Brad Fogel is the Founder and CEO of Operation Technology, a digital marketing and web design agency located in Chicago, IL. Operation Technology provides digital marketing solutions for small to large businesses, which include mobile responsive websites, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising and local search marketing. Brad holds a PMP certification from the Project Management Institute. Building solid online strategies for his clients and making new connections within the industry is his passion.
Please introduce yourself and where you work.
Hello! My name is Bradley Fogel and I am the CEO of
Operation Technology, a digital marketing agency located in Chicago.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
SEO has gone through enormous changes during the past 10 years. Years ago, companies could get away with keyword stuffing their website content, black hat optimizations such as spammy backlinks and crank out low-quality content. This day and age, that is absolutely the wrong way to go about it, especially if you want to be in business for the long haul.
Businesses should look at a mobile responsive website design, high quality long-form search engine optimized blog content (>1500 word articles) which may include answering user intent (the intent could be to purchase something and for others it’s to find information or make a connection with a company), web pages that load quickly, and clean code. Adhering to these steps in conjunction with a quality link building campaign will help a lot versus the way it was done 10 years ago…and for the better. Not thinking about quality will get you caught up in Google’s constant algorithm changes and most likely in a bad way.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
I was working for a fortune 500 in the early 2000s as a product manager and online marketer, essentially wearing two hats. I had flexibility to test how certain website changes and optimizations would affect rankings for our products versus the competition. Seeing big jumps in product related keywords had me hooked on SEO. It drove sales to my product lines and got everyone interested in our marketing group.
What are the services you provide to your clients?
We provide search engine optimization, paid search advertising, web design, retargeting, social media and content writing.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2018 for SEO?
Besides quality content, we think of link building and engagement. When people like your website and the products or services you sell, or the content you publish, they’ll naturally link to your site creating natural backlinks and come back often. This also creates the opportunity to send social signals if utilizing social platform and spread brand awareness.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
My best advice is to read and practice often. Be hands on. Watch how-to videos. The industry constantly changes and keeping up is important to do. I started out learning how to program myself after hours, taking some classes, putting up a personal website and then practising and honing my digital skills such as SEO on my own site years ago. It was amazing to see how little changes to your own website could have dramatic results afterwards. Enjoying what you do is important otherwise you may not want to keep up with the constant changes going on within the digital realm.
