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SPOTLIGHT ARTICLE
Do you consider yourself a builder who can create in any industry, or do you specialize in a particular niche? And what makes you an expert in that space?
SEO Specialist
11/22/25, 1:54 AM
Photographer Credit:
Robert Skuba
Principle
Lantern Room Marketing
Bio
Rob Skuba is the founder of National Smart Home and Lantern Room Marketing. With 25+ years spanning smart home, AV, SEO, and dealer strategy, he builds websites, campaigns, and national initiatives that help businesses stand out. His approach blends deep research, emotional storytelling, and simple design that makes technology feel human.
SPOTLIGHT ARTICLE
We Don’t Just Build Websites — We Build Moments
The strategy, campaigns, and human-first ideas reshaping how businesses connect with the people they serve.
11/22/25, 1:54 AM
Well, thank you so much for sitting with us today and sharing a bit of your story. To kick things off, can you tell us a little about yourself, your company, and the services you offer?
I’m Rob Skuba, founder of National Smart Home and Lantern Room Marketing.
Most of our work centers on the smart home industry, but we help all types of businesses tell clearer stories online.
After years in the AV and smart home world, I saw a simple problem: great companies were hard to understand. So we build brands, websites, and content that feel calm, clean, and human — the way homeowners actually want to experience technology.
Wix lets us design fast and beautifully, without the technical weight.
At the end of the day, our work is about one thing:
Making it easier for people to trust the business in front of them.
How did you get started on Wix? Do you remember the first website you built and what made you choose this platform? And have your services or offerings evolved since those early days?
I built my first websites on a Sony WebTV in 1998. A few years later, while running my automotive shop, I went to night school for web design — Dreamweaver, HTML, Java. That’s where I learned the truth I still use today: Google is sales. Social media is branding.
My first real project was HiDEFNJ.com. I was doing social media for smart home dealers at the time, trying to help them get visibility, when I realized many were paying agencies $2k–$5k a month for bloated websites with almost no SEO. No traffic. Nothing helping them win real jobs.
I talked to Tony at HiDEF, and he said, “Let’s do it.” So I built a 20-page Wix site. In six months, he went from 20–30 visitors a month to over 1,000. When I pulled the analytics, I saw only about 20 of those visitors came from social. That’s when it clicked:
You don’t sell a $25k or $300k theater through a thumb-stop.
People go to Google when they’re ready to spend money.
Back then, Wix SEO wasn’t as strong as it is now, but it had the foundation — and they’ve made huge leaps since. That’s what pulled me deeper into this work: helping good businesses get found by the people already looking to hire them.
What would you say makes your business unique? And for those who think Wix is “just templates,” what’s your take on why Wix is actually a strong platform for professional, custom sites?
What makes our work unique is how we design for the way people actually shop. We keep minimal header menus because no one lands on a website and clicks through Services → Galleries → Blogs → Projects → Highlights. The header exists to convert the sale, not distract from it.
All the deeper content — blogs, project highlights, galleries — still lives on the site, but it’s placed where it belongs: in the footer and inside the service pages, where search traffic naturally finds it. The top of the site stays clean, focused, and built only around what a buyer needs to make a decision.
That ties into our core mantra: let the content unfold as the user suggests.
Simple paths. Clear pages. Every click takes visitors exactly where they thought they were going.
And to make that work, you have to understand how people actually search. Most agencies build websites around what the client tells them to, dealer and “industry language” — “automated shades,” “lighting control,” “whole-home automation.” But homeowners say completely different things. “Automated shades” gets around 500 searches a month; “motorized blinds” gets over 3,000. And most people don’t say “keypad” — they say “remote-control light switch.”
If you design around the wrong language, you design around the wrong customer.
That’s why we build every site on deep keyword research and user behavior — not industry jargon.
Wix gives us the tools to deliver that clarity at scale. Velo and Collections let us build repeaters that update instantly without redesigning entire pages. If there are 50 products or rooms and the client adds one, it’s a few clicks — not a rebuild. Fast, organized, and clean.
WordPress developers love talking about code, but in years of using Wix, I have never hit a limit I couldn’t solve. And with Google prioritizing speed and simplicity, heavy code and animations only slow businesses down.
At the end of the day, we’re not building websites.
We’re building businesses.
Wix gives us the performance and flexibility to do that without complexity getting in the way.
Photographer Credit:
Let’s talk services. What do you offer today, and can you share a few project examples that taught you something meaningful or shaped how you work?
A lot of what we do today comes from real project experience — taking websites that were either outdated, over-engineered, or built on bloated platforms, and rebuilding them into clean, modern, search-friendly sites that actually bring in business.
One of the first proof points was HiDEF of NJ. Tony didn’t even have an active website at the time — so this became the perfect test case. We built a clean, 20-page Wix site and watched it take off. That one project showed me something that’s still true today: if you structure a site around how homeowners search, the traffic comes naturally.
Next was Bravo AV, which became one of the strongest examples of what happens when you replace a heavy platform with something cleaner. Tom was locked into a Joomla site and paying $3–$4k a month to an agency. When I looked under the hood, everything was missing — empty alt tags, no H1s, no local keywords, nothing internally linked. I even got on Zoom with the agency, but they basically said, “We’re an $11M company — we don’t change our system.”
It took six months of patience and relationship-building, but once Tom gave the green light, we rebuilt the entire 130-page site on Wix. His traffic went from ~300 visitors/month to over 1,300. Within two years, his website was driving 35% of his business, and eventually 48% of his annual revenue — about $3-4 million.
Another project was BirdiesLI, a WordPress takeover. They already had a strong domain authority and social presence, but the website only pulled about 400 monthly visitors. Once we rebuilt and properly structured everything — real internal linking, correct keyword focus, optimized categories — their traffic jumped to over 3,000/month in about six months. This happens a lot with takeover sites: once the architecture is right, everything snaps into place.
One more meaningful project was Epic Systems. Joe was one of the first clients willing to test eCommerce for a service-based AV company. We built a clean store inside Wix, supported it with blogs and ads, and within nine months he passed over $60,000 in online sales. That project taught us (and Joe) that Wix is far more capable for local commerce than most people realize — especially when the store is built around real user behavior, not just products on a page.
These projects all taught me the same lesson:
When the website is clean, fast, intentional, and mapped to how real people search — the business grows.
And it doesn’t require heavy code or complex platforms. It just requires structure, clarity, and listening to the user.
Do you consider yourself a builder who can create in any industry, or do you specialize in a particular niche? And what makes you an expert in that space?
I definitely have a niche — the smart home and home theater industry feels like home to me. I spent over 15 years in it: running wires, doing sales, working distribution, and eventually becoming a manufacturer rep. So when I build sites for dealers, I’m not guessing what they’re trying to communicate — I’ve lived those conversations with homeowners. It makes the content sharper, faster, and more aligned with what actually converts.
But we don’t only build in smart home. Because everything we do is rooted in deep keyword research and understanding how customers actually search, we can step into any industry as long as we take the time to study it. That’s how we’ve been able to deliver wins for indoor golf brands, coffee companies, landscapers, plumbers — you name it. If you rely only on what the client says, you’re building from a “panel of one.” We build from a “panel of 100” — real data, real search behavior, real intent.
And with the smart home space specifically, this approach has allowed us to build something bigger: a national network of dealers with protected territories. When dealers aren’t competing with each other, they’re far more open to sharing what’s working — and what isn’t. If one dealer has success with a certain service page, promotion, or SEO structure, we can replicate that for dealers in non-overlapping markets. And if something fails, we share that too so no one else wastes money or time.
It turns individual dealers into a connected ecosystem — each one learning from the others, and all of them building momentum together under the National Smart Home umbrella. Everyone wins that way: better content, better data, better results.
This has been such a great conversation. Before we wrap up, can you share three pro tips for anyone building a website on Wix — and let our readers know how they can connect with you?
We don’t just build websites.
We build the tools dealers need to stand out, communicate clearly, and actually connect with homeowners.
1. Start every project with deep human research, not guesses.
Before we write a single word, we run a full-scale research sweep:
• Deep AI dives into Reddit, Quora, major blogs, and forums
• Pull every fear, frustration, desire, and misunderstanding homeowners have
• Go to Google → copy all “People Also Ask”
• Scroll down → grab every related keyword phrase
• Check Google Images → study which images rank and why
This gives us the customer’s language, Google’s questions, and every ranking angle upfront. If you start with this, your content will never miss the mark.
2. Build every page the way Google crawls, not the way agencies design.
Most websites look great but rank terribly.
Our structure is simple:
• One H1 containing the core keyword
• H2s built directly from “People Also Ask”
• H3s for supporting detail
• First 100 words: answer the search intent immediately
• Internal links only to revenue pages
• Every image renamed to a keyword, with true alt text
• No bloated animations, sliders, or slow-loading junk
Pretty sites without structure don’t convert.
We build search engines disguised as websites.
3. Use analytics like a lie detector.
Numbers tell you what clients never will.
We track:
• Which pages make money
• Which ones bounce
• Which cities convert
• Which keywords create calls
• What homeowners click first
Then we rebuild the site around the truth, not opinions. That’s how sites go from 20 visitors to 1,000…
or from 400 to 3,000…
or end up generating 40% of a dealer’s annual revenue.
Analytics isn’t reporting.
Analytics is the strategy.
⭐ Bonus Tips (The Real Secrets)
• Use emotional truth as the North Star.
People don’t buy tech — they buy comfort, control, safety, pride, and moments.
• Build national moments that spark conversation.
Smart Home Day.
National Headphone Day.
Own the Season.
Date Night in Stereo.
These give dealers something real to talk about — not recycled product shots.
• Don’t sell the product. Sell what it changes.
Two speakers and five songs aren’t “audio.”
They’re connection, nostalgia, intimacy, presence.
That’s Date Night in Stereo.
And that’s why homeowners respond.
• Make campaigns that travel.
Smart Home Day gives homeowners a national moment to notice their home.
Headphone Day taps into music lovers who don’t care about specs.
Own the Season teaches comfort from October to February — not a one-week Super Bowl push.
Date Night in Stereo helps dealers show HiFi as an experience, not a price tag.
Every campaign we build gives dealers value before the pitch. This also taps into social trends giving you more content ideas and visibility. Who doesn’t love a good National Day?
That’s how trust is created.
⭐ Where to Connect
If you want to collaborate, get clarity, or explore something different for your business:
NationalSmartHome.org
or
LanternRoomMarketing.com
Always open to conversations — especially the ones that change how people see technology.
Robert Skuba
Principle
Lantern Room Marketing
Bio
Rob Skuba is the founder of National Smart Home and Lantern Room Marketing. With 25+ years spanning smart home, AV, SEO, and dealer strategy, he builds websites, campaigns, and national initiatives that help businesses stand out. His approach blends deep research, emotional storytelling, and simple design that makes technology feel human.
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