11 People To Watch At MozCon 2014

June 30, 2014 | Sean McQuaide

MozCon 2014

MozCon is a three day marketing conference put on by Moz.com. The conference brings together next-level speakers to talk about everything from SEO to brand development to analytics. This year Erica McGillivray and team will bring 29 speakers to the Emerald City to give their expert opinions on the future of marketing. It is a jam packed three days, so I have outlined eleven of the people I am most excited to see along with some of their own reasons you should watch them.

When: July 14-16, 2014
Where: Seattle,Washington

Day One

1. Kerry Bodine – Broken Brand Promises: The Disconnect Between Marketing and Customer Experience

Description: Companies chase the business benefits of customer experience, but advertising and marketing communications that aren’t aligned with the true capabilities of the organization foil these efforts.
Reason to Watch: She applies her knowledge of human-computer interaction to design interfaces for websites, mobile apps, wearables, and robots and aligns it with marketing communications. Very cool. Given the increased focus on mobile this year, I will be interested to see how much of her presentation revolves around mobile and cross-device experiences.

Can’t Make MozCon? Check out her presentation for free on July 9th through EventBrite.


2. Lindsay Wassell – Improve Your SEO by Mastering These Core Principles

Description: Discover how SEO tactics that win in the long run complement web-friendly business practices and core principles, and how to incorporate this approach into optimization strategies for changes in search results.
Reason to Watch: Reviewing the basics is an essential part of continued success, especially in an industry where basic practices change so often. I am looking forward to seeing how she meets SEO basics with a business’s core principles.

Lindsay’s Reason to Watch:


3. Cindy Krum – Mobile SEO Geekout: Key Strategies and Concepts

Description: Learn all the technical nuances necessary to make your websites rank and perform well in mobile and tablet search!
Reason to Watch: One of the big takeaways LunaMetrics’ own Chris Vella had from SMX Advanced this month was the focus on mobile. Admittedly I am a little weak in this area, so I look forward to learning a lot about optimizing for a mobile user.

Cindy’s Reason to Watch


4. Mike Ramsey – Local Lessons from Small Town USA

Description: Whether your audience is in one region or thousands of major metros across the world, these small town lessons will guide you through the complex world of local search.
Reason to Watch: These days the users location has a big affect over the results they see. As Google’s contextual search grows, so will the need for marketers to take advantage of location to stay in front of their clients’ customers. I’ll be interested to see the similarities and differences between single and multi-location businesses.

Mike’s Reason to Watch:


Day 2

5. Pete Meyers – How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas

Description: Learn how to stay afloat in the coming flood of content, as Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for sustainably creating high-value content.
Reason to Watch: “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.” -William Plomer. Yes I pulled that from BrainyQuotes and had to Google who William Plomer was, but it is exactly what I’m looking forward to in Dr. Pete’s presentation.

6. Mark Traphogan – Google+ Game of Thrones: Claiming Your Kingdom for Brand Dominance

Description: Be the ruler of your vertical by claiming uncharted ground in Google+ to dragon-power your brand’s Google influence.
Reason to Watch: Who isn’t a sucker for a Game of Thrones themed presentation? The power of Google+ is well-known in the SEO industry, but few are leveraging its full potential, including me. We all know building an audience on Google+ gives you an edge in search results. I am looking forward to hearing Mark’s strategy for finding and growing that audience and then leveraging them like a Lannister. (Of course you should never “leverage” an audience, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration)

Mark’s Reason to Watch:


7. Justin Briggs – Talking Back to Conversational Search

Description: Looking at how conversational search and knowledge graph are changing how users search and engage with content, Justin will talk about implementing entities at enterprise scale.
Reason to Watch: I’ve been hooked on the idea of conversation search since the first time I set my eyes on the MotoX. Although it’s cool and useful for the end user, it generates many challenges and questions when it comes to SEO. As Google continues to expand the knowledge graph I will be interested to hear how we can take advantage of Google’s growing intelligence.


Day 3

8. Paddy Moogan – Beyond SEO – Tactics for Delivering an Integrated Marketing Campaign

Description: Everyone talks about the need for SEOs to diversify, but Paddy will give you actionable tips to go away and do it, no matter what your current role is.
Reason to Watch: Diversifying as a professional is a difficult process that takes a lot of thought and energy. Knowing how to take the first step can be the difference between powerhouse and scatterbrained. I look forward to hearing Paddy’s thoughts on how to start along the right path.

Paddy’s Reason:


9. Richard Baxter – Developing Your Own Great Interactive Content – What You’ll Need to Know

Description: Even if you’re not a technical genius when it comes to interactive, front end web development projects, Richard will show you how to make something the Internet loves from ideation and conceptualization to rapid prototyping, launch, and huge coverage.
Reason to Watch: You know what Google can’t suck into a knowledge graph? Unique interactive content. Did I just jinx it? I look forward to taking the skills learned in Dr. Pete’s “How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas” presentation and bringing them to life with this one.

10. Dana DiTomaso – Prove Your Value

Description: Dana will show you how to report so there’s no doubt in your client’s mind that they’d be lost without you.
Reason to Watch: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” -Albert Einstein. I have made great strides at increasing the quality of our SEO reports at LunaMetrics. But still I am always looking for what’s missing or rather what needs to be removed. Reporting is a topic which rarely floats across news feeds, but is an essential part of how we prove our worth to clients. I’m looking forward to any and all “Why didn’t I think of that!” moments Dana may deliver.

11. Rand Fishkin – Mad Science Experiments in SEO & Social Media

Description: Whether it’s anchor text or sharing on Google+ instead of Facebook, Rand’s spent the last few months formulating hypotheses and running tests, and now he’ll share these fascinating results to help you.
Reason to Watch: Last but certainly not least is Experiments in SEO. Rand will be presenting results from his own experiments, as well as insights from IMEC Labs and others. I participate in IMEC so I’ll be excited to see the impact of all the random queries and link clicks I’ve done in the past month.

Rands Reason: