Digital Marketing

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

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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

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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 33 | Dave and Mary Davies, owners of Beanstalk Internet Marketing

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My guests today are Mary and Dave Davies, the husband and wife co-founders of Beanstalk Internet Marketing. They’ve got a new project called Oohloo which I’m going to talk to them about during this conversation.

This is the first time we’ve had a couple on Suds & Search and it was one of my favorite episodes yet.

Mary and Dave are experienced and sought after experts in SEO, Social Media Marketing, and user experience. They are both fixtures on the speaking circuit. They’ve presented independently and sometimes as a couple at State of Search, Pubcon, SMX, SEM Summit and many, many other places.

They are contributors to Search Engine Journal, SEMrush, Search Engine Watch, and Search Engine Land. Dave has co-hosted his own podcast known as Webcology for over a decade.

All their professional accomplishments aside, Dave and Mary Davies might be the two nicest people I’ve ever met. Mary consistently supports causes around mental health and suicide prevention which are far too common in our industry. We’re going to talk a little bit about her upbringing and background in social work and how it impacts her work today.

What I like most about Dave is his unbridled enthusiasm. Some presenters sit behind a podium and speak in a monotone voice. Dave is an energetic teacher pacing across the stage educating the audience on some of the most complex topics in SEO. I’m going to ask him about one of his favorite topics, Entities.

Grab a beer and join me for a conversation with Mary and Dave Davies. We’ll talk about social media marketing during COVID, their new Entity Crawler & Reporting Tool, and what dinner conversation is like in the Davies household.


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

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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

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

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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 27 | Ashley Segura, CoFounder at TopHatContent

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My guest today is Ashley Segura, CoFounder of TopHatContent. Ashley is one of the world’s leading presenters on topics related to social media and content marketing.

She has presented all over the world including at Pubcon, SMX, Content Marketing World, State of Search, and many, many other places. She is a regular contributor at Search Engine Journal and a fixture on many SEMrush webinars and training videos.

Ashley is a true marketer. How do I know? When she got married, Ashley and her husband decided to get an RV and travel around the country. What’s interesting about that story is she started a branding experiment on social media known as Nomad Newlyweds, developed strategies and hash tagging tests to build an audience for their experience.

Top Hat Rank, where she works was recently nominated for a U.S. Search Award and they are doing a ton of interesting things. I’m going to ask Ashley about two new-ish ventures, TopHatSocial and TopHatContent.

Grab a beer and join Ashley Segura and me for a conversation about how to perform a proper social media audit, how to measure ROI from content marketing, and PubCon scavenger hunts.


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

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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

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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.