MozCon Day #1
Well, the day has finally arrived!#Pumped #MozCon ???????? pic.twitter.com/cAxIn6O2rb
— Ben Schofield (@benschofield17) July 9, 2018
There was plenty going on in the first day of #MozCon 2018…
.@Moz CEO Sarah Bird welcoming us to #MozCon! ???? Excited to be here in Seattle and learn all things #SEO! pic.twitter.com/1oWCQlyZa5
— Samantha Cossick (@SamanthaCossick) July 9, 2018
#MozCon Day 1 in the books!
Thanks to all the attendees for making it a blast & putting up with me all day! ❤️ ???? pic.twitter.com/Ud15ZnBSsy
— Britney Muller (@BritneyMuller) July 10, 2018
It Started With the Tech
How much time and money do we collectively burn by fixing the same kinds of basic, “binary,” well-defined things over and over again (e.g., meta tags, 404s, URLs, etc), when we could be teaching others throughout our organisations not to break them in the first place? As long as we “own” technical SEO, there’s no reason (for example) for the average developer to learn it or care — so they keep making the same mistakes.
We proclaim that others are doing things wrong, but by doing so we only reinforce the line between our skills and theirs. We need to start giving away bits of the SEO discipline, and technical SEO is the easiest piece for us to stop owning. It’s time for more democratisation, education, collaboration, and investment in open-source projects so we can fix things once, rather than a million times.
So @JonoAlderson’s opening presentation at #MozCon, The Democratization of SEO, is going to have me thinking a lot over the next few weeks. More than an indictment for doing the same things over and-over, it’s a call to arms for the #SEO community to contribute to Open Source.
— Rich Tatum »∵« (@RichTatum) July 9, 2018
Mobile Indexing, or A Whole New Google
The emergence of voice-search and Google Assistant is forcing Google to change its model in search, to favour their own entity understanding or the world, so that questions and queries can be answered in context. Many marketers are struggling to understand how their website and their job as an SEO or SEM will change, as searches focus more on entity-understanding, context and action-oriented interaction. This shift can either provide massive opportunities or create massive threats to your company and your job — the main determining factor is how you choose to prepare for the change.
So what does this actually mean?
- The emergence of voice-search and Google Assistant is forcing Google to change its model in search
- Google wants to index more than just websites – mobile-first indexing is not just about websites!
- Google crawls websites but ingests info more efficiently from: Feeds, APIs databases, video, apps
- Google’s goal is to “organise the world’s information” – not just the world’s websites
- Entity-first indexing allows Google to surface the right content in the right context
When you hear basically that:
“The future of the internet is no websites” #MozCon pic.twitter.com/BHK7tgAcrK— AshleyAucoin (@AshleyAucoin) July 9, 2018
Discussing Localised Search
Rob Bucci’s presentation was a highlight of the day. He and his team at STAT Search Analytics have been doing an incredible amount of testing around localised SEO, and there’s a lot to learn. I’ll be reviewing his slide deck in far more detail over the next few days, but for now, here are some key points that stood out:
- Every SERP is a localised SERP
- Location matters, but so do geo-modifiers
- If you’re not sampling some local SERPs, you’re not seeing what your searchers see
- Smart segmentation is key to local SEO success
#MozCon off and running with @SarahBird … and then she says everyone should be paying attention to local SEO. Finally we are at the big kids table. ???????? pic.twitter.com/wX12Tio5RQ
— Aaron Weiche (@AaronWeiche) July 9, 2018
Of about 1.2 million queries tested (with varying modifiers)…
There’s sooo much more to this, but I’m gonna have to review @STATrob’s deck, in detail, with a beer in hand. The tests conducted are INSANE ????. So freaking cool!! #MozCon #MozCon https://t.co/1ezpWAZUAq
— Ben Schofield (@benschofield17) July 9, 2018
Stay tuned for more key takeouts from #MozCon Day 2!
