Mark Bealin, Author at SearchLab Digital

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Mark Bealin

Founder and Principal

Mark Bealin is the Founder and Principal at SearchLab, which was founded in March 2017. Under his leadership, Clutch and Manifest both named SearchLab one of the top agencies in Chicago in 2018 and 2019.

Mark has been helping small and medium-sized businesses with SEO and PPC since 2007. He is an in-demand speaker and contributor at events throughout the country, sought out for his expertise in SEO, Paid Search and Analytics.

He is a board member of EO Chicago and a guest lecturer at DePaul University. Mark lives in Chicago with his wife and three children. He's a former varsity high school football coach and remains active at St. Ignatius College Prep.

Suds and Search 38 | Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro

November 5, 2020 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is a man who needs no introduction. Rand is one of – if not the most recognizable personalities in SEO. He is the co-founder and CEO of SparkToro.

Previously, he co-founded SEOMoz, which later rebranded to Moz, along with his mother Gillian. Moz is one of the most important brands in SEO. From Whiteboard Fridays to the Beginner’s Guide to SEO to MozCon and all the impressive tools Moz has created, Rand has been at the center of this incredible company from the start.

Rand resigned from his board position at Moz in October 2020 just after we spoke. You can learn more about his personal journey and that of his company in his incredibly impressive book, Lost and Founder. I’ll spend some of our conversation talking about the book, but honestly, I could’ve talked to Rand all day about it. I couldn’t recommend a book more strongly. It’s not just for SEOs! It’s not just for entrepreneurs. It’s an incredible human story. Rand courageously tells all the great and gory details of his entrepreneurial life.

I’m going to start our conversation talking about his new company SparkToro. I’ll get Rand’s reaction to some use cases for Local SEOs and pick his brain on a post he wrote titled, “Six Ways SparkToro’s Early Customers Use Our Product.”

Grab something cold to drink and join me for a conversation with Rand Fishkin. We talk about the importance of core values in business, how to become less reliant on the duopoly of Facebook and Google, why he chose to make canceling a subscription with SparkToro easier, and we’ll spend a little time talking about his love for pasta and al pastor tacos.

Suds and Search 37 | Will Critchlow, Founder and CEO of SearchPilot

October 29, 2020 Mark Bealin Marketing Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Will Critchlow, CEO at SearchPilot and SEO Partner at Brainlabs. Will is one of the most famous SEO presenters in the world. His content is ubiquitous on blogs, webinars, and at industry conferences.

Will co-founded Distilled in 2005 with Duncan Morris. Distilled became an iconic brand in SEO, winning numerous industry awards. Will and the team at Distilled started the conference series SearchLove, one of the most popular search marketing conferences with events held in London, San Diego, and New York.

Earlier this year, Distilled’s consulting services were acquired by BrainLabs. I’m going to start our conversation by talking about what it was like to go through an acquisition.

His new project, SearchPilot, was originally software Distilled used to help their clients. Now they’ve developed a really interesting way for SEOs to do A/B tests. A/B testing is popular in Conversion Rate Optimization and Paid Media, but not as much in SEO. I’m going to ask him about some of the findings from the A/B tests he and the team at SearchPilot have performed.

Will and Distilled have had an amazing relationship with Moz and Moz’s co-founder Rand Fishkin that I’ve followed from afar. We talk about how building genuine relationships rather than transactional relationships was a key to Distilled’s rapid growth.

Grab a beer and join me for a conversation with Will Critchlow one of the most important voices in SEO. We’ll talk about how the industry has evolved over his 15-year career, how to do a proper a/b test in SEO, we’ll talk about his love for basketball and what he learned from having his children perform a handful of searches on Google.

Suds and Search 36 | Duane Brown, owner of Take Some Risk

October 22, 2020 Mark Bealin PPC Advertising, Suds and Search

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My guest on this week’s episode of Suds & Search is Duane Brown, Founder and Head Marketer at Take Some Risk.

Duane started Take Some Risk in January of 2017. In a short period of time, they have developed an impressive roster of clients including Birdies, Unbounce, and Woocommerce.

Duane is a paid media expert who worked internationally for years before starting his own agency. His journey from vagabond digital marketer to agency owner…during a lockdown was definitely something I wanted to discuss with him.

Duane is an in-demand conference speaker who has presented all over the world. A shortlist of the conferences he’s spoken at include, Brighton, INBOUND, SMX, and SEERfest.

Duane is also an accomplished writer. What I really like are his long-form guides to lesser-used advertising channels like Snap Ads and Tik Tok. I’ll spend a lot of our conversation talking about his guides and how marketers can use these channels more effectively.

Grab a beer and join me for a conversation with Duane Brown. We’ll discuss the value of advertising on smaller channels like Tik Tok and Snap, Google’s update to their Search Terms report, and why he decided to fire all his clients in August 2017.

Suds and Search 35 | Mordy Oberstein, Liaison to the search community at Wix

October 15, 2020 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Mordy Oberstein.

Mordy is a talented SEO speaker, podcaster, blogger, and social media influencer. He’s presented at SMX West, SMX Advanced, Ungagged, DMIExpo, and many other places.

Mordy is also one of the most popular SEO podcasters. He’s launching a new show called Behind SEOs. He’s already lined up some impressive guests.

In a former life, Mordy was a school teacher and it shows in his approach as an SEO educator. This comes through most in his blog content. I would encourage you to check out his columns at Search Engine Land.

Mordy hosts the popular #SEOchat which happens every Thursday at 1:00 pm. To join in, simply check out the hash tag #SEOchat to participate.

Until very recently he was the CMO at Rank Ranger, the popular SEO tool suite. He recently started a job at Wix as their Liaison to the SEO community. In a rare scoop for Suds & Search, we caught up with Mordy a couple of weeks into his new job to discuss how things are going.

Grab a beer and tune in to learn from one of the really good guys in the industry. We’ll talk about featured snippets, algorithm updates, NFL fandom and the beer scene in Israel.

Suds and Search 34 | Jeff Ferguson, Partner at Amplitude Digital

October 8, 2020 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Jeff Ferguson. Jeff is a Partner and the Head of the Production Team at Amplitude Digital. He is an industry veteran with over 25 years of experience in digital marketing. In that time, he’s worked with large organizations like Belkin, CBS, eHarmony, Manchester United, Paychex, Sony and many others.

He is a regular presenter at conferences such as Ad:tech, AllFacebook Expo, Conversion Conference, eMetrics, and SMX. He is also a professor at UCLA where he teaches classes in Advanced Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

Earlier this year, Jeff wrote an article for Search Engine Journal titled, “Do We Have the Math to Truly Decode Google’s Algorithms?” The article quickly gained interest on Twitter and throughout the SEO community. I’m going to spend a lot of our conversation discussing some of the points made in the article.

Prior to joining Amplitude, Jeff owned his own agency Fang Marketing. I’m going to ask him about the experience of getting acquired during a global pandemic.

Jeff is also a lot of fun to have a beer with. Bonus points to Jeff for bringing an imperial coffee stout from Gigantic Brewing Company with an unforgettable picture of Sam Jackson on the front of it (picture on the next page).

Join us for a conversation that scrutinizes the tools SEOs use, the studies we rely on for information and learn a little bit about Gentlemen Scientists.

Suds and Search 32 | Jason Brown, GMB Spam Fighter and Google Gold Product Expert

September 24, 2020 Mark Bealin Google My Business, Local SEO, Suds and Search

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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Jason Brown, an expert Local SEO, and Google My Business Gold Level Product Expert. Jason has a wide breadth of SEO knowledge but what he really loves to do is fight spam.

Spam has been a major issue in SEO from the very beginning. Over the course of my thirteen-year career, Google has cleaned up many of the most common tactics but local businesses still grapple with an astonishing level of spam especially in the map pack.

Spam fighters like Jason Brown act as consumer vigilantes fighting spam on behalf of legitimate local businesses. I start our conversation by asking Jason about the different ways that spammers are attempting to take advantage of vulnerabilities in Google’s local algorithm.

In many cases, this activity isn’t merely a matter of bad customer experience; it’s actually fraudulent. We talk about why Google hasn’t been able to do more to fight spam and how other third-parties like the better business bureau are involved.

Jason presents at numerous industry conferences including LocalU, Local Search Summit, and Pubcon. He is a columnist for SEMrush and regularly appears in BrightLocal webinars. He is a sought after subject matter expert for national and local news pieces on local spam. If you like this interview, I highly recommend that you follow Jason on Twitter.

Grab a beer and join me for a conversation with one of the top Local spam fighters in the world. We’ll talk about why local Spam is so prevalent, how small businesses can fight back, and the time he found a lawyer who had a listing in the middle of the ocean.

Suds & Search 31 | Casie Gillette, Senior Director of Digital Marketing at KoMarketing

September 17, 2020 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Casie Gillette, Senior Director of Digital Marketing at KoMarketing. Casie has been a sought after speaker, writer, and contributor in SEO for many years.

She’s presented at the top conferences in the industry including Mozcon, Pubcon, SMX, and SearchLove London.

I really love her writing. She is a VIP contributor at Search Engine Journal and regularly writes for KoMarketing’s company blog.

One of my favorite things Casie talks about is a challenge asking digital marketers to grow up a little bit. As Google has gotten more sophisticated, the tactics that used to work when Casie and I started in SEO aren’t effective. We start our conversation talking about some of the most cringe-worthy epic fails she has seen in content marketing.

We also talk about some brands that are doing things right – make sure to listen to how Wegman’s, a supermarket chain in New York, earns customer loyalty and lines around the block by making memorable content.

Casie is also a really enjoyable person to have a beer with. She was kind enough to let us interrupt her move to drink German beers and talk about what the top content marketers in the world are doing differently, the ways Google rewards great customer experience, and why you absolutely have to take a duck boat tour the next time you’re in Boston.

Suds & Search 30 | Upasna Gautam, Ecommerce Product Manager at CNN

September 10, 2020 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Upasna Gautam, Product Manager at CNN. Upasna is a leading expert on publisher SEO. Publisher SEO is a really interesting niche that focuses on publisher sites, which produce a mind-boggling amount of content. Imagine being responsible for ranking hundreds of thousands if not millions of existing pages in Google while creating workflows so that a breaking news network like CNN could add thousands of pages every day that are also optimized for Search Engines. That is the very challenging work publisher SEOs do every day.

Suds & Search 29 | Cyrus Shepard, SEO Consultant with Moz

September 3, 2020 Mark Bealin Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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Often adorned in his signature fedora, Cyrus Shepard is one of the most recognizable faces in the SEO industry.

Cyrus joined me for some day drinking on Suds & Search earlier this summer to talk about a bunch of topics in SEO.

He is an SEO consultant at Moz and the owner of Zyppy, an SEO agency he founded in 2018. Cyrus formerly served as lead SEO at Moz and remains extremely active at Moz to this day. He frequently appears on Whiteboard Fridays and continues to publish blogs on the Moz site.