We recently sat down with Eric Rohrback, the team lead for SEO and PPC at HubShout, to talk about what's next in local and mobile, and how he finds ways to make his clients the priority.
Tell us a bit about HubShout — how did you start? What inspired you to strike out on your own? Who founded the business?
HubShout is a SEO Reseller service where agencies of all sizes outsource SEO, Pay Per Click, and Social Media needs to us while keeping it all within the United States. Our company was founded by Chad Hill and Adam Stetzer back in 2008 after building a reporting software to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. We now help manage campaigns for hundreds of reseller partners using this powerful software. We have teams of analysts, content writers, web developers, and account managers to help make campaigns successful.
We have two locations in the US. One in Rochester, NY and one in Falls Church, VA.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I'm the team lead for both SEO and PPC teams here at HubShout. I started out at the company working as a paid search analyst (PPC team), but always had a strong love of local search and helping small businesses. In the time that I'm not spending helping clients, I'm active in all kinds of sports.
How does Yext fit into your product/service offering? How does it help you do your job better?
Simply put, Yext takes the hassle out of manual citation building. The great integrations they have with the directories to allow menus, additional photos, and other great enhancements are more than you can ever get with free listings and at a better price than doing each one individually. Having our team work from one dashboard to update 60+ sites saves us time that can be better spent helping our customers. We have a large amount of local businesses/main street businesses that we work for, so having a strong and complete local profile on all the major sites is a huge thing. Yext was one of the better product offering enhancements we've made.
What does Yext make it possible to do that you wouldn't have time for otherwise?
Our team has more time for onsite optimization, Google My Business optimization, and providing a higher level of customer service. If we stopped using Yext, then we'd need to spend more time building citations manually which would create a situation of diminishing returns for us. The more time we can spend helping customers and less time we spend manually building tedious citations on directories is better for everyone; both the customer and our team.
Where do you see Local Search headed in the next 1 to 2 years?
It's already been going there, but more focus on mobile use. More and more the "centroid" of the search is moving away from desktops which have a static location, and more towards mobile search and the roaming user. Businesses need to have complete and engaging profiles on all the mapping programs, and all the relevant directories otherwise they could miss important traffic.
Businesses also need mobile-friendly websites to make sure users who find them on their phones can actually convert. If people can't find you on their phones, or they can't use your website on their phone then you're going to lose them to a competitor.
What are the top 5 mobile apps you use on a day-to-day basis?
Inbox – Google's new Gmail app
MindBody Connect – I use this to sign up for CrossFit classes
Evernote – Helps organize life 🙂
Twitter App
QuizUp/Trivia Crack (can't decide which one should take the last spot) – It's fun to compete against other people in trivia (especially friends).
Check out HubShout's website or follow Eric on twitter to learn more about what his company is doing in the local search space:
@ericrohrback
