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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Stephan Bajaio. Stephan is the Chief Evangelist and Co-founder of Conductor, a search and content intelligence platform that helps marketers create and optimize content to improve visibility online.

Stephan has a well-earned reputation for being one of the really good guys in our industry. He is an in-demand speaker, podcaster, and SEO expert. He co-hosts the extremely impressive podcast Search on Tap and the equally impressive webcast Search from Home.

His company, Conductor, puts on the C3 conference and the annual Searchie Awards.

Stephan has a gift for identifying problems. He has an innate sense of when things aren’t working right. I’m going to start our conversation asking him about some of those problems and how SEOs might begin to solve them.

One problem he’s noticed is a lack of access to decision-makers. Simply put, SEOs don’t have a seat at the table where decisions are made. Stephan notes that SEOs often have access to data that can help every facet of an organization but for some reason, they remain several degrees removed from the c-suite. He’ll explain how SEOs can evangelize for their data.

We’ll also have a frank conversation about problems with the SEO industry. Stephan is fond of the phrase, “If you’re not helping people you’re just selling stuff.” There’s even a t-shirt. I love that phrase and Stephan’s laser-focus on value. We’re going to spend some time talking about the responsibility SEOs have to use the data at our fingertips to create value.

Grab a beverage and join me for a conversation with the extremely interesting Stephan Bajaio. , We’ll talk about where SEO belongs inside of a large organization, how SEOs can add value to virtually every facet of a company, and I’m going to ask him what a Chief Evangelist does.

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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.

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