Our guest this week is Mike Grehan - CMO & Managing Director at Acronym, SEO pioneer, author, world-traveler, and keynote speaker, Champagne connoisseur and consummate drinking partner to the global digital marketing community. Former publisher of SearchEngineWatch.com and ClickZ.com, and producer of the industry’s largest search and social marketing event, SES Conference & Expo.

Tune in for this intelligent conversation at TalkRadio.nyc or watch the Facebook Livestream by clicking here.

Show NotesSegment 1

Joseph introduces his guest, Mike Grehan, a CEO and digital marketing expert, they discuss Mike’s former career in the entertainment industry as a DJ, and how he transitioned to digital marketing. Mike explains how content is the most important aspect of any business, especially in the entertainment industry, as business’s customers come back for the content, not the ads and coding of the website. Joseph and Mike discuss the wise content strategy of publishing books, as well as Mike’s journey of writing his own book about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They also discuss the importance of learning how Google operates, and if one figures out how Google operates, they can best use Google to promote their business and their products. Mike also explains how the book has affected his professional life, and how it launched him into prominence in the SEO industry and community.

Segment 2

Mike explains the difference between information retrieval and data retrieval, how information retrieval is finding out about things, and data retrieval is finding the exact specific thing you’re looking for. Joseph and Mike discuss the differences between structured and unstructured data, and how the content you create is unstructured data, and you can implement this content with structured data. Mike explains how the academic field of information retrieval has been around for a long time, even when search engines and SEOs first came around. They also discuss on page optimization, and how with Google updates, this strategy is no longer viable, and now creators have to focus more on the content and optimizing that content in terms of an SEO perspective. The two discuss the E.A.T., experience, authority, and trust, as an SEO strategy, and Mike explains how E.A.T. is important when implementing unstructured data. Experience focuses on knowing your audience and catering to them, Authority focuses on earning credibility for you and your website, and Trust focuses on end user data.

Segment 3

Joseph and Mike discuss the best ways for people to use structured data on their website, which is an extra signal to Google to let them know what your content is about. Mike suggests Scheama.org as a resource to learn how to properly use and implement structured data on your website. The two also discuss more in depth what structured data is, and how best to make use of structure data to your benefit. Mike explains how if one gets the E.A.T. aspect of unstructured data correct, then Google will reward you with structured data, which leads to more engagement, which leads to more structured data polish for your website for Google. They discuss the importance of creating experiences with the content, and the future of the jobs of SEO specialists are that they now need to become content experience analysts.

Segment 4

Mike discusses how he would explain what SEO to a CEO who doesn’t know what SEO is, even though in the modern day most CEOs and CMOs do know the basics of SEO, but don’t understand the value of SEO. Mike also explains how many larger businesses were not prepared for the push for ecommerce due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which lead to more CEOs now understanding the value of SEO for their business. Also how Google has become very good at training the industry to do what Google wants them to. Joseph and Mike discuss the manuscripts that Mike has written for his upcoming books, and how people can connect to Mike with any questions. Joseph brings up BrightEdge as a resource for optimizing and polishing one’s wise content.