Meet Zach Chahalis | SEO/Analytics Consultant

We had the good fortune of connecting with Zach Chahalis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Zach, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I’ve always wanted to own my own business and I’ve been entrepreneurial from a younger age. prior businesses led me to my career in digital marketing. Even as a kid, I was trying to find ways to make money based on my skill set (I started out making custom portfolios for Pokemon card collections). In college, I ran a custom computer and IT business. Through that, I was introduced to SEO by one of my clients who was in need of some website marketing. After self-training on SEO, I identified their website issues and improved performance from 5-10 organic sessions a month to over 4,000 organic sessions a month. This led me down the path of a digital marketing/SEO career. After being in the industry for over 12 years and growing my skills, I decided I wanted to return to my entrepreneurial roots and run my own SEO/analytics consultancy.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My business, Zach Chahalis Consulting, Inc., is a digital marketing consultancy specializing in search engine optimization (SEO) and website/marketing analytics. What sets me apart is that I bring over a dozen years of experience managing digital marketing programs for businesses ranging from several Fortune 500 businesses to various small and medium-sized businesses. I’ve also worked across every vertical imaginable so I have experience building successful digital marketing programs for every shape and size business. While I love and execute all aspects of SEO, my specialty and passion is truly in technical SEO and website replatformings. Throughout my career, I’ve managed over 50 major website replatformings and migrations for brands such as GameStop, CoStar, Extended Stay America, Kimberly-Clark, and more. In each of these projects, I effectively built on the organic performance that the brand had built up without experiencing any negative loss in performance when the website launched.

I got to where I am today by spending over 10 years working in some of the most well-known and respected digital marketing agencies. This allowed me to experience working with a wide array of clients, projects, and problems. I also spent several years in-house allowing me to expand my skillset further and understand how to effectively implement my strategies both from an employee and a consultant standpoint.

I would say that my journey was not the easiest because of the wide array of problems that I’ve had to solve over the years along with learning how to best tackle these problems in different ways to best suit the client’s needs. Throughout my journey, this has allowed me to grow my people skills and learn how to be an effective client-facing strategist while still possessing the skillset to solve even the toughest digital marketing challenges. I also learned how to effectively communicate to all levels of an organization and learned to tailor my approach depending on whether I’m talking to a website developer or to the CMO of a Fortune 100 brand.

Overall, I feel that my experience as well as my ability to both be a client-facing and technically savvy digital marketer has prepared me to effectively run my own SEO and marketing analytics consultancy.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
This is definitely a tough one because there are many cool spots and places in Atlanta and the metro area. For me, I’ve lived in the Newnan/Peachtree City area for about 15 years so I would definitely take them around this area so they can see some of the historic aspects of both cities as well as all of the filming spots. One of the highlights would definitely be Senoia, GA where there are some excellent restaurants as well as a bunch of film/TV history including The Walking Dead among many others. Given that I am also a big sports and racing fan, I’d have to include ideally both a Braves game and maybe a NASCAR race at Atlanta Motor Speedway as well as a trip to the college football hall of fame. Having also spent a lot of time in the Druid Hills area as an Emory graduate, I would also bring them over to that side of town and show them the Emory campus, the Botanical Garden, and the Fernbank before wrapping up with some time at Ponce City Market and the Beltline.

Food/drink wise, I’d have to take them to some of my favorite places around the city like some of the fantastic restaurants in downtown Newnan, Fox Bros BBQ, The Vortex in the city for an amazing burger, Bistro Hilary in Senoia and a steak at one of my family’s favorite restaurants, McKendricks Steakhouse near Perimeter Mall. I’d also have to take them to some of my favorite lounge and hangout spots in Atlanta like Ormsby’s and the Red Phone Booth for a nice cigar and old-fashioned.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d definitely like to shout out a few folks. I, of course, need to start with my parents to helped to make me the person I am today. While there are a few people who got me into digital marketing, I am especially thankful to the folks at Response Mine Interactive who gave me my first shot as an SEO Intern back when I was still in college. I also want to shout out several team members who were instrumental in helping me grow as a digital marketer during my time at Search Discovery including John Sherrod, Wade Saunders, Jeff Louella, Mike Gustafson, Lee Blankenship, and Mike King. Without those folks, I wouldn’t have gained the skillset that I have today in digital marketing. Finally, I’d like to shout out Sarah Lander who is one of the greatest mentors that I’ve had in digital marketing and offered me the opportunity to expand my talents into marketing/data analytics and paid media.

Website: https://www.zacharychahalis.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharychahalis/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/zachchahalis