Marketing Speak®

Link Building is an essential component to SEO, yet it is often given short shrift, probably because so much of it is outside of our control, at least in comparison to on-page SEO. While the on-page stuff can be quite technically complex in terms of the diagnosis and the implementation, after all, that's why a lot of companies bring me in to help them, at least it's pretty straightforward and that...

If you're like most business owners, you probably hate cold calling. I can relate. I hate it too. Selling isn't easy, not even for the raging extrovert who loves the limelight and chatting with random strangers. From a young age, we're taught to be humble and self-effacing. So it's no surprise that most of us find hyping up ourselves, our company and its products a little uncomfortable. Yet, sales...

If you have a unique skill or have cracked the code on running a successful business, sharing your heart and wisdom with others can provide you with an expanded product offering and generate a lucrative income stream. The main hurdle is finding a simple and scalable way to monetize your knowledge. If only there was a solution.  Enter Jonathan Cronstedt or JCron, as he prefers to go by, our guest f...

The traditional view of the entrepreneur is someone with superhuman stamina who works day and night to get their vision off the ground. For a long time, it was simply accepted as part of the culture that people who wanted to succeed work 14-hour days and spent their weekends buried in spreadsheets and contracts. On this episode number 196, we're going to hear from a man who embraced this lifestyle...

For the serious SEO practitioner, Ahrefs is a tool and brand that we're already well aware of. It's a powerful platform for many things, including competitor analysis and keyword research. As you can imagine, an awesome marketing tool like Ahrefs needs an awesome chief marketing officer, and that's where Tim Soulo comes in. Tim is a digital marketing thought leader, a frequent speaker at events ar...

What's the difference between a viral video campaign that gets millions of views, shares, and likes and an equally valuable one that languages in the backwaters of YouTube? Daniel Harmon is the co-founder and the creative visionary of the Harmon Brothers. You may not have heard of the Harmon Brothers but they're a big deal. The agency has delivered over 1.4 billion video views—that's B, billion—wi...

Affiliate marketing can be lucrative, but it's an industry where only the strong survive. My guest for this episode number 193 is Ian Fernando. Ian is a digital marketer who cut his teeth in the affiliate marketing space for over 15 years, building a highly profitable business, and developing innovative monetization strategies. Ian has also appeared as a speaker at conferences around the world, de...

How do you convince someone to take action? It's the eternal dilemma of the marketer. Unfortunately, too many people rely on their guts rather than facts and data when it comes to conversion strategies. Optimizing for conversion means understanding your customer's journey holistically—from the Google search to the shopping cart. It's about ensuring your copy, design, and overall user experience wo...

Building a website isn't that hard. Anyone can buy a domain and throw up a few pages of content into a plug and play website builder, like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, but building a website that people actually want to use and even enjoy using, that can be incredibly difficult. It takes research, patience, and a deep understanding of the customers' needs, motivations, and desires. User Experien...

Some of the biggest influencers and internet celebrities of the 21st century rose to fame via YouTube. While you may think that they happened to get lucky by being in the right place at the right time, there's actually a lot of work that goes into a successful YouTube channel.   YouTube has a tremendous audience--it's the second largest search engine after Google--but you need to be smart about ho...

Every brand has a social media strategy. But which platforms should you focus on? Most businesses invest their time and money in the bigger networks - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and so on. Having a presence on these sites is a given, but what if there were other sites that actually delivered a bigger impact and ROI? Brent Csutoras is a digital marketing consultant, futurist, top-tier s...

Digital publishing is difficult in the 21st century. The competition is tight and the industry is getting more and more saturated because of the internet's open-source advantage. But one company that really stands out today is Digital Trends. In fact, it's the largest independent tech publisher in the U.S. with over 30 million visitors per month. Here with me today is the co-founder of Digital Tre...

For years, you've probably heard people say that you should be using video in your marketing. It makes sense. After all, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. If you don't have a YouTube strategy, you're missing out on a ton of traffic and a massive opportunity to promote your brand. While creating video content is cheaper and easier than ever, it can still be intimidating if y...

Podcasting is huge right now. Yet, many podcasters struggle to make money or generate leads from their podcasts. Some even have trouble building an audience or producing consistent, engaging content. If you've confronted any of these problems or thinking about dipping your toe into the world of podcasting, then you'll want to know what my guest for this episode has to say. Like me, Nicole Holland ...

Have you ever had a numerology reading? Are you superstitious about numbers? My guest is Blair Gorman, the Founder of Numerologist.com, one of the most popular and successful numerology sites on the web. You may be wondering what numerology has to do with marketing? Whether you swear by your destiny number or not, you can definitely learn some amazing lessons about digital marketing from this show...

No one wants to wait around for a website to load. If you want customers to buy from you online, you need to give them what they want quickly. Google understands this better than anyone. That's why they created AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP is a technology that allows Google to serve up from its cache a trimmed down version of your mobile pages, thus massively reducing load times. Not surpr...

Google isn't just one search engine. Google also operates a number of specialty search engines, one for news: Google News, one for images: Google Images, two for video: Google Video and YouTube, and many more. In this episode, we're going to focus on optimizing two of these specialty engines, Google News and YouTube. One of your secret weapons for Google News optimization is press releases. If you...

When we plopped down in front of Netflix, we often forget how massive the video streaming revolution really was. It wasn't long ago that TV watching was limited to whatever was being broadcast live over the air or on cable. If technology has taught us anything, it's that change is the only constant. What will the next revolution in streaming video be and how can you capitalize on it? My guest for...

If you want to achieve long-term sustainable growth, then you need a system. Having been an SEO consultant for several decades, I can tell you that the same is true if you want to drive high-quality traffic to your website consistently. Creating a consistent income stream is one thing, but leveraging that income to attain access to your dream life is another thing entirely. Joe Fier and Matt Wolfe...

Conversion is something we all want more of yet increasing your conversions can be tricky. There's no magic bullet. No one size fits all solution to the conversion problem. One man who knows conversion optimization inside and out is Khalid Saleh. He's the author of  Conversion Optimization  published by O'Reilly. Khalid is also Cofounder and CEO of Invesp, a company that has conversion optimized s...

It's a strange world we live in where it's considered inappropriate to call without texting first. Isn't placing unannounced calls exactly what phones are for? I remember the days where I could call my friends or even prospects out of the blue and it was totally fine. Regardless, the phone is often still your first touch point with prospects and their first impression of you. No one knows better h...

Owning a portfolio of over 100 revenue-generating websites may sound impressive, but it can be more pain than it's worth, especially if you put your trust in the wrong partners. There are so many details, financing options, manageability, scalability, performance metrics, valuation, negotiation and due diligence. Googling for the answers is not going to cut it. Doing adequate or even deep due dili...

Have you ever dreamed of becoming a household name? What about a bestselling author or the number one expert in your field? Or are you simply looking to take your business to the next level? Whatever your ultimate goals in business and life are, it all starts with building relationships, not just any relationships but authentic relationships that will attract people to you and bring clients, profi...

Public Relations is a necessity for any growing business. When budgets are tight and there are other more urgent costs, hiring a glitzy PR firm can seem extravagant. The fact of the matter is most businesses probably already have all the tools they need internally to run their own PR strategy. This isn't something I'm just making up. It's the premise of a new book co-authored by Cameron Herold cal...

If you run a business, you know that branding is more than just creating a logo. When done right, a brand represents your principles, it stimulates loyalty and aspiration in your customers, and adds value in the marketplace. Above all, a brand is a promise. Many of you know that I'm a big proponent of branding done properly, yet this is only the third episode of Marketing Speak that we've ever don...