Fastlane Founders and Legacy with Jason Barnard: Personal Branding, AI Strategies, and SEO Insights for Visionary CEOs
Entrepreneurial insights from CEOs on fast success, enduring impact, and building long-lasting companies. “Fastlane Founders and Legacy” hosted by Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube, explores the delicate balance between rapid growth and enduring success in the business world. This podcast features insightful conversations with entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives who have mastered the art of building lasting legacies while navigating the fast-paced demands of modern business. Each episode uncovers a blend of agile tactics for immediate impact and strategic thinking for long-term sustainability. Listeners will gain valuable insights into how these leaders accelerate progress without sacrificing future stability, and how they transform innovative ideas into companies built to stand the test of time. Join us to learn how today’s most influential business figures harmonize quick wins with lasting achievements, creating both rapid success and enduring impact.
SEO for the Health Industry and our Ageing Population (Karina Tama-Rutigliano with Jason Barnard)
Oct 14, 2019
Show notes I have to read her name tag to get through the difficult first moments of the podcast. Then we talk about the health industry and getting old (it is expensive). Plus the target audience is not necessarily the people themselves, but their children. And if the audience is the older people, Bing is a good marketing target. She goes on to say that if you do the right thing, Google updates are not a worry, and you sleep well.
The Ultimate Podcast Strategy (Craig Campbell with Jason Barnard)
Oct 14, 2019
Show notes Craig explains that I have got the strategy for my podcast all wrong. My plan is to not have a plan, which is not a good idea, it seems. So he tells me what I SHOULD be doing. Hint - have a plan.
Analysing the Web in Blocks, Chunks, Fraggles, Segments (Dixon Jones with Jason Barnard)
Oct 07, 2019
Show notes Majestic don't keep Dixon informed about very much. Because he can't keep a secret. When they DID tell him what they have been doing for the last year and a half,., he got rather enthusiastic - context around links by analysing around chunks / blocks / segments / sections / fraggles of content… and so scoring content according the context of the segment it is in… text, semantics, link density, images, alt tags and so on. Cool! The fact that Majestic are doing this (and looking at how well they do it) gives us a good indication of how well Google will (probably) doing. Then onto the new link tags, the problems inherent in the UGC tag… And Dixon suggests that Google add a rel=important tag. Dixon digs his grave by suggesting that Google lack variety and are moving to echo chambers… and somehow uses Middle Ages Villages to demonstrate. I get excited about self-fulfilling prophecies and the problems of discoverability and trust for some authoritative content … The World's best content is the very stuff that is buried.
The Wider Lessons from Local SEO and Near Me Searches (Paul O’Donoghue with Jason Barnard)
Oct 02, 2019
Show notes We start with a discussion about horrid nicknames at school (that were secret until today) Then we move quickly onto local search and near-me information. There are more near me searches now than ever before - both explicitly expressed in words, and increasingly by geo localisation. We are now expecting local results within 500 metres, down from 5km in just 6 years. Local search is all about the answers. And that is increasingly true of the wider world of search. Local search also brings to the fore that online / offline are intertwined. And that is increasingly true of the wider world of search. Google is now pulling in information from all sorts of sources. And that is increasingly true of the wider world of search. The parallels go on and on… Being in local search is the best place to be for digital marketing now. Getting that right is the starting point for any business - and most get it wrong. Then onto the other players in the near me field - we often forget that “near me” information comes from a variety of sources in the near me world - Yelp, Facebook, Bing, FourSquare… Local is a global thing.
Google’s Reaction to the Link Tax (Andrea Volpini with Jason Barnard)
Sep 28, 2019
Show notes Google formalised its reaction to the Link Tax on 23rd September. I was a bit confused. Luckily Within Andrea has already figured it out and gives me the rundown / lowdown on the EU copyright Directive, Google's reaction to it and the practicalities for publishers… Google News publishers are opted in by default, other publishers are opted out by default. Search Console gives publishers he means to control this. Schema markup is the solution if you want to opt-in and yet keep your rich results. Could this perhaps even be an opportunity to take control of our content? Brilliant !
Buying, Pimping and Monetising Websites (Liz Raad with Jason Barnard)
Sep 25, 2019
Show notes Liz was at SMS Sydney to get some extra SEO knowledge - but she knows more than she lets on. She has a Norwegian name, is Australian... but is part Swiss (but she has never been to Switzerland). Liz and her husband (Matt) buy fully functional domains that they can monetise, or sell on - a bit like buying property, apparently. But the ROI on websites is incredibly high. MUCH higher than real estate. She suggests that the due diligence in their industry is simply an SEO audit - and it is mad that more SEOs aren't doing it (how stupid are you Jason?) She encourages me to dip a toe in the water - I could buy a $500 website and get my start - I call it pimping websites, Liz calls it renovating. A lot of the work that needs to be done is simple SEO cleaning up and UX. Liz insists it is easy money if you work at it from a business point of view. Quick discussion about international expansion for manufacturing SMBs (Sarah Carroll gets a mention there). Then back to buying websites to monetise them... she doesn't look for sites by topic, but rather income or profit. She has a site all about pigeon racing, so we have a lovely discussion about pigeon racing that goes from the Philippine to betting, to Little Voice, to Mike Tyson. Amazon affiliate sites are blue chip, AdSense sites are blue chip. And since AdSense delivers ads based on the search algorithm, we SEOs have a DOUBLE advantage.
Schema Structured Data – The Future of the Web (Jono Alderson With Jason Barnard)
Sep 17, 2019
Show notes Starts with a yawn. Then he forgets one of his jobs. Jono's current job at Yoast and it is his double dream job - his role is to turn up at work and think of fun and interesting things to work on that are impactive. I have never had a real job, and spending a couple of days at Yoast HQ is the first time I have thought it might be nice. Jono could have chosen anything he wanted to work on, and he chose Schema.org (the most boring thing on the web). He is swimming in relationships, philosophy, ... and then he gets into the pure scale of what they are doing - 14% of the web uses Yoast... Um. Wow. And on top of that, they need to be backwards compatible and remain compatible with all the plugins that hook into Yoast and all the badly coded sites. One simple, genius idea has made all this possible (like all the best systems). Schema.org markup gives Google confirmation, confidence and precision. Jono wants a t-shirt! Google are rolling out a conveyor belt of carrots (in the form of embellishments and additions to rich results). Next up is booking a restaurant or buying a product enabled by Schema.org (and we find out why a Bose headphone costs $33900). Quick discussion about Joomla and Typo3 (Jono likes Typo3). Followed by a bit of memory loss. Jono then gives a quick rundown of how and why Google are betting the farm on Wordpress. Lastly, Yoast is investing very heavily in Schema.org - it is the future of the web, apparently... as big a jump as from Web 1 to Web 2. From interactive communities to interoperable data.
Structured Data, Ontologies, Commonsense Knowledge Graphs – Round Table (Martha Van Berkel, Robin Allenson and Dateme Tubotamuno with Jason Barnard)
Sep 15, 2019
Show notes Three amazingly intelligent and eloquent people help me understand rather a lot of concepts. What is a commonsense Knowledge Graph? Using Schema.org structured data to manage your data layer. Ontologies are containers full of entities that have relationships (use triples !!!). Lots of philosophy around computer science - specifically ontologies. Entity management is the future (thanks, Greg Gifford). We are all becoming data architects. Three levels of knowledge. Databases expressing opinions. How semantics help sell t-shirt bras. Manage your brand for machines (not just search !). And rather a lot more... Amazing.
Selling on Amazon – a More Pessimistic View than Dan (Paula Didone with Jason Barnard)
Sep 10, 2019
Show notes Paula had just given a talk at BrightonSEO in (April 2019 edition). This is a great follow-up to Dan Saunder's episode... Amazon is challenging both for PPC and SEO. PPC can become very expensive very quickly, especially as a side business. Reviews are the key, and the step to getting enough reviews is very big. And when you get enough, your competitors will spam you down, and then Amazon replicate successful products with Amazon Basics… double cut-throat. For SEO, brand is vital. Just like Google, Amazon want to get their users through to the best product / sale as fast as possible. So conversion rates are the single biggest thing to get right. Intent is vital for that, and an opportunity is to be found where your competitors are falling down - just check out their reviews :) Rank well on Amazon, you will probably rank well on Google - I get carried away and suggest you can forget Google-centric SEO, and perhaps dump your website. Paula brings me back to earth. We end with Google's problem of owning path to purchase, but not owning the sale. And Amazon's inverse problem.
How Google is Using Machine Learning – SEO and SEA (Jeff Ferguson with Jason Barnard)
Sep 07, 2019
Show notes Jef gets us started with a repeat of his groovy Elvis impersonation. Then gets serious and gives some amazing insights into what machine learning Google is using that affects SEO. Obviously Rankbrain, but also crawling and extracting unstructured and structured data for the web. I love the idea Jeff throws out - that Schema.org is the only thing we are doing ONLY for the search engines. We debate whether Schema.org is needed for understanding or is it really mostly for improving confidence. We move onto how many legs does a horse have (pretty funny) and how fast does an ostrich run. Jeff has a lovely line on cocky human beings. Onto ML in Google Ads, specifically DSA. Volume of data is incredibly important, and is a factor we (I) often overlook. Lastly Smart Display - Maybe machine learning will push some ugly ads because they work better… in which case we still need the human touch!
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