agency to an in-house team.
- He attributes the layoffs at Facebook, Google and Microsoft to over-hiring during COVID rather than a coming recession; SmartSites did no layoffs and instead paid employees a home-office bonus and kept hiring.
- The main reason to keep growing is employee opportunity: in a company that stays the same size, people only advance when someone is fired, quits or dies.
- Hiring a dedicated HR manager and opening roles nationally instead of New Jersey-only were the two biggest unlocks; SmartSites reached about 300 employees before it had any HR person.
- The hardest growth stage was 100 to 400 employees, which required creating management layers, hiring the right department heads and giving them real autonomy instead of approval chains.
- Project managers with a couple of years of experience get full ownership of their clients and run them like entrepreneurs, supported by weekly meetings, senior open hours, a 24-person design team and a 90-person content team.
- Alex keeps ChatGPT open on a dedicated monitor all day for summarizing articles, vendor research, and drafting social posts; asking it to respond as an expert produces noticeably better answers.
- ChatGPT writes better review responses than a human will take the time to write, but AI content for SEO still needs heavy editing because Google could reverse its stance on treating all content equally.
- Someone starting in SEO today should first learn Google's ranking signals, then either specialize in one piece of SEO across industries or do all of SEO for one industry, such as dental.

> “If you stay the same size, no matter what industry you're in, if you keep the status quo, the only way your employees start developing themselves is if someone gets fired, quits or dies.” [13:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=782s) · Alex Melen

> “When I wrote my book ChatGPT didn't exist. It literally did not exist when I wrote the damn book, and by the time it's published it's like obsolete now because ChatGPT changed so much stuff.” [14:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=862s) · Alex Melen

> “People tend to enjoy it and appreciate it. If you need to be micromanaged, SmartSites is not the place for you.” [31:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1879s) · Alex Melen

Chapters
- [0:00 Host intro and episode setup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=0s)
- [1:24 Alex's background and new book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=84s)
- [4:00 What the book covers: full transparency](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=240s)
- [9:12 Growing through layoffs and recession](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=552s)
- [19:35 How SmartSites hires at scale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1175s)
- [23:30 Management layers and department heads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1410s)
- [28:44 Project managers as entrepreneurs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1724s)
- [32:37 How SmartSites uses ChatGPT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1957s)
- [44:22 AI content, free hosting and learning SEO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2662s)

Questions this talk answers

**How does SmartSites manage 400 employees without micromanaging?**

Alex says the organization is very flat and the key step from 100 to 400 people was putting the right department heads in place and giving them real autonomy. Project managers get full control of their clients and run them like entrepreneurs, backed by weekly team meetings, senior staff open hours, and shared design and content teams. People who want to be micromanaged do not fit.

**Should you use ChatGPT to write SEO content for your website?**

Alex advises caution. SmartSites tested it and the output does okay but needs a lot of editing and due diligence. Google said it will treat AI content equally, but he thinks that could change, especially once millions of people publish near-identical AI articles. He recommends using ChatGPT freely for social posts, review responses, research and summaries instead.

**How did SmartSites keep growing during COVID and the tech layoffs?**

More than half of SmartSites' clients stopped or reduced payments when COVID began, but the agency did no layoffs, gave employees a home-office bonus and kept hiring strong people other companies let go. Alex believes big tech over-hired rather than reacted to a recession, and that continuous growth is what creates advancement opportunities for employees.

**How should a beginner learn SEO today?**

Start by fully understanding Google's ranking signals and what Google values, then reverse-engineer everything else rather than copying what other agencies do, many of which still run SEO from 15 years ago. From there either specialize in one piece of SEO, such as link building or technical, or do all of SEO for a single industry and become its go-to expert.

** Full transcript 10,144 words · auto-generated captions, lightly edited for readability · timestamps link to the video **

[0:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=4s)Are you ready to learn because my super experienced guests are ready to share some really valuable information make sure and listen all the way to the end to get help and support so let's start with the best audio experience effective SEO management how it's important today to manage a team to get results I remember many years ago 10 years ago I didn't have a team because one specialist can provide all job to write content to submit content to promote content and Google rank well today it's not because it's hard we need to pay attention to Quality that's why I'm so excited to discuss this topic with Alex Melen how are you good glad to be here yeah big pleasure I remember all this valuable in size from our first episode yeah I spent some time in the emergency room to learn to consume all this content so how to improve my efforts today I'm excited a lot more because I know how it's important to be a manager because I can feel that I'm Jacob Fortress because I need to understand all topics and manage the team Alex before we start just tell more about yourself experience background about your new book that you published in November because I love

[1:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=84s)Reading books it's my login format and I spend so much time by reading books more than blog posts and any other type of content because I get more value more knowledge so more about you and your book perfect thank you yes I've been involved in digital space for a very long time I started my first company in 1997 T35 hosting which was one of the first web hosting providers which is geez I don't only want to account the years how many years it's been and then I started SmartSites with my younger brother 12 years ago now which is a full service digital marketing company we do website design SEO SEM we have over 400 employees now we double in size every 18 months so in 18 months we'll be at 800 and I think last we spoke I forget what it was I think we spoke like a year ago we were still at 300 so we're always growing always looking for ways to do things better more efficiently and grow the company and thank you for the intro of the book today actually April 25th my book came out on Automotive search marketing so it's SEO and SEM or SEO and pay-per-click depending what industry you're in you'll call it differently it's Automotive specific but as SEO is SEO every industry and I've I as my company SmartSites

[2:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=164s)Industry agnostic and I speak at conferences in every industry I always surprises people that it's the same SEO right at the end of the day if you're doing things correctly that if you if you are doing the link building the content creation right it's all like it could be for a dealership it could be for a dentist website that then they create in unique valuable content link building all of that is the same so the book itself is Automotive specific but it's I think anyone reading it'll we'll get some value out of it and it's like a it's a real book I don't physical copies haven't arrived yet so I don't have it in front of me but it's 250 pages so it's a real book it's not it's not like a pamphlet nice love it love it so I'm going to read this book but before I do it can you give a strong reason for me for my audience to read this book because let me tell why I'm asking about that because I found many business books are great for sleeping when you have problems with sleep you can take a new book it either sleep well you don't need medicine abuse anything just take a new boarding book but some books are great for example when I read books from Joe Sugarman say I've got it I can feel that I'm part of this book I can forget about sleep I can forget

[4:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=240s)About me about water because I love this content it's not boring and once I spoke with Jim Edwards he worked in Business Insider 10 years then company was sold for 500 million dollars and he told me the success of Business Insider depends on creating non-boring content so business is boring but they form the way how to create non-boring content can you tell why what benefits can I get and my audience can get by reading your book and what value can we used in our strategy yeah very good question so I this is all new to me right the public speaking I do I started only a couple years ago it's also it's all personal development right so I figure things out as I go along I can't promise it's not going to be boring right to my wife keeps saying that all the stuff I write is boring to her at the very least but the reason that I think it's super valuable is as I am with everything I write about all the public speaking I do and really our company values it's all about transparency so in this book first of all I go through my interpretation of what Google ranking signals are right that's always super valuable and I feel like very rarely talked about in

[5:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=319s)The SEO industry it's always like the SEO agencies the way they talk to clients and prospective clients as oh we'll do some mystery stuff and your traffic will go up right here I go through literally what I feel like our Google's ranking signals or Google's algorithm my interpretation of all this other data of all these SEO communities themselves internally evaluating rinking signals right so aside from being like the algorithm engineer at Google I think it's the best view you're going to get into Google's ranking signals of course I wrote it six months ago so it was before the Yandex code base was released and whatnot which itself I think gives a lot more clues to the Google's algorithm but aside from that I think that's the best view you're gonna get of what's important to Google obviously it's always a moving Target and what was important to Google this year won't be next year right but at this point in time I think it's as close as you're gonna get so I think that in itself is super valuable and then I talk about exactly what we do for clients and I even give some hypotheticals if this client has this budget this budget and fully transparent this is exactly what we do and when we do work with clients as an agency we do the same thing our SEO we sell hourly so you buy

[6:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=397s)A block of hours and then we use those hours on your behalf to do content link building literally or all the best practices so in this book I outline all of it just like we do as a company and if someone wants to go out and do all those things themselves they're more than more than happy for them to do so right if they want us to help with some of that we're happy to help but it's if there if there's anything in what I speak about and what our company does and what I write about is that's full transparency we lay out everything there's no mystery I don't there's a lot of like that publicity and SEO then you don't know what people do and blackhead and it's we full this is we sure this is exactly what we're gonna do and that's what the book outlines this is exactly if it was me if it was my small business that I was doing SEO afford this exactly with you I also have a full chapter that I lay out the differences between hiring an agency and doing it in-house which I think is also on the mind of a lot of people right for maybe it doesn't make sense for like a three-person company but let's say you have 40 50 employees at that point maybe it does make sense right so I lay out that if you wanted to do full-blown digital so not just SEO and the paid side the PPC what are the positions you would need internally to be filled and you could have one person to

[7:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=474s)Hold the positions if you if you find that magic person right but I literally lay out and I think I have like 30 pages of like this is all the stuff that goes into doing correct SEO and SEM so I think it's those things and I can't I can't promise it's not going to be a boring read right but at the very least it's very honest and it's what I hoped was a summary of my experiences in the last 20 25 years of doing that for our business and for thousands of clients nice okay guys I submit this book in the description so you can find it and Alex I have the question about your growth you mentioned that you hired two times more employees and today I often see some articles posts about recession and companies like Amazon Google layout people Twitter of course Elon Musk can do it but you grow can you tell how you do it when we don't know what future will be this recession this one in Ukraine and we don't know about the economy so any how to grow in possible recession yeah very good question so I think the big companies are doing the layoffs the

[10:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=628s)Themselves able to work efficient efficiently effectively from home and we actually hired and we hired a lot of really great people because other companies really well for sure cost us a lot of money and we lost a lot of money it was very risky but ultimately I do believe in digital and the importance of digital right so we do continue to make those Investments I think there's always headwinds covid was a huge one recession coming even let's say it's 50 right aside from recession I think there's all these other headwinds now from ChatGPT from AI content right from a lot of people saying that with the ChatGPT and search going away do you even need a website let alone doing SEO right so for sure a lot of risks and as our payroll our payroll now I pay millions per month on payroll we spend 400 000 a month on our own marketing so for sure a huge risk we take but I think ultimately we do it because a I do believe in the future of digital I think there's still a lot of people not taking advantage of it right even the small businesses we're still getting like the roofers the plumbers the people that you think would have a website but they still don't like the final holdouts right if anything COVID pushed a lot of those people into digital if you

[11:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=705s)Think about like the stores in the mall like selling like jeans in the mall right they never needed a website they're like I'll never need your website in my life restaurants they're like I never need to do a website social media I don't need to do anything COVID hits all of a sudden if you're if you're if the restaurant is not on social media and is not doing all this Creative Marketing to actually deliver with the pro because no one's coming to restaurants right so now they have to have a website have a social media presence so I think if anything that keeps pushing us I think there's still opportunity I think digital is still super important other than people not in digital yet like the holdouts right you still have a lot of people that now are running 10 year old websites and it becomes more and more important right if Amazon taught us anything is that consumers now have less and less patience right they need frictionless experiences they need everything to be smooth they need to everything to be consistent if you're if you're marketing's talking about some offer and you click it and it doesn't it doesn't land till landing page it looks exactly same and talks about that same offer the consumer's not going to buy they're gonna think it's scam right so I think there's still huge opportunities and for us I'll tell you the main reason we grow and right it's so much easier not to be like we're good now we're very efficient we have all the positions because every growth is

[13:02](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=782s)Very difficult and as we've done it for 12 years every step is I don't say more difficult but different right growing from 10 employees to 20 is a lot different than 300 to 400.

[14:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=862s)Right not even completely if 10 less people use Google search it would be catastrophic to Google and to the SEO SEM industry right so there's always a lot of waves but it's you just gotta your best to overcome them I think it no matter what in this year you're in you're even if you're not in digital right if you're a dentist or whatever there's always challenges there's always there's always ups and downs you just gotta you gotta keep investing in the company gotta invest in your reputation your company's reputation yeah invest in your employees especially for people like me and a lot of the people who watch your podcast who are in the service businesses right they're not I don't produce like a widget like I don't make pens right like my literally my service is my employees so my employees providing a value decline so that's why I do it but for sure risk jumped tremendously and I wrote my book in November so I wrote my book in November it finally it's published today's official day it's launching it's got the in Barnes and Nobles all the stores soon I hope when I wrote my book ChatGPT didn't exist is that crazy yeah it literally did not exist when I wrote the damn book and by the time it's published it's like obsolete now because ChatGPT changed so much stuff so definitely very rapid change

[15:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=941s)I think more important than risks of recessions I think is all the AI change that really has been like the last three months I want to say nice love it love it you remind me Mark Zuckerberg who said the biggest risk is not to take the risk yes we need to take the risk yes Industries like digital or digital agencies SEO like the industries we're in like if you're if you're like a dental practice with like a very solid base of like customers have been coming to you for 30 years right you're not you don't expect as much change to be happening right but in our Industries it's if anything it's been a little too quiet right like before ChatGPT if you think about it the last three years five years maybe even and SEO has been like very quiet like there's always algorithm changes and different things are more valuable than others but there hasn't been dramatic change right you're creating quality content you're doing link building you're doing technical SEO for the last five to six years like that formula has really stayed very much the same you want to avoid doing that thing bad risky things of course but aside from that it's been it's been a little bit too quiet so now you're seeing the rapid change you have all of a sudden Sergey Brin is back at Google I don't know if you heard he was at Old deck

[16:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1018s)Meeting I remember before he even was on a news site it was end of January thing all of a sudden like he's like I'm email chains that I'm on I'm like I'm like I thought he was on like an island retired somewhere like I'm like am I seeing something so it's he's back now so it's huge it's I think it's a potential well potential to be nothing and just go away like the whole ChatGPT stuff right could get banned right but potential to really be existential threat to Google and really change a lot of things so it'll be interesting to see how the next three to six months look yeah nice yeah I think digital marketing is a quickly changing world and I think it's impossible to fight the best time to publish a book because it doesn't matter before I found I found the worst time though before Yandex leak by the way when I check out all this Yandex leak I didn't find one I think that's the Yandex shares everything with Putin with his team so all the rest were Relic but not this information and yeah I think when I read books from they wrote these books like 40 years ago before digital before digital but I

[18:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1097s)Still get a lot of valuable in size that I can use in digital it doesn't matter because I think Technologies change the world but not human psychology people are the same so yeah we need to adapt Technologies to human psychology and the Sugarman when I wrote his book how to retain audience how to give a strong reason to consume until the end yeah I think I can use it today to create content that people want to consume and for example in our course we spent so much time by creating a lessons about high quality content how to create high quality content and I found some influencers I don't know once I spoke with Bridgette heisen she has a plus four million followers on LinkedIn she's well known and she told me she doesn't know how grips on LinkedIn so she had a lot of followers but many great influencers don't care about algorithm they care about people because all algorithms created to satisfy user intent to help people to support them and I found that companies who are not willing to learn about algorithms because they will change but if you care about human then

[19:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1175s)You can satisfy algriff as well yeah Alex for sure yeah sorry just to have real quick it's very interesting I've seen first so for Seth Godin specifically he has a lot of videos on YouTube and I've seen a lot of videos like you said the content is still so relevant that he has videos that are like from two years ago you can see the published it right and he just changed like it's it like the video is like SEO strategy and he puts in for 2023 right the video was published like three years ago it just changes the title to say 2023 because it is you're right a lot of a lot of things continue to be relevant no matter what yeah okay Alex I wanna ask you about Harin can you tell how to hire I don't know like 400 people in 18 months for me it's really hard to know to find these people to speak with them to interview them to know that these people can grow your company help your customers so any tips how you do it yeah so it's very tough It's a hiring has been in the digital world has been very tough the last couple years I want to say pretty much as COVID started but even a little bit before it got a lot a lot more difficult I think if COVID has helped us with anything is before we used to be very new jersey-centric our offices in New Jersey and now we hire

[20:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1253s)Like all over the US I think that itself has helped us a lot but I think the biggest thing that we did that really helped is hire an HR Manager so before that hiring was a lot of it was on me and the rest was on the department heads and it is I feel like even during the final interview or like setting them up in payroll was what that was ultimately on me and I was always the bottleneck like people would be oh we need to hire more people I'm like I can't next two weeks I have no time free I can't do it right so I think ultimately giving up control and just for us again we're just a different size right if we were a 10 person company I wouldn't do it but to be able to hire like some weeks we hire five six seven people in a single week right there's no way I would have been able to do that if we did not hire an HR Department to be able to facilitate all that so for our size that was the big thing and it took me for a company of our size to finally hire HR department I think we were super late on it right it was crazy that we got by for as long as we did we were at 300 employees or something with no HR person so I think that was huge but it's all it all depends on the different levels but it's all the hiring me to do now

[22:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1331s)Is in indeed although it's gotten more and more expensive but it's still been the best the best ways the best way for it for us to hire but for sure challenging We've opening up nationally and hiring HR person was our big aha moment in the last 12 months but for sure it depends on your size if you if you have 10 employees you definitely want to vet people a lot more and be a lot more involved in the hiring because you have a lot less room for error right you're already like over capacity and you hire this person and you train them for 12 months and it turns out to be a bad hire you're a lot worse off than for me that we have a PPC Department of 30 people and we hire one person it doesn't work out it's not that big of a hit so I think it's very dependent on different stages and different growth and different company sizes but for sure the hiring has been very tough and I think it's only now getting a little bit easier I think I think the last three years almost every industry I've heard it's been tough even like jobs like Automotive technicians right like even that's the like very hard I think every everyone has had a hard time hiring for what it's worth I think it's easy enough a little bit now nice I kept the

[23:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1410s)Question about management I think okay if you had a lot of great people but for example personally I can manage 10 people 20 people it's not tough to manage 10 20 people to explain them what they need to do but you wrote a book you grow grew your agency can you tell how to do it I mean like to manage 800 people I think it's really hard to explain everyone what to do tell about structure of your company how the pro the process looks like yeah for sure and sorry if you hear noise in my kid's bathroom upstairs you're like something like fresh over my head that's what it is hopefully nothing physically comes flying down yeah so we're at 400 now for that so that's when I talk about different challenges with different levels of growth so the biggest challenge going from let's say 100 to where we are today which we did over the last three years let's say has been that has been creating management layers right because when we were when we doubled from 10 to 20 or 20 to 40 or 40 to 80. I still had a very good control in every part of the business every Department

[24:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1488s)We didn't we didn't need as much Management in place we've always been a very flat organization but now that's that was the recent challenge of putting the right people in place in the right positions letting them run the show and pretty much being having the team myself and the my I run the business with my brother having us to support that person that becomes super important so you become very dependent on the department heads and you have to be very careful to hire the right people I'm not going to put we've had very amazing people that have been with us some have been with us since we started the company so I think when we get to the level we're at now it's all about putting the right people in place and then giving them a lot of autonomy and a lot of control and I think that's that second part is what's usually missed so before SmartSites I worked at Publicis for a little bit I was in charge of digital for Samsung and then for Walmart for two years amongst other jobs I had the Publicis job was amazing I really nothing bad to say about it but I just noticed from corporate jobs even at Google assist a lot of times they

[26:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1567s)Don't they wouldn't give people like the higher up management director positions they wouldn't always give them full control right it was a lot of like you could do just this and you have to submit this to this person for them to review and approve and when you create a culture and other jobs is very good some other jobs I've had I did I did the corporate finance at Toys R Us Toys R Us corporate for example that the culture you create with that micromanagement and not giving people enough control to really do their own things try their own things as I think where companies struggle I think create the wrong culture a employees won't stay there for long and maybe you don't give people the opportunity to succeed in our industry where it's ever changing and you really have to be super agile you really have to empower the people on the front lines and not even the just the department that's right old employees really need to empower them to be able to make to drive change to initiate change right because they're the ones on the front line seeing what's working what's not working right if you're like oh you're just a junior employee I don't want to influence from you right that's how you fail that's how companies become very slow to change

[27:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1646s)And eventually go out of business like you have companies like the Bed Bath and Beyond it's a bankruptcy man right that was like a no-brainer Toys R Us that I worked at I left there because I also saw them going out of business right it's if you create culture that does not really reward agility change give autonomy to employees that's very wrong into trouble and again it's not a 20 employee company I don't think it's something you worry about but I think once you're maybe 300 up I don't know what the magic formula is but that's something we've been I don't want to be I don't want to say it's been a challenge for us but that's what we've been working our way through recently and there's a lot that goes into it right maintaining that culture where you're no longer physically in an office is very challenging right so there's a lot that goes into it but I think that's that to me has been the key pieces to continual continuous growth nice awesome yeah love it love it you mentioned a few times about this autonomy and you remind me another great guy Steve Jobs and he told that Apple doesn't have people to teach them how to work Apple hires them so these people can teach Apple

[28:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1724s)How to work so yeah and can you tell about this economy what does that mean you mean like you gave them tasks what to do but you rely on their experience to complete this job or you give them like Google I know Google can share 20 of time to create own products that's why we see Gmail many other great products from opal Google because all these products were created because of this autonomy any tips about that how to yeah so we do it yeah very good question so we do it we do it a little differently although in somewhat similar way so the My Philosophy on that is we give employees full autonomy so we hire project managers who are probably a couple years of experience so they're in a lot of times in a lot of cases that's the amount of responsibility we give them is probably more than they've ever had at any other job right we give them literally all the responsibility the here's your client you manage the relationship you manage this I mean really the give them full control they almost like are an entrepreneur in themselves right we're as a company are very entrepreneurial so

[30:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1801s)They are their own entrepreneur and then you have you have the entire team so let's say the PPC team right the entire team is there to support them right so there's weekly meetings where everyone brings up an issue they have or something they need help with we have several senior employees who have like open hours that's just three hour block that anyone can enjoy and chat about anything so we really Empower people to have full control and really be an entrepreneur and almost run like their own business and then we have the team in the company to support them right they run their own business but we have an entire design team with 24 people when they need design stuff we have content writing team with 90 people when they need content right so they're an entrepreneur within the company with the resources of the greater company and then the support of the team the team leads and everyone else really in the company so that's the way we structure it's not for everyone right there's always going to be some employees that enjoy a structure and oversight right not everyone will succeed in the environment that we have but I think ultimately it is the best for people who are who are okay with it and we find that a lot of the younger generation is more willing and wants to be more entrepreneurial right very few of

[31:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1879s)The younger generation like people graduating a couple years ago or even graduating now very few people want to go into job and be like micromanaged right where 30 40 years ago is very common right you get a job invest in banking and accounting whatever it is a lot of times you're going to be micromanaged you expect that and gives you some comfort knowing that like I won't I can't mess up because this other person is going to check everything I do right so we do we do pretty much the opposite so it's so far so good in that way definitely a unique approach but people tend to enjoy it and appreciate it and again the people who enjoy that stuff again if you if you need to be micromanaged the SmartSites is not the place for you yeah nice Bill Gates said that the era of AI has begun okay you publish a book but we got AI and I think all businesses all companies need to adapt AI Technologies because it's not replacement for human being but it will be replacement for someone who doesn't adopt AI because competitors can adapt can provide much better results

[32:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=1957s)Much better quality of products so can you tell how your company adopt AI today and can you advise for others who are listening for this podcast how to start learning about AI and adapt to their products yeah so very good topic I've actually written a couple articles on it and all of a sudden everyone's asking me speak about it so I just did a speech about it last week in North Carolina and literally it's fine every single conference has been reaching out to me to come and talk about ChatGPT and AI because the hot new topic and there's really no experts in it right so it's been interesting I wish I had a product to sell around but because all these conferences when we come talk about it and in the end I'm like well people are like this can you come to our company and train Us in ChatGPT I'm like absolutely not that's nothing close to what I do so yeah so I think it's super powerful again I don't think it's gonna replace as many things as people think but I think it's super useful for creating efficiencies even in my day-to-day I have multiple monitors up I have a monitor on the left side where I just have it on all the time right and it's super useful for me to organize things like if there's an article I need to read I paste it in

[33:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2034s)There and ask for it to summarize it right so it's almost like a 24 7 secretary or assistant right like that literally I could just toss into you could ask it to do research you could say can you act as a as a forget what prompt I use as a as a tech a technical journalist and research these three vendors and compare contrast them right they do really cool things like that it's very powerful for creating content so website content I wouldn't use as much although Google came out and said they won't penalize for it which was surprising to me right in my book I put it so my book predates to GPT but it was it was coming so I think I have a sentence somewhere saying that I think once it comes out Google's gonna because Google knows what's AI written I think I thought Google's gonna flag it and then like it'll say machine generator right Google came out and said we'll treat all compound equally I'm like are you kidding me and of course they could change their mind so for SEO content I'd be very careful we've run some tests and it does okay it requires a lot of editing and a lot of due diligence I wouldn't just take the content to go it on your website right but aside from SEO content where it's questionable where I think there's risk because Google could also change their mind right and they

[35:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2112s)Know what they have written so that's AI content for SEO I think is the risky section for all the other type of content cyber schedule right have it write your Facebook post right you could say that generate me for Facebook posts for with this topic this topic and have a call to action and then you could say generate me five tweets for Twitter when you ask it to generate content for different social media it'll actually generate the friends so when you ask for the Twitter post it'll do it with hashtags it automatically optimize this for every social media platform so I think right now it's all about efficiency I think being good at asking ChatGPT all sudden became a huge thing right at the speech I just did last week I opened it up with a job post there's a job post for a prompt engineer that pays three hundred thousand dollars is that crazy there's now jobs prompt Engineers the profession they literally you are per your you prompt you prompt ChatGPT that's your job right not only that there was another job post that I wanted to include but I didn't but I have the screenshot also it says prompt engineer right I need someone to be good at prompting ChatGPT we want that person to teach our company how to use it very well everything makes sense 300 Grand also right is that like

[36:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2189s)It's like pays more than programming jobs anyway so for that one specifically in the job requirements it says looking for someone with 12 months ChatGPT experience gigpd has been at four months right so all of this is like super fast moving it could change like literally Google tomorrow could say it will penalize for AI content and everything will change but for now I think it's all about creating efficiencies we've been testing it for Content we've been testing it for other internal efficiencies we've been testing it for social media and social media is a no-brainer responding to reviews it does really well like your Google My Business reviews people manually like yep the best practice is to respond to reviews negative and positive sitting there responding to it I guarantee you no matter how much time you spend responding to a review ChatGPT will do better they it does so you literally put in their ChatGPT can you respond to this review make sure to point out that our service is actually blah it uses all the content of the review it does please test it out aside from that it's just literally learning to use it and it's there's no experts out there I know because everyone thinks I'm an expert and wants me to speak about it and I'm not right I'm just I use it myself once in a while so it's also I'm the expert so that

[37:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2268s)That's how I know there's no experts out there certainly no experts have been using it for 12 months but there's really the small things that you'll learn as you use it for example and this is this is the I think the big giveaway for people listening who don't know of this trick if you ask Chad ChatGPT to respond as an expert so ask it the same thing you're going to ask anyway but you say respond as an expert it actually pulls in more information and spends more time going through all of its data before responding that's another trick that you get much better responses by literally just saying response as an expert you could do different ways by the way you could you could re you could say respond is this person that person in this different style I have a really good one for automotive I say ChatGPT write me an article about the history of the Mercedes GLS writes an amazing article of really cool information then I say same thing ChatGPT I've writing an article about the Mercedes GLS in the style of Shakespeare and it literally like writes a poem in the style of Shakespeare about the Mercedes GLS It's the funniest thing it's so at the very least I think all I could say is that everyone should go and play with it right it's like it's free it's that the free versions ChatGPT 3.5 the new one now four you have to pay for

[39:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2347s)You have to do chat plus which is 20 a month which is nothing but even the base version is more than enough for everyone out there the Chachi pt4 actually passes all the exams right the 3.5 was getting like 70 on the bar exam and everything chai gpt4 is actually getting like 90 but for almost all use cases it doesn't make a difference but I would encourage everyone to go out and at least play with it the people who do marketing try out having a bright post for your social media post Google My Business reviews people who are coders programmers give it some code to fix be careful with what you give it though because anything you give it you give the chat ChatGPT keeps forever right there's I don't know if you saw on the news but there was a big case where someone at Samsung was debugging code and they could like some small code and they put the entire Samsung code repository to ChatGPT to get your GPT to help debug the code and then checkina owns the repository right and there was like a big thing and Samsung was reached out to OpenAI which owns chat you can see and they're like please delete our repository from your internal database and they're like that's not how it works anything you give to check that's it not only does it

[40:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2426s)Take it learns from it right that's the that's the whole way all of this works the more people that interact with it the more it learns and the more it takes in once you give it something that's it there's no backseats you can't go back and like please give back our repository that's not how any of this works so just keep that in mind and of course like anything that's data based it's not perfect then I've seen it give wrong answers if you want to test it out and see an interesting one if you go to ChatGPT and ask it what countries start with the letter B I think I asked list of countries that start with the letter V it says there aren't any right it says charging PT goes there are no countries that start with letter v there's Vietnam right and a couple others but the data set that it has Vietnam is not Vietnam right it's the Socialist Republic of the or whatever right so if it's data it knows that it's not Vietnam so it says there's no countries that start with the learning and by the way it's gotten better that's the last example I have left that still works two months ago I had like 20 examples the new ChatGPT they fixed a lot of it so it's gonna get better and better but of course you have to vet the information a little bit I wouldn't just take everything and just as factual but certainly a lot of uses for it and I think like you said I don't think it's gonna replace anyone people who don't know it and refuse to use it I think will ultimately be replaced or

[41:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2503s)Maybe the other way around people who do use it are going to be more efficient and effective at their job and I do think the GPT operators positions are going to go away I think that's a fad I don't I don't think that's going to become a huge industry especially now there's a there's Autumn there's what's in you on automated charger pizza or I forget what it's called where you don't need to prompt it the idea is that in a couple of months it could prompt itself you just ask anything and it'll prompt itself correctly right this prompt engineer just exists in this short period of time for now but I think it's super powerful and everyone should go out and play around with it and if you go on YouTube and search alexmelen.com / Alex Melen ChatGPT I did a one hour webinar on it I think a month not two weeks ago yeah nice you share a lot about GPT about AI and you told that you're not an expert but a lot about AI because I see you that's it and once I spoke with Fabrice Canel from and I asked about AI content and he told me Bing doesn't care / Bing cares it's written by human or AI Bing doesn't care / Bing cares about quality so if you can create quality content then people

[43:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2583s)Will rank this content I think it's the same with Google because Google changed the policy and you can use but use it right not overuse it's not like to ask please write a new article about weight loss yeah you need to use the right problems you need to edit to spend time not overusing it's more about using the right way yeah Google can you have a blog post about it and they're like the forget I forget where they posted but they're like internal update that I think February 2nd or something like that exactly that they said that it we don't care how the content's created as long as it continues to follow all the best practices quality of the authenticity all of that I still think that's gonna change I really I think what's gonna happen is so right now ChatGPT has 100 million users right it was the fastest platform to reach to 100 million users ever right TikTok did it in nine months it was groundbreaking I think Instagram was 18 months Chachi petite in two months and the users of ChatGPT are in The Tick Tock like 12 14 year olds they're just scrolling through it right people using ChatGPT are or it's a lot more of a difficult product to grasp to

[44:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2662s)Understand any case they have 100 million users right if 100 million and I've been using this example history of the Mercedes GLS and a couple speeches if a million people go and ChatGPT for an article on the history of GLS right and everyone throws it on their website and everyone has a very similar article ultimately that's not going to rank well so I think eventually like anything I've seen in the in the digital space over the last 30 years once it gets abused I think they'll have to either point out that's machine learning content or some Something's Gonna have to change right and it's my first company I started was free web hosting and if you or anyone watching been involved in the tech space all the way back to the mid 90s that was like the tripod geocities Hypermart those companies right it was groundbreaking thinking back then that anyone could create a website on the internet instantly free that was a big thing because before all of that and the company I started actually predates geocities so it was really the groundbreaking point of all that but before we started that the Technology if you wanted to make a website you'd have to call your internet service provider if you had internet or your phone service provider like a Bell Atlantic at the time before it became Verizon say you want a website pay them like tens of

[45:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2740s)Thousands of dollars wait eight six to nine months and they would make you a website on the internet that's the way it would be right with free hosting it was revolutionary everyone started making website it was it was Wild West was really cool times guess what happened all those companies are our business I don't know of any major free web hosting providers still around the reason it happened it got abused it was all fine for a couple of years and then all of a sudden everyone's like I can instantly make anything I want accessible anywhere in the world so you had all the scammers all the frauds like and unfortunately every year everything changed we went to paid hosting as even if it's GoDaddy sells it for like 99 Cents but as long as it's something because you get the credit card information then you prevent fraud right so I think similarly with all this once a million people have the exact same AI generated content on their website yeah how does Google determine which of those 1 million duplicates to rank higher or lower maybe a link building becomes more important right than your Authority ranking becomes more important I don't know but I could have sworn before Google came out and Microsoft and said that they're all treated equally I could have sworn that they were going to start like highlighting it in results like just highlight that's machine generate content but honestly yeah it was so quickly moving that it's

[47:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2820s)It now that I finished that my search marketing book I've had a lot of people suggest I write a book on ChatGPT because I speak about it a lot and everything now but I was like anything I write now by time gets published in six months will be like completely wrong like it's moving so much quicker than anything else before that like even if I take like guesses and try to cover my bases with different stuff it's the chance of me like being correct six months from now is just so little yeah nice great points yeah I agree I see when content creators care about uniqueness when they generate content on ChatGPT check out uniqueness 100 but it's not about this uniqueness it's more about uniqueness of context because it's like no for example when I ask my friends about a new movie to get this review and I often get reply nothing special I watch the same a lot many times the same movies I think it's the same with content if you cheat these tools that will share 100 you can cheat Google you can cheat people because people can find totally the same content in the top 10 so it's not unique

[48:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2897s)It's not nothing special yeah I completely agree with that and Alex my final question about your experience because I have some students in my network who are looking for way how to learn SEO from scratch today when we have AI when we have this technology can you tell if you started today from scratch without any experience knowledge skills what will you do to learn more about SEO yes I think it's still possible and I see companies starting from scratch and still doing it's it's what can I say it's more risky to start a career in SEO today than it was five months ago just because of ChatGPT I think that is the major disrupter right if it all of a sudden everyone is using AI chat Bots instead of Google search that they will change the industry but I think Good Start not to promote my own book but a good start is learning about Google's rankings signals which I have in my book but you can also find online I think fully understanding what's important to Google is the first start and then you can reverse engineer everything else and I encourage people not to just duplicate what other agencies are doing what other people are doing because in a lot of cases I see agencies doing SEO from 15 years ago right I think the most important thing is to fully understand Google's

[49:34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=2974s)Perspective and what they value and Bing of course is going to become bigger now but then usually just mirrors Google at least it has in the last decade to fully understand what's important to go Google and what's driving their ranking signals and I think once you fully understand that you could develop a product around it right and you don't have to attack all the bases rightly because you have you have a local pack you have Google Map results right you have the organic local organic results those themselves are separate each one needs different things then if you just look at the let's say the organic results this regard map for now you have content creation link building technical SEO you have so many items you don't really have to necessarily do all of it right you could really specialize in one thing or you could do all of it and specialize in one industry you could become the go-to person for dental SEO right I think either way you either go General and specialize in a piece of SEO or do all of SEO and really specialize in an industry but again I think first you have to really learn what's important to Google the ranking signals and really think about your value add when you when you're when you're selling your service what is your value at how are you creating value for the customer I think once you figure

[50:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf3fZWS9-5M&t=3052s)That out everything else will come a lot easier nice love it love it awesome Alex it's a big pleasure to get on my show to learn from you tell our audience the best way how to keep learning from you how to follow you how to reach out to you and how to read your book yeah perfect yes so if you go to alexmelen.com / Alex Melen ChatGPT a-l-e-x-m-e-l-e-n.com I have all my information on the bottom I have all my social media platforms I'm more most active on LinkedIn these days and probably Twitter but I'm on all the platforms so definitely connect with me and reach out more than happy to help anyone who needs help with anything Nice Guys you can find the link to the website in the description below to LinkedIn account listen us on Apple Google Spotify thanks again for your time I love it so valuable you always lead me to an emergency room where I need to spend time to consume all this information to think how I can adapt and create the best strategy for my Agency for my clients okay guys thanks a lot for listening and watching us

Ranking #1 on Google is the ultimate goal of any business’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. However, with the ever-changing landscape of SEO, businesses need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and techniques to achieve success. In this podcast, we’ll be talking with Alex Melen, an expert in SEO management, about how businesses can effectively manage their SEO strategy to achieve top rankings on Google. Alex has extensive experience in the world of SEO management and has helped numerous businesses achieve success through effective optimization strategies. In this podcast, he s

Date

May 11, 2023

Location

Paramus, NJ

Format

Podcast / interview

Speaker

[Alex Melen](https://www.alexmelen.com/about/)

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