The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We’re just about a month out from this year’s MozCon and we couldn’t be more excited! If you’ve never considered it before, it’s high time you became acquainted with the idea of a “couchference” — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we’ll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry’s top speakers, you’re in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you’ll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren’t able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we’d love to hear what talk you’re most excited for in the comments. (All talk times are in Pacific, so keep that in mind when planning your day! We promise we won’t judge if you’re watching in your jammies.)

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year’s virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings?

This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she’ll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, “building a brand” is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer’s woes. But it’s unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn’t realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn’t have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn’t do the job — but hadn’t seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he’s used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We’ve all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don’t get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they’re ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you’ll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

“Machine learning” and “automation” aren’t words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we’re greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what’s expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand’s ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what’s expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That’s a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What’s the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn’t know about SEO. This year, he’s back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn’t be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn’t usually a marketer’s forte. In this session, you’ll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn’t dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland “unique selling propositions” that aren’t unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that’s any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you’ll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You’ll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn’t guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared.

Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs.

This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That’s a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing… we can’t wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I’m going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!