A Week With Other SEO Nerds
Last week, half the SEO team spent some time in sunny and warm Sin City at Pubcon 2015. Pubcon, the premier conference for all things search, was started in 2000 when several WebMasterWorld members held the first event. Born in a pub in London, hence the name Pubcon, the gathering has grown rapidly and over 30,000 attendees have made the journey to the conference since it started. While I am still catching up on emails, I want to share with you some highlights and takeaways from our memorable week at Pubcon.
As an industry, the search and internet marketing sphere is known for its youth
. Just like the internet itself, we have grown exponentially faster than other industries. Within the last 15 years the world of search has changed more times than we can keep count. Our leaders are young, kind, curious, and passionate about the crazy industry we work in. We dive into new techniques and connections faster than most, devouring any new tactics to keep up with whatever Google is going to throw at us next. Driven by algorithm updates and ever changing internet trends and tools, the search industry is one that can never just sit back and relax; this common bond is especially apparent at Pubcon, when SEO’s, developers, and content marketers alike can come together and gripe about their plights with Google over a few beers in a Vegas casino.
The main draw of Pubcon is the networking. It’s hard not to make new friends in the industry when you’re talking about your careers over tacos and drinks at the kickoff networking party at Señor Frogs. Our team met so many people, some inspirational, some educational, and all of them very successful in our industry. For a small SEO agency based in Des Moines, these kinds of interactions are invaluable in growing our business. A few things I learned from our new SEO friends.
- A team of seven in-house agency team members is rare and makes us really unique.
- Search industry professionals usually specialize in one thing. Each of our team members is well versed or certified in everything from organic SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, PPC, and Google products like Analytics and Search Console. We had no idea this wasn’t the norm until we kept hearing about how constant communication between team members is important to SEO success. Lucky for us, we don’t have to worry about that – our team is much more agile this way.
- Explaining the value of SEO to clients is one of largest challenges we face, after Google updates of course. Long story short, unless you are a large government website or a Fortune 500 company, you need organic SEO. For more convincing information see my post on 8 Reasons Your Website Needs Ongoing SEO.
- Even when you get face to face with someone who works at Google, they still most likely won’t be able to answer your questions about the crazy updates. Damn their PR department.
Highlights from Pubcon 2015
SEO Trends for 2016
The main focus within the sessions centered around mobile optimization and strategy (no surprise there, thanks a lot, Mobilegeddon), content and social media marketing, and integrated SEO campaigns. From the sessions I went to, it seems like integrated is going to be the biggest thing to hit SEO in 2016. We need to think of digital marketing from a more holistic perspective; each element affects the others and we as marketers need to be thinking of the parts of the SEO process in terms of how they affect the greater success of the site.
Best Sessions
Larry Kim knows how to market just about anything on social media. The founder of WordStream had an informative, engaging, and hilarious session on the top 10 social ad hacks and let all of us digital marketers in on some of his tested secrets.
Ryan Jones of SapientNitro presented on Data Driven Marketing. His presentation, Visualizing Search Data: Making SEO More Actionable by Changing the Way We Look At It, was a great discussion on how SEO’s need to be defining what metrics are most important to clients and how to spice up our typical keyword research process. The free Fireball shots didn’t hurt either!
Inspirational Story: Dana Lookadoo
On September 14, 2015, the search industry lost one of its most talented and respected digital marketers. Dana died from injuries she sustained in a tragic biking accident in 2014. It was amazing to watch so many touching tributes to her memory at Pubcon this year; her friends and colleagues have started the Dana Lookadoo Memorial Scholarship Fund, accepting donations on her behalf to start scholarships for bright, young digital marketers to break into our industry.
Best Keynote
Guy Kawasaki
The Chief Evangelist at Canva gave a very real keynote that felt like it was him and ten other people in the room; he went over some simple tips on how to polish your marketing tactics that anyone can easily handle. It’s all about consistency and getting people to trust you. Before Guy’s session, I had no idea you should have the same profile pictures (or avatar, as he called it) across each and every social media platform you use. I also found out that all of mine were different and almost all of them violated his rules for how to clean up your marketing strategy. The more you know!
Outside Pubcon: Tales from the Social Scene
Ginuwine’s Birthday Party
Getting randomly invited to rapper Ginuwine’s 45th birthday party? Only in Vegas.
SEO Pioneers
While Anna and I were off being fancy at the US Search Awards, Jess and Emily were networking on their own. After meeting one of the first SEO bloggers in the industry at a Pubcon after hours event, they ended up on the High Roller (the giant ferris wheel off the strip), hanging out with people who were into SEO from the start. A few of these guys worked for a company called SEOSavvy; we hope to see them again next year!
Highest Roller
I won a grand total of $12 the whole week. Yay slot machines!
Meal of the Week
We found a place called Secret Pizza (we think) in the Cosmopolitan hotel. It has no name, no signage, and amazing New York style pizza.
US Search Awards
In case you missed it, Webspec won a US Search Award for Best Low Budget campaign in 2014 and was shortlisted for three more awards this year: Best Low Budget campaign for Amega Garage Doors and Iowa Funeral Planning and Young Search Professional of the Year (that was me). While we didn’t take home any hardware this year, Anna and I had an amazing time bumping elbows at dinner with some of the biggest names in search and watching all the incredibly talented award winners give hilarious speeches.
What we lacked in sleep last week we made up for in networking and learning more about this crazy industry we work in. We can’t wait to try out what we learned for our clients in 2016. See you next year, Pubcon!
