7.30am – Registration and breakfast
9:00 — Opening Remarks + State of the Industry
Ethan Hayes
Moz’s new CEO will kick off proceedings on the first day with a warm welcome, explaining all the pertinent details of the conference and setting the stage for what’s to come over the two days of MozCon.
9:15 – Optimize the forest, not the trees: Go 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 types of SEO processes, all of which are useful and very helpful, but often lead SEO professionals to miss the most important questions of all: why am I doing this task, why does it matter to the client, and What impact will this have on overall performance? After over 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 results your clients (or your boss)!
9:45 – SEO Brain Games: Decoding Searcher Biases for Content Success
Garrett Sussmann
Explore the untapped influence of researcher biases in the dynamic evolution of SEO. While the industry often dissects search engine bias, Garrett will dig into the psyche of users, uncovering the threads of confirmation bias and its profound impact on content strategy. From top questions like “Is coffee good for you?” to the self-driven nuances of conversational search, he will examine how biases shape our interactions with Google’s generative search experience and the search ecosystem at large. This presentation goes beyond the surface, suggesting various other biases that influence the search experience. Ultimately, Garrett will connect these insights into a cohesive framework, revealing the strategic implications for content creation. Join him on this journey through the mind of the searcher and get actionable strategies to become the content your audience is looking for.
10:15 — A special announcement from Moz that you don’t want to miss!
Ethan Hayes
10.25am – Morning break for networking
10:55 — Trust and quality in the new era of content discovery
Andy Crestodina
After decades in digital, we enter a new era in which artificial intelligence has changed everything… or maybe not. Our audience hasn’t changed. Their needs have not changed. Their perception of quality has not changed. In fact, the most important things have not changed at all. In this session, you’ll learn how AI can make us better at classic challenges: getting discovered, connecting through content, and staying top of mind with the people who matter most. We will use timely tools to rebuild timeless foundations. We will make better bases but with the most advanced techniques. Andy will share a series of frameworks, tips and techniques for improving your digital foundation using today’s latest tools. And ultimately, Andy will consider, in one brief look, what the biggest change of all might be and how to grow your footprint in the new landscape.
11:25 — Create local dominance through your digital ecosystem
Amanda Giordano
Explore the power of local business authority with Amanda! In this presentation, you’ll gain insight into how to increase your brand’s visibility by leveraging local landmarks, events, and culture, and discover strategies to dominate the SERP 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 recognizable and impactful digital presence. You’ll leave MozCon armed with an actionable blueprint that will transform your local business.
11:55 — The power of emotion: how to create content that (actually) converts
Talia Lupo
All the AI tools, automation, and other technologies in the world will never help you create high-converting content if you can’t 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 get significant ROI from your content with tried and tested tactics. You’ll discover how to get into the heads (and hearts) of your audience so you can create content that drives conversions. Talia will walk 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 text and design with emotion to get more ROI from your content.
12.25pm — Lunch + Birds of a Feather peer discussion tables
1.55pm — It’s not right, but it’s good: The future of analytics
Dana Di Tommaso
Welcome to our future of analytics, where embracing imperfection is key. Our ability to capture data is changing rapidly – how can we address these changes and what do they mean for our best analytics plans? In this session you will discover strategies for making informed decisions in a landscape full of uncertainty. 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 is not only unrealistic; it is not needed.
2.25pm — Community speaker — Breaking silos for banking: getting search and social to work together
Navah Hopkins
Beyond the familiar divide between SEO and PPC, discover the hidden obstacles that prevent marketers from truly excelling for their clients: the separation between search and social. Discover valuable data-backed insights in this action-packed session, where you’ll learn the secrets to identifying successes by overlaying opportunities in search and social and using factors such as auction price, cost of content, historical patterns of the customer journey and internal operational indicators. After this session, you’ll master the art of testing channels 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?
Doctor Pete Meyers
Google’s job is to shape 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 about mega-brands. Learn how to harness the power of brand and why it’s essential to driving search traffic in 2024 and beyond.
3.10pm – Afternoon break for networking
3.40pm — From followers to believers: Build a personal brand that inspires trust
Chima Mmeje
Plagued by impostor syndrome, insecurity, or the nagging worry that your voice will get lost in a sea of others? These are common barriers that can dissuade even the most talented individuals from building a personal brand. However, these challenges shouldn’t hold you back. Chima Mmeje conquers these fears head on with a personal brand that boasts a following of over 35,000 on social media and is featured in leading publications such as Entrepreneur and HubSpot. In this talk, Chima shares the blueprint for building a memorable brand, aligning your personal brand with the voice and tone of an organization, and using your brand to attract organic leads. Whether you’re a high-level executive or a junior SEO looking to make your mark, you’ll learn how to cultivate a personal brand that works like a lead generation machine.
4.10pm – Connect Unusual Dots: Use “SEO” Skills to Stay Ahead and Drive Marketing in a World of Generative AI
Wil Reynolds
With 25 years of research, I invite you to go back in time, when new search engines emerged almost every day, each with unique features (Go “Google” Snap, iWon, Infoseek). It was the Wild West…sound familiar? Generative AI, via LLMs, is a great predictor 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. Research will be won at the margins. The small atypical insights of the 1% add up and have an impact, but how will you get those unusual ideas? Doing what people have always done in research: hypothesize and test, challenge best practices. Whether it’s ChatGPT or Google doesn’t matter: it’s just another box where customers ask a question in search of an answer, and the search industry is better than many others at testing and turning that information into value. It’s in your DNA, and this presentation will simply remind you that you are already prepared with the skills to deal with future disruptions. I’ll share my playbook, tapping into “SEO thinking” in this new world. You’ll learn how to staff for a world where people are moving away from search engines, how to time bets on when your customers will make the switch, how to prepare for changing KPIs, and what you can do today to start reskilling your organization from research KPIs to generative artificial intelligence KPIs.
4.45pm — Day 1 — Closing remarks
5:00 pm — Welcome reception happy hour
Join us on Summit’s private rooftop garden terrace. Meet other attendees and speakers over light refreshments, music, and breathtaking views of the city skyline. We can’t wait to bring our community together to kick off MozCon 2024. See you there!