“If SEO needs to be baked into your product, then SEO needs to be in the room from the beginning.”
Malte Landwehr, VP of SEO at Idealo
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In this episode, Maeva Cifuentes speaks with Malte Landwehr, VP of SEO at Idealo. Malte shares how SEO isn’t just a channel, it’s the foundation of Idealo’s business model and what it actually means to lead SEO at executive level. He walks through how he filters out 75% of ideas using prioritization frameworks, how he scopes influence across five departments without direct authority, and how he handles being the first call when traffic drops. Malte also shares how he’s thinking ahead to generative search, what’s working for brand visibility in LLMs today, and why B2B leaders should be watching that space more closely than they are.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Cross-functional marketing alignment
- Enterprise SEO strategy
- SEO leadership
- SEO prioritization frameworks
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Takeaways
- SEO as a business model: Malte explains why SEO isn’t just a traffic channel at Idealo—it’s the foundation of the entire business model.
- Prioritizing at scale: He shares how to ruthlessly filter SEO ideas using ICE or RICE and a unique complexity formula based on team involvement.
- Driving cross-functional alignment: Strategies for influencing product, engineering, and content teams without formal authority.
- Building long-term visibility: Why tracking LLM citations and mentions matters now—even if the revenue impact is small today.
- Structuring SEO leadership: What it actually means to operate at VP level in SEO and why title alone isn’t enough without execution power.
Time chapters
[00:07] understanding how SEO became the business model at Idealo
[01:35] exploring the shift from consultant to VP-level SEO leadership
[03:22] navigating the illusion of being “out of SEO” while leading product
[05:25] embedding SEO into product, naming, and architecture decisions
[07:03] handling high-stakes responsibility when SEO drives the business
[09:30] prioritizing SEO projects with ICE/RICE at massive scale
[12:20] estimating complexity with a team-based effort formula
[14:58] spotting common traps in overestimating short-term SEO gains
[17:48] integrating SEO goals into other departments’ quarterly planning
[20:47] tracking LLM mentions and understanding brand-source dynamics
[24:31] comparing LLM traffic vs SEO traffic for B2B vs e-commerce
[26:36] applying the horizon model to structure your strategy time
[29:26] rethinking how long-term brand work fits into constrained resources
About Malte
Malte Landwehr is the Vice President of SEO at Idealo, where he leads enterprise-scale SEO strategy across millions of product pages. With over 15 years of experience in SEO, product management, and digital strategy, Malte has held leadership roles in both consulting and in-house teams.