In our new column, we will occasionally host leading people in the digital industry, and ask them to answer professional as well as personal questions. The goal of this column is to provide a platform and a space for prominent people in the digital community, so they can share their knowledge and experience with others.
Last time we hosted Elad Levy, click here to read the answers to his questions.
This time on the A-List – Eliav Lankri!
How did you start your career?
At age 13, I had a successful children and youth portal called Tik-Tak. I invested all the free time I had back then into it (including school time). I learned to program during that period and also got to know the world of marketing through my website. After all, you have a site—how do you bring traffic? That’s where it all started.
Every possible experiment related to SEO was done on that website.
Back then, there was a very active forum of developers, SEO specialists, and web hosts called Hosts. I was active there, and there was a competition where you had to rank a non-existent term on Google, and after several months the winner was announced. I decided to participate in the competition, and after a few months, I won first place. You could say that’s where I fell in love with SEO.
How did you take your first steps in the industry?
Before the army, at age 17-18, I was looking for what to do until enlistment. An acquaintance connected me to an amazing company called WhiteWeb, where I met 888 alumni who founded an SEO agency and provided services to the world’s largest companies in the Gambling sector. There, in practice, I became skilled at setting up 3-5 sites a day that were part of a large network promoting client sites, and I learned more techniques and work methods, some of which I still use today.
What are your challenges as the manager of an SEO agency in the international market?
First and foremost, it is important to note that since the beginning of COVID we have been working from home, and to be precise, 90% of my team is actually from foreign countries – which is a great advantage – (but a separate article should be written about that), which requires all of us to develop the ability to communicate remotely, whether in conversation, in writing, or simply checking in on remote employees, because one of the hard things we discovered is that working from home, alone in a room, can be unpleasant and sometimes you can feel very lonely.
In addition, one of my goals for 2022 is to SCALE processes and train all my employees to do everything, so there won’t be an employee responsible only for link buying or content optimization, so that everyone knows how to do everything. This requires organizing everything related to “organizational knowledge”—it’s worth noting there are guides, but it still requires going over and reorganizing as much as possible so things are clear.
Another challenge we face is related to one of our prominent capabilities as a company: we know how to do outreach (cold emails) and achieve very high open and response rates. Over the past year, we’ve seen that the providers we work with are starting to get very fearful of these types of activities, and it’s a challenge to find providers that allow working at the volumes we want. It’s a very long technical process where, ultimately, what determines whether we work with a provider is its deliverability capability and its flexibility with our requirements at the server level, etc.
What main platforms do you recommend advertisers use?
I’m an organic guy, don’t try to trip me up 😊 But if you insist, Adwords.
What do you think is the next big thing in digital marketing?
It seems that in the past year a lot of AI tools for content creation and prediction have emerged. The tools are supposed to save SEOs a lot of time on small tasks like generating titles or descriptions. I saw and tried Jarvis; unfortunately, I was not impressed, and I also saw a site that bragged that all its content was Jarvis and took a hit in the latest update.
Ultimately, it’s still in its infancy and a lot of good progress has been made, but a professional eye must review the final product and approve it. It is definitely not “set and forget.” Certainly not.
What does your workday routine look like?
- Coffee + mom’s cookie X2
- Checking the Data Studio report sent to my email with a summary of the company’s client traffic
- A quick run-through of tasks waiting for me in Asana (+ daily prioritization)
- Going through emails and prioritizing – what I can answer in a minute, I answer; what requires more from me goes in as a task for the daily routine.
- At 10:30, a video call with the team around the world – 10-15 minutes, each one updates on what they plan for today and if there’s anything they need help with / are stuck on.
Day is over 😊
- Not really, after the call I actually start the day; diving into tasks, getting on calls with employees, and of course in between meetings and tests that are done on the fly!
What marketing move did you pull off that kept you awake for a few nights?
During the COVID period, we greatly developed the company’s outreach capabilities; suddenly we could send 10,000 emails without an issue. I ran several tests and it turned out we got over 300 completely free links for our client because we were there at the right time, with the right tool, and with the right content. I remember that week I was on a “high.” Since then, we execute this move quite often; we may not get 300 links, but we definitely get links and everyone is happy.
What advice would you give to someone who has just started their journey in the digital world?
Patience is not something you can buy in any store. Today I see folks who just finished a course with the ambition to conquer the world, which I think is amazing. They need to start and gain as much experience as possible on their cousin’s website or in an early-stage company; the main thing is that they start exploring and creating work processes for themselves that will improve over time.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
From my competitors (in every niche). You can learn so much from competitors—what works and what doesn’t. It helps me open my mind and get ideas.
How do you stay updated on everything new in the world and in general?
I’ve had a subscription to Feedly for many years; this service aggregates all the sites I like, categorized by topics I organized, and when I have free time I visit and get updated. In addition, over the past year I’ve been visiting Twitter more than before. It has become a nice place for SEO enthusiasts; well-known figures share knowledge freely, which is wonderful.
Additionally, I recently started listening to podcasts. The issue is that it fits great during commutes to work, but the thing is, the office is at home 😊
How do you sum up the year 2021?
The year 2021 was a year of growth and building my team for the years ahead, instilling processes, and thinking about improving existing ones. There is still a lot of work, but we accomplished quite a bit this year, and I hope we achieve double that next year.
Following the COVID crisis period, what should we take forward and maintain?
The remote work model is something I was very skeptical about; I was proven wrong. I’m so glad it happened, you could say it’s a revolution that today everything can happen online. I have clients I’ve never met physically – in the past, everyone wanted to meet once a week / two weeks / month – today, a quick Zoom meeting is totally fine.
One of the things that annoyed me the most in the pre-COVID era was traffic jams, but there wasn’t really a visible alternative. I used to waste about two hours on the road every day just to get to the nice office we had in Ramat Gan (10 hours a week, which is another workday in my book).
Nowadays, that time is invested in the family 😊
A bit about the interviewee
