Being an in-house SEO for an Enterprise business company | Gus Pelogia
Hey everyone, welcome back to Search Session! I'm your host, Gianluca Fiorelli—and today’s episode is one you won’t want to miss.
Joining me is someone I’ve admired in the SEO world for quite some time: Gus Pelogia. He’s originally from Brazil, but his career has taken him across continents—from Argentina to the Netherlands, and now to Ireland, where he’s the Senior SEO Product Manager at Indeed.
Gus brings a unique perspective, shaped by his background in journalism and over a decade of hands-on SEO experience, both agency-side and in-house. We talk about what it really means to drive change inside a massive company, how AI is reshaping the SEO landscape, and why curiosity and collaboration still matter more than ever.
From building SEO experiments in Google Colab to launching the SearchIRL meetups in Dublin, Gus shares thoughtful, practical insights—and more than a few relatable stories from his international career.
Let’s dive in!
Transcript
Gianluca Fiorelli: Hi everybody, and welcome back to a new episode of Search Session!
Before we dive in, don’t forget to hit the bell and subscribe so you get all the updates on new episodes—never miss one!
Meet Gus Pelogia
Today, we’re having a really great conversation with someone I truly admire. His name is Gus Pelogia—he's Brazilian but has lived quite the nomadic SEO life. He started his journey in Brazil, then moved to Argentina, then Europe—specifically the Netherlands—and eventually landed in Ireland.
Gus is currently the Senior SEO Product Manager at Indeed, and he’s been in the SEO game for nearly 20 years—just like me! What’s wild is he still looks so young, it’s honestly impressive.
Good morning, good evening—wherever you are in the world, welcome! Hi Gus, how are you doing?
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, doing really well—thanks so much for the intro and for having me on. Everything you said is spot-on. I've lived in quite a few different countries over the years. I actually discovered SEO after I left Brazil—I was a journalist before that.
I've been working in SEO for about 12 or 13 years now. Hopefully, I’ll make it to 20 someday—not quite there yet, but that’s the goal! I really love what I do. There's always something new to learn, and that’s what keeps me so passionate about this field.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, yeah, I saw that you started out as a journalist, which I found really interesting. I think it’s important to remind people—especially the younger generation of SEOs—that many of us didn’t start in this field with a traditional SEO background.
We all come from different professional paths or academic studies. You, for instance, were a journalist, so you probably studied journalism, communications, or something along those lines. In my case, back in the previous century—literally—I studied literature and linguistics.
So even though SEO doesn’t require a technical degree to get started, it’s something you can learn. And you’re a great example of that, as we’ll explore during this conversation. What really matters is having a curious mind. All the experiences you’ve had before tend to come back and serve you in unexpected ways.
Agency vs. In-House SEO
Gianluca Fiorelli: Now, you're working at a really big company. I checked the LinkedIn page for Indeed—it says “10,000+ employees,” so it’s huge. And if I’m not mistaken, this is your first in-house SEO role, right? Or is there something before this?
Gus Pelogia: I had a bit of experience before—back in Argentina and in Holland. I worked in-house, but always with smaller teams. I’d never had a role in such a big company, with a large SEO team and other specialists working alongside me. So this feels very different from any SEO work I’ve done before.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, for sure—it really is a big difference. Being the only SEO, or maybe the only digital marketing person in a company, is a whole different experience compared to working at a big enterprise like Indeed.
But what I’m actually more curious about is your experience working with someone like Wolfgang Digital in Ireland. I know them well from judging their entries in the European Search Awards, and they’ve always stood out.
So, what’s been the biggest shift for you in moving from a relatively large agency like Wolfgang to working in-house? What kind of impact did that change have—going from being on the agency side, supporting big companies, to now being on the company side, hiring agencies?
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, that’s a really good question — and honestly, something I think about from time to time.
Working at Wolfgang was an amazing experience. You get to work with many clients, which means you're constantly dealing with different scenarios. It’s interesting because you end up learning a little bit about everything — PPC, social, SEO. After maybe the first year or two, I also started working as a client manager.
That role really changed how I thought about the work. It wasn’t just about doing good SEO or producing technical or content deliverables — it became more about how to keep clients happy and confident in the process. Even if we hadn’t hit the end goal yet, how could I tell the story in a way that helped them see the progress? That things were moving in the right direction, that we were testing and learning, and that the strategy was starting to take shape.
Then, moving in-house, the biggest shift was probably how much time I now spend building those stories. I’d say maybe half my job is just aligning things before execution even begins.
For example, if we want to do something simple like internal linking between two products, I don’t just go do it. I talk to the product manager from the other team, check if they’re using the same tech stack, see if they’re open to the idea, and understand what the benefit is for them too. Then, before anything happens, I write up a detailed product requirement document — what we want to do, how we’ll measure it, how long it’ll take, how much it’ll cost, all of that.
So yeah, a lot of my work is the “before” work — setting the stage so we can actually get things done. And fun fact: I don’t really know how to code!
Pre-Production and Stakeholder Alignment
Gianluca Fiorelli: Uh, we could—yeah, we could call it, uh, drawing from my background in the audiovisual industry—we could call it the pre-production phase.
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, totally. So, you’re meeting with stakeholders from all over — UX folks, engineers, whoever. And even if it’s just to say, “Hey, I’m pitching this idea, and it seems relatively easy to do — is it actually easy?” you want to bring them in early. Because they’re the ones who’ll actually be doing the work, right? So it’s like, “I’m speaking on your behalf here, but please come take a look with me.”
That’s when you start gathering feedback. And people get a little excited, because there’s something in it for everyone — content, UX, SEO. By the time you get to execution, everyone’s already familiar with the idea. And in a company this big, when you do move the needle — like, let’s say you add 3 million, 5 million, or even 10 million sessions per week — that’s a huge deal.
And sometimes, even when things don’t move, that’s okay too. Because often you’re still in those strategic debates — should we do this or that? Or maybe in order to even get permission to do something, we need to improve the product first before the other team will let us move forward.
So yeah, all the testing and preparation — it’s stuff I hadn’t really done before, but now I see how important it is. Sometimes, I’m halfway through writing a PRD and realize, “Wait, I don’t know how to measure this.” It’s an SEO concept, and sure, people say “this works” or “that works” in theory, but once I break it all down, I’m like… will this actually work?
Then I start thinking, okay — two months from now, I’ll be in a room with the same people. How am I going to prove this worked? And if I can’t convince myself, I’ll sometimes drop the project before it even starts.
But maybe that’s just part of the process — to really understand what’s being done, and to convince yourself and others that it has a real shot at turning into something impactful.
Working with Agencies & Consultants
Gianluca Fiorelli: Uh, yeah, definitely—it's interesting. But let’s try looking at another scenario. Say you're the lead SEO at a company. Maybe you have external resources—like a consultant for a specific project or an agency handling something bigger, like a major PR campaign.
How can that external person really help you communicate the value of what you’re doing—especially during this early, pre-production phase?
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, so the last time I worked directly with an agency or a consultant was at a previous in-house role—before Indeed. It was interesting because this consultant had tons of ideas for things we wanted to do. But being on the other side—closer to the people who actually approve things or give the green light—you start to realize, okay, this person doesn’t really care about this or they don’t see the potential here.
So you begin to ask yourself: Where can this consultant actually make an impact? What are the areas where they can really help us move forward?
I’ve had situations in the past where I was doing audits, and I knew—like 90% sure—that none of it was going to be implemented. It felt like I was just ticking a box. I’d spend weeks preparing audits, building spreadsheets, explaining everything… knowing full well that no one was going to look at it seriously.
Now that I’m on the other side, I see how important it is to focus on the areas where a consultant or agency can own something end-to-end. Maybe it’s something we don’t have the in-house expertise for. Or maybe it’s something where the key stakeholders—like my manager overseeing all of digital marketing, not just SEO—will actually get behind it.
It’s really about finding that sweet spot: the areas where someone can truly deliver, where the work will actually get implemented. That’s the middle ground you want. Because otherwise, it just turns into someone producing reports or deliverables that people glance at and say, oh, that’s interesting, but nothing ever comes of it.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Interesting, interesting... it really is. I was nodding along as you spoke, especially from the perspective of a consultant. Your insights resonate a lot.
As someone who’s been a consultant for many years, I had to learn—often the hard way—that it’s not about jumping straight into offering a service or pitching a solution. At first, I used to go in with the classic “here’s what I can do for you” approach. But over time, I realized it’s much more valuable to begin by asking lots of questions—especially about the business itself—before even suggesting a potential collaboration.
That way, when we do present a quote or proposal, it’s meaningful. It’s not just some cookie-cutter pitch or copy-pasted service list. I completely agree with you—this is a skill I had to develop over time, especially since I’ve never worked in-house. I had to learn this mindset shift myself.
Now, you mentioned working in-house with smaller companies as well. In my experience, the challenge in smaller companies is often the founder or owner being very central to every decision. On one hand, this can be a bottleneck. But on the other hand, it’s a short chain of command—there aren’t a dozen layers of hierarchy to get through just to speak to a decision-maker. So in that sense, it's more direct.
Navigating Big Company Bureaucracy: Gus’s Framework for Speed
But with larger companies, of course, it’s natural for there to be a more complex structure, more layers of bureaucracy. And without going into any specifics, I’m curious—how do you manage to move through those steps more quickly? Because from my own experience consulting with big enterprises, one of the main challenges is the time it takes to make decisions. And especially now, when things are moving fast, that delay can be a real problem.
Gus Pelogia: That’s true. Yeah. I have to say, I’ve been really lucky with Indeed because I generally get to move things fast.
I’ll give you an example. I wanted to test whether adding a link to the top navigation would have any impact on traffic. The link already existed in the footer of the same page, but there were a lot of debates about putting it up top. The thinking was: if we add it to the top nav, it should drive more traffic, right? Since it’s in a more prominent spot.
But there was also pushback. Some people felt the product needed to improve before it “earned” that placement—since it was a content product, there were questions about whether it was worth such visibility.
Eventually, that project landed on my plate. So I went to the product manager who owned it and asked, “Hey, can we test this?” We had all these improvement suggestions floating around, but I thought, what if we just run an A/B test and see if it even makes a difference? Because if it doesn’t, then we might be spending time on something that’s not actually impactful.
I told him, “I’m on top of this. I already have tracking set up. Here's the plan: we'll test it in a small country, run it for a month, and measure the results.” I basically pitched him this whole idea—he didn’t know me, but he said, “Okay, maybe you can try it in this country, or that one—pick one.”
So I did. If I had said I wanted to run this in the U.S., that conversation would've taken months. But doing a variation in a smaller market? That was doable.
Turns out… the test showed no real change. The link in the footer was probably doing enough already. That goes against what we might expect as SEOs—we’d assume adding a prominent nav link would help. But it didn’t. Maybe it was better for users, sure, but that’s a separate conversation.
What we wanted to measure was the SEO impact—would it drive more traffic to the linked pages under that product? And it didn’t.
So, I’m always trying to find ways to test things on a smaller scale. Can I try this in just one country? Can I avoid adding layers of work and treat it more like a minimum viable product or an experiment? If it works—say we get a 20% traffic increase—then that’s a very different conversation. Now I can go back and say, “Look, we tested it, it worked, and I can almost guarantee results.”
That’s way more compelling than saying, “Hey, let’s do this for SEO,” especially when you're talking to someone who isn’t even in the SEO world.
At a big company, there are always layers. But going out and talking to people in each team—understanding how they do things—it’s much easier when you’re on the inside. You’ve got Slack, shared groups, and sometimes it’s just about finding someone who knows someone who can introduce you.
Like, I might be working with someone who shares an office with the person I need to reach, and they can literally walk over and say, “Hey, can you give this person a few minutes to chat?”
Even in a remote-first world, building relationships is huge for getting things done. That’s a big part of how I approach my work.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, yes. Uh, knowing people—even if the circumstances are mostly remote—is really important. It just makes things go more smoothly when you're working together. If you’re only maintaining a kind of sterile, impersonal relationship, it becomes a lot harder to collaborate effectively.
You mentioned, for example, this situation—let’s say you're working in a small country. And then, okay, let's take it a step further and talk about working across multiple countries. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how it’s organized in every case, like with Indeed, for instance. But from what I’ve seen, especially when it comes to enterprise clients, there’s often this centralized structure where all the key decisions—especially technical ones—are made at the top.
Then you might have a smaller, sometimes more developed marketing team. But usually, it's more of a generalist team—maybe two people handling everything from PPC to communications to SEO. So, not always a dedicated SEO team.
Rolling Out Global SEO Features
Gianluca Fiorelli: So I’m curious—how do you personally manage things when you’re in that kind of setup? Like, say you need to roll out a new feature. Do you launch it simultaneously in every country? Or do you take a phased approach?
I remember a classic example with Apple.com—the store rollout happened country by country, based on how important each market was to the business. So how do you organize things when you’re dealing with lots of teams at once?
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, it can definitely get chaotic at times. I usually try to start small—one country, maybe two—and once you can prove the impact, that’s when things start to grow. But then, of course, you have to start coordinating with a lot more teams, which adds complexity.
If we’re talking about something like job search, that’s more of the core product. There are more people involved, more eyes on it, and more care taken to make sure everything runs perfectly. So naturally, things can take a bit longer to release.
I’ve seen features roll out to just 1% of users, and at first, you might think, "Oh, that’s barely anything." But then you realize, even at 1%, you start noticing issues—maybe the page is loading slower or fewer people are applying for jobs. That can be frustrating, especially for someone like me who likes to move fast, release quickly, and learn as I go.
But once you're working across multiple teams, you really have to take everyone into account. Things will slow down, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. From the company’s perspective—especially outside of SEO—people understand that testing and releasing features takes time.
On my end, though, I’ve sometimes pushed for something to be released globally, across all countries and users—especially if it’s a change that’s purely SEO-related. Then three months later, during a performance review, my manager asks, "What was the impact of that change?" And I realize we didn’t actually measure it properly. Maybe we assumed it worked because we saw something similar perform well last year, but without data, I can't really show how it moved the needle.
So yeah, sometimes you need someone to pump the brakes and say, "Let’s do this step by step." Because even for career growth, tying your work to measurable impact matters more than just doing a bunch of things and assuming they’re all making a difference. Some will, but some won’t—and the numbers are what really tell that story.
Localization & International SEO
Gianluca Fiorelli: Interesting, interesting. So when it comes to something like localization, how much freedom do you actually give to the local teams? I mean, sure, the technical side usually stays the same—it’s consistent across all versions. But when it comes to actually localizing, personalizing things—like how content is presented, or how a feature in a manual is explained for one country versus another—how much flexibility do the local teams have?
Basically, how much agility and freedom do you give them so they don’t feel too restricted or tied down by the overarching policies of the main headquarters?
Gus Pelogia: I'm not sure I have a complete answer for you here, but we do have local teams—or teams that handle localization—for different areas. For example, if something is within the product, one team handles it. If it's legal content, that's a different team. So, no, things aren't just auto-translated. We do have native speakers involved to make sure the content actually makes sense in each specific context.
Using OpenAI, Colab, and MVPs to Prototype SEO Ideas
Gianluca Fiorelli: So, you’ve been active in the community for quite a few months now, sharing all sorts of ideas about how to use AI to build your own tools. But before we dive into your journey—how you’ve been learning and figuring things out, which I think is a great example for a lot of people, myself included—I want to ask: is AI actually making your life easier? Especially when it comes to that whole prep phase we all deal with, the part that eats up so much time in our work?
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, it's been really useful. I think it’s all about figuring out what works for you, right? Personally, I mostly use OpenAI. So if I want to test something personal, I use my own API key—I’ve got a few credits there, maybe even an auto-renew set up—just so I can play with Screaming Frog or test different things.
If it’s something more official, like related to Indeed or any of our internal tools, then I go through our proper channels—using our team’s API keys and all that.
Overall, it's been super helpful. There's a lot of trial and error. Like, for example, I was working on tagging pages according to a specific taxonomy we use. The model would sometimes generate variations of the tag—like if the tag was Switching Careers, it might output Finding New Careers instead. So you realize, okay, it's not doing exactly what I need. Then you tweak the prompt and test again. But you start to notice—it’ll always introduce slight changes.
At that point, I ask myself: is it still doing 80% of what I need? If yes, cool—I’ll manually review the rest. But once I get it to a place where it mostly works, I can take it to the team and say, "Hey, we could use a data scientist to build this properly."
I actually do that a lot—build an MVP myself, prove that it's possible, and then hand it off to a team that can take it further. Often, they’re more knowledgeable about the technical side anyway, so they really level it up. But I use AI to validate the idea first: Can this be done? If the answer is yes, then great—let’s bring in the real specialists to scale it.
That’s the kind of insight I need, whether it’s for SEO or product.
Gianluca Fiorelli: You're using mostly for prototyping processes can be eventually validated or not.
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, that’s part of it. I was using it to find related articles, so I wrote a bit of code—just a small test—and it worked. It actually worked in Google Colab, using just the knowledge I already had. And that’s the key for me.
I’ve tried learning Python so many times before, but I’d always get stuck—just trying to install it properly, or going through a course, or reading someone’s tutorial. Then I found out I could use Google Colab and realized, “Wait, all the installation stuff is already taken care of?” So I tried it out and thought, “Oh, okay. This actually works!”
And once I saw the results, once I could look at the output and say, “Yeah, that’s what I expected to happen,” that was enough. It did the job. Sure, maybe we’ll eventually need a better version—maybe someone to build it properly, with a cleaner UI and more polished features—but this initial test gave me confidence.
If I can prove the idea works, even in a rough form, then I feel good about handing it off to someone who can really bring it to life. I can justify having an engineer spend two or three months building out a great version of it.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I agree. Looking back, I really wish we’d had tools like OpenAI, Gemini, or even just more advanced AI back then.
For example, I remember when I was helping Glassdoor with Italian localization. I asked for access to their internal search data so I could better understand how users were clustering terms—how categories formed naturally through search behavior. That turned out to be a really valuable exercise. It helped me fully grasp just how many different ways people can describe the exact same thing.
Now, with tools like OpenAI and large language models, natural language processing is so much more powerful—and useful for exactly this kind of problem. Back then, trying to cluster and categorize things manually could really drive you crazy. We tried building mechanisms to manage it, but it was nowhere near as easy as it is today.
I imagine you're already doing this, using these tools to make sense of the overwhelming variety of search terms. It can help optimize the structure of a site like Indeed and maybe even surface entirely new job categories.
Because, as we always say, 90% of the jobs our kids will have don't even exist yet. But search data might already be giving us hints. Maybe it’s pointing to something new—something that should be presented as its own category.
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, I think it gets really interesting once you’re inside a large company—there are just so many directions you can go and so many different ways to do things. What I enjoy most is the process of exploring those directions.
We have internal databases where you can check how certain pages are performing or see how many jobs we have in a particular area. And once you start digging, you realize there are a lot of internal databases—and they all do slightly different things. Then you’ll meet someone from the mobile team and discover they're working on something you might actually collaborate on.
So a lot of it really comes down to connecting with the right people. I often just hop into group chats or forums and start asking questions. Sometimes that leads to introducing myself to someone new, and then I’ll book a call to learn how something works.
It’s not even about “who you know” in the traditional sense. For those listening, it’s not like you need to meet all the higher-ups. Honestly, I’ve never even met many of these people in person—and yet they’re still super willing to help.
It can be a lot to navigate, but I try to start with: “Okay, what are we calling this thing?” Like, in one of my recent projects, I discovered we already have a taxonomy that standardizes how things are tagged across the company. So instead of creating something new just for my pages, I followed that existing system—because there’s already a team maintaining it and it’s widely adopted.
Once you find those nuggets—like a shared taxonomy—you realize you can integrate with other products more easily just by speaking the same language. And suddenly, everything gets a whole lot smoother.
Learning AI & Python Without a Coding Background
Gianluca Fiorelli: So, what you’re saying brings me back to something you mentioned earlier in our conversation: even when we’re working remotely—like so many big companies do these days—truly knowing the people you work with is essential. Not just for a more fulfilling work life, but also for actually getting things done and pushing projects forward.
Now, bringing it back to me—okay, we’re talking about AI and how it can help us. A lot of people are afraid that AI will replace them, which is totally understandable. But maybe, just maybe, AI isn’t here to replace us. Maybe it’s here to enhance what we’re capable of in business. At the same time, AI is showing us just how crucial the human element really is.
One of the things that makes us so human is curiosity. And you’re honestly a great example of that. Like me—I come from a humanities background, you're a journalist, and we’ve both had to dive into technical stuff. You’ve pushed yourself to learn, and you’re really good at sharing what you’ve discovered and how you figured things out.
So I’m curious—how did you start teaching yourself all this? What was your step-by-step process for getting into AI, working with OpenAI tools, and eventually creating your own projects? I still remember those fantastic examples you shared at the conference in Finland last summer.
Gus Pelogia: Uh, yeah—so I think the whole process of discovering these things kind of started with, um... was it—oh, sorry—yeah, it was Mike King. He wrote this really long article about embeddings and cosine similarity. I remember spending over an hour just trying to wrap my head around what he was talking about. It got really complicated.
At one point, I was just sitting on the sofa—it was a Saturday. My daughter was napping, my wife was working, and I was deep into trying to understand this stuff. It took me a few days. I read the article a couple more times, did other things, came back to it. And eventually, I started thinking, “Okay, if I simplify this—if I say it in my own words—I think I can explain it a little better.”
That’s also when I remember coming across Google Colab. I think I read somewhere that ChatGPT could generate code, so I gave it a try. I started really simple. I’d ask things like, “Can you do this? If I give you one CSV file, can you split it into 10?” Stuff like that. And it worked.
So I started asking it to do more—like looking into cosine similarity. Then I saw that Screaming Frog had added a feature that let you extract embeddings. And I was like, “Wait a minute—I read about embeddings in that article by Mike King!” So it started to click. If those pieces hadn’t already been out there, I don’t think I would’ve made the connection.
But once I figured out a bit of a formula—like, “Oh, I can ask ChatGPT for code, test it, then build on top of it”—that changed everything. I’d try something new in Colab, add a layer of complexity, ask another question, and just keep going. Little by little, I learned not just what to ask, but how to ask. That’s how I kind of stumbled into this whole universe.
It all came from just being curious. Honestly, I’ve always worked closely with engineers and developers, and I’ve always been fascinated by what they can do. I’ve often wished I had those skills myself. Maybe that’s part of why I ended up in product—because I’m good at seeing what could be done, breaking it down into smaller parts, building a case for it, and convincing people that it’s worth doing. Then I bring it to the engineers who do the real heavy lifting.
So yeah, I hope that answers your question.
Gianluca Fiorelli: No—yeah—actually, yes, you totally answered my question. It kind of reminds me of a smaller-scale example, mostly because I don’t work with engineers pretty often—I’m a consultant, so I’m not embedded in a team—but over the past 20 years, I’ve built a lot of friendships with people who are way more technically skilled than I am, especially when it comes to coding.
So I’ve been lucky. For example, when I’m experimenting with something—like trying out named entity recognition using OpenAI—I might say, “Hey, I usually do it this way. Can you help me build a tool that does this at scale?” And I’ve got folks I can reach out to who help make that happen.
And I totally agree with you: that’s the only real way to learn. It’s like when we were kids and we’d take apart a clock just to see how it worked—and then challenge ourselves to put it back together. Same thing here. Back when we were starting out in SEO, the only way to learn was to open up a website and just start messing with it.
The Impact of AI Search on Companies Like Indeed
Gianluca Fiorelli: Now, it’s similar—but instead of messing with websites, we’re poking at OpenAI, ChatGPT, generative AI, that whole landscape. I’m curious: How much do you think these AI tools are impacting companies like Indeed?
Gus Pelogia: I'm not sure how much I can share about all of these.
Gianluca Fiorelli: No, whether you are seeing an impact or not.
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, you do start to see some changes in behavior. People are coming in from these new platforms and applying for jobs, so things are definitely shifting. I think overall, the world of search is changing—and it’s going to change a lot for everyone.
In particular, I think a lot of our traditional top-of-funnel strategies are going to shrink. I saw someone say something like, “Do we really need another blog post from a dentist explaining what a cavity is?” And it’s true—so much of that content just repeats the same information across tons of pages, all trying to convince Google that theirs is the best version. But really, they’re nearly identical.
So I think everyone will have to evolve their approach to top-of-funnel content. We're already looking closely at how people are finding us and how they're engaging, and I’m sure we’ll see strategic shifts—not just for us, but across the board in SEO—to adapt to this new landscape.
Traffic might go down overall, but I don’t necessarily think that’ll mean a drop in conversions. The impact there might actually be pretty neutral.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah. The classic distinction we always make—it's not just about traffic volume. It's about traffic quality. Even if the traffic is smaller, it can still be valuable if the conversion rate stays the same or even improves. That’s often because the people landing on your site are intentionally searching for something, and even if they’ve already seen a big answer from Google, Bing, or another LLM, they’re still clicking through because it genuinely interests them.
So the real work becomes: how do we capture their attention? Especially when your content might be used by these systems. That’s something I plan to explore more deeply in an upcoming episode of Search Session: how to do conversion rate optimization but for the elements in SERPs we can control—beyond the usual rich results—like microcopy. How do we write content that we know could be pulled into an AI-generated answer or featured snippet? In the past, we tried to optimize for featured snippets without giving everything away, and that’s still a balancing act.
Zooming out a bit, improving traffic quality means thinking more holistically. It’s not just a technical SEO task anymore—it’s a collaborative one. It involves product teams, CRO specialists, and even web designers. The mindset has to shift from "just bring in traffic" to "bring in qualified traffic and make it stick."
This might be a new focus for us in SEO. We’re not just responsible for acquisition anymore, but also for helping keep users engaged once they land. That means exploring new ways to create synergy with other channels.
We’re already seeing LLMs pulling in content from social platforms. And Google is starting to show more short-form videos from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and so on. So collaboration across teams—social, owned media, all of it—isn’t just helpful anymore, it’s essential.
Are you seeing this same need from the other channels too? Are social and owned media teams also feeling the push to work more closely with SEO?
Gus Pelogia: I haven’t really seen much change in that direction, to be honest. I think it’s still pretty early for a lot of this stuff. Like with generative AI, everyone’s still trying to figure out how to track impact and optimize in those areas.
There’s still a lot of debate—like, do these models actually look at structured data or not? You hear both sides, and these kinds of conversations are still ongoing.
Personally, I’ve got a few theories I’m working through. I’m running some tests—like, if I write a piece of content on Indeed or somewhere similar, how long does it take before it shows up in ChatGPT? I saw you tested this week. It was just one day or two right?
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I wanted to run a quick test just a couple of days after the publication. So I started asking some questions—just using ChatGPT in this case. I knew I was talking about something that was in the piece I'd just published, and ChatGPT had already ingested it through Search GPT.
As you probably know, there’s a difference between classic ChatGPT and Search GPT. With classic, it’s more like the old-school Google—you'd have to wait a while for your content to get picked up and show up in responses. But with Search GPT, it was almost immediate. It showed my content as the first result, which was super exciting.
So yeah, it's definitely getting faster. And obviously, that also means Bing was quick to index my content too.
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that’s actually a good test. And that’s what I had in mind too. Like, how would it go? And I’m not looking for a definitive answer here, because honestly, I don’t have one.
But once you’re in a more competitive space—where there’s real demand and existing answers—the question becomes: how long does it take for you to influence that answer?
Can you or your brand become a trusted source? Or if you’re already considered a source, and you go back to update or optimize your content—maybe it's something that mentions your brand along with a few others—how do you steer that content to really spotlight what makes you stand out?
How do you tweak or influence that answer so it better reflects what you want people to see?
Gianluca Fiorelli: Well, it’s not manipulation; it’s influence, haha.
Gus Pelogia: I know the word “manipulate” has a bad reputation, but it kind of depends, you know? Like, you can shape Play-Doh into something cool.
Anyway, how do you, um, influence the response to highlight the good things about your brand? I think that’s going to be a really fun space to explore.
Right now, I’m dabbling here and there—just experimenting—but pretty soon, I’ll be diving in fully and running those tests myself. I’m excited to immerse myself in that whole world.
The Proust Questionnaire
Gianluca Fiorelli: True, true. Okay—well, what a great conversation. I mean, the only thing missing is a beer to make it even better.
Gus Pelogia: Yes, that’d be nice.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Let’s move on to the part of the session that’s becoming a bit of a classic. It’s where I ask you a series of, let’s say, personal—but not too personal—questions. The idea is that you answer quickly, without overthinking it. Just say whatever comes straight from your heart, your brain, and your mouth.
It’s a fun way to get to know someone a little better—both for the person answering and those listening in.
So, here we go. First question: What’s your favorite sound?
Gus Pelogia: My favorite sound? Hmm... I’m not sure—maybe rain. It's so relaxing, as long as you don’t have to go outside. I don’t know—I’ve never really thought about my favorite sounds. Um… okay, here’s one that really touches my heart: when I go to daycare or come back home, and my daughter sees me, she just screams from whatever room she’s in and comes running to me. That’s a great sound.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Okay. And what are some of the things you enjoy most when you have time to yourself?
Gus Pelogia: Right now, what I really enjoy—like, really enjoy—is going to the gym. I don’t miss a day. I go one day, rest the next, then go again. It’s become a really relaxing part of my routine.
It’s such a habit now that even this week, when I’m feeling a bit under the weather—and we couldn’t record yesterday like we planned—I still found myself thinking, I can’t miss the gym today. Hopefully, I’ll start feeling better soon so I can go this evening.
So yeah, it’s something I genuinely love doing, and I feel off if I miss it.
Gianluca Fiorelli: So, uh, what's a movie you've seen the most times? If there is one.
Gus Pelogia: Not a movie, but a series—I spent countless hours watching Seinfeld. I absolutely love the show. I'm always quoting random lines from it. I even convinced my wife to get me the Seinfeld LEGO set—it’s actually up on the wall right here. So yeah, Seinfeld is definitely my number one show, even though I haven’t watched it in a while.
I could rewatch any episode anytime.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, I love it too. Seinfeld—when I was working in television, I was actually trying really hard to buy the TV rights for Seinfeld for cable TV in Italy. But, you know, Fox had more money, so they ended up getting it. We came pretty close, though! We did manage to get the TV rights for The Office—the UK version—along with a bunch of Star Trek shows and so on. It was a really fun and exciting time in my professional life.
Anyway, another question for you. You’ve lived in quite a few places—you’re kind of a globetrotter, right? What would you say is the one quality you loved most about each country you’ve lived in, including Brazil?
Gus Pelogia: Um, yeah, I think what I love and miss most about Brazil is just having all my friends around—those deep, lasting connections that don’t fade with time. I have childhood friends and others I met as an adult, and we’ve been close for 15, 20 years. I could fly back tomorrow, and it would be like no time has passed. We’d still have so much to talk about, like we hadn’t missed a single day.
Argentina was where I first learned to live as an expat. It’s where I started meeting people from all sorts of cultures and really began to feel like a global citizen. I realized that there isn’t just one right way to do things—there are so many different approaches to life beyond what I grew up with.
Then there’s Amsterdam—or Holland in general—which was fascinating. People there are incredibly direct and live in such a different way from what I was used to. I’d find myself at random house parties with people I’d just met, biking everywhere. In Brazil, cars are often a status symbol—people show off their wealth through what they drive. But in the Netherlands, my boss, who ran a company of 30 people and earned a great salary, would ride around on a cheap bike. And no one cared. There’s just less focus on power and appearances, and that made me feel more at home.
Now I’m in Ireland, and it feels like the place where I’m really building my life. I’ve gotten used to the rhythm here. Irish people are incredibly friendly, and I met my wife here. It just feels like a solid place to settle down, and honestly, I think this is probably where I’ll stay.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Cool. So, speaking of Ireland—I know you’re involved in the scene there, especially since you live in Dublin, if I’m not mistaken? Right. Dublin is kind of the European tech hub, thanks to all the advantages Ireland offers big companies for setting up their offices. It’s a really multicultural city, and I imagine the SEO community reflects that.
I remember Learning Bound—you were involved with that too, right? I actually presented there once! It’s not a huge community, probably due to demographics, but it's definitely an active one.
I’m curious—are you still doing stuff with that group? Or have you started something new, maybe a more informal SEO meetup or project?
Gus Pelogia: Yes, the first SearchIRL meetup is tomorrow, actually. So we are recording on the 26th. It's on the 27th of March.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Oh, it already happened around the time we published this episode. Are you planning to make it a recurring thing, or are you just letting it happen randomly?
Gus Pelogia: So, I’m aiming to do this four times a year. And just to give a bit of context—every year, I write down a list of goals for the coming year. These can be personal or work-related. One of the goals I set this time was to organize a meetup in Ireland at least four times this year—basically, once per quarter, which feels very doable.
Three months between events is plenty of time to prepare, so I got started. When I posted about it on LinkedIn, someone reached out—he works in SEO for a hotel chain—and said, “Hey, maybe I can help you find a venue.” Just the fact that I shared the idea publicly led to someone stepping in to help, which was amazing.
He showed me three or four different venue options, and we picked one. That’s how it all came together. If I hadn’t posted about it, I probably would’ve kept thinking, “Yeah, I’ll get to it… maybe next month,” and it might’ve just fizzled out. But once someone else got involved, it gave the whole thing momentum.
That’s something I try to do in every meeting—get things moving. I’ll suggest next steps, assign responsibilities, and propose a date. And that’s exactly what happened with Luke. He said, “Let’s do it. I’ll show you some venues. How about next week?” And suddenly, it was real. I had to carve out a couple of hours to check out the venues, and by the end of that week, we had a location and a date locked in. It was happening.
And because I’d committed to it publicly—and involved others—I had to follow through. I’m really excited about it. As far as I know, there aren’t any other SEO events happening in Dublin or Ireland right now. I’m not doing this to make money; I’m actually covering the food costs out of pocket for this first one. Hopefully, I can get some sponsors to help cover costs for future events.
But for me, it’s really about building a community—bringing people together and seeing who else is out there doing SEO. I know the folks I work with at Indeed, a few people at Wolfgang, maybe two or three other agencies… but that’s about it. I know there are others doing really cool things, and I’d love to connect and learn from them, too.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s also really rewarding—this whole journey of contributing to and maintaining a live community. And we all know about the SEO community and its impact. The positive aspects of the SEO community really stand out—they outweigh the challenges that come with any community.
Thank you so much. This was a really good conversation, and it was a real pleasure having you on this episode of Search Session. I wish you a speedy recovery—I know you’ve had a bit of a health issue recently. Take care, and I really hope to see you again in real life soon.
Gus Pelogia: Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I’ve actually been following your work for quite a while, even before we met, so I was really happy when you reached out and thought of me as a good fit for something you’re doing. Hopefully, the people watching or listening got at least a little something interesting—something they can learn from, build on, or turn into something even better for themselves.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Maybe it sparked an idea for them—and hopefully, they'll share it with us, too. Thank you so much! Bye-bye!
Podcast Host
Gianluca Fiorelli
With almost 20 years of experience in web marketing, Gianluca Fiorelli is a Strategic and International SEO Consultant who helps businesses improve their visibility and performance on organic search. Gianluca collaborated with clients from various industries and regions, such as Glassdoor, Idealista, Rastreator.com, Outsystems, Chess.com, SIXT Ride, Vegetables by Bayer, Visit California, Gamepix, James Edition and many others.
A very active member of the SEO community, Gianluca daily shares his insights and best practices on SEO, content, Search marketing strategy and the evolution of Search on social media channels such as X, Bluesky and LinkedIn and through the blog on his website: IloveSEO.net.
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