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xIn this episode of eCoffee with Experts, host Victor Julio Coupé chats with Katarina Dahlin, Senior Growth Hacker at Genero, to discuss her journey from developmental psychology to becoming a leading SEO expert. Katarina shares her insights on leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT for SEO, especially how she optimizes her flower blog to attract over 50,000 monthly organic visitors. She dives into the strategic use of custom GPTs to write product descriptions and build better content, as well as her tips for affiliate marketers entering the competitive landscape in 2025. Katarina also offers actionable advice on “stealing” featured snippets from competitors and experimenting with SEO techniques like redirecting expired domains. Watch the episode now!
I didn’t start in marketing, but once I got here, I realized that growth is about experimenting, adapting, and just diving in—even if you’re learning along the way.
Katarina Dahlin
Senior Growth Hacker at Genero
Welcome, everybody, to eCoffee with Experts. I’m Victor, your new host to the program. Today, we have a very special person, friend, and an even better SEO consultant to talk with us here. Katarina Dahlin, thank you so much for being with us. It’s a pleasure to have you here at eStorm Solutions at the coffee with Experts. I would love to just start by asking who you are, not for me, but for the audience, of We already know the things you do. We already know everything about your career, but we want to share. We want to give you the stage. We want to make sure that people from the outside who are watching this YouTube right now can understand who you are and especially why you’re here. So please do start.
Hello, my name is Katarina Dahlin, and thanks for inviting me to the show. I work as a Senior Growth Hacker at Genero. We are a marketing agency in the Nordics. I work with the CEO. Yeah, mostly with the CEO.
Don’t be shy. Do tell the folks about the things you do, how an expert you are into everything else. Come on, we love to know about you more.
What else? Currently, I’m very into AI and how I can use AI and ChatGPT in my SEO work. I’m also I’m an affiliate marketer. I have a flower blog. Yeah. So what else?
Awesome. I think we can start by simply asking what started, what made you Coming to the SEO market, to the marketing market. At least when people ask me, did you always plan on working with sales? I always say no. At first, I started working as a marketing analyst. I was sure that this was going to be my future. Then all of a sudden, I was selling tech. But how was it to you? How did you manage to find yourself into this scenario where we’re currently at?
I also ended up here by accident, so to say. I studied developmental psychology, so has nothing to do with marketing. But I don’t know. I was just asked by my previous colleague who changed jobs to this agency. She told me one day we would need a growth hacker. Do you want to come? Then I just came, started as a trainee, didn’t know anything at all about marketing.
Then I just-Self learned.
Yeah, switched job and learned everything here in the agency.
When did this start? When are we talking about this first time?
Almost six years ago. How was-In 2019.
Exactly. Before COVID, before ChatGPT, before Google’s several updates. How was the market back then? How do you see the current growth, let’s just say, in terms of SEO, in terms of digital marketing?
I’m happy I started at a time where things needed to be done manually or more or less. You start now, you probably would start other ways than with all the ChatGPT and stuff. Exactly. But I still learned how working in spreadsheet, doing keyword research, checking on the pages manually, what needs to be done. Now I work in a more different way than when I started.
Everything that you learned from these six years as a growth hacker, was it the spark necessary for you to open your garden flower shop Or no, was it like another thing to just jump out of a parachute of a plane and land it here?
Okay, so my flower hobby, that just started with… I just wanted to grow flowers, like real flowers. I just decided one winter that, okay, now I will start a new hobby. I will start to grow cut flowers in the summer. I rented one of these garden plots the local garden. So then I just grew my flowers that summer. But then, the summer is very short here in Finland. And then came the autumn, and it’s very dark here in Finland, autumn. So then I got very bored when my flower hobby ended. I had nothing to do. So then I started this flower blog, and then quickly it turned out to be an affiliate marketing blog. And then I had to continue on that.
That’s super great. You did mention to me that you found a good monthly organic growth in the website, right?
Yes. Within one year of starting the blog, and I do, of course, SEO on it. I grew it to 50K monthly organic visitors in one year. That’s super nice. It’s really, yeah. That’s like 1% of the Finnish population we have. It’s 6 million or something. Okay.
Yes. Like any… Sorry to interrupt you, but did this growth come from specific techniques that you found by working at Gwenaer, for example, as a growth hacker? Or we can just say that it was a mix of luck and having the right ideas being well-executed?
Actually, when I just started, I started set up the blog before I used ChatGPT, so nothing really happened then because it wasn’t so fun to write articles. But then I just, in the same time, in the spring, a few months later, started to experiment with ChatGPT and started to learn how it works. I started to I use ChatGPT on my blog to write articles. I suddenly got more things done that I did in the manual period, so to say. But I just use the same techniques as I do normally. Doing the keyword research, working with one team at the time. It was flower deliveries I started with. Optimizing the content, creating pages, linking, working feature snippets. Started to try to get backlinks to my blog.
It’s always about the backlinks, right?
Yeah, they are important. Everything is important. They are important, yes.
We do know that you are a custom GPT lover, right? I imagine a lot of custom GPTs helped you across this journey. Any particular use case you would like to share with everybody here?
I started with the articles, but later on, when I grew the blog, I took in products to my site. But when I used the normal ChatGPT, you get the normal text. But when I build an own GPT for each brand on my site, then it start to know the words and the tone of voice. It starts to know the products It writes much better product text for me. I use custom GPTs mostly for product optimization.
That’s so cool. I use custom GPTs to ask why my car is running slow. I have a mechanic GPT in my ChatGPT tab, but I’m glad to see that people use it wisely instead of me just blatantly asking questions because my mechanic is out of touch right now.
But I do that also. I talk with the ChatGPT a lot.
Yeah, like what I… Please go on.
No, but yeah. Anything if I want to code something I ask for help or just also daily questions.
No, me too. We have two homepots here back at home, and it’s so dumb. We ask for the weather, but if I ask it like, Hey, should I take an umbrella with me? It’s not able to respond because it’s not a LLM, right? Yeah. I’m looking super forward to have a ChatGPT at the homepots just because I want to ask, Hey, is it okay to feed my dog with eggs? Which is, in case anybody’s wondering, it is okay to feed your dog with eggs. I want to have this as well. I want to have not only the custom GPTs for our professional line of work, but for the personal one, right? I think that’s the most brilliant part about it all. But then, alas, coming back to the professional side of things, you did mention about the affiliate site of your website of the flower business that you currently own. But When we consider affiliate marketing nowadays, the first thing that comes to mind, especially marketplaces or TikTok, for example, or Instagram shop, the social media part of affiliate and how everybody can start being an affiliate in the blink of a night. But in terms of SEO and in terms of your knowledge, which is the biggest part here, how did everything work when you were starting?
The first week when you were building everything, you knew about the affiliate techniques and the theory behind it all, and you also knew about SEO. How did you manage to bring them together to execute properly and then give the growth you already you’ve achieved?
Actually, I didn’t know much about affiliate marketing, but I just started. I started and learned on the way.
Nice.
But actually, it was like a colleague, He mentioned to me that… Or he showed me what he had done, what sites he had been doing, and how much money he had earned. But then I just thought, Look, what could I do with my flower blog that I just had that. Then I found these, like there were searches on flower delivery, flower deliveries and flower delivery plus city. Then I just thought that Okay, maybe I should try to do this, like how we did for other cDahlints. Just like local pages, flower delivery, Lsiki, flower delivery, Pamper and so on. Then I think it was good because then I I had my winter vacation. I was free for… I had vacation for one week. I was supposed to do a sport, but we do that in the sports vacation in Finland. But then I just home and built all these pages. I built 160 flower deliver pages in one week. Then I just started. Then I got my first sale from Canada. I don’t know why, but I got my first sale very early. Then I got motivation, just continue because I noticed that, Okay, this works.
Let’s continue.
That’s super nice. It’s encouraging to hear that you don’t need to know a lot about a thing to start.
No. Then I had also another colleague here. He was doing the same. He started at the same time. Then we started to share ideas and do this thing together as as well. It was really fun. We learned together.
Any tips, any beginner tips for 2025? We are almost at the end of October, right? Any tips for 2025 for anybody who wants to start an affiliate shop?
Yes, start somewhere, but maybe start somewhere where the competition is a bit lower.
That’s a good point.
Less search volume.
I think more niche usually helps as well, right?
Niche sites are good. Try to find words that web shops can’t rank on. They, for example, sometimes they have difficult to rank on words like best and a product because Google is showing third-party sites. Google is showing these review sites. But that’s Where your site, your affiliate sites comes in.
I see.
Words like best hiking shoes or best skincare product or also product plus review.
Do you have a champion product that converts most of the traffic to your page in specific flowers, that’s the best seller overall that you know you need to talk about it, maybe you have more backlinks sending people to that page specifically.
Might have a few categories that are getting more traffic. Now, when Black Friday is coming, I optimize also for Black Friday and product words, Black Friday and other brands’ words, for example. But I don’t have one big thing that gives me everything. I have a lot of pages and get a bit from everywhere.
It makes sense. At the end of the day, when I think about buying flowers, the Eucasus cases are pretty simple. Either you lost somebody, and then you want to buy flowers to make up for it, to take it to the site, or you want to surprise somebody, you want to gift somebody with flowers. I don’t really see any third scenario, but please, I believe you do know more that you can share with us here, right?
For the flower words, it’s just straightforward. For a lot of people, I just looking for. Send flowers and diversity. But this is just… Okay, it’s a flower blog I have, but it’s a small part. I also have, just to get in more revenue, but I also have home decor products, garden tools, and a couple of these Finnish brands.
I see.
Itala and Marimekko and these.
Makes super sense. I think not only about flowers, but when anybody comes to your profile, they’re going to see the SEO Growth Hacker at the beginning as well. This is something that we can talk if you’d like to, of course. But nowadays, again, 2025, you are the growth hacker at the company you’re working for. How is the life as an SEO growth hacker in Finland, for example? Because we do know a lot about the UK, we do know a lot about the US. But do share with us your experience in your region. How do you find it overall in terms of outreaching? Do you have a lot of bloggers willing to talk easily with you or no? Is it another situation?
Now, I, of course, know just the situation in Finland, but I don’t know. I think the SEO work in Finland is mostly on-site and technical and searching with content. I would say that, yeah, to some extent we work with getting back links from bloggers and other parts. But I would say that this part is not so strong as on on the edge and technical and content side.
Okay.
I know in Sweden, for example, they work a lot more with backlinks than they do in Finland.
Oh, that’s interesting.
Maybe we are getting more into the backlink direction. I think so.
Portugal has a similar market where they are not working too much with backlinks at the moment. But this is because of the low geochemical maturity around the the population of Portugal. What we have right here is a lot of old people. This is not an issue. I’m not talking badly about old people. I love my grandmother. But we are talking about old people who are not very present in the digital world. Then anytime somebody asks me any tips for difficult crowds like this one, we go some unconventional techniques because sometimes the simpler you can be, the better your work is going to be. Have you ever been in a situation, not with old people, of course, but have you ever been in a situation where any unconventional techniques worked for you? And by unconventional, I mean, there’s no raw definition of the term. You can just like, at the time, I thought it was unconventional. It still is in my Anything you can share with us regarding this?
I was just curious when I also started my blog. I tried this technique to buy expired domains and redirect them to my side. Yeah, I did that.
And did it work?
It feels like it. It feels that it worked very well. But then came the Google core update in March, where this thing came in. They said, This will not work anymore.
Another victim by the updates.
And then my blog also went down a bit, but I don’t know if it was because of these backlinks or if it was because big brands started to rank better than my little affiliate blog. I don’t know what caused what. Yeah, I stopped buying expired domains now. I don’t know if it works, but anyone can test for themselves if they want.
Would you consider this it worked? You literally just said that you wouldn’t buy anymore.
I wouldn’t buy to my cDahlints. I could buy for a testing purpose on a blog that doesn’t matter.
Because I’m thinking about those business owners watching us.
Okay, then I don’t recommend it.
Awesome. That’s it. Everybody, please don’t buy expired links.
Yeah, but that’s a technique that I tried, but I don’t recommend it anymore.
It is good to know that they can try to test, but it’s not like a recipe for success.
Be careful.
Okay, be careful, guys. Don’t buy expired links nor expired food.
It’s better to try to get them in a better way.
Yeah, yes, I agree. I 100% agree. One of the things that brings me a lot of joy, especially when I’m talking to important people like you, is when they manage to share who they are in the words, not only here in this YouTube podcast, but also in real life, especially in events. For those who don’t know, Katarina was at Brighton SEO. She was at SEO Office Hours, right, Katarina? Am I missing another one that you have recently been into?
Seo Vibes in Helsinki in May.
Great. Do you want to share with us about these three events? What did you do at then? How was it? Any new discoveries or findings that the community might find important?
You learn things in all the events. But the best part, I think, is to meet other SEOs and meet other people.
It helps you build your authority in the market as well, right?
Yeah, and also getting friends in the industry. Getting friends. I think that’s the best part of all the conferences this year. But otherwise, it was my first talk in my first conference where I spoke at. For me, it was a lot to learn about. Congratulations. Thank you. A lot to learn about how it is to be a speaker yourself.
Yeah, that’s Do you feel like you’ll be speaking more and more in the following years in events?
Yes, because every time I speak at some event, it’s so much fun. Then I want to go again and go to the next event.
That’s awesome. Eventually, you’re going to be a host. I can already see that happening as well.
I don’t know, but at least I want to speak more.
I would never tell myself five years ago that I would be talking to in a podcast hosting, so we never know.
We never know. That’s the magic of life.
We never know.
Exactly. I never thought I would speak at an event five years ago either.
Yeah, exactly. This is Great. Awesome. Okay, I remember that in one of the events, you did talk about stealing features snippets, and the listeners at first would be curious to more about it the same way that I am, because now I’m only just asking you this with no answer in my mind. So anytime we talk about your expertise in stealing feature snippets, What can we expect from this expertise of yours? What is the knowledge that you have? How do you use it in a day-to-day basis? What do you recommend? Everything else that you can talk will always be appreciated here.
Yeah, We noticed that we found a technique, or we noticed that it’s pretty easy to steal the feature snippets from competitors if you just update your content, that make your content better than the competitors. Okay. What we started to do then is go to Semrush or Ahrefs or any SEO tool where you can see on your site, you see all the words that’s ranking, and then you can filter out only those words where the feature, cbet, is available. Okay. Then you filter out those words where it’s available on, but where you rank on position 3 to 15, maybe. Then we just take one word at a time. We see how the feature snippet looks like today. Then we just go to our page that is ranking for the same keyword. We try to edit the content so it explains the thing more in a simpler way than the competitors in a more easier way. Usually the feature is a bit, or often it answers a question, What is this thing? And then it gives an answer to that. Then we also go to our site and add an H2 heading For example, what is.
I see.
Then the keyword and then writes the answer 2-3 sentences so that it’s short enough but explains the thing in those sentences. And then says so that it could fit the featured snippet space. I see. This doesn’t take long time to do, 10 minutes for each feature snippet. If you do 100 If you optimize 100 feature snippets on your site, maybe 40% you can actually take it from the competitor.
That’s nice to know. That’s a nice to know.
Or that was the percentage that we got when we tested on three Dahlints and optimized maybe 400 feature snippets.
It’s a pretty good use case what you have right here. It’s proven work, so that’s awesome to know. I also know a lot about your… A lot of people say that somebody has an entrepreneur side, but I’m not going to say that you have that side. You have more of a mechanic, technical person side where you build stuff, where you experiment technology, where you share your findings with the world. And recently, we were discussing, you and I, about your redirect tool, right?
Yeah.
Can you share a little bit not only about the tool, but what drives you into creating such technologies and sharing them with the world? Do you see yourself investing more and more time creating new technologies, creating new tools and softwares, or is this just a free time exercise and hobby that you have?
I’m just curious. I’m curious and I’m very into tool building with ChatGPT. I think I just found a way to communicate with ChatGPT and help it to write code for me and build all these tools. Usually, it just starts with an idea or a thought that, Can I build this with ChatGPT? Then I just need to test it and try it because I’m curious It’s very rewarding when I actually can build tools with myself because I’m not a developer and I couldn’t do this five years ago without ChatGPT. Now I just do it because it’s fun.
No, I can’t see that. If I get proud of the Lego sets that I build, imagine yourself building things that really matter instead of Batman’s Batgate. Also kudos to you.
Yeah.
I’m still talking about tech. Because you’re mentioned throughout this conversation how much ChatGPT helps you. This is already a fact, and everybody knows ChatGPT helps everybody who knows how to use the prompts, who know how to use the software. It is indeed one of the best things in the recent years in terms of technology, right? But do you see any other emerging technologies for SEO? Not AI automated or anything like that, but maybe a different API, a different code, a different language that can help SEO, or will the future be AI-centered as we are currently indeed seeing it happen?
I think AI is so strong. I think it’s difficult to go away from that. But there are other tools than ChatGPT. I also I recently started to experiment with Google App Script and see how I can work with that in my daily SEO work. For example, if I previously had to manually check the titles of a page and get them into spreadsheet, or if I just need to check if this page has this keyword in this sheet. Before I had to check them myself, but now I just write a script for it in Google app, App script, and then I just click on a button and then it checks for me.
This is how you approach keyword research nowadays?
In the same way as before. I also I check in the different tools and ideas and check what the competitor has, are there gaps? These I still do in the normal way.
I think it will always the case forever. Everybody, as we say, the grass sometimes can be greener in their side. Then you go looking at your competitor, the competitor of your customer, you’re going to see the things he do. But that’s usually when AI also helps, right? To reverse engineer backlink strategies, for example, making sure that your life is easier down the line. Awesome. I think we are in the last stage of our conversation, which is a pity because if it were up to me, we be here for hours and hours. But now more about Katarina person side than professional side. What is your favorite flower, starting by that?
That’s Signia. I don’t know if you know it, but…
I don’t, but I’m going to ask the market team to put a picture here about it.
All the flowers that I can grow myself and make a nice flower.
That’s nice. That’s lovely. When talking about flowers, so we’re already talking about SEO, we’re already talking about tech, we’re already talking about affiliate and marketing. Any tips on how to take care, take good care of the flowers everybody buys? We always know about watering them, making sure that they receive sunlight. Anything extra that plants nowadays need?
If you buy cut flowers, if you buy them from a store, I just make sure. I usually just cut a piece from the- Okay, the straw? Bottom. Yeah, the straw.
I don’t know the term as well.
Yeah, just to make it and usually a bit sideways. Okay. Very diagonally, right? Yeah, so that it will- Reset more water. Get water and don’t die from that.
Yeah, I heard about it. Never did.
If you are really pro, change the water in the waste every day, you can even put the whole waste in the fridge if it has space. Okay. It lasts for during the night and take it out during the day.
Oh, that’s nice to know.
It will last longer. Yeah.
Yeah, I had no idea. This is a good tip. Yes, I had no idea. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Wow. I’m actually going to do six- You can try it. Flowers. Yeah, I’m going to try today. I’m not going to lie, I’m going to try today. Amazing. Let’s do then a quick last minute questions where I just ask you your favorite thing or one thing or another, like $5 or a secret gift, and you let me know your preferences. How does that sound?
Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah?
Okay. Awesome. First, one of the most important questions in the universe, pizza or hamburger?
Pizza.
Awesome. I agree 100% with you. I love pizza. Winter or summer?
Summer.
Summer. Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones?
Lord of the Rings.
Lord of the Rings. Do you mind explaining why?
I just love books. I love movies. I watch them all over again.
It makes sense. Then when we think about nerdy questions, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars?
Still Lord of the Rings.
Wow. We do have a token fan here then. Awesome. Amazing. Last one, and this will be our conversation for the day. As CEO SEO or affiliate marketing? If you had to choose between working with only one, which would you prefer?
Seo.
Nice. Do you mind telling us why?
Because when I work with my blog and as an affiliate marketer, I am more alone. With SEO, I have all my colleagues here, and I love being at the office and doing things together. That’s why.
That’s a great answer. It wasn’t scripted, everybody. So yeah, that’s the true Katarina for you right here. Awesome. Katarina, I think this is it. I really appreciate you being here with us. I really appreciate you sharing so much. Of course, anytime at all, anybody wants to ask Katarina some questions and wants to understand more about her flower business, about her time at Gander, do pinc her on her LinkedIn. It’s going to be in the post where we’re going to share this video alongside the description in the YouTube right here below the like button. Katarina, once again, thank you so much for your time. It was amazing having you here. Thank you. Everybody, I appreciate your time as well. I’m Victor Julio. This is my first podcast, so please bear with my mistakes, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of you and seeing more of Katarina in the next events where she’ll be speaking not only about her flower business, but about her overall SEO experiences. Thank you all so much, Katarina. Thank you so much.Thank you so much.It was a pleasure.Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Bye-bye.
Bye.
