Interview with Damian Sałkowski [CEO SENUTO] – image building and SEO evolution

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Dominika Słomka

November 06 2019 (updated July 23, 2026)

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Continuing our series of interviews with interesting industry figures, we decided to stick with SEO. Damian Sałkowski, Founder & CEO of SENUTO , took some time to talk about how he balances managing a company with creating his own image as an expert and keeping up with the ever-changing Google algorithm. We're on the subject, and it was me – Dominika – who asked.

Dominika: Hi Damian, we're pleased to have you here today. Thanks for your time. First, a warm-up question: what does a typical day look like for a Senuto chef?

Damian: Thank you for the distinction and invitation to the new series of interviews.
So, for me, it's hard to describe a typical day. Everyone is a bit different. I'm involved in many areas of the company. I can share how I organize my work.
I work using a modified Pomodoro technique – in my case, this means 90 minutes of work followed by a 10-minute break, with a 30-minute break every three cycles. This allows me to focus on my work and put aside distractions for that time. I schedule my tasks using the Monday system. Every Monday, I try to plan my work for the entire week in advance. For each week, I identify five tasks that I need to complete that week (these are the five most important tasks for that week) and the three most important for each day. The rest are lower priority. I also provide a brief summary of my progress each day, making any necessary adjustments. I also try to be proactive rather than reactive at work – that's why I check my email once a day and silence my phone when I need to focus. Although my role involves a multitude of external signals and it's not easy, I try to manage them. I think working on my own terms is an important skill. I also use the toggle system, which measures the time it takes me to complete individual tasks. I try to learn from this data and predict how long individual tasks will take me based on what I have done in the past.

Other than that, I'd say my day is quite long. I'm usually in the office from 9-10 a.m. to 8-9 p.m. I have two or three meetings a day, exchange about 100 emails a day, and send 150 messages on the company messenger.

Dominica: You are active on social media and at conferences.
How do you manage to combine company management with personal branding? How important is personal branding to you?

Damian: There's no grand strategy behind my personal branding. I try to follow simple principles – helping others and having a real impact on the development of the industry. Combining these principles with company management isn't difficult. In fact, I speak at 10-12 conferences a year, devoting a total of about a dozen days a year to it. Personal branding, in the sense that it's perceived – i.e., consciously creating an image for profit – isn't important to me. Online and offline, I try to be myself, and my real image is no different from the one I project. I try to maintain complete naturalness. In other words, in my case, image creation isn't meant to directly translate into benefits. Benefits are meant to be a side effect, not an end in themselves. It works for me, and people appreciate it.

Dominika: Do you think there is a limit to creating an image so that a given person from the company is perceived as an expert in the industry, but the company does not base its entire image on this person?

Damian: In my case, it happened naturally. I had already established a strong position in the industry before starting the company, so it was much easier to grow it based on my name. This works to a certain extent. Now, it's a bit of a hassle. Many people direct their questions about the app to me directly. If we have a problem, I'm the first person called to the board. With 14 users, this translates into a dozen or so additional messages a day. That's the price you pay for this strategy. Of course, it also has many advantages – in the initial stages, it was much easier for me to convince people to use the app because they already had some trust in me.
Now we're trying to dispel that image. We want people to realize that Senuto isn't just about Damian Sałkowski. Many excellent specialists work here. More and more of our team are presenting at conferences and webinars, which should soon result in Senuto being associated with more than one person.
If I could turn back time, I would do the same and build our brand image in a similar way because I think it was the optimal path.

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Dominika: Can you say that speaking at conferences or other events brings the company contacts that later become real customers?

Damian: In my opinion, it's very difficult to ensure that contacts from conferences translate directly into customers. However, that doesn't mean they're not worth attending. For a customer to decide to purchase a product, it takes more than one contact. In our case, events help us convince those who aren't convinced – often, someone doesn't make a decision based on what they see online, but meeting us at an event makes them decide to buy a product. Events also help us build brand recognition, which makes it easier for us to sell the product through other channels. In short: attending events is worth it, but don't count their profitability based on the number of customers acquired directly at the event.

Dominika: You were a speaker at SEO, a 4-day workshop for those interested in SEO and cruising. How do you rate such personalized training compared to larger, open events?

Damian: What's more, I was even one of the organizers! The idea came about during the May long weekend in Masuria with Robert Niechciał. We realized that we have a lot of conferences in Poland, but it's really hard to build a deeper connection with anyone at them. So we decided to organize an event where everyone would have time to bond. We invited another colleague, Adam, to join the project, and from the idea in May, we moved on to the first date in August. Our concept worked. People who attended the event still keep in touch and help each other. Additional projects are emerging from this, including a charity project that should be making a splash soon. Large events are also worthwhile, but it's difficult to gain concrete knowledge – at most, inspiration. At personalized events like the SEO Rejs, you can not only gain real knowledge but also build friendships with people in the industry. We will definitely organize the SEO Rejs next year because everyone who attended wants to come back.

Dominika: Comparing other lead generation channels with conferences and personal branding activities, which ones do you think are the most effective and have the highest conversion rate for Senuto?

Damian: Recommendations are definitely working for us. Many people who run training courses recommend Senuto to their participants – we gain many clients this way.
Additionally, we conduct content marketing activities, especially those that utilize our own data. Thanks to them, we are able to deliver unique value.

Dominika: How do content marketing and SEO relate to this, and how can you measure their effectiveness in the context of lead collection?

Damian: In my opinion, content marketing is one of the best ways to acquire traffic. However, it's important to be aware of its role in the sales funnel. Using these activities, we usually reach people who are at the initial stage of the purchasing path, and we need additional steps to convert them. I'm referring to remarketing and email marketing, among other things. Many companies make this mistake and try to measure effectiveness at the content <> purchase level, which in most cases leads to erroneous conclusions and, ultimately, bad decisions.

Dominika: What do you think of the recent changes regarding the introduction of new link attributes? Do you think the main reason for these changes is that Google wants to curb the practice of buying links from sponsored articles, which is much more common in the West than in Poland?

Damian: I wouldn't say this practice is more common in the West than in Poland. Link acquisition in the West relies primarily on outreach. In most countries, you won't find platforms like LinkHouse or WhitePress, which make this much easier.

It's difficult to assess these changes at this point. It all depends on how publishers react. If most of them don't implement these attributes, nothing will change. If publishers start implementing them, Google will have a good starting point. With thousands of flagged sponsored publications, it will have a fairly large database for its algorithms, which will be able to evaluate publications without flags based on this sample. We saw a similar situation in 2013, when Google introduced the Penguin algorithm and, consequently, the disavow tool, which allowed users to disavow "bad links." After some time (after gathering the appropriate database), Google decided it didn't need any more and introduced Penguin 4.0, which automatically evaluates links and works in real time based on the findings we provided via the disavow tool. Therefore, everything depends on the publishers.

Dominika: The Google environment is constantly changing, what development plans does SENUTO have to keep up with these changes?

Damian: It's important to remember that most changes are made on the input – what we do to achieve better results. Senuto works mostly on the output – checking how our actions affected the results. Therefore, most changes don't affect us. Our development plans cover several areas:

Data must be highly accessible – i.e., provide data in any form. Hence, integrations with Data Studio, Slack, and API expansion, among others.
The application is to become active, not passive – In addition to data, we want to provide ready-to-use conclusions. We will use machine learning, among other things, for this purpose.
The application is intended to be universal – We want to address different personas. We want the app to be equally useful for e-commerce managers and SEO specialists.

For us, developing these areas means building many new features and developing existing ones. I think you can expect many interesting solutions from us in the near future. We will be investing heavily in R&D.

Dominika: In the context of machine learning: what features in SENUTO already use machine learning?

Damian: We use machine learning, among other things, to plan content in our enterprise products. We're not yet at a level of utilization that we'd be satisfied with. We have a lot of work to do in this area. We're planning projects with the Warsaw University of Technology, among other things, and we'll be working with them on this topic.

Dominika: Is the introduction of machine learning and big data necessary in tools supporting the work of SEO specialists?

Damian: I'm convinced it is. Google's algorithms currently use machine learning, which means they can change and adapt essentially in real time. Analysis based on subjective feelings is of little use here. We need significant computing power and large amounts of data to draw good conclusions. Until now, the SEO industry has relied on the subjective opinions of experts; in my opinion, this model has run its course.

Dominika: At the last SEO Barcamp, you mentioned another update from the so-called medic. Do you have any advice for website owners whose sites have seen a significant decline in this area?

Damian: First of all, I'd recommend staying calm. This isn't an update whose effects can be reversed with a few simple steps. Updates from this series have a tendency to backfire. Sites that lost ground in the first version of this update gained ground in the second or third. It's as if Google were constantly modifying and improving it. Therefore, I'd recommend checking everything on your end and eliminating all errors, although I wouldn't count on a quick reversal. The effects of these changes will likely only be visible in the next update.

Dominika: What tools do you use daily in your work? Is there a feature you particularly miss and think a tool could be created to solve this problem?

Damian: When it comes to SEO , I use a lot of tools. Senuto, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, and many web tools. I also use many less obvious tools like dataiku. I also create a lot of my own using the R language.

There's currently no large niche in the market that a single tool could fill. Most of the gaps can be filled with basic programming skills, which I recommend to any professional.

Dominika: In what direction do you think Google's search engine algorithms will evolve?

Damian: The natural direction of development is to increasingly better understand user questions and provide increasingly better answers. This is partly due to algorithms like BERT, which allow Google to understand questions at a completely different level than before. This also forces changes in user behavior. More and more of us are using voice interfaces – Google must adapt to this. Therefore, we will increasingly receive questions with answers directly in search results. Just a year ago in Poland, only 200,000 phrases had a direct answer snippet; today, it's over 600,000, and this number will continue to grow. This will lead to an increase in the number of "zero-click" queries, where the user doesn't have to click anywhere to get an answer. This already accounts for over half of all mobile queries.

Many industries will suffer SEO as a result. Sites that answer easily categorized questions (e.g., "How old is actor X...") will lose a significant portion of their traffic.

Machine learning will also develop, leading to the creation of new, previously unknown algorithmic factors. It will be very difficult to classify which factors determine ranking, so, as I mentioned earlier, we need to use similar technologies to Google to be able to decode them. I think we have a very exciting period ahead of us when it comes to SEO. There will be more and more unknowns, and this will lead to a revolution in the approach to SEO , which we at Senuto want to be a part of.

Dominika: Great! Thank you for the interview 🙂

Interview with Damian Sałkowski [CEO SENUTO] – image building and SEO evolution - photo no. 3

Short bio about Damian:

10 years of experience in SEO. Currently, he is the CEO of Senuto, an application providing comprehensive SEO support. During this time, he has trained hundreds of people and presented at dozens of industry events. He is the author of two books on internet marketing. Damian specializes in using data in SEO. He is also a fan of football and motorboat sports.