Input = Output
Whatever you put into something determines what you get out of it. Sloppy inputs make sloppy programs. We fix the inputs first.
ABOUT
Twenty years of solid, compounding work.
I'm Gert Mellak. I've been in Marketing, SEO and Ecommerce since 2005, long enough to watch the field reinvent itself three times and notice what stayed true underneath. I run two practices out of Madrid: SEOLeverage (search and growth) and Solicom (AI & automation). Same diagnostic, two toolkits.
- 20+ years in the practice
- 300+ engagements shipped
- 3 companies founded
- +2,000 newsletter readers
THE LONG VERSION
How I ended up here.
I started in 2005 doing technical SEO for small businesses in Austria. I was the person who actually read the Google patents. I liked how the field rewarded careful work: change one thing, measure, learn, change the next. That instinct never left.
By 2012 I'd moved to Madrid and founded Solicom Consulting, and the brief broadened: not just SEO but the whole marketing stack, then ecommerce operations, then the quiet compounding work that separates brands that grow from brands that churn.
In 2018 I launched SEOLeverage, a process-first approach to SEO for ecommerce operators, built around a simple idea: input equals output. Whatever you put into something determines what you get out of it. Most SEO programs fail not because the tactics are wrong but because the process can't be repeated.
PlatformLeverage followed, then a book, then the weekly blog. The through-line across all of it: I don't sell magic. I help operators do the boring work that compounds.
In 2024 I opened a second practice under Solicom for AI & automation work. It wasn't a pivot. Clients kept asking, and I was already building tools for my own team. Same diagnostic, different toolkit: workflow automation, AI content pipelines, internal tooling, agent-based systems for the ops work that shouldn't need humans.
Everyone's rushing to optimize for AI while their basic SEO is falling apart. I fix the basics first, then we talk about AI.
PRINCIPLES
Four principles I actually use.
Process over magic
Marketing is boring when it works. I build programs operators can run on Mondays without me in the room.
Subtract first
Most teams I meet are over-doing, not under-doing. The most expensive word in marketing is more.
Say it plainly
No decks, no jargon, no hype. If a founder can't explain the strategy to a new hire in five minutes, it isn't strategy yet.
FROM A CLIENT, 2025
"Gert is the first person I call when the number at the bottom of the P&L stops making sense. He doesn't show up with decks. He shows up with the three questions nobody else asked."
Founder · €8M DTC apparel brand · Madrid
Still reading? Let's talk.
Forty-five minutes, your hardest problem, no slides. I'll tell you if I can help and, if I can't, who I'd send you to instead.