How do you take an idea from the startup phase and scale it into a world-class organization? How do you hire and train the right people at the right time?

How do you plan goals and choose key performance indicators that matter? And how do you instill the right culture and processes so that the business lives beyond a single person?

These are all questions (more!) that Brett explores with our special guest – David Palombo, the Chief Marketing Officer of Launch That, a full-service marketing agency in Orlando, Florida.

Issues Discussed

* Importance of self-learning

* Developing the right processes for Generalists vs. Specialists

* Importance of a good foundation (technical, architecture, user needs, user personas, etc)

* Understanding how your goals relate to each other

* Customer generation as a key metric

* Favorite tools for success

* Considerations when hiring specialists

* What the only true failures are

* Creating a culture of learning from failure

Links Mentioned

Contact David via email

Follow David on Twitter

Launch That

Check out this episode!

Listen on iTunes!

Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a powerful suite of free tools to help improve your search marketing. It provides a lot of data – but how do you use it effectively?

In this Part 2 of the Google Search Console series, Brett and Nate discuss how to use Search Console’s features to improve your website’s on-page SEO.

Issues Discussed

* HTML Improvements

* Search Analytics Report

* Internal Links

* Links To Your Site

Links Mentioned

Google Search Console

Nate’s Guide To Google Search Console

LunaMetrics Guide To Search Analytics

Check out this episode!

In digital marketing, PPC ads and SEO influenced organic results are often seen as an either/or. And often SEO & PPC fight over the same budget & resources.

Any collaboration usually revolves around increasing click-through rate – or SEOs harvesting PPC keyword data.

But SEOs & PPCer’s can learn so much more from each other to create better marketing campaigns that drive higher returns than either one could in a silo.

On this episode, we have a special guest – Aaron Levy of Cast Iron Digital. Aaron is a veteran digital marketer with over a decade of experience guiding digital marketing and PPC strategies for clients of all shapes and sizes. He’s a frequent speaker at marketing conferences, including HeroConf, SES, ClickZ, SMX, State of Search, Search Exchange & a number of colleges/universities across the Northeast.

Most recently he spoke at Search Marketing Expo in New York with Bamboo Chalupa’s own Brett Snyder on today’s topic – what SEO & PPC can learn from each other.

Links Mentioned:

Aaron Levy on Twitter

Cast Iron Digital

Aaron’s 2014 SMX Presentation on PPC, SEO and Audience Analysis

Brett’s 2014 SMX Presentation on an Agile Approach with PPC & SEO

 

Check out this episode!

Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) is a powerful suite of free tools to help improve your search marketing. It provides a lot of data – but how do you use it effectively?

In this Part 1 of the Google Search Console series, Brett and Nate discuss how to use Search Console’s features to improve your website’s technical SEO.

Issues Discussed

* Set up tips & tricks

* Crawl rate report

* Crawl error report

* Fetch As Google

* Robots Tester

* URL Parameters

* XML Sitemaps

Links Mentioned

Google Search Console

Nate’s Guide To Google Search Console

Check out this episode!

Transcript

Brett Snyder: Hello there and welcome to episode number 33 of your Bamboo Chalupa Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Brett Snyder, I am the president of Knucklpuck and I’m joined by my co host Nate Shivar, the author of Shivarweb.com.

Nate Shivar: Hello hello.

Brett Snyder: So today we’re going to talk about a tool that is publicly available, that is free, and that most people especially who have been around digital marketing for a while, obviously know about, but really don’t use in to full extent possible. We’re talking about what was formerly Google Web Master Tools, but is recently being re-branded to the Google Search Console. Give a little background on kind of Google, now Google Search Console. I’ll apologize in advance if we call it Web Master Tools at any point throughout the episode. Google Search Console kind of created a mutually beneficial arrangement between Google and between Web Masters. That’s why they called it Web Master Tools to begin with because they wanted to encourage people to install this snippet of code on their website under the guise that Google will provide you with information about how that website is performing. Now to provide the information about how that website is performing, Google obviously needs access to that information. This idea of Web Master Tools really gave Google an opportunity to get people to install additional tracking codes about site performance on their own individual websites. Google gets more information about how people are interacting with and engaging on the website, and the web master gets info about how those interactions and engagements actually influence the search performance in the search engine.

Nate Shivar: That’s a good reminder about the SEO industry in general. I think a lot of people who don’t know about it think of it as you know, people who are trying to trick Google into getting better rankings. It’s important to understand that Google wants to have well run, well written, well maintained websites because like you said it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. To do that they also make Google Web Master Tools Search Console fairly easy to install. To get installed, you know not to basic, but there’s several options. Nowadays you can install it actually through your analytics code snippet so you don’t even have to add anything additional to your website code.

Brett Snyder: That is honestly, that’s my favorite way to do it. It’s the easiest way. It’s one where, we’ve told people from episode one that you have to have Google Analytics installed. That it’s pretty straight forward. If you have the same login really all you have to do is say verify through Google Analytics. If you’re logged in to the same Google account as your Google Analytics code is verified, it will automatically, once you hit verify, it will automatically verify the access to Google Search Console.

The term “search engine optimization” is often (actually mostly) used in the industry as a synonym for “Google organic optimization” – but it’s really more than that. In fact, you might argue that with all the specialization going on on the Web, specifically when it comes to finding products/services, that Google is no longer the place you go to find what you want…it’s the place to go to find the place to go to find what you want.

Links mentioned

SEO for Amazon

Guy Doing Old School “SEO” in Spotify

Check out this episode!

How do you approach & plan to distribute content to millions of people? What kind of lessons can every business takeaway from viral content machines like UpWorthy & BuzzFeed?

This episode brings back one of our most popular guests. When we last spoke to Evan Porter, he was the lead copywriter at marketing agency in Atlanta. Since then he’s moved on to a full-time position with Upworthy where he writes and packages uplifting, stories with the expressed goal of helping that content go viral.

In this episode, Evan talks to us about planning, creating & distributing content at scale. We go into the details of how sites like UpWorthy drive so much success with creating & distributing content and what every site can learn from them.

Issues Discussed

* Why content at scale matters

* The biggest difference between an agency & a pure content position

* The mindset required for working with content distribution at scale

* Headlines & creating sustainable user experience

* How to balance quality, fact-checking & speed

* Tradeoffs between timeless & trending content

* How distribution channels affect content distribution

Links Mentioned

Evan on UpWorthy

Evan’s Twitter feed

Evan’s Facebook page

Evan’s personal website

Check out this episode!

Digital marketers, and SEOs in particular, have a habit of latching onto specific tactics that are “working” and using them to death. The process can turn legitimate marketing tactics into spammy parodies of themselves – wasting time, money & reputations.

The problem is the inherent contradiction with tactics that are both sustainable & scalable. In this episode Nate & Brett discuss how to identify shortcuts or “shiny things” in marketing & how to make sure you keep your tactics both sustainable & scalable.

Issues Discussed

* What The shortcuts & shiny things are

* Why chasing shortcuts & shiny things matters

* How to do SEO better

Links Mentioned

Rand Fishkin’s tweet about roundups

 

Check out this episode!

Every business has limited resources, so how do you prioritize opportunities in SEO? It’s not a straightforward question. And there is no right answer. But you have to choose priorities regardless.

In this episode, Nate & Brett debate the choice between on-page/content and off-page/links for SEO. What side do you think will win?

Debate Points

Scenario & Opening Statements

What’s Google Looking At?

What Will Bring The Quickest ROI?

What Will Bring The Highest Long-term ROI?

Can You Overcome Inherent Disadvantages?

Links Mentioned

Brett’s debate with Wil Reynolds over microsites vs. domains

Check out this episode!

One of the essential parts of any digital marketing campaign is great content. But how do you develop an audience for your content? And how do you develop a consistent brand voice wherever your content appears?

Those questions are just part of what our special guest Evan Porter covers in this episode of Bamboo Chalupa.

This episode was originally recorded in 2014, but we thought it spoke for itself as a piece of “evergreen content” since it’s just as relevant in October 2015 as it was in 2014.

Evan is writer at UpWorthy and the author of WordsByEvanPorter.com. He’s not only led campaigns for clients across a range of industries, but has also had his own work featured in major online publications ranging from AskMen.com to UpWorthy to LifeHack.org the front pages of Medium and Digg. 

Links Mentioned

Find Evan’s work at WordsByEvanPorter.com

Evan on Twitter

The 5 Why’s Approach

Check out this episode!

So much SEO & digital marketing advice is either simple/vague or specific/advanced. In this episode, Nate and Brett walk through their best entry to medium level SEO tips for anyone just starting out in SEO.

You’ll learn how to approach learning SEO; how to approach keywords and content; how to start getting links and off-page signals; and how to treat SEO like an investment, not a cost of running a website.

Issues Discussed

* How to learn about SEO

* Tips for technical SEO

* Tips for on-page SEO

* Tips for off-page SEO

Links Mentioned

Google’s SEO Starter Guide

Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO

Nate’s Guide to Choosing Keywords

Nate’s post on Prequalified Content

Check out this episode!

Listen on iTunes!

Transcription

Brett Snyder: Hello and welcome to Episode 29 of your Bamboo Chalupa Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Brett Snyder. I am the President of Knucklepuck, and I’m joined by my co-host, Nate Shivar, the author of ShivarWeb.com.

Nate Shivar: Hello, hello.

Brett Snyder: Today we’re going to be talking about a topic that we actually get a lot of questions for, not only through the podcast but I know Nate does as well over on ShivarWeb, and that’s talking about tips for beginner SEOs or business owners looking to get their feet wet and get started in SEO. We focus on a lot of medium-to-high-level topics here, but an understanding of the fundamentals is extremely important for growing businesses. We want to make sure that we’re serving that audience as well, so today we’re going to talk about the top tips for people looking to get involved in actually doing SEO for a particular website, citing some tools, all of which will be recapped in the Show Notes, but the very first thing and the way we always try to kick this off is the purpose for this is we want you guys to educate yourselves.

Nate Shivar: Yeah, and there are plenty of beginners, guys. I think the most famous one is the Moz Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Google has a SEO Starter Guide, but I think to start the whole educational process is to learn what you’re looking at. It starts with really looking at Google and Bing, Yahoo! search results. Look and see when you search for a keyword, something that you’re searching for yourself, what results are displayed? What types of sites come back? What is Google trying to show? What is a title tag? What’s a meta description? What makes up each element of the search results that Google shows? What’s the difference between the organic and the paid listings, and how does that translate into the different things that people are looking for and what they do when they end up on the website that they click through to?

Brett Snyder: SEO is ultimately just a grand experiment in reverse engineering. You have to understand the elements of the search result, what you’re actually trying to optimize for, before you can implement any tactics to accomplish that. One of the really easy ways that beginner SEOs can educate themselves is to become familiar with the popular tools...