Episode Details

E1045: This is what it takes to carry the responsibility of managing 90 SEOs AT THE SAME TIME.

I sit down with Travis Tallent, former Managing Director of AI SEO at Brainlabs, where he led a team of 90 SEOs, CROs, digital PR specialists, and content strategists across enterprise clients like Microsoft and GitHub.

We break down what scales inside a large SEO organization, what quietly breaks, and what most people get wrong about hiring, systems, and AI.

This is not surface-level advice. It's what happens when you grow a team from 15 people to 90 in four and a half years and have to build the infrastructure to support it.

What we cover:

Leadership and scale - What leading 90 SEOs is really like day to day - The growing pains of scaling from 15 to 90 people - Why process matters more than talent at scale - How to build systems for communication across large teams - Decision rights, hierarchy, and why clarity prevents chaos - How to stop teams from getting in each other's way

Hiring and onboarding - The most underrated skill in SEO hires - How to screen for real operators, not surface-level knowledge - The interview question that reveals everything - What a three-month onboarding program actually looks like - Why mock calls and repetition build communication skill - How to design onboarding that produces confident, client-ready SEOs

Digital PR and link building - Why traditional outreach often fails at enterprise scale - What actually works in digital PR today - How to build data-driven linkable assets - Personalizing outreach without burning your domain reputation - Creative examples of assets that generate thousands of backlinks - Why brand investment matters more in the AI era

CRO and conversion strategy - Why incremental button tests rarely move the needle - When full funnel redesigns drive major revenue gains - Common CRO mistakes that hurt SEO - How poor design damages both traffic and conversions - Why cross-functional alignment between SEO, paid, design, and CRO is critical

AI, automation, and hype cycles - The real risks of migrating from .com to .ai - How executives think about AI branding decisions - Why most companies are trying to automate too early - The danger of vibe-coded sites without real strategy - What AI search actually requires to win

Enterprise SEO lessons - How to fix cannibalization at scale - Why internal linking and taxonomy are often overlooked - What separates plateauing sites from compounding ones - How to push back on clients using data instead of ego - The metrics that actually matter when you lead a large SEO team

This conversation is about ownership, discipline, and long-term thinking.

Scaling SEO is not about adding more people. It's about building clarity into hiring, onboarding, communication, and execution.

If you're running an agency, managing a marketing team, or building a SaaS company that depends on search, this episode will give you a more realistic view of what scale actually requires.

⭐️ Travis Tallent on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/travistallent/ ⭐️ Out in AI, Travis's LGBTQ+ & ally AI group: https://outinai.com/ ⭐️ Travis's company - Daynova - AI Change Management - https://daynova.ai/

🚀 Edward's SEO Articles - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/search-engine-optimization/

💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/

00:00 Managing 90 SEOs 01:51 Underrated SEO Skills 03:14 Communication Systems 05:31 Mock Calls Training 07:22 Scaling Team Onboard