Seth Besmertnik, being brutally original, and making Spectacles of yourselves – VB Engage

This week, Travis and Stewart talk with Seth Besmertnik about content marketing, SEO, mobile engagement, how to make sure the output you create is actually seen, and what to do to ensure your potential customers actually care about you.

And in this week’s news we discuss the latest and greatest in VR, plus we talk about what’s going on with Snap Inc Spectacles, a wearable that interacts with Snapchat to provide a less geeky Google Glass-like experience. Want a pair? Turns out there isn’t an easy way to get ahold of them right now, but that’s part of the fun, right?

Did you miss last week’s episode with the brilliant Veronica Belmont? We’ve got your back.

Listen to the 29th episode of the VB Engage podcast to hear:

• Travis and Stewart are back in their natural habitats this week [00:50]
• Any generous benefactors want to fund Stewart and Travis to cover Tech? [01:42]
• Next week, we begin our Web Summit interviews [2:55]
• Exciting week for wearables associated with mobile [03:22]
• Snap Inc. is releasing Spectacles via Spectacles Bot [04:11]
• The words of the year? [04:20]
• Ebay has Spectacles available at 3x exaggerated prices [5:25]
• Scoble jumped in the shower with Spectacles, like he did with Glass [6:06]
• Spectacles link in with smartphones, live streaming, ephemeral networking [7:17]
• Google Earth releases Earth VR, and it’s amazing. [8:08]
• Earth VR is released on HTC Vive, not Daydream, which is peculiar [8:55]
• Travis wakes up to the Superman theme song and wants to fly in VR [10:12]
• Stewart just finished research on a new consumer survey on VR interest [11:11]
• Joke about Samsung VR Gear exploding in your face [12:23]
• 62 percent of people have tried VR once, tried it multiple times, or want to try it [13:05]
• Google Street VR is available on all platforms currently, a 360 panorama. [13:40]
• UploadVR video showcasing a monkey wearing VR [14:45]
• VB Engage 029 guest is Seth Besmertnik from Conductor! [15:40]
• What should we do about SEO? Stewart says “nothing” [16:44]
• Google automatically awards high-quality content [17:25]
• The old world of easy SEO algorithms is over [18:15]
• Some technical things that work today in the mobile world [19:44]
• Schema markup on your site can work and canonicalize your content [21:00]
• Make sure your pages are linked to each other [21:14]
• User experience is crucial today for search engine ranking [21:48]
• Seth offers some tips and tricks on how to create rankable content [23:39]
• Stop using the term “SEO” [24:35]
• If your content is good for everyone, then it’s perfect for no one [25:15]
• Know who your customers are and their words, topics, interests, and intent [26:12]
• Social signals and how they impact search ranking [27:29]
• 200+ ranking signals, and how does Google Rankbrain factor in? [29:00]
• Focus on your customer and what they want. Chase what they want [29:27]
• Make good content, and you’ll have YEARS of traffic [30:04]
• How do Siri, Cortana, and Alexa’s conversational UI impact search? [31:23]
• Move away from transactional marketing [31:40]
• Make progress toward answering questions that your products are solutions for [32:03]
• Understand needs of customer, be strategic, and make focused content [32:52]

Thanks for tuning in this week, and be excited for next week, when we begin our Web Summit interview series, starting with the incredible CEO of Imgur, Alan Schaaf.

And if you missed last week’s episode with Veronica Belmont of Growbot, an incredible episode full of massive knowledge bombs, listen to it right here.