Join Rob Twells and returning guest Rüdi Dalchow, Global SEO Strategy Lead at Improove, for another insightful episode of Room 301.
Rudi highlights the importance of staying curious in marketing and how you should never be afraid to ask too many questions (even the "stupid" ones) if you really want to be successful in SEO.
He also shares insights into key SEO tools like Microsoft Clarity and the evolving role of AI in digital marketing. Plus – find out what we're throwing into Room 301 this time, with plenty of light-hearted stories and relatable marketing frustrations along the way!
Some of the resources mentioned in the podcast.
Disclaimer: These resources shared are based solely on the experiences of the podcast guest. This is not a sponsored segment or an endorsement.
Rob Twells (00:29)
Welcome back. Rudi, how are you?
Rüdiger Dalchow (00:33)
Yeah, not too bad. It's nice that you have me again. Everything's good on my end. A few changes in my position and the company I work for. I hope you are well as well.
Rob Twells (00:43)
Yes, and we'll get into that. For anyone that doesn't know, Rudi appeared on the Room 301 podcast, I want to say about a year, maybe a year and a half ago. It was very focused around AI at the time. AI was a trending topic, because it still is now, to be fair, but maybe less so. So, yeah, for anybody that didn't listen to that,
Rüdiger Dalchow (00:53)
More year and half I think.
Rob Twells (01:06)
first episode where you were on. Tell the listeners a bit more about you, tell them about the role change that you've had recently.
Rüdiger Dalchow (01:15)
So yeah, last time I was on I worked for a company in Mansfield called 20i, web hosting company. I changed in between to an international SEO agency, even if I worked in -house all my life before and I said never agency. But now I work for an international agency with headquarters in Vienna, offices in New York, Madrid and Munich. And I'm the only lonely fighter in the UK. I sit in Nottingham.
Started there as a senior SEO manager and meanwhile involved to which is global SEO strategy lead which is quite a mouthful. But yeah, it's interesting. It's really, it's fun to work like with trying to align the approach of different offices in different places of the world and
Rob Twells (01:54)
Yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (02:07)
different cultures of work and approaches as well. So it's fun.
Rob Twells (02:13)
Have you managed to get out to the other offices at all?
Rüdiger Dalchow (02:17)
I've been to Vienna a few times. I haven't been to New York and Madrid, so Vienna I go four times a year. I should maybe mention the name of the company as well. It's called Improove with a double O. It's founded by a former Google employee and we have a few old Googlers in there which really really helps sometimes because of the insights they can provide.
Rob Twells (02:19)
nice.
Nice.
I bet.
Rüdiger Dalchow (02:46)
Yeah and I hope to go to Madrid early next year and New York is still on the bucket list but unfortunately the guys from the US come more often to Austria as well and so we meet there but yeah let's see what happens.
Rob Twells (03:02)
Let's see, let's see. Well look, if you don't mind really, take us back, take us back. How did you get into the wonderful world of SEO?
Rüdiger Dalchow (03:12)
Yeah, that's a little bit an unusual story maybe, most of the people who do this for a long time got there on an unusual way because there was no uni course in digital marketing. There was no digital marketing. There was no digital at all. So when I went to uni and I studied printership, so big printing machines and stuff like this, the internet was still quite a new thing, at least in Germany.
Rob Twells (03:40)
Hahaha.
Rüdiger Dalchow (03:41)
And yeah, in studying printership you learn about SGML, which is basically where HTML derives from. So I was able to translate this a little bit and then make my own first website as a juggler and performer. So I was a professional juggler for part of my life.
Rob Twells (04:02)
Oh wowser!
Rüdiger Dalchow (04:05)
Because of that, then a few other people asked me, can you make us a website as well? And it was an on and off relationship with building websites and digital marketing for quite a while. And then I, in mysterious way, fell more and more into it and realized I'm not so bad at what I do and people start paying me money. So yeah, all good.
Rob Twells (04:26)
Always a good sign. When someone starts paying you money that means you're valuable and you're good at something. Well look, we typically split our episodes into three areas. One is called What's in Your Toolbox? Then we have a funny failure and then we go on to the main event which is what we're going to put in Room 301. So we'll start with What's in Your Toolbox? Now when it comes to the toolbox, this doesn't necessarily have to be a piece of software at all. It could just be the way you think about something, the way…
Rüdiger Dalchow (04:31)
Yes.
You're not doing it too long.
Rob Twells (04:56)
you get through your work on a daily basis, the framework that you use. You're a busy guy, you're leading a team, for example, so how do you get through your work really? What sort of tools do you use? What sort of ways of thinking do you have? Yeah, over to you.
Rüdiger Dalchow (05:13)
So I think for tools it's mainly the standard SEO and management tools we use, so there's nothing outstanding, all the Ahrefs and Semrush and Screaming Frog and stuff like this. What I found with tools really interesting in the past half year is the development of Microsoft Clarity.
Rob Twells (05:34)
Okay, yes.
Rüdiger Dalchow (05:35)
heat mapping tool. A lot of people know a lot of people use other heat mapping tools, but it has developed in far more than a heat mapping tool. So it gives you excessive clicks, scrolling data and stuff like this. And I find this really useful and it's for free, which is always nice. the guy who pays the bills always likes this, which means you in your case. That's in general tools.
Rob Twells (05:42)
Yeah.
Well, yeah, exactly.
Correct.
Rüdiger Dalchow (06:02)
Other than that from like a thinking approach, I'm always surprised that I see in meetings on client side and on our team side sometimes you see the question mark on the face of people but they don't ask the question. And that's, I'm never shy even if I think it's an absolutely stupid question.
Rob Twells (06:19)
Yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (06:25)
But if I have the question, I ask it. No matter if it's inside our business or if to the client. Because if I don't understand…
the scope, the task, then I can't fulfill it. And maybe the client hasn't asked the question himself because nobody asked it before. That happens often, they say, yeah, actually that's a good question. Why did nobody else ask this before? that's, you know, always stay curious and if you don't understand something, ask. Don't feel bad about not understanding and say, I…
Rob Twells (06:45)
Hmm. Hmm.
Rüdiger Dalchow (06:59)
I look it up later. Ask the people who can give you the answer. That's, I think, the most important thing within your own head.
Rob Twells (07:07)
No, 100%. 100%. I think stay curious, it's a quote that I live by as well, think. I'm notorious for getting into the details.
Rüdiger Dalchow (07:14)
I think it's the main thing in our industry because it changes so often and if you are set to, I know this now and I do everything with my knowledge I have accumulated up to now, you will be outdated within three months, latest.
Rob Twells (07:34)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, devil is in the detail, I would say. On Microsoft Clarity then, so, I mean, we've always been big users of Hotjar over the last, well, going back probably six or seven years now, but I've noticed, particularly the design team, so we employ user experience designers here, I've noticed a slight change in them using things like Microsoft Clarity. Now, two questions for you, assuming you've used Hotjar, which do you think is a better platform for comparing heatmaps and user experience?
What sort of things have Microsoft added to the Clarity tool over the last sort of six months or so that makes it a good tool for you to use?
Rüdiger Dalchow (08:13)
I used Hotjar for about two years actually so I'm sure they have development as well but for once I don't use it on a daily basis we only use it in a few projects at the moment I think Hotjar still has a few more features but again
Rob Twells (08:16)
Wow, even clarity since then.
Okay.
Rüdiger Dalchow (08:31)
clarity for once is free. Back in the days, clarity was really, at least I found, quite a hold up in your loading speed. Meanwhile, this has become better. It's still extra code you have to load, it has become better. And I really like the things that it shows you, like excessive scrolling, excessive clicking, where you can see, do I have my CTAs on the right point and stuff like this.
Rob Twells (08:41)
Right, yeah.
Yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (09:00)
If they click there and there is nothing to click, maybe I should put something there. You know, it's just for identifying the user journey really and where the user intends the journey is not always the same where your UX team intended the user to go his journey. Yeah, that's I think quite a few nice features they have integrated meanwhile.
Rob Twells (09:04)
Yeah
Yeah, no, big fan, big fan. I'm surprised it's still free as well. How long that lasts for, who knows.
Rüdiger Dalchow (09:30)
I think Microsoft, they still try to get some market share over providing some tools. I Google has done the same for ages with everybody has Google Maps and stuff like this. So, yeah, you go to Google for all things. for something like Microsoft, think this tool is not one of the major cost points.
Rob Twells (09:49)
Yeah, yeah, whether it stays free is anyone's guess, isn't it? So, now look, some really good tools there. know it's a tool, Microsoft Clarity in particular is something that we use and I I imagine anybody else in marketing or involved in optimizing their website has exposure to, but staying curious, yeah, for sure. think anybody in a marketing position, get the detail, get as much information as possible. The more information you can take in, in my opinion, the better the output. So think that's a really good way of thinking about gathering detail.
and making sure you produce good outputs for customers and internal teams.
Rüdiger Dalchow (10:20)
and
And with this output, come to one of the last two actually, I want to mention it, because a lot of people, and I read this all the time, we will come back to this later with a pet peeves, because it's the use of AI and there are still so many people out there who are self -declared prompt engineers and just put something in ChatGPT and think that is the solution without any bigger workflow behind this.
Rob Twells (10:37)
Okay, yes.
Hmm.
Rüdiger Dalchow (10:54)
And so we created with some people who are far cleverer than me, in -house a few workflows to utilize different sources of data, put them into data links and then use different LMMs to analyze this.
because that makes you independent so whenever something happens to because we know all OpenAI at the moment yeah they're doing a good job but they are burning through millions of dollars a day and you know there's no security they will be around in a year or Perplexity or whatever happens with Lambda and stuff like this but when you build a workflow that can utilize different LMMs then you're independent because the flow still works it doesn't matter
Rob Twells (11:27)
Hmm.
Rüdiger Dalchow (11:40)
which engines you use in it. And so we have some really good experience with this in data gathering and ideation tools and as well as at the moment one of the big topics organic shopping identifying opportunities in organic shopping which is I mean in the UK we are ahead of the rest of the continent at the moment but when you look in America
Rob Twells (11:58)
Yes.
Rüdiger Dalchow (12:10)
every like buyer inspired query is just grids, grids, grids with filters on the side and it's crazy. And you know.
Rob Twells (12:18)
Really?
Yeah, I mean, last time you last time you came on the podcast really, we were quite heavy on AI. We're talking about that in a lot of detail. was fairly not new, but it was it was definitely a hot topic in the news and particularly the SEO industry. So over the last 18 months, what sort of impact has AI had on search results? Your ability to do SEO? Do you think you've had a positive impact or a negative impact overall?
Rüdiger Dalchow (12:49)
On our ability to do SEO it has a positive impact and it's continuing to do so because even if it's now quite a while that all the the conversional AIs are around, it's still a stage where we build tools for it and establish workflows. But it helps us really to save time in
Rob Twells (12:54)
Yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (13:14)
Research especially, know, just you don't have to click through everything manually just I said you have a workflow who says okay Gather me information from this and this and this and this channels put them all together in a data
make me then you can make TDF IDFs over all the documents or BM 25 running over it or something like this and
really save some time there without losing quality, sometimes even with increasing quality, because as a human you get tired, you get bored when you research a topic. The good thing about AI solutions is they don't get tired or bored. They can do the same thing 50 000 times for the same bloody topic, sorry for swearing, for the same topic and they still find the things they are looking for.
human would not. On the other hand, seeing on some client side and over the wider web, there are so many quick and cheap approaches which will hurt companies and businesses because they just churn out. Low quality would be too much of an approval for this content. No quality content.
Rob Twells (14:34)
Yeah, understatement.
Rüdiger Dalchow (14:37)
And there's just a myriad of no quality content at the moment exploding. And I think there's a few people who still haven't realized this and are still going down this road. yeah, let's say like for nine months, they heard the word programmatic approach. And now they are again having one prompt they use in ChatGPT or in…
Rob Twells (14:51)
Yeah. Yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (15:06)
Gemini or whatever and try to solve problems in content creation and Ideation with that and it wouldn't work. It would work. It's still work the work just changed
Rob Twells (15:20)
I agree. Well look, I appreciate you sharing your tools and your ways of thinking. I think there's some really good takeaways there. Moving on to the next part of the episode. failures. I think anybody who has been successful in their career has faced failures. What I'm particularly interested in is either a failure that stuck with you, for whatever reason, something that may have had a really big learning curve for you, or just something that was a little bit funny.
We all like to laugh, don't we? So over to you. me some failures that have stuck with you or are pretty funny to look back on.
Rüdiger Dalchow (15:58)
One was rather recent. That's personal. I'm really bad with names. I can't remember names normally. And so I always try before I have meetings or whatever with bigger groups, I try to remember all of the names. And then again, on an agency, sometimes you have a little bit time pressure. So I rushed from one meeting into the next one with like the head of marketing from a multinational company. And even if it's like we have now, you have the names down at the bottom.
Rob Twells (16:01)
dear.
Yeah.
Alright.
Rüdiger Dalchow (16:28)
the name is shown and and i addressed him with the wrong name from the guy in the meeting before for the whole hour and everybody was looking at that now he was actually not saying anything i think he was smirking a little bit and he he really kept it to the end till he said actually my name is not this it's it's this and i like yeah yeah he he had his he had his fun with this he knew i was wrong and
Rob Twells (16:35)
Did they take it well?
You let you go an entire meeting without, yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (16:55)
It was an oversight just but he let me run through the whole meeting and at the end he said and I like, no, please. So yeah, sometimes it's good. I think I will go back to post it notes on my screen. And yeah, the other thing is which stuck with me, that was luckily was just one of my pet projects. So for some friends where I manage their sites on the side
Rob Twells (17:07)
Yes, yeah, yeah, take it old school.
Rüdiger Dalchow (17:24)
and I uploaded a YouTube video for the wrong side on the other side so basically there was a YouTube video for some some clowning and juggling on a website for a bike shop for what two days because I just went on the weekend and they like Rüdiger why is this video on our webpage? and I'm like let me have a look
Rob Twells (17:40)
It is a client website.
Rüdiger Dalchow (17:48)
that should be on the other page. So again, a little bit lack of concentration, but you know, when you do five things at once, it can happen. Lucky again, it was pet project, pro bono project where I don't get anything for myself, but still it's a little bit like, things like this shouldn't happen. sometimes it's better sit back, take a breather before you press the publish button.
Rob Twells (17:49)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we all fall into that trap, particularly with busy people, know, having three or four things to do at once, feeling like deadlines are just falling upon you at any given moment and you end up making silly mistakes. Nine times out of ten, normally it's for a customer, customers find it, fine.
Rüdiger Dalchow (18:28)
Yeah, it's like the classic, know, sending an email before you completed it and just press the send button and then like, haven't put the date in for the meeting.
Rob Twells (18:35)
Yeah, yeah, I always try and take a moment before sending an email or a message now. That's a big learning for me actually. You send an email or a message, you look back at it, a day later you think, hmm, maybe I was just feeling some kind of way at that moment. Maybe it didn't come across in the right way, maybe it had been received not so well by the person receiving it. So yeah, learnings.
Rüdiger Dalchow (19:02)
I think the classic really is, know, like, like, will you agree to this meeting at two o 'clock and not putting the day in? That's something where always when I read through like, you haven't put the day in, please put the date and the day in as well. That's why I always, know, like before I press send turn around, take a breather I have a sip of water.
Rob Twells (19:16)
Yeah.
Correct. Well, on to the main events. So, I've done plenty of these episodes now and there's a lot of pet peeves, let me tell you. I think marketers are the most frustrated people in the world by the sounds of it. So, give me some of yours. What are we going to put into Room 301? What do you not want to see happen again in marketing?
Rüdiger Dalchow (19:46)
Yeah, I'm not sure if they're that unique because there's quite a few things I think they will happen to everyone. First thing is when people contact you and say, yeah, I've read your profile and then continue. I'm an SEO expert and think I can help you with your website.
Clearly you haven't read my profile because the company I work for does the same on a rather big scale what you're trying to offer me. I mean, you know, if it's not scientific… Yeah.
Rob Twells (20:21)
I mean, I must get 25 of these a day. I must do.
Rüdiger Dalchow (20:28)
Yeah, but then don't say you read the profile. Just say, know, we are a company and would you like to our services or white label or whatever? That's. But I think that's that's that's a very common one.
Rob Twells (20:41)
I had a voicemail yesterday, I a voicemail from a very nice sounding lady, but it was just one of those emails but in voicemail format. was, hey, this Rob, we've looked at your website, we think we can get it to the top of Google, give me a call back. I was like, well that's different, at least she's done something different. But again, same rules apply. If you took 30 seconds just to look at what we do as a company, you'll realise that we probably don't need your support.
Rüdiger Dalchow (21:02)
Yeah
Yeah, especially if it's normally a sent from like an Outlook email account or whatever.
Rob Twells (21:15)
Yeah, it's like a Gmail or an Outlook, yeah, yeah, or a Hotmail. Yeah, terrible. No, but that's in. We can put that in.
Rüdiger Dalchow (21:20)
At least it's not an account anymore. No, but with Voicemail, I think this will come off because meanwhile you can get so good AI -generated voice and videos. That's unbelievable. So we work at the moment at like really digitalizing a few of our staff as well for company videos and stuff like this. The output is amazing.
Rob Twells (21:33)
yeah, absolutely,
What else?
Rüdiger Dalchow (21:49)
Back to the pet peeves one thing I really, I don't think we can get rid of this in marketing or SEO or whatever, it's, you know, when client talks to you and says, yeah, can you achieve this and this and say, yeah, yeah, can you give me access to your data? And they're like, no. And you're like.
How should I do an assessment when I don't get don't you have tools? Yeah, but they are tools. They are estimates. I need you know, at least your Search Console and your GA4. That's that's the minimum and the understanding I think of what we do sometimes still where I think it's our industry was was a little bit lazy in the past 10 years in educating our clients as well because
Rob Twells (22:41)
Yeah, yeah.
Rüdiger Dalchow (22:43)
yeah, they do something with keywords. No, it's, it's, it's first, it's not a silo. You can't think in silos anymore. You know, you have to work together with the paid team, with the sales team to get data from customer voices at best. And you know what, what your customers complain about, please give me the data. can analyze this data and then see what the pain points are. But there's a lot of time for reluctance to give this out. And that is really one thing I wish.
Rob Twells (22:53)
Absolutely,
Rüdiger Dalchow (23:11)
that would be something of the past and we could just say, okay, let's share the data with somebody who we want to achieve for us and not keep it all in house. That's really, that's sometimes rather annoying and challenging.
Rob Twells (23:26)
Yeah, there's definitely a disconnect between what an SEO will do and what the expectation from somebody sitting at board level might think of that. I think there's still lots of rogue agencies, rogue freelancers around that will still do black hat techniques and all that kind of stuff. think that gives, even to this day, gives SEO a bad name in some instances. And I think there's a lack of trust there at times. There's a great customer is one that really values what you do.
they value the audits that you do in order to make a strategy. The ones that want to hide it, I always think that's a sign that actually they could well be a poor client down the road.
Rüdiger Dalchow (24:10)
Yeah, because it's trust is not there. I I understand with some companies, if there's sensitive data, if you work within the finance sector or whatever, there's lot of hoops you have to jump through to get an approved supplier and stuff like this. But in general, the more data you have, the better job you can do. this, know, SEO is not just printing a few keywords over the content. That's…
Rob Twells (24:19)
Yeah.
No, Spirit, no.
Rüdiger Dalchow (24:39)
That's a little bit 2005.
Rob Twells (24:41)
Correct. Correct. Anything else for Room 301?
Rüdiger Dalchow (24:48)
Yeah, I'm getting a little bit more friendly with it, but I'm still not a big fan of GA4 to be honest.
Rob Twells (24:54)
No, no, can't say I am either, to be honest.
Rüdiger Dalchow (24:58)
It just makes things rather complicated to find the sources, the attribution ways and stuff like this. It is possible, but the pain in the backside. I hope whenever Google does an overhaul, and I hope they do it soon, they will think a little bit more about what people really want. The data is there and it's more data than universal actually before, but it's just so complicated to get to it.
Rob Twells (25:16)
Yes.
Yeah, I I really miss universal analytics and I was really quite proficient at that. I've not really used GA for a huge amount, but I know, again, the feedback from our internal team is no, you know, it's very difficult. The user interface is very difficult. Setting up reporting at the start of client relationships is a pain. Yeah, there's no, I mean, Google must listen to this feedback. I'd love to be a part of their meetings where they're talking about what they do next with it, actually.
Rüdiger Dalchow (25:57)
Yeah, but I think Universal was still, it was clunky, but the whole industry got used to it over a decade. And the change of how you then get to, know, like, what actually attributes to an MQL in the end or to a conversion. And it's just…
Rob Twells (26:06)
Hmm.
Rüdiger Dalchow (26:20)
It's ridiculous complicated and I don't think they really thought about this. just said somebody thought about, what data can I get from this? But not what is the interesting data and how is the connection between different data points.
Rob Twells (26:28)
Mm
No, I totally agree. Well, all three things are firmly on the top of most people's lists of what is very annoying about our role these days. But I appreciate you coming on again, Rudi. If anyone wants to find out more about you or the company you work for, where should they go?
Rüdiger Dalchow (26:52)
Everyone can find me on LinkedIn. That's the easiest way to get in contact with me. For the company, just Google or go to Improove as a double "o" .net. That does the trick and we're just overhauling our own website. So wait a little. But yeah.
Rob Twells (27:15)
Haha.
Rüdiger Dalchow (27:19)
No, but LinkedIn is the best way I would think to get in contact with me or any colleagues of mine or the company as well.
Rob Twells (27:26)
Well I appreciate that Rudi and I appreciate everyone listening in today. We're looking to drop episodes every two weeks so we'll see you again soon.
Rob is the Founder of an award winning digital agency (since forming a digital agency group The Digital Maze with Boom Online) specialising in eCommerce, SEO, PPC, CRO, digital strategy and web design. With over 10+ years in the marketing space, Rob has been involved with hundreds of marketing projects and campaigns with some of the best known brands.
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