Top 5 MozCon Virtual Conference Takeaways
By Jennifer Anderson
I recently attended the MozCon Virtual conference, where I had the opportunity to listen to some of the top SEO speakers and experts in the industry share their insights, and wanted to share a few of the top takeaways. I’d highly recommend attending MozCon or any other digital marketing conference, they’re always great ways to learn from the industry experts, pick up new tips and strategies and network with your fellow SEO colleagues.
1: More Virtual Marketing Conference Options Please!
Normally conferences are a great break away from the office but this year the event came right to my home office. Like everything else these days, this conference went to a virtual format and personally I love this option, and hope more virtual conference options are available in the future. I used to live in a larger city that had wonderful digital marketing conferences that I regularly attended in person. But now I live in a smaller city and as a busy working mom, it’s more difficult for me to travel to attend conferences.
At SEO conferences I enjoy learning from industry experts and stepping away from work to just focus on learning new tips and perspectives, I always come away with a few new ideas to take back to my team and clients. As a nerd who loves to learn, listening to the various speakers brought me back to my college days and learning from some of my favorite professors, but without the painful finals to study for and papers to write. And another bonus about virtual conferences, I can easily hit the pause button if I didn’t type my notes quick enough, can’t do that in person in a conference center room!
2: You Can Never Have Too Many SEO Tools
SEO experts love our tools! My browser’s bookmarks of tools and resources are a bit out of control, but then I listened to various speakers and am reminded that I’m not the only one with overflowing SEO toolboxes.
I always find a few new SEO tools or new ways to use existing ones to add to my toolbox at conferences. One of my favorites came from Pete Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz presentation. Pinterest Trends is a great way to use Pinterest search data to research trends in various industries. Using social media data from Facebook, YouTube and others doesn’t just have to be limited to social media campaigns, they can be helpful for SEO and other marketing channels too.
3: Being Agile Is Key During The Coronavirus
Brands and ecommerce websites that quickly adjusted their marketing strategies and websites were rewarded with increased organic search traffic and revenue. The Coronavirus rapidly changed consumer search behavior, who would have thought a year ago that some of these would be top trending categories in 2020 - hand sanitizer, roller skates, jump ropes, hair color removers and pool water slides.
The most successful websites quickly created new blog content, category pages and product assortments to address the changing consumer behavior in their specific niche. Ecommerce sites especially can take advantage of gaining new customers who may have never shopped online for their specific type of products before. Taking a data driven approach to the most recent and changing search trends and then adapting your website to address the increased demand for different products can have great benefits.
4: Repurpose Old Content
When working on blog content calendars and brainstorming sessions, we typically focus more on creating brand new content. But what about all of that older content that you spent so much time and energy creating? Sometimes that older content is still relevant and helpful, it could just use a little refresh.
I loved Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation’s presentation and his examples of following Disney’s strategy of continually remaking and updating old movies and stories. I know I can name several movies that I’ve seen more than one version of. It can be beneficial to occasionally review your old content for opportunities to improve, expand upon, update with new information and data, or repurpose into other social media channels. Then take those ideas and include them into your next content calendar planning session.
5: Spend More Time Promoting Your Content
In Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko’s, great presentation he mentioned a stat that made me a little sad. He said that “94% of blog posts get 0 links”. :( So it's not enough to just write your blog posts, click publish and now your work is done. Brian reminded us that we tend to spend too much of our time writing and not enough time promoting our content. This extra effort will help you gain the backlinks needed to help get that additional boost of traffic. Some of his top suggestions included writing more content targeting bloggers and journalists in your industry, testing out retargeting ads for promoting your content since it’s typically less expensive than other channels and adding more personalization to your outreach emails. We’ve all seen that old generic outreach email that just doesn’t work, don’t use it!
After reviewing my notes from MozCon Virtual, I couldn’t quite possibly share everything from all of the great speakers, but just wanted to share a few highlights. Thanks MozCon Virtual!
