What a way to start the next season/phase of episodes of the Azeem Digital Asks podcast. 

My guest is the SEO Twitter Flame, my good friend, Kristina Azarenko. She is a Toronto based SEO consultant, providing eCommerce SEO, Technical SEO, Website Migrations and Google Analytics consulting so that you can finally get what you’re looking for – via her company MarketingSyrup.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite listening platform from this list:

Spotify: Click here
Apple Podcasts: Click here

Use a different listening platform? Choose it here.

Kristina is someone I consider to be one of the foremost thought leaders in the Ecommerce space, and also runs her own SEO course, as well as recently releasing a Chrome extension which has over 5,000(!) downloads!

We discuss:

– How she went from being a debt collector to starting her own business.

– The impact of COVID on Ecommerce, and how businesses have responded.

– Advice for businesses who are considering investing more in the space.

– The biggest mistakes she has seen people in the space make.

– What behaviour changes she has noticed from consumers as a result of the pandemic.

As always, please tell a friend to tell a friend, and please like, rate, share, and subscribe to the podcast!

Joining me on this episode of the Azeem Digital Asks Podcast is Barry Schwartz, CEO of RustyBrick. He’s the founder of Search Engine Roundtable, and has covered search news for over 17 years (You may recognise him from his famous “not new” replies when people share updates on Twitter). As well as this he is a co-ordinator, speaker, and moderator at many search marketing conferences.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite listening platform from this list:

Spotify: Click here
Apple Podcasts: Click here

Use a different listening platform? Choose it here.

We have a great conversation about how he keeps up to date with everything going on in search, his origin story, some of the challenges he’s faced, responding to negative comments he gets, and how he manages to get a lot of work done during the day.

As always, please like, rate, share, and subscribe – tell a friend to tell a friend! 

Useful links:

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

Barry’s website: https://www.rustybrick.com/barry

Barry’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rustybrick

Barry’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/rustybrick

Search Engine Roundtable: https://www.seroundtable.com/

Search Engine Land: https://searchengineland.com/

For the final episode of 2020, I have an incredible guest – Izzi Smith – a Munich-based SEO with a penchant for SERP optimization, Structured Data, UX, tech SEO, and making people smile with her cheesy jokes and SEO memes. She’s also a regular on the conference speaking circuit, and shares LOTS of useful information.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite platform here.

We talk about:

• Her origins in the industry, moving from Burnley to Munich – having never been abroad or on a plane before!
  
• Why she chose a career in SEO.
  
• How she learns about SEO and stays up to date, and improves her soft skills.
  
• Putting herself “out there” and dealing with impostor syndrome.
  
• How she has been coping with COVID restrictions, and tips for people who aren’t fond of remote working.
  
• Her biggest failure last year, and what she learned from it.
  
• Why SEO needs a “facelift”
  
• Advice for people heading into 2021 seeking inspiration.

and so much more!

You’ll really enjoy this episode, possibly more than we did making it. A lot of fun and laughter was had!

As always, please tell a friend to tell a friend, please like, rate, subscribe, and share the podcast! See you in 2021!

Izzi’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/izzionfire

Izzi’s Website: https://izzismith.com/

SEO Memes: https://izzismith.com/seo-memes/

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/

Joining me on the show this week is the awesome Rand Fishkin. He is the cofounder and CEO of SparkToro. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his blogging, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s most likely to be in the company of his partner in marriage and (mostly petty) crime, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you feed him great pasta or great whisky, he’ll give you the cheat code to rank #1 on Google.

Listen now, right above the subscribe button, or pick your favourite platform here.

In this episode, we get into:

• Algorithms, and the responsibility of networks to manage misinformation/disinformation.
  
• SparkToro’s high churn rate, and the challenges he’s having with the product.
  
• Lessons he’s learned throughout his career.
  
• Where, and who Rand draws his inspiration from.
  
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within the industry, and how he went about diversifying MozCon lineups.
  
• Why he feels he’s been unsuccessful with his content strategy/marketing for SparkToro during the last year.
  
• Where the inspiration came from to write the blog post about leaving Moz, and why he wrote it.
  
• How he deals with negative responses to his content.
  
• His theory about Google’s deep-learning algorithms weighting unlinked brand mentions more than it it is links by themselves.

..and so much more!

There’s a lot of value to be had from this episode – you won’t want to miss it!

As always, please tell a friend to tell a friend – subscribe, rate, like, and share this – it all helps!

Rand’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/randfish

SparkToro: https://sparktoro.com/

The blog post we discussed: https://sparktoro.com/blog/im-ending-my-tenure-on-mozs-board-welcoming-tara-reed-and-asia-orangio/

Podcast Anchor Page: https://anchor.fm/azeemdigitalasks

My Twitter page: https://twitter.com/AzeemDigital

My website: https://iamazeemdigital.com/