7:30am — Registration & breakfast
9:00am — Opening Remarks + State of the Industry
Ethan Hays
Moz’s new General Manager will be kicking things off early on the first day with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference and setting the stage for what’s to come over the two days of MozCon.
9:15am — Optimize the Forest, Not the Trees: Move Beyond SEO Checklists
Lily Ray
It can be tempting to approach SEO, like checking a list of tactical items off a checklist. Our industry produces checklists for all kinds of SEO processes — all of which are helpful and come in great handy — but often lead to SEO practitioners losing site of the most important questions of them all: why am I doing this task, why does it matter to the client, and what impact will it have on overall performance? After 10+ years of overseeing agency SEO teams, Lily will share what she sees as a common tendency to miss the SEO forest for the trees and how to ensure your priorities are aligned with the outcomes your clients (or your boss) care about!
9:45am — SEO Mind Games: Decode Searcher Bias for Content Success
Garrett Sussman
Explore the untapped influence of searcher bias in the dynamic evolution of SEO. While the industry often dissects search engine bias, Garrett will delve into the psyche of searchers, unraveling the threads of confirmation bias and its profound impact on content strategy. From leading queries like “Is coffee good for you?” to the self-guided nuances of conversational search, he’ll examine how biases shape our interactions with Google’s Search Generative Experience and the search ecosystem at large. This presentation goes beyond the surface, hinting at various other biases that influence the search experience. By the end, Garrett will tie these insights into a cohesive framework, unveiling the strategic implications for content creation. Join him on this journey through the searcher’s mind and gain actionable strategies to become the content your audience is searching for.
10:15am — A special announcement from Moz you’re not gonna want to miss!
Ethan Hays
10:25am — Morning networking break
10:55am —Trust and Quality in the New Era of Content Discovery
Andy Crestodina
After decades in digital, we enter a new era where AI has changed everything… or maybe not. Our audience hasn’t changed. Their needs haven’t changed. Their perception of quality hasn’t changed. In fact, the most important things haven’t changed at all. In this session, you’ll learn how AI can make us better at the classic challenges of how to: get discovered, connect through content, and stay top of mind with the people who matter most. We’ll use timely tools to rebuild timeless foundations. We’ll do better basics but with the most advanced techniques. Andy will share a set of frameworks, prompts, and techniques for better digital basics using the latest tools of today. And in the end, Andy will consider — in a brief glimpse — what might be the biggest change of all and how to grow your footprint in the new landscape.
11:25am — Create Local Dominance Through Your Digital Ecosystem
Amanda Jordan
Explore the power of local business authority with Amanda! In this presentation, you’ll gain insights into boosting your brand’s visibility by leveraging local landmarks, events, and culture and uncover strategies for dominating SERPs with advanced SEO tactics. Learn to seamlessly integrate social and online strategies, and discover the keys to making your brand synonymous with your city for a relatable and impactful digital presence. You’ll leave MozCon armed with an actionable blueprint that will transform your local business game.
11:55am — The Power of Emotion: How To Create Content That (Actually) Converts
Talia Wolf
All of the AI tools, automation, and other technologies in the world will never help you create high-converting content if you fail to leverage the one component that matters more than anything else in marketing: Emotion. During this session, Talia will show you how to leverage emotion-based marketing to drive meaningful ROI from your content with proven and tested tactics. You’ll discover how to get into your audience’s heads (and hearts) so you can create content that drives conversions. Talia will guide you through the emotional marketing framework she uses to create high-converting pages (with case studies you can learn from). You’ll walk away with the tools to optimize your copy and design with emotion to drive more ROI from your content.
12:25pm — Lunch + Birds of a Feather peer discussion tables
1:55pm — It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay: The Future of Analytics
Dana DiTomaso
Welcome to our analytics future, where embracing imperfection is key. Our ability to capture data is rapidly changing — how can we navigate these changes, and what do they mean for our best-laid analytics plans? In this session, you’ll discover strategies to make informed decisions in a landscape full of uncertainties. Through practical examples and techniques, learn how to make decisions based on imperfect data and leave with a clear understanding of how to adapt your mindset to a future where analytics perfection isn’t just unrealistic; it’s unnecessary.
2:25pm — Community Speaker — Breaking Silos To Make Bank: Getting Search + Social To Work Together
Navah Hopkins
Beyond the familiar SEO and PPC divide, discover the hidden obstacles hindering marketers from truly excelling for their clients — the separation between search and social. Uncover invaluable insights backed by data in this action-packed session, where you’ll learn the secrets of identifying wins through overlapping opportunities in search and social and utilizing factors like auction price, content cost, historical customer journey patterns, and internal operational cues. After this session, you’ll be mastering the art of channel testing and establishing foolproof safeguards for brand sensitivity, ensuring your strategies evolve seamlessly with the dynamic digital landscape.
2:40pm — Brand or Bust: Can You Compete?
Dr. Pete Meyers
Google’s job is to model the world, and the world is built on brands. As Google Gemini evolves and the machine is trained on our collective knowledge, brands will only get stronger. The brand advantage may seem unfair, but brand-building isn’t just for mega-brands. Learn how to tap into the power of brand and why it’s essential for driving search traffic in 2024 and beyond.
3:10pm — Afternoon networking break
3:40pm — From Followers to Believers: Craft a Personal Brand That Commands Trust
Chima Mmeje
Plagued by imposter syndrome, self-doubt, or the gnawing worry that your voice will be lost in a sea of others? These are common barriers that can deter even the most talented individuals from building a personal brand. However, these challenges should not hold you back. Chima Mmeje conquers these fears head-on with a personal brand boasting a following of over 35k across social media and features in leading publications like Entrepreneur and HubSpot. In this talk, Chima shares the blueprint for building a memorable brand, aligning your personal brand with an organization’s voice & tone, and using your brand to attract organic leads. Whether you’re a C-suite executive or a junior SEO looking to make your mark, you’ll learn how to nurture a personal brand that works as a lead-generation machine.
4:10pm — Connect the Uncommon Dots: Use “SEO” Skills to Stay Ahead & Lead Marketing in a Generative AI World
Wil Reynolds
With 25 years in search, I’ll invite you to journey back to when new search engines emerged almost daily, each with unique features (Go “Google” Snap, iWon, Infoseek). It was the Wild Wild West… sound familiar? Generative AI, via LLMs, are great predictors of what words are likely to come next. So, in the future, your job will be to develop unpredictable ideas and approaches to solving customer problems. Search will be won on the margins. The little 1% atypical insights add up and have an impact, but how will you get those uncommon ideas? By doing what search people have always done: hypothesize and test, challenge best practices. Whether it’s ChatGPT or Google doesn’t matter — it’s just another box customers are asking a question seeking an answer, and the search industry is better than most at testing and turning that information into value. It’s in your DNA, and this presentation will just remind you that you’re already prepared with the skills to navigate the disruptions ahead. I’ll share my playbook, drawing on “SEO thinking” in this new world. You’ll learn how to staff for a world where people move away from search engines, how to time those bets on when your customers will be making the shift, how to prepare for shifting KPIs, and what you can do today to start to retrain your org from Search KPI’s to Generative AI KPIs.
4:45pm — Day 1 — Closing remarks
5:00pm — Welcome reception happy hour
Join us at the Summit private rooftop garden terrace. Meet with fellow attendees and speakers over light refreshments, music, and stunning views of the city skyline. We look forward to bringing our community together to kick off MozCon 2024. See you there!
