It’s been awhile since our last post, let alone my own personal outlook on things. Fast forward 6-months and one full day of MozCon madness and my mind is blown with information, ideas and takeaways. I’m considering this my own personal reflection on what I witnessed and plan on posting up daily updates from what I grasped each day. Thanks to all the presenters today at #MozCon 2012 and to Moz for putting on what’s shaping up to be an outstanding event. MozCon 2012 day-2 synopsis.
Starting with just a few takeaways from Rand Fishkin – SEOmoz leader @Randfish
- Content marketing is nearly as critical to SEO’s as SEO is.
- Links are still ruling the algorithm, but for how long? Many are less skeptical on will these be “it”.
- Google’s transparency report has been very questionable lately – which doesn’t line up with their ethos. Credibility will decrease.
- Bing has been increasing their market share. Both Bing and Google are solid, but Bing still has a ways to go in regards to relevancy.
35 Ways to Get Links – Paddy Moogan @paddymoogan from Distilled
just a few….
- Strategy is important, but you need tactics to make that real and to make that happen. Tell the story, bring it back to your user/client and show them proof.
- Monitor tweets and look for authors and websites related to your industry, product, service niche. Reach out and engage with those who have shared your content and see if they would be interested in linking it on their site.
- Bring offline, Online – do cool stuff offline that generates buzz online. Great example was showing some love in your store to local bloggers. Publish their names on a list in your store to showcase where your products have shown up online
Building the Agile SEO Framework – Jon Colman @jcolman from REI
Awesome stuff here. At first I wasn’t sure where it was going to go however, it was great content. It’s something I have believed in for awhile actually and one of the many reasons the traditional ad agency model is failing. (That’s probably a bit too personal and I should rant on that later). But, the meat of this discussion really is centered around busting up the silos inside your organization and allowing yourself to think more about, and like your customer. The original idea here was the phrase “multi-functional team.” Remember that one? Let’s just call this today’s successful company. The entire company should be a “multi-functional team”, right? Think about your end-user, what do they need, why don’t you focus on working together and deliver that product to the user… Simple stuff right? No, talk about a big shift for many companies who have different channels they must go through. Obviously this is something I’m passionate about and should write more on. Why can’t we all just get along? You’re in engineering… ever think that your mathematical calculations you have just produced are not going to make sense to the end-user, when all they really care about is the action you get from pushing the green button on the dashboard?
Community as Inbound – Jen Lopez (not JLo) @jennita from SEOMoz
I feel somewhat bad for Jen. Seriously, who wants to be the last speaker before lunch? Unfortunately the crowd was getting a touch restless at this point, myself included, and honestly, I didn’t find Jen’s content to be in-depth enough. Much more top-level than I was expecting. Good attempt, but perhaps aimed a little too low for speaking to professionals. Jen, I look forward to your response and maybe some additional nuggets of information related to managing a sizable community such as SEOMoz.
Relationships and Link Building – Jon Henshaw @RavenJon from Raven Tools
I liked Jon’s approach, it makes complete sense to me and seems very natural. Be nice to people, offer help when and where you can and consider paying it forward a bit. Much of Jon’s takeaways were definitely geared more toward networking to me. Who are your relationships with and how many can you really manage effectively? One thing I have learned is that you cannot be, and don’t need to be, everywhere at once. It’s not physically or mentally possible and you are not doing yourself or your business any justice by following that model. Look closely at who you network with and how can you build your relationships?
Badass Excel Tips and Tricks for Your Data – Annie Cushings @AnnieCushing from SEER Interactive
Annie’s presentation should have come with a disclaimer. “Warning: presentation includes vast amounts of data and making it sexy.”
With that out of the way, Annie geeked out on data and how to take that data to the next level and make it sexy. Shortcut tips and tricks to make your life easier. This is extremely important stuff, boring at times, but important. Data is ugly but it’s what drives decisions at the end of the day – why not make it easier for your client to understand? I did get the chance to chat more with Annie at the after-party and thoroughly enjoyed talking data and excel, thanks for making it entertaining!
Web Spam Research: Good Robots vs Bad Robots – Matt Peters @mattthemathman from SEOMoz
Seriously.. SEOMoz, where did you find this guy? Holy smart. Matt’s presentation alone was mind-blowing. The amount of data this guy churns through in his head is mind-blowing. That said I could grasp the following top-level items on knowing what might be spammy.
- Unnatural sites or link profiles – if you build obvious, low-quality links.
- MozTrust Rules – MozTrust is a good predictor of Spam actually.
- SEOmoz Tools Future – The hope is to have a spam score of some sort in the Mozscape in the future.
Beyond Link Building: Real Companies Do Real Things – Wil Reynolds – @wilreynolds from SEER Interactive
By far probably one of the best presenters I have witnessed in awhile. Not only does Wil bring it and get’s the crowd amped up, he brings real-world experiences that we all can relate to. Wil’s presentation really boiled down to a couple things and he nailed it right out of the gate.
Consider this:
- Before the internet, businesses sold things – so how would you sell software without any LinkJuice?
It’s about #RCS, Real Company Sh*t. This is a concept I have been a firm believer in for a long, long time – but didn’t have a cool name for it. At the end of the day, it’s not about discussions surrounding links and how do we acquire them. Instead, lets have have an open discussion about what your business is going to do to improve the community, or maybe help people out. This could be related to your product or service, but maybe it just relates to what you’re doing within your community and what your company is passionate about. That said, before you run off and think about acquiring more links, think about Wil’s message and implement some #RCS.
Social Tools & Data Mining: Making a Case for Content Strategy – Mike King @ipullrank from iAcquire
Mike King is an entertainer at heart. The rap intro was solid with MadMen references left and right throughout the presentation. What it all boiled down to, in my opinion, was many in the SEO realm fail to get to really know and understand our client’s need. Back up and take the time to really develop some simple persona’s and have a clear definition of what you are trying to achieve. Isn’t this basic marketing stuff – why did you forget it?
“SEO people typically don’t do market research but you really need to have a better understanding of who your audience is, ask them, it might just not be formatted in the right way.”
