SEOblog Interview: Atlanta SEO Expert Eric Davis from UpSwell

We’re excited to have interviewed Atlanta SEO Expert Eric Davis, from UpSwell, for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

UpSwell is one of SEOblog’s top SEO companies in Atlanta.

Eric Davis is the digital marketing product manager at UpSwell, a full-service marketing agency that drives the maximum number of customers for businesses it serves through data-driven, hyper-local digital and print marketing solutions. Eric has been working in the digital arena since 2012 and uses his experience to develop digital strategies for clients to help them reach and surpass their goals through SEO, SEM, social and mobile marketing.

What would you say is unique and/or challenging about the hyper-local SEO industry? 

“What’s unique about local SEO is customer sentiment and reviews. It’s very important to be a great business in your community. There is no point in promoting a terrible reputation. The challenge is building your brand with really good content on your website and on all platforms, social media and cultivating positive third-party reviews.”

How does your agency stand out in a crowded market like the location digital marketing industry?

“I would break it down to two factors. First, we’ve been in the ‘local’ small business industry for more than a decade. We understand what works, what doesn’t and help small-business-owners avoid wasting money. Secondly, is we provide end-to-end service when it comes to local SEO. SEO is not one of those marketing efforts where you can set it and forget it. It requires continual optimization and taking the time to explain our analysis to SMB owners who have day jobs and don’t have time to be SEO experts. We boil our results down to attribution and ROI, making it easy for owners to know exactly what impact they are getting for their investment.”

Can you share a success story from a local SEO campaign centered around a local market?

“Regymen Fitness is a good example. In the last six months and through the pandemic we were able to increase their visibility by almost 1,000 percent. Fitness is a very crowded and fragmented industry, but we apply a formula that works. In the beginning we were around 300 keywords and now they are ranked for 2800, which includes keywords in the top 3 positions on Google.”

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“Treat your clients’ budget as if it were your own money, make sure you spend it wisely and do your best to achieve the stated goals.”

What do you think is the most important quality that makes an SEO agency truly great?

“From a small business perspective, our clients have their hands full just running their businesses; therefore, our job is to fill the gap in their marketing or branding efforts – to remove the weight off of them, and allow them to focus on other parts of their business that will make the most impact.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“It’s always going to be around. There are two big challenges facing SEO today. One is there is just too much garbage on the internet. Google and other search engines are improving their ability to validate what is meaningful content and recognize the garbage. Therefore, improving your content to be meaningful, differentiated and help your users to make decisions will be essential. Placing a blog article for blog article’s sake is a thing of the past. Quality over quantity every day. The second challenge is privacy. This will become a double-edged sword. As the internet stops following you around, search results will become less personalized and accurate. Strategic focus on your core customers and high-quality content will become paramount in order to be found on the internet in the future.”

What is your reaction when you hear that “SEO is dying”?

“I would say ‘SEO is changing’.”

What do you think is the most important contributor to keeping clients happy?

“Driving real leads and new customers and always being in communication with the client through the campaign and including them in the process. Learn their business and how they measure success.”

Interested in being considered as an SEOblog “Featured SEO Expert”? Reach out to our team at [email protected]! We’d love to hear from you and give you a high-traffic platform to share your SEO agency’s story and insights.