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Please introduce yourself and where you work.
My name is Keith Baxter and I’m the SEO/SEM account manager at BubbleUp LLC. I bring 19 years of SEO experience to BubbleUp and am getting incredible results for the clients that hire us for SEO services.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
The last 10 years has been interesting. From using blackhat (cloaking) and mass spam backlinks to rank and convert just about anything, to an age where Rank Brain dominates and minimal backlinks are necessary.
From 100% keyword based anchor text, to focussing on brand and keeping keyword based anchor text percentages very low.
Even local has changed drastically. From just including keyword modifiers along with your primary keywords to spending 90% of my time in Google My Business optimizing local campaigns (focusing on reviews, citations, and image optimization).
And lastly, the introduction of Google Suggest and the ability to make it work on a mass scale for client campaigns.
From 100% keyword based anchor text, to focussing on brand and keeping keyword based anchor text percentages very low.
Even local has changed drastically. From just including keyword modifiers along with your primary keywords to spending 90% of my time in Google My Business optimizing local campaigns (focusing on reviews, citations, and image optimization).
And lastly, the introduction of Google Suggest and the ability to make it work on a mass scale for client campaigns.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
In 1998, I bought a ‘digital business’. It was an ad network that was 100% fake. I didn’t realize that when I bought it, but once I did, I had to figure out this ‘traffic’ thing really quickly.
I first worked with banners and classified ads in email, but once I discovered what could be done with GoTo, Alta Vista, and Lycos, the game changed completly.
In 2004, I was an early Adwords adopter and realized that the data I was getting was perfectly matched for SEO and ramped up my knowledge/experience with Google and Yahoo.
There were things we could do in those days that we can’t do today, so it was the wild west of SEO… moreso than the previous 6 years.
In some regards, the engines were getting smarter which weeded out so much competition, thus allowing me to take over entire markets for a period of time. That’s what soidified my passion for SEO which continues to this day.
I first worked with banners and classified ads in email, but once I discovered what could be done with GoTo, Alta Vista, and Lycos, the game changed completly.
In 2004, I was an early Adwords adopter and realized that the data I was getting was perfectly matched for SEO and ramped up my knowledge/experience with Google and Yahoo.
There were things we could do in those days that we can’t do today, so it was the wild west of SEO… moreso than the previous 6 years.
In some regards, the engines were getting smarter which weeded out so much competition, thus allowing me to take over entire markets for a period of time. That’s what soidified my passion for SEO which continues to this day.
What are the services you provide to your clients?
BubbleUp provides a full range of digital marketing services, including design, SEO, SEM, and media buys through many networks and platforms. Our employees are some of the most experienced and talented in the business and can craft and manage simple to complex marketing campaigns.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2017 for SEO?
Rank Brain is the current standard and immediate future of Google in 2017.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
They say you need 10,000 hours to master a skill. You need experience. Experience that no book/course/certification can give you (those are great starters, but are meaningless). You need to spend and lose your own money. You need to discover how to maneuver the landmines of losing money and how to turn that around. Once you have one profitable campaign, you need to understand how/why you got there and how to scale it. You need to understand data and how to use data to drive decision making. Digital Marketing is strategic and you need to have that mindset/aptitude if deciding to make this a career.
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