We’ve got three months and some change before MozCon 2019 splashes onto the scene (can you believe it?!) Today, we’re excited to give you a sneak preview of the first batch of 18 incredible speakers to take the stage this year.
With a healthy mix of fresh faces joining us for the first time and fan favorites making a return appearance, our speaker lineup this year is bound to make waves. While a few details are still being pulled together, topics range from technical SEO, content marketing, and local search to link building, machine learning, and way more — all with an emphasis on practitioners sharing tactical advice and real-world stories of how they’ve moved the needle (and how you can, too.)
Still need to snag your ticket for this sea of actionable talks? We’ve got you covered:
The Speakers
Take a gander at who you’ll see on stage this year, along with some of the topics we’ve already worked out:
Sarah Bird
CEO — Moz
Welcome to MozCon 2019 + the State of the Industry
Our vivacious CEO will be kicking things off early on the first day of MozCon with a warm welcome, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and getting us in the right mindset for three days of learning with a dive into the State of the Industry.
Casie Gillette
Senior Director, Digital Marketing — KoMarketing
Making Memories: Creating Content People Remember
We know that only 20% of people remember what they read, but 80% remember what they saw. How do you create something people actually remember? You have to think beyond words and consider factors like images, colors, movement, location, and more. In this talk, Casie will dissect what brands are currently doing to capture attention and how everyone, regardless of budget or resources, can create the kind of content their audience will actually remember.
Ruth Burr Reedy
Director of Strategy — UpBuild
Human > Machine > Human: Understanding Human-Readable Quality Signals and Their Machine-Readable Equivalents
The push and pull of making decisions for searchers versus search engines is an ever-present SEO conundrum. How do you tackle industry changes through the lens of whether something is good for humans or for machines? Ruth will take us through human-readable quality signals and their machine-readable equivalents and how to make SEO decisions accordingly, as well as how to communicate change to clients and bosses.
Wil Reynolds
Founder & Director of Digital Strategy — Seer Interactive
Topic: TBD
A perennial favorite on the MozCon stage, we’re excited to share more details about Wil’s 2019 talk as soon as we can!
Dana DiTomaso
President & Partner — Kick Point
Improved Reporting & Analytics within Google Tools
Covering the intersections between some of our favorite free tools — Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager— Dana will be deep-diving into how to improve your reporting and analytics, even providing downloadable Data Studio templates along the way.
Paul Shapiro
Senior Partner, Head of SEO — Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
Redefining Technical SEO
It’s time to throw the traditional definition of technical SEO out the window. Why? Because technical SEO is much, much bigger than just crawling, indexing, and rendering. Technical SEO is applicable to all areas of SEO, including content development and other creative functions. In this session, you’ll learn how to integrate technical SEO into all aspects of your SEO program.
Shannon McGuirk
Head of PR & Content — Aira Digital
How to Supercharge Link Building with a Digital PR Newsroom
Everyone who’s ever tried their hand at link building knows how much effort it demands. If only there was a way to keep a steady stream of quality links coming in the door for clients, right? In this talk, Shannon will share how to set up a “digital PR newsroom” in-house or agency-side that supports and grows your link building efforts. Get your note-taking hand ready, because she’s going to outline her process and provide a replicable tutorial for how to make it happen.
Russ Jones
Marketing Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Russ is planning to wow us with a talk he’s been waiting years to give — we’re still hashing out the details and can’t wait to share what you can expect!
Dr. Pete Meyers
Marketing Scientist — Moz
How Many Words is a Question Worth?
Traditional keyword research is poorly suited to Google’s quest for answers. One question might represent thousands of keyword variants, so how do we find the best questions, craft content around them, and evaluate success? Dr. Pete dives into three case studies to answer these questions.
Cindy Krum
CEO — MobileMoxie
Fraggles, Mobile-First Indexing, & the SERP of the Future
Before you ask: no, this isn’t Fraggle Rock, MozCon edition! Cindy will cover the myriad ways mobile-first indexing is changing the SERPs, including progressive web apps, entity-first indexing, and how “fraggles” are indexed in the Knowledge Graph and what it all means for the future of mobile SERPs.
Ross Simmonds
Digital Strategist — Foundation Marketing
Keyword’s Aren’t Enough: How to Uncover Content Ideas Worth Chasing
Many marketers focus solely on keyword research when crafting their content, but it just isn’t enough these days if you want to gain a competitive edge. Ross will share a framework for uncovering content ideas leveraged from forums, communities, niche sites, good old-fashioned SERP analysis, and more, tools and techniques to help along the way, and exclusive research surrounding the data that backs this up.
Britney Muller
Senior SEO Scientist — Moz
Topic: TBD
Last year, Britney rocked our socks off with her presentation on machine learning and SEO. We’re still ironing out the specifics of her 2019 talk, but suffice to say it might be smart to double-up on socks.
Mary Bowling
Co-Founder — Ignitor Digital
Brand Is King: How to Rule in the New Era of Local Search
Get ready for a healthy dose of all things local with this talk! Mary will deep-dive into how the Google Local algorithm has matured in 2019 and how marketers need to mature with it; how the major elements of the algo (relevance, prominence, and proximity) influence local rankings and how they affect each other; how local results are query dependent; how to feed business info into the Knowledge Graph; and how brand is now “king” in Local Search.
Darren Shaw
Founder — Whitespark
From Zero to Local Ranking Hero
From zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally, Darren will take us along on the 8-month-long journey of a business growing its digital footprint and analyzing what worked (and didn’t) along the way. How well will they rank from a GMB listing alone? What about when citations were added, and later indexed? Did having a keyword in the business name help or harm, and what changes when they earn a few good links? Buckle up for this wild ride as we discover exactly what impact different strategies have on local rankings.
Andy Crestodina
Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer — Orbit Media
What’s the Most Effective Content Strategy?
There’s so much advice out there on how to craft a content strategy that it can feel scattered and overwhelming. In his talk, Andy will cover exactly which tactics are the most effective and pull together a cohesive story on just what details make for an effective and truly great content strategy.
Luke Carthy
Digital Lead — Excel Networking
Killer CRO and UX Wins Using an SEO Crawler
CRO, UX, and an SEO crawler? You read that right! Luke will share actionable tips on how to identify revenue wins and impactful low-hanging fruit to increase conversions and improve UX with the help of a site crawler typically used for SEO, as well as a generous helping of data points from case studies and real-world examples.
Joy Hawkins
Owner — Sterling Sky Inc.
Factors that Affect the Local Algorithm that Don’t Impact Organic
Google’s local algorithm is a horse of a different color when compared with the organic algo most SEOs are familiar with. Joy will share results from a SterlingSky study on how proximity varies greatly when comparing local and organic results, how reviews impact ranking (complete with data points from testing), how spam is running wild (and how it negatively impacts real businesses), and more.
Heather Physioc
Group Director of Discoverability — VMLY&R
Mastering Branded Search
Doing branded search right is complicated. “Branded search” isn’t just when people search for your client’s brand name — instead, think brand, category, people, conversation around the brand, PR narrative, brand entities/assets, and so on. Heather will bring the unique twists and perspectives that come from her enterprise and agency experience working on some of the biggest brands in the world, providing different avenues to go down when it comes to keyword research and optimization.
See you at MozCon?
We hope you’re as jazzed as we are for July 15th–17th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet, we’ve got your back:
Has speaking at MozCon been on your SEO conference bucket list? If so, stay tuned — we’ll be starting our community speaker pitch process soon, so keep an eye on the blog in the coming weeks!