Come and gone is another year of MozCon, the yearly SEO spectacular from the geniuses over at Moz.com. This year was the first virtual MozCon, which allowed team members here at Digital Neighbor in Tampa to attend two days of mind-blowing presentations and inspiring networking events.
We asked some of our team members who attended the sessions to give us their thoughts and discuss some of the main takeaways of #MozCon 2020.
Amy, Digital Strategist & SEO Junkie
MozCon Virtual, to me, is the perfect example of adaptability in our field. We’ve known that the digital disruption was coming for years, but now it’s sink or swim. So despite everything that’s going on in the world right now, I feel lucky to be in a position where I can support myself and Digital Neighbor’s clients as we navigate these choppy waters together.
If MozCon’s speakers have drilled anything into me, it’s that we can do better than just staying afloat—we have the chance to help our clients thrive. By thinking outside of the box to solve complex problems in unorthodox ways, we can start to form habits that will benefit our clients (and make our lives easier!) long after this crisis is over.
Emily, Digital Coordinator & Content Connoisseur
I noticed a common thread in all of the presentations I attended and it was that our world—and our audience—is becoming increasingly complex. The old ways of digital marketing were so straightforward: you put a keyword on a page and Google would reward you. That isn’t the case these days as the algorithm transforms and consumers get savvier.
Part of what we do at Digital Neighbor is to try to see how all of the different pieces of the puzzle come together. We know it’s not just about having the right keyword or tweeting a few good tweets. It’s about everything working as one, just like how a good team works together. I was really fascinated by how the MozCon speakers acknowledged all the ways content, PPC, SEO, and everything else builds upon each other to make a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Cheyenne, Account Manager & Client Enthusiast
MozCon blew me away with the expertise on how to handle situations in unknown times. A few key takeaways I got from this awesome experience was how to not only navigate your business in a forward direction, but to also lead your clients in the same direction with a forward attitude. When your clients depend on you, as marketers we have the tools in our back pocket to help.
It should not take a crisis nor a pandemic to start leading our clients in a forward direction. As marketers, we are the future, we are constantly on the lookout for new opportunities and cutting edge ways to help our clients. As digital marketers we should constantly be looking ahead so we can make sure they are successful for what is to come in the future. Below are some sources that can help you prepare for the future so you can better serve your clients and customers. Stay informed with the following: https://searchengineland.com/, https://www.seroundtable.com/, https://moz.com/blog
Takeaway #1: Adapt to COVID-19 World
It felt like almost every speaker mentioned the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the kind of work we do. From how COVID-19 is affecting consumer search behavior (like queries for “how to cut hair” going way, way up) to how it’s changing the way we work and communicate with each other (our team here hasn’t seen each other in person since March).
So what do we do in the face of a global pandemic? The MozCon speakers all seemed to convene on one similar answer: we adapt. Whether that’s diving in to find new keywords or digging up old ideas and remixing them for the modern-day, it’s most important to find new ways of navigating this pandemic-stricken world.
Takeaway #2: Automation is Your Friend
When we do so much for each and every client, sometimes we get bogged down in small, time-consuming tasks when we want to be out there focusing on the big picture stuff. Thankfully, a big focus of MozCon this year was on how automation is a valuable and accessible tool for marketers of all kinds.
From Francine Rodriguez’s insight on letting computers do the grunt work in PPC campaigns to Britney Muller’s masterclass on machine learning for improving workflows, we learned a lot about how we can save time and money by embracing automation.
Takeaway #3: Things Are Getting Complicated (And That’s OK)
SEO is a beautiful, intricate mix of art and science. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems, especially as our world and our technology evolves. Another big theme this year was about how everything we thought we knew is changing—whether it’s something as big as the role of CMOs in a company to how we give the content we create every day a bigger role in our brand identity.
At Digital Neighbor, everything we do starts with an understanding that our changing world requires us to be adaptable every single day. And we want to do that alongside our clients—as partners and as true digital neighbors.
P.S. Check out our Twitter account to see our live coverage of MozCon 2020 or peruse the #DNxMoz hashtag for more!
