Search Engine Optimization

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 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 & 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 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 21 | Lily Ray, SEO Director at Path Interactive

July 9, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Lily Ray, SEO Director at Path Interactive. Lily has been one of the most popular speakers in the industry for a while now. She’s been nominated for multiple industry awards, including Best Female Search Marketer by Search Engine Land.