Conference season is upon us, and the SEO industry is no different. From Brighton SEO in the UK to SMX East and Pubcon in the States, there are a lot of conferences to choose from in order to expand your skillset and network with your peers. I’m only appearing at two conferences this Fall, Advanced Search Summit in D.C. and Pubcon in Las Vegas. While I’d like to present at more conferences, since I generally pay my own way, two is about as many as I can budget.
Advanced Search Summit D.C.
I’m in Washington D.C. this week for Advanced Search Summit, where I’ll be presenting on a topic I talk about a lot, Democratization of SEO throughout organizations, creating a center of excellence and enabling your team with not only as much data as possible, but the critical thinking skills required to use it properly.
It’s quite a broad topic, but I think it’s essential, especially in a job market that favors SEOs more than it does companies. There are ample job openings for SEO, if you haven’t noticed, and not nearly enough people with skills in SEO to fill them. Whereas I’m quite fortunate to be on a sizable team of very capable SEOs at IBM, most companies won’t be that lucky.
So, how do you survive as an in-house team without a large team of SEO experts? You create an organization of people who are experts in their own respective fields and understand how they can do their jobs in a way that not only doesn’t hurt your site’s organic potential but also strengthens the overall digital experience.
See below for my Advanced Search Summit D.C. deck:
Search Talk Live
Later this month, on September 24th, I’ll be making my third appearance on Search Talk Live. You can listen to my other appearance on my Multimedia page. I’ll mostly be covering what I talked about at Advanced Search Summit and what I plan to talk about at Pubcon Pro in October.
Pubcon Pro
Speaking of Pubcon, I’ll be traveling to Las Vegas on October 7th to present and moderate there. I’ll be on the stage with Topher Kohan of the Weather Company discussing Large Enterprise in-house content strategies. We’ll also be on a Site Review panel together with other in-house experts later in the week.
Lastly, I’ll be at the US Search Awards ceremony on October 9th at the SLS/Sahara as a judge and presenter.
I always look forward to my annual trip to Las Vegas, not because I actually like Vegas. It is a wretched city. But this is my chance to catch up with my extended search family in the industry.
