What We Learned At MOZCON 2020?
Posted On : July 17th, 2020 By : Dillip Kumar Mohanty To : ConferenceDifficult times offer unique opportunities. This statement became reality personally when I heard Moz was going to conduct Mozcon this year on a virtual platform. So, it offered a big chance for many marketers like me who never got a chance to attend Mozcon. 🙂
Though conducted in these challenging times, I was amazed to see the big names with their unique presentations were present. Mozcon Day 1 started with networking opportunities for participants.
Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaignsby Shannon McGuirk
A great presentation from Shannon McGuirk of Aira team with active replies from Paddy Moogan to the participants’ questions.
Shanon presented some nice sources of links but a few are completely new for many like interactive infographics, Instagram map etc.
The Truth About Digital PR, nice session by @ShannonMcGuirk_ at #MozCon #mozcon2020
Where do we get links ?#guestpost#infographic (static)#infographic (interactive)#instagrammap #bestjobever #productstunt
& in future#video #VirtualReality @paddymoogan— Dillip K Mohanty (@DillipsMohanty) July 14, 2020
In addition to the above types of contents, Shannon added “Index” content which was confusing. But the co-founder of Aira, Paddy Moogan clarified that to me (thanks Paddy, you’re great as always!). He also informed that steady performer gets link steadily over the course of time, not just a spike once and stop.
How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss: Brian Dean
As you know Brian Dean rarely speaks at conferences and it’s a big success for the Moz team to bring him to the Mozcon event this year.
Just like his regular posts at Backlinko, the presentation was full of information and lengthy as well. I got a chance to ask him about the impact of guest posting as we’ve recently seen that SEMRush had to stop their guest posting service after the controversy with Google. John Mueller said that they are violating Google quality guidelines.
7 strategy advised by Brian Dean was nicely covered by James Wirth in his tweet.
7 promotional strategies
1. Create for the linkerati (bloggers+journalists)
2. Expanded social posts
3. Avoid JarJar outreach
4. The Jedi mind trick
5. Hyperdrive-boosted Facebook posts
6. Infiltrate scarif: subreddits
7. Hack the Halonet: click to tweet links@backlinko #mozcon— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 15, 2020
Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies by Andy Crestodina
Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media emphasises on original research content which can bring natural links and hence overall ranking development.
And he presented some proofs which show how well researched original contents helped them to get links.
Whatever You Do, Put Bilboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google
Robin Lord, the Senior Consultant at Distilled presented beautifully the topic on why we should measure brands as SEOs and how to get unbeatable brand data. He showed us the ways to use Google data to gain special insights into city- and product-level brand awareness. He also discussed his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence and how to use country census data to help assess priority of location.
The Science of Seeking Your Customer
Alexis Sanders, the Senior SEO Manager at Merkel, was amazing with her presentation. She shared information on how to find the right audience / customer. She also shared various tools of different price ranges to accomplish this job. Here are the key takeaways from her presentation:
- Make use of information
- Ask Analytics Intelligence basic questions
- Ask questions on Google Discover
- Try Audience Tools like: Google Find My Audience, FB Audience Insights & Sparktoro.
- How to map user journey against content
- Iterative, constant change = new norm
Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis
Dr. Pete Meyers presentation on “Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis” was awesome. He guided well on how to find keywords using different methodologies. His presentation was focused on how to track trends, how to spot trends, different trend tools, and how to tie trends together. Here are my takeaways from Dr. Pete Meyers presentation:
- Use Google Trends to explore what is trending.
- Go to https://store.boingboing.net/ and check for trends.
- Check Rising Retail Categories by Google: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/category-trends/us/year/en
- Use Pinterest Trends: https://trends.pinterest.com/?country=US
- Perform Advance Search on Twitter
A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites
Incredible information shared by Rob Ousbey of Moz on Scrapping Websites data. Through his presentation, he offered various ways of scraping website data by using JavaScript and also focused on multi-site scraping. Here are the key takeaways from Rob’s presentation:
- To scrape data, you need to learn JavaScript & most importantly its basics. Inserting Javascript codes directly in the chrome dev tool can scrape data.
- JavaScript Bookmarklets
- Multi-site scraping
- He also showed how to scrape SEO data from https://web.dev/measure/
Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs
Britney Muller of Moz presented how machine learning & automation can be used for SEO. You can do keyword analysis, entity and category extraction as well as internal link opportunities using machine learning. She used the Colab Notebooks environment for it.
Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy
Joy Hawkins gave some insights about Google My Business which will surely surprise many local SEO agencies. Like-
- Views in the dashboard of GMB insights should not be taken as reporting metrics because it contains views data on Google map during users zooming in or out. It also contains views on the knowledge panel.
- According to her, search & search queries are better metrics in GMB dashboard.
- She suggested using UTM code to GMB URL for better tracking in Search Console.
- Google Search Console is not tracking local pack impressions when users search from mobile devices.
- Implicit queries ( without location) converts better than explicit queries (contains location)
Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO
This was presented by Michael King of iPullRank, of course with his own unique signature. It was not a presentation but a movie to me. But what he showed is just unbelievable for many SEO experts. He focussed on using Big Query, Google cloud console, JSON, AB Script, Google sheets etc to pull data & analysis.
He also informed that how e-commerce sites focus on internal linking to a specific page which is on page 2 of SERP to bring it to the first of SERP and they are doing it on a large scale programmatically.
He explained about two composite metrics –
- Content Performance metrics (Content Audit Score)
- Keyword Performance Potential (Content Potential Score)
You can create such composite metrics using programs to optimize your content. Lots of advance strategy he explained which can be done only through programs to optimize your website. Truly speaking, my bounce rate was around 90% during his session. 🙂 I need to watch his session again and again to get some basic understanding.
This Mozcon shows where the future of digital marketing is going. If you want to stay in the industry, you’ll have to get some basic knowledge of coding and to focus on automation, machine learning etc. You’ll have to use advanced tools like Colab Notebooks, Google Cloud Console etc for data analysis & optimization.
A big thanks to the entire Moz team for this Mozcon Virtual 2020. It again shows their undying attitude to serve the entire industry even during such unprecedented situations.
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