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1,163 viewsMark is the principal of Two Wheels Marketing, and a 10+ year veteran in the digital marketing industry. Mark began as an affiliate manager in the uber-competitive online gaming industry, managing a team in the recruitment and management of 10,000 affiliates, which increased revenue by 350% in one 4-year period for the program. Mark developed his SEO skills during this time by developing his own affiliate websites and driving traffic through content marketing and link building. After 6 years in the gaming business, Mark launched his consulting business and shortly after forming his own digital marketing agency, helping clients to increase website traffic, generate more sales, and increase leads through PPC, SEO and Social Media strategies.
Please introduce yourself and where you work.
My name is Mark Subel, I am the owner and founder ofTwo Wheels Marketing based in Columbus Ohio. We are a boutique digital and search engine marketing agency working with clients of all sizes and in various industries.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
I think the biggest thing is that there are less shortcuts to achieving success with SEO. I remember the days when having the keywords on the page and then getting listed in everyone’s “links” page was a legit strategy that achieved good rankings. I think the main principles of SEO have remained pretty steady over time in terms of success, and there are just less and less shortcuts and spammy techniques working these days. I also think that Google is doing a much better job at returning relevant results than they used to years ago. There is always room for improvement, but search results pages are much more relevant to the search every day minus some outlier cases.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
My first job was as an affiliate manager in the online gaming industry. I would work with hundreds and hundreds of affiliates who were driving traffic to their sites through SEO. After working with them and learning some of their strategies for a number of years, I decided to purchase and operate an affiliate website myself with the goal of using SEO to drive traffic and refer business to the other gaming sites out there in exchange for commission. It was a true learning experience in the online gaming industry which was very competitive. I learned how to rank for competitive terms and “long-tail” terms that in aggregate drove a lot of traffic. Of course, it taught me other SEO techniques like on-page SEO, content marketing, link building, and etc.
What are the services you provide to your clients?
A majority of our business now is on the “paid” side of things. PPC, Display, Remarketing and Paid Social Ads – (Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn). We do still provide SEO services. Our core specialties are search engine marketing and paid social advertising.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2018 for SEO?
Many of the same SEO strategies still apply today. People are searching for things, and you must have the “best” page about that search in order for Google to rank you well (That means many things obviously). I think on the content marketing side of things, integrating more “intent”-based content will help you to not only rank well for various keywords, but provide better context for Google to rank you for various searches. To the extent you can provide content revolved around the intent behind the actual keywords being searched, the better off you will be and the better you will satisfy a potential searcher, which is most important.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
Just jump in! Learn as much as possible, get confused, get frustrated, ask questions, ask for mentoring, read articles, attend webinars and be a practitioner. The only way you will learn this stuff is by doing. You WILL make a TON of mistakes along the way, but each mistake makes you that much better in this space. No one is the absolute expert on ANY one topic, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it. There are always things to learn and things you can do better and that’s why we love this space. If you like to learn and try new things, and positively impact the bottom line of businesses and organizations big and small, this is a great career path!
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