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 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.

Suds & Search 28 | Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director at VMLY&R

August 27, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Heather Physioc, the remarkably interesting Group Connections Director at VMLY&R. Heather is the leader of an award-winning 40-person Discoverability Group. If you don’t know what a discoverability group is, you’re not alone. I’m going to ask her about it early on in our discussion.

Heather is an in-demand speaker who’s presented at virtually every major conference in our industry. A shortlist of the places you might have heard her present includes MozCon, Brighton, SearchLove, and PubCon.

Suds & Search 26 | Niki Mosier, Head of SEO at Two Octobers

August 13, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Local SEO, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Niki Mosier, Head of SEO at Two Octobers. She’s a well known local SEO, a must-follow on Twitter, and a popular presenter. She has presented at SMX West, WordCamp, Optimisey and she’ll be speaking at Brighton later this year.

A few years ago, Local SEO legend Mike Blumenthal coined the phrase, “Google as your new home page.” The idea is that Google is showing so much information in knowledge panels and other special features that searchers no longer need to go to your website to find out everything. In fact, Google probably has some better information than a small business website.

Suds & Search 25 | Mike King, Managing Director of iPullRank

August 6, 2020 Mark Bealin Digital Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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In 2011, I was a young SEO Director for a small agency. I read a blog post from a not very well known SEO with a memorable Twitter handle – ipullrank. After reading the post, I remember sending an email to our team that said something like, “You all need to read this immediately.” The author of that blog post was Michael King and I’ve remained a fan of his ever since.

Today, Mike is the Managing Director of iPullrank, the digital marketing agency he founded. Mike and his team work with some of the most iconic brands on the Fortune 500 list. He’s got a really interesting back story. I start our conversation talking about his journey from unappreciated contractor to agency owner.

Suds & Search 24 | Ruth Burr Reedy, VP of Strategy at UpBuild

July 30, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Ruth Burr Reedy, Vice President of Strategy at UpBuild. I first heard of Ruth when she was working at Moz as their Lead SEO. Veteran SEOs know that Moz used to be called SEOmoz. Ruth took on the daunting challenge of overseeing the SEO for that rebrand. She’s now living in Oklahoma and I start our conversation asking about her journey to UpBuild.

Ruth is an in-demand speaker who’s presented at all of the major industry conferences including UnGagged, Mozcon, SMX, and State of Search.