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MozCon 2018 is just around the corner — just over six weeks away, on July 9-11 in Seattle — and we're excited to share the final agenda with you today. There are some familiar faces, and some who'll be on the MozCon stage for the first time, with topics ranging from the evolution of searcher intent to the increasing importance of local SEO, and from navigating bureaucracy for buy-in to cutting the noise out of your reporting.

We're also thrilled to announce this year's winning pitches for our six MozCon Community Speaker slots! If you're not familiar, each year we hold several shorter speaking slots, asking you all to submit your best pitches for what you'd like to teach everyone at MozCon. The winners — all members of the Moz Community — are invited to the conference alongside all our other speakers, and are always some of the most impressive folks on the stage. Check out the details of their talks below, and congratulations to this year's roster!

Still need your tickets? We've got you covered, but act fast — they're over 70% sold!

Pick up your ticket to MozCon!



8:30–9:30 am

Breakfast and registration 9:30–9:45 am

Welcome to MozCon 2018!
Sarah Bird

She'll also set the tone for the show with an update on the state of the SEO industry, illustrating the fact that there's more opportunity in it now than there's ever been before. 9:50–10:20 am

The Democratization of SEO
Jono Alderson

How much time and money 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 organizations 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. 10:20–10:50 am

Mobile-First Indexing or a Whole New Google
Cindy Krum

10:50–11:20 am

AM Break 11:30–11:50 am

It Takes a Village:
2x Your Paid Search Revenue by Smashing Silos
Community speaker: Amy Hebdon

Your company's unfair advantage to skyrocketing paid search revenue is within your reach, but it's likely outside the control of your paid search team. Good keywords and ads are just a few cogs in the conversion machine. The truth is, the success of the entire channel depends on people who don't touch the campaigns, and may not even know how paid search works. We'll look at how design, analysis, UX, PM and other marketing roles can directly impact paid search performance, including the most common issues that arise, and how to immediately fix them to improve ROI and revenue growth. 11:50 am–12:10 pm

The #1 and Only Reason Your SEO Clients Keep Firing You
Community speaker: Meredith Oliver

You have a kick-ass keyword strategy. Seriously, it could launch a NASA rocket; it's that good. You have the best 1099 local and international talent on your SEO team that working from home and an unlimited amount of free beard wax can buy. You have a super-cool animal inspired company name like Sloth or Chinchilla that no one understands, but the logo is AMAZING. You have all of this, yet, your client turnover rate is higher than Snoop Dogg's audience on an HBO comedy special. Why? You don't talk to your clients. As in really communicate, teach them what you know, help them get it, really get it, talk to them. How do I know? I was you. In my agency's first five years we churned and burned through clients faster than Kim Kardashian could take selfies. My mastermind group suggested we *proactively* set up and insist upon a monthly review meeting with every single client. It was a game-changer, and we immediately adopted the practice. Ten years later we have a 90% client retention rate and more than 30 SEO clients on retainer. 12:10–12:30 pm

Why "Blog" Is a Misnomer for Our 2018 Content Strategy
Community speaker: Taylor Coil

At the end of 2017, we totally redesigned our company's blog. Why? Because it's not really a blog anymore - it's an evergreen collection of traffic and revenue-generating resources. The former design catered to a time-oriented strategy surfacing consistently new posts with short half-lives. That made sense when we started our blog in 2014. Today? Not so much. In her talk, Taylor will detail how to make the perspective shift from "blog" to "collection of resources," why that shift is relevant in 2018's content landscape, and what changes you can make to your blog's homepage, nav, and taxonomy that reflect this new perspective.

12:30–2:00 pm 2:05–2:35 pm

Near Me or Far:
How Google May Be Deciding Your Local Intent For You
Rob Bucci

In August 2017, Google stated that local searches without the "near me" modifier had grown by 150% and that searchers were beginning to drop geo-modifiers — like zip code and neighborhood — from local queries altogether. But does Google still know what searchers are after?

By comparing non-geo-modified keywords against those modified with the prepositional phrases "near me" and "in [city name]" and qualifiers like "best," we hope to understand how Google interprets different levels of local intent and uncover patterns in the types of SERPs produced. 2:35–3:05 pm

None of Us Is as Smart as All of Us
Lisa Myers

Success in SEO, or in any discipline, is frequently reliant on people's ability to work together. Lisa Myers started Verve Search in 2009, and from the very beginning was convinced of the importance of building a diverse team, then developing and empowering them to find their own solutions.

3:05–3:35 pm

PM Break 3:45–4:15 pm

Search-Driven Content Strategy
Stephanie Briggs 4:15–4:55 pm

7:00–10:00 pm

Kickoff Party

Tuesday, July 10
 9:35–10:15 am

Content Marketing Is Broken
and Only Your M.O.M. Can Save You
Oli Gardner

In this session you'll learn data and lessons from Oli's biggest ever content marketing experiment, and how those lessons have changed his approach to content; a context-to-content-to-conversion strategy for big content that converts; advanced methods for creating "choose your own adventure" navigational experiences to build event-based behavioral profiles of your visitors (using GTM and GA); and innovative ways to productize and market the technology you already have, with use cases your customers had never considered. 10:15–10:45 am

Lies, Damned Lies, and Analytics
Russ Jones

10:45–11:15 am
 11:25–11:55 am

The Awkward State of Local
Mike Ramsey

You know it exists. You know what a citation is, and have a sense for the importance of accurate listings. But with personalization and localization playing an increasing role in every SERP, local can no longer be seen in its own silo — every search and social marketer should be honing their understanding. For that matter, it's also time for local search marketers to broaden the scope of their work. 11:55 am–12:25 pm

The SEO Cyborg:
Connecting Search Technology and Its Users
Alexis Sanders

SEO requires a delicate balance of working for the humans you're hoping to reach, and the machines that'll help you reach them. To make a difference in today's SERPs, you need to understand the engines, site configurations, and even some machine learning, in addition to the emotional, raw, authentic connections with people and their experiences. In this talk, Alexis will help marketers of all stripes walk that line.

12:25–1:55 pm 2:00–2:30 pm

Email Unto Others:
The Golden Rules for Human-Centric Email Marketing
Justine Jordan 2:30–3:00 pm

Your Red-Tape Toolkit:
How to Win Trust and Get Approval for Search Work
Heather Physioc

3:00–3:30 pm
 3:40–4:10 pm

The Problem with Content &
Other Things We Don't Want to Admit
Casie Gillette

Everyone thinks they need content but they don't think about why they need it or what they actually need to create. As a result, we are overwhelmed with poor quality content and marketers are struggling to prove the value. In this session, we'll look at some of the key challenges facing marketers and how a data-driven strategy can help us make better decisions. 4:10–4:50 pm

Excel Is for Rookies:
Why Every Search Marketer Needs to Get Strong in BI, ASAP
Wil Reynolds

 
Machine Learning for SEOs
Britney Muller 
Convert Local Searchers Into Customers With Reviews
Darren Shaw

Clicks from local search results to business websites are on the decline. For local businesses, it's no longer enough to rank. Your presence in the SERPs has to stand out in order to attract new customers. So how do you set your business apart from the competition? Reviews! Reviews can help your rankings, but more importantly, positive reviews drive more leads and conversions. In this talk, Darren will teach you the latest strategies and tactics to level-up your review game on Google and other important sites, so that consumers will choose your business over the competition.

 11:25–11:45 am

Location-Free Local SEO
Community speaker: Tom Capper 11:45 am–12:05 pm

SEO without Traffic:
Community speaker: Hannah Thorpe 12:05–12:25 pm

Tools Change, People Don't:
Empathy-Driven Online Marketing
Community speaker: Ashley Greene

When everyone else zags, the winners zig. As winners, while your 101+ competitors are trying to automate 'til the cows come home and split test their way to greatness‚ you're zigging. Whether you're B2B or B2C, you're marketing to humans. Real people. Homo sapiens. But where is the human element in the game plan? Quite simply, it has gone missing, which provides a window of opportunity for the smartest marketers.

In this talk, Ashley will provide a framework of simple user interview and survey techniques to build customer empathy and your "voice of customer" playbook. Using real examples from companies like Slack, Pinterest, Intercom, and Airbnb, this talk will help you uncover your customers' biggest problems and pain points; know what, when, and how your customers research (and Google!) a need you solve; and find new sources of information and influencers so you can unearth distribution channels and partnerships.
 
You Don't Know SEO
Michael King

Or maybe, "SEO you don't know you don't know." We've all heard people throw jargon around in an effort to sound smart when they clearly don't know what it means, and our industry of SEO is no exception. There are aspects of search that are acknowledged as important, but seldom actually understood. Michael will save us from awkward moments, taking complex topics like the esoteric components of information retrieval and log-file analysis, pairing them with a detailed understanding of technical implementation of common SEO recommendations, and transforming them into tools and insights we wish we'd never neglected. 
What All Marketers Can Do about Site Speed
Emily Grossman

At this point, we should all have some idea of how important site speed is to our performance in search. The recently announced "speed update" underscored that fact yet again. It isn't always easy for marketers to know where to start improving their site's speed, though, and a lot of folks mistakenly believe that site speed should only be a developer's problem. Emily will clear that up with an actionable tour of just how much impact our own work can have on getting our sites to load quickly enough for today's standards.

 
Focused Reporting: Fewer Reports that Do More
Dana DiTomaso

With an ever-increasing slate of options in tools like Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio, marketers of all stripes are falling prey to the habit of "I'll collect this data because maybe I'll need it eventually," when in reality it's creating a lot of noise for zero signal.

We're still approaching our metrics from the organization's perspective, and not from the customer's perspective. Why, for example, are we not reporting on (or even thinking about, really) how quickly a customer can do what they need to do? Why are we still fixated on pageviews? In this talk, Dana will focus our attention on what really matters. 
Why Nine out of Ten Marketing Launches Suck
(And How to Be the One that Doesn't)
Rand Fishkin

More than ever before, marketers are launching things — content, tools, resources, products — and being held responsible for how/whether they resonate with customers and earn the amplification required to perform. But this is hard. Really, really hard. Most of the projects that launch, fail. What separates the wheat from the chaff isn't just the quality of what's built, but the process behind it. In this presentation, Rand will present examples of dismal failures and skyrocketing successes, and dive into what separates the two. You'll learn how anyone can make a launch perform better, and benefit from the power of being "new."

7:00–11:30 pm

MozCon Bash

Join us at Garage Billiards to wrap up the conference with an evening of networking, billiards, bowling, and karaoke with MozCon friends new and old. Don't forget to bring your MozCon badge and US ID or passport.

Grab your ticket today!

About Trevor-Klein —

Trevor manages Moz's Content Marketing team, which works to blend our rich history of educational content with an increasingly diverse and multi-faceted suite of marketing software. That work involves finding and reaching our products' target audiences in ways that offer value and encourage brand affinity. In addition to supporting and championing the team, Trevor works to research and set appropriate KPIs and metrics for our content's success, tracking, analyzing, and reporting on that success as the goals of the company evolve over time.

Moz Acquires STAT Search Analytics: We're Better Together!








