Who's Stephan Spencer?

Stephan is an SEO authority expert, author, speaker and consultant helping some of the most prominent companies in the world.

Stephan is the author of The Art of SEO and he's one of the foremost experts in the field of search engine optimization. Stephan is also the host of two popular podcasts. The Optimized Geek and Marketing Speak. I'll tell you a little bit more about each podcast next, and you can find out everything else you need to know about Stephan at his website, stephanspencer.com

The Optimized Geek

I listened to a few episodes of The Optimized Geek when he first told me about the podcast, but it wasn't until recently that I started listening to every episode.

The Optimized geek talks about "life-hacks" for lack of a better term. Stephan interviews interesting people that have achieved high-level accomplishments and amazing personal transformations.

The podcast is about biohacking, personal transformations, I would say they're about self-optimization (is that even a real term?). Its official tagline is: Reboot and Improve your Life.

Stephan went through his own amazing transformation. If you knew him 6 years ago, you wouldn't recognize him today. I was flabbergasted when he first showed me and told me about his transformation.

I'd recommend it to anybody looking to learn how to master your body, your life, and relationships.

Marketing Speak

The other podcast, Marketing Speak is also a high-value podcast covering monologues and interviews with field and industry experts. I don't recommend it to everyone because it isn't for everybody.

If you're an entrepreneur, marketing geek like me, blogger, vlogger or business owner, then this is a must podcast to add to your subscriptions.

Both podcasts are available everywhere it matters: iTunes, Google Play, Sticher and probably other podcasting apps

So what did I ask Stephan Spencer During the Interview?

Our interview was about voice search and how it's changing the landscape of SEO.
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Imagine that in the future, actually... right now, Google will not be showing you 10 blue links to pick one you like. Instead, it will be reading the summary of the top one result.

I say reading it because we have a boom in virtual assistants being deployed in our homes. Google Home, Alexa, Cortana and others are listening to your commands and queries triggered by your voice commands.

Most of these devices take the top-most result on a search query and read it out loud. This is the featured snippet of search engines. You might have noticed these the last time you did a search online.
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Those little summaries in the search engines are called featured snippets and Stephan tells us the steps we can take to take advantage of those results so that our websites provide those results.

via GIPHY

If you can answer a question on your website, and your answer shows up on that spot, then Google Assistant in Google Home, Alexa, Siri, Cortana and other "smart" assistants will use your answer to give people searching with their voice.

The tricky part is making your blog or website the one that provides that answer. The interview is short, but packed with useful and actionable information to help you rank for featured snippets and start integrating voice search results as part of your overall SEO strategy.

The post How To Rank For Featured Snippets appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

SEJSummit is a conference featuring some of the top experts in enterprise level SEO. Hosted by Searchmetrics and organized by SEJ, this conference was extremely valuable in terms of networking and learning. The thing that makes it different than other similar industry events is that it is geared towards enterprise level SEO.

Big numbers, big traffic, multinational companies, multi-platform online presence management and things that are generally out of the reach of most SEOs. When it comes to analyzing data, big is awesome.

Usually enterprise level SEO means lots, and lots, and lots of traffic and really fun budgets. You get to try things and test things and you get results quickly. You can run A/B tests like Neil Patel suggests and get almost instant results.

By the way, Neil was one of the speakers. If you are a digital marketer of any kind, you should know who Neil Patel is. Another notable name was Jordan Koene. The presentations by Neil and Jordan were probably the most insightful and useful out of the event, but the other speakers were great too.

Mindy Weinstein taught us about making stories relevant and personal when you need to write content for "boring" industries. What I really liked about her talk is that she taught us how to do it at the same time she presented. She used a personal story to draw us in to her presentation and it worked beautifully.

I went to the Santa Monica event because it is close to me, but the SEJSummit is coming to Dallas, San Francisco and even London to name a few of the upcoming locations, visit the official invite page (click on the image above).

Sometimes when you go to an industry event like this one, you'll find yourself overwhelmed with information. You feel like you just put your mouth to a firehose and if you take in one more drop you will explode. This feeling generally leads to analysis paralysis and you end up going home with nothing but a spaghetti of new ideas; pages and pages of notes about cutting edge tricks and tips and possibilities that never materialize.

Not at SEJSummit, the format was terrific. One track was all that was needed. Speakers come up quickly without a whole lot of hoopla in between. The key element that makes this a must-attend event for 2015 is the focus on delivering three takeaways.

We have limited time; we need deep knowledge but also actionable steps. This is why the summit was outstanding.

See all the photos here.

Each speaker is required to present their talk in a 20 minute time slot (strict) and they open up by explaining what they will share with us and at the end there are 3 takeaways.  The three takeaways are easy to remember and note down, and then, expand when you get back to the office and really put things to action.

SEJ made sure that these three takeaways are actionable, impactful and memorable. Each speaker did a great job and kept the audience engaged. I wasn't the only one that felt this way because the room stayed full until the very last presentation.

If you want to learn about SEO from an enteprise point of view, you should make your way to one of the SEJSummit events. It doesn't matter if you are in-house SEO for a large company or an Agency managing enterprise clients, you have to make it to one of these. Oh yeah, and did I mention the event is free? What?

The post SEJSummit 2015 at Santa Monica by Searchmetrics and SEJ appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.