SEOblog Interview: Philadelphia SEO Expert Bob Bentz from Purplegator

We’re excited to have interviewed Philadelphia SEO expert Bob Bentz from Purplegator for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

Purplegator is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in Philadelphia.

Bob Bentz is president of the mobile-first marketing agency, Purplegator. It is located in suburban Philadelphia with offices in Des Moines, Buffalo and Dallas. Bentz is the author of Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing. He is also an adjunct professor at West Virginia University, where he teaches a graduate-level course in mobile marketing. Bentz likes SEO almost as much as baseball.

What would you say is unique and/or challenging about the Philadelphia SEO industry?

“When a company is interested in hiring a Philadelphia SEO company, there really is no competitive advantage to hiring a local agency since the work can be done from virtually anywhere. I do notice, however, that Philly people prefer to work with local businesses. They want a company that understands and lives the marketplace every day. We know our city takes a lot of unjustified criticism (they still talk about throwing snowballs at Santa Claus) and I think that’s why we stick together.”

How does your SEO agency stand out in a crowded market?

“While we service many vertical markets, it’s important to be specialists in an agency. We have developed a great recruitment program for finding passive candidates for hard-to-fill jobs such as a nurse or a truck driver. It’s important to become an expert in a particular category and then take that same winning formula to non-competing companies in the same vertical market.”

Can you share your varied background and what you have learned about digital marketing over the years?

“My start in mobile was really kind of strange. It happened when I was visiting our office in London in 2002 and I noticed when a person’s phone rang on the Tube, it played a Spice Girls ringtone. At the time, Europe was about three years ahead of North America when it came to mobile. I brought that concept back to the US and we started one of the first online ringtone sites. That business grew to 60,000 members paying $9.99 per month for ringtones until we sold it to a publicly traded Canadian company in 2006.”

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“Every trait that an employee has is both a positive and a negative. For instance, being a hard worker is obviously a positive trait, but if it goes too far, it can be negative as the employee suffers burnout and then mistakes will happen. Your job as a manager is to emphasize the positive parts of your associates’ attributes while limiting the negatives.”

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

“Nobody can be an expert at everything. That’s why companies hire an agency in the first place. Your customer can hire a smart marketing person who might be pretty good at many aspects of mobile and digital, but they won’t be experts. A good agency has experts on the team and if they don’t have expertise in a certain area, they must be able to outsource that part of the business.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“The future of SEO requires a mobile-first approach. Since July 1, 2019, mobile-first indexing has been enabled by default by Google for all websites, yet I still see sites that are optimized primarily for the desktop version. For instance, Google often won’t index content that requires swipe ups on mobile so it’s important that the technical coder and the SEO team works together to eliminate this problem.”

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

“I’ve been hearing that for two decades now. SEO isn’t dying, it’s just constantly changing. I highly recommend a new college graduate become an SEO expert. Demand for SEO skills is only going to increase.”

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

“I don’t think this has changed in the history of doing business. It’s making sure that you let them know that you care, that you don’t take them for granted and that they know that they are an important customer to you. It also doesn’t hurt to thank them for their business every month.”

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.