Business Class Lounge by SearchPilot, hosted by Will Critchlow: Recent Episodes
Will Critchlow
Will Critchlow interviews CMOs, VPs and other marketing leaders to understand how they really think about leadership, management, finance, and more. The Business Class Lounge podcast is designed to be interesting to marketing leaders who want to improve, to founders and CEOs who recruit and manage them, and for practitioners who aspire to senior roles.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate. You can find out more about SearchPilot at www.searchpilot.com.
Follow Will on twitter @willcritchlow and SearchPilot @searchpilot.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What does leadership really care about when it comes to SEO?
Will spends a lot of time talking to folks in leadership positions about what they really care about (as well as to the teams who report to them). Some of the themes Will explored are: SEO is confusing. We don't have SEO goals; We want to do things right but faster; We've been stung by SEO before. If any of these resonate with you, then listen to both Part 1 and 2!
This is Part 2. You should be able to find Part 1's audio in the show's library.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What does leadership really care about when it comes to SEO?
Will spends a lot of time talking to folks in leadership positions about what they really care about (as well as to the teams who report to them).
This is Part 1 before Will accidentally pressed the wrong button and took himself out of the live stream. Thankfully, the YouTube and LinkedIn live streams continued, but the audio file recording was split into two parts. Hence, Part 2's audio upload follows next.
Tune in to the full live stream on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
There's only one thing in the news this week as it relates to Google - and that's the leak of internal engineering documentation regarding how organic search works. First reported and analysed by Rand Fishkin and Michael King, it's a treasure trove of rabbit holes (to mix my metaphors) for those of us who geek out on this stuff. But what does it change? What should we be doing differently as a result? Rand said that if you aren't changing things as a result (and didn't have omniscient knowledge of Google's inner workings already) then "you're not paying attention". I disagree. Tune in to find out why. Tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In a week where we are celebrating the announcement that SearchPilot is working with M&S to bring SEO into their experimentation program, it seemed like a good time to revisit testing in ecommerce generally, how experimentation programs work, and what good looks like! Tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Taking on the biggest announcement from Google (so far), AI Overview, Will sifts through published articles and posts to get to the core points of how this can affect marketing and the search world. He also shares ways on how we, as marketers and SEO professionals, can do better amidst all these changes. One clear way of doing better is by running more SEO A/B tests as it's going to get harder to predict which pages will perform better. He concludes with an optimistic point of view on all these changes. Tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this live stream, Will shares his thoughts on whether Google is saving costs and provides an explanation to uncover a few recent mysteries. He breaks down the answer referencing revenue reports and data-based research. Also featured in this week's talk is the presentation he gave at the recent BrightonSEO conference. You can tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Google is feeling the pressure, from regulators, from the media, and from customers. Are they really under pressure? What are they likely to do about it? This week, Will want to dive into some of the sources of uncertainty and instability and what they mean for marketers and leaders of companies that rely heavily on search visibility. Here's one of the articles (The Man Who Killed Google Search) he referenced in his talk. You can tune in to the full live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this week's live stream, Will covers a whole bunch of articles and thoughts on whether a Google subscription works or not. He also talks briefly about the effect of your (UK) social status on your work pay and promotion. He shares podcast episodes and channels that he's listened to and following. Two of them are from Lenny's Podcast where Jason Lemkin talks about building world-class sales organizations and Dharmesh Shah on productivity framework for leaders. You can tune in to the whole live stream recording on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Learn about a goal-setting model for your experimentation program, early lessons for SEO A/B testing from Googlebot and GSC, and Will's insights on being a 'sustainable' founder. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week's talk centers around the value of experimentation to help you make meaningful decisions. Will also shares some research paper and trend lines on statistics and ecommerce growth. All that to point to the importance of testing for both CRO and SEO with an example of a CRO positive change that was a -25% effect on SEO. Head over to our YouTube channel to see some live whiteboarding to have a sneak peek of Will's new 2x2 quadrant. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow pull out the threads on a common SEO element that is within your full control: internal linking? How can you influence this element more? How to set up SEO A/B tests for internal links? Plus Google's new Head of Search and Apple and Google Gemini's strategic partnership. And some sneak peek and news alerts from SearchPilot. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This new research proves that search is still the biggest channel and offers you your biggest opportunity for growth. Not only that but the data staggeringly shows that Google dominates the search stream. Will goes through this latest research from Rand Fishkin. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When you have experimentation ingrained in your organization's culture, it's important to have the right tool to match this practice and discipline. More often, we come across this question: Build or Buy? Will discusses this big ol' question referencing Ryan Lucht's presentation deck on experimentation and from Ronny Kohavi's deck. Find out what set of questions to use to determine whether build or buy suits you. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
After a week's break, Will is back with some thoughts on his experience bootstrapping while building his business. He also shares some of his holiday reading list. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, we are taking the SEO geek path as Will talks about Googlebot, Gemini (formerly Bard), Google's large language model, and how tracking works for SEO testing. Also, did you know that our platform has a new feature that shows you if your test pages are also crawled by Googlebot (you can see how this works on our YouTube channel). Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This week's livestream focuses on different research papers and articles on the discussion of whether Google is getting worse or if the web is getting worse. Will's opinion is that irrelevant content makes the site bad, especially with more AI-generated content. He makes a case for SEO testing and how this can help turn your website 'not bad' and shows what kinds of insights you can gain from SearchPilot's customer dashboard. Listen in or tune in on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will uncovers why SEO is as important as ever, how scalable sites are fueling the world's organic search traffic, and why companies should bring search statistics as part of their reporting. Plus, he talks about the ins and outs of producing search-performing content with generative AI and Google's new announcement on their Search Generative Experience (SGE). Tune in to this replay of the live stream on 23 Jan 2024. Join him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will does a candid talk on the different challenges that DIY SEO testing analysis can bring out: seasonality, statistics, the sophistication of the data and test set-up, and other compounding effects that are often outside of our control. There's a way to overcome these 'pains': listen in or tune in to YouTube to see some of the insights presented via screen sharing. Also, check out the podcast show recommendations on history, current affairs, politics, and how to write better....maybe even basketball. Join him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesdays). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this week's live stream, Will advocates for good experimentation program and what that looks like. He also shares ways on how to coordinate CRO and SEO testing to gain better metrics that you care most about which is revenue. Plus, things he learned from 'On Writing' by Stephen King and how to avoid 'death by a thousand cuts' part way reading through the 'Challenger Customer' book. Tune in to this replay and join him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every week (mostly Tuesday). If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Could SEO be your biggest opportunity in 2024? Will goes back to what SEO is, what it brings to your business and how you can make it your biggest growth opportunity for this year. He also shares thoughts from his holiday reads that included titles like: Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk and Michael Lewis' book about Sam Bankman-Fried. Tune in to the replay and join him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every Tuesday. If you want to see how SearchPilot can help you run more SEO A/B tests and make SEO your biggest growth opportunity, then let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will went live pre-festive season to cover how we keep our security and compliances in check to confidently deploy our software server-side and how to get important things done for a small business via a steering committee. Listen to the replay of this live stream to find out more about his insights as a business founder and CEO. Be sure to join him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube every Tuesday. If you want to see the SearchPilot features he mentioned in this episode, let us know here.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow shares what's on his reading and watch list. Have you seen The Bear? He also shares upcoming features of the SearchPilot platform, including how users can track Googlebot crawl data for the SEO tests they are running. He also talks about how Google Search Console data affects SEO testing and an upcoming beta feature to be added to the SearchPilot platform. Listen to this replay to hear more about this and his favourite episode of The Bear. Be sure to join him every Tuesday on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow explores the complex relationship between user behaviour and Google's ranking algorithm. He also discusses the implications of this for SEO strategies and the importance of focusing on user experience. Listen to the replay of this live stream to find out more about his insights on ranking factors. Be sure to join him every Tuesday on LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
My guest for this episode is Brian Hale.
Brian is currently VP of Growth at DoorDash. We met over a decade ago when he was in the growth team at Facebook, and we got to work together on some SEO initiatives. In the intervening decade, he rose up the ranks ultimately to lead a large team as VP of Product Growth across Meta (as Facebook had become by then). He's been responsible for as much growth and innovation as anyone I know, and his work has affected an incredible number of people. As you'll hear though, he's also an empathetic and effective leader, and I'm looking forward to quizzing him about growth challenges.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of the Business Class Lounge, Will interviews Stephanie Chang, a Fractional CMO and Growth Advisor.
Stephanie is a neuroscience major turned growth marketer. We first met over a decade ago when she joined the New York office of my agency, Distilled. Since then, she's built her career leading growth and strategy at Etsy and Glossier before starting her own fractional CMO business in 2020.
Over the past three years, she's helped startup CEOs work through their most difficult growth and go-to-market challenges. She's driven, intelligent and inspirational, and I think we're all going to learn a ton from her.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, Will Critchlow interviews Adam Monago, the VP of Global Digital Marketing at Adec Innovations.
Adam is an award-winning digital marketing expert who I met when he was the VP of Global Head of Digital Marketing and Strategy at ThoughtWorks a couple of years ago. He transformed the digital brand and space of ThoughtWorks, including creating the highly popular Technology Radar. He has always been a proponent and driver for modern digital experiences so that B2B businesses will have higher relevance and better impact. Adam is responsible for some of the smartest B2B campaigns I've seen, and I can't wait to quiz him about how he works.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow interviews April Dunford - positioning expert and author of Obviously Awesome
April is most well-known for her positioning work and her excellent book Obviously Awesome. Our conversation built on that and her experience in more general marketing roles at startups and in the enterprise. She’s done a million interviews about positioning, so I wanted to pick her brains about some different things. April is funny, incisive and engaging - if you like her advice, we highly recommend picking up a copy of her book.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow interviews Brian Provost - SVP and GM, Search at Yahoo.
Brian has as deep an understanding of news and media SEO as anyone in the world, worked at Define Media Group with many of the largest media properties globally and then ran search strategy at CBS interactive and ViacomCBS. Since May 2022, he’s GM for all of search and SEO at Yahoo which is a huge job, but if anyone can do it, he can. The work’s exciting, but as you’ll hear, there are a few areas where I believe Brian is head and shoulders above pretty much everyone I’ve met and I’m excited to find out how he does them.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow interviews Jes Scholz, Group CMO at Ringier.
Jes has one of the most complicated CMO jobs I know off, with responsibilities spanning verticals, brands and markets. I’ll let her describe it because I don’t even know the full extent of it all.
She has an extremely strong SEO background, and has worked her way up to the group leadership level in a large organization. I have learned a lot from her writing and conference talks on SEO (including sharing a stage with her at SearchLove), but I’ve never had the chance to quiz her on leadership and management topics so it was a real pleasure to be able to do that.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow interviews Cian Weeresinghe, Chief Marketing Officer at Wise.
I’ve actually known Cian since college, but it took us a little while to realise we had both ended up in internet marketing. Cian first got into digital at eBay - as one of a cohort of incredibly talented folks in the UK digital industry. That cohort are now scattered doing interesting things around the UK startup scene.
More recently, he ran growth at the Guardian after their massive domain migration in 2013, was CMO at cool travel company Secret Escapes, and is now CMO at Wise - formerly known as TransferWise - I guess he just can’t avoid being suckered in by big domain moves. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Cian.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow interviews Lisa Schneider, award-winning Chief Product Officer and co-founder at Cingo, which is working to close the gap between estate planning and execution.
Lisa and I first worked together when she was Chief Digital Officer at Merriam Webster. She is a visionary leader who has proven unusually capable of defining and capturing missions that inspire and direct teams and products. At Merriam Webster, that included considering the question "what's the mission of a dictionary?" and coming up with answer that worked in the digital age. I always love catching up with Lisa and I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation and our discussion of our shared love of the English language as much as we enjoyed having it.
This episode is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Will Critchlow interviews Kieran Flanagan, SVP Marketing at HubSpot.
Kieran started out in SEO, and has deep channel expertise. At HubSpot he has done many things including being part of founding HubSpot’s international business and at times leading 200-person strong team. He’s now the Senior Vice President of marketing and he’s exactly the kind of person we want to be bringing on this podcast because he has everything from detailed hands-on experience to stories of executive leadership and the understanding of what it takes to report right to the top of a large and successful organisation.
This trailer is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hear from Will Critchlow, the host of the Business Class Lounge, about his vision for the show, what he wants to learn from interviewing marketing leaders, and why he's starting a podcast. Listen to snippets of the first couple of interviews with Kieran Flanagan, SVP Marketing at HubSpot, and Lisa Schneider, CPO at Cingo and former Chief Digital Officer at Merriam Webster.
This trailer is produced by Mark Cotton and hosted by Will Critchlow - you can follow Will on Twitter: @willcritchlow.
The Business Class Lounge is a podcast from SearchPilot. SearchPilot helps large websites prove the value of SEO by making SEO tests easier, faster, and more accurate.
If you like the sound of the podcast, add the feed to your podcast app if you haven't already, and if you know anyone who you think would enjoy the conversations, please do recommend it to them.
You can email us at podcast@searchpilot.com to discuss anything you hear on the show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.