We’re back for more lessons from day two, the final day of MozCon 2024! Day two brought more speakers, more chances to network and catch up with old (and new) friends, and more time to grab swag. Let’s get back to the future of digital marketing!

We were so excited to have Britney Muller back on the MozCon stage this year, where she uncovered the hidden facets of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its transformative impact on the marketing and SEO industry, helping us to navigate this ever-evolving landscape.

Britney has been fascinated by magic since her early childhood and has a passion for making secrets accessible to everyone. She’s obsessed with AI and has created the world’s largest open multilingual language model — Bloom. But she warned us we should stay skeptical of everything we hear about AI — things are not always as they seem.

She spoke about how AI can be generative or discriminative, and there’s a big difference between the two. AI reflects its training data and, in fact, magnifies it. And there are a number of problems with the datasets they use, including bias, misinformation, racism, sexism, homophobia, privacy, consent, and more. Large language models (LLMs) undergo additional training to improve these problems; however, it’s important to remember that you should not provide LLMs with any private information you wouldn’t want them to regurgitate later. LLMs are not information retrieval systems, nor are they deterministic. LLMs generate randomized outputs based on a probability distribution.

LLMs are good at A LOT of things, and this technology can help accelerate our processes. But, there are a number of pitfalls to keep in mind when using the technology:

It was relieving to hear Britney relay that AI can be accessible to everyone, and she provided a number of resources, websites, books, courses, and SMEs to follow to get started — see her presentation deck here for more information.

In his inaugural MozCon talk, Bernard Huang entered the MozCon stage in his wizard hat, touching on why the future of search engine optimization (SEO) content needs to be engaging. It’s clear that Google cares about relevant, helpful content and uses engagement to know what kind of content actually meets users’ needs.

Understanding ‘The Google Game’ is vital in order to stay on top of how Google ranks our content. He mentioned three phases of this game: (1) technical SEO, (2) authority — links + content, and (3) user engagement signals. He also detailed how search engine result page (SERP) engagement actually works — the way users interact with SERP results is the magic.

Information gain matters significantly to Google because topics evolve — and Google needs as much data as possible to stay authoritative. Bernard let us know that Google has been very public about collectively reducing low-quality, unoriginal content (specifically by 40%) and emphasized that the SERPs vary in ‘consensus, meaning low or no information gain.’

AI Overviews (AIO) answer the problem of consensus variation, reducing unoriginal answers, and not leaving much room for us content creators. But Google needs us to create original, engaging content. Thus, we ultimately need to rethink our SEO strategies. As someone performs searches for any specific topic, they’re on a search for what is meaningful to them.

Introduce ranch SEO — Bernard suggests we need to think about perspective-led content. We need to go after the different searcher intents and perspectives our users care about because perspective-led content is engaging. We must switch our strategies from targeting keywords to targeting perspectives.

Learn more about how to create more engaging content in his recent appearance on The Practical Marketer webinar.

Following up on her blog post on lessons she has learned from losing a local SEO client, Joy Hawkins joined us on the MozCon stage to share more stories from her experience of owning and working at a local SEO agency. Joy shared invaluable insights gained from setbacks, giving us tried-and-tested actionable processes to implement in our own scenarios and challenging situations.

Joy detailed five learnings from working with clients this past year:

1. Have a process to flag underperformance — The divorce lawyer

For this client, Joy first looked at pages that were declining. She looked at an example term, e.g., ‘Florida divorce,’ optimized her client’s page for that term, and saw their ranking improve. But when looking at other keywords, she found they were underperforming for many other keywords where the SERP had been won by websites such as Reddit.

As a result, Joy came up with important questions to ask clients, including: Are leads up MoM? Are leads up YoY? Is the client happy? Does the client trust us? We need to have a process to flag underperformance.

2. Encourage clients to understand what you do and why you make decisions — The insurance agent

At the beginning of working with this client, they dominated the market and got the majority of their leads from their Google Business Profile (GBP), but the client was adamant about link building. To make the client happy, Joy looked at how links impact local pack vs organic rankings. Links ended up making a large impact on organic rankings but a small impact on local pack rankings — the client wasn’t thrilled.

Joy decided to start hosting webinars and invited clients to help them understand more about why her agency makes specific SEO decisions. This client came back after one of the webinars, and they won the client back!

3. One agent and an ideal customer — The criminal lawyer

When Joy’s agency got this client, they firmly told the agency they wanted to focus on DUI cases. Joy started researching and worked on target keywords relating to people with multiple DUIs, but the client wanted the angecy to focus on first-time offenders.

So, she started to think about how they could prioritize the things that make the most money. Sterling Sky made a couple of changes — they minimized contact to one agent rather than two. And, made sure to ask the business who their ideal customer is.

4. Show how long-tail keywords can help dominate the SERP — The locksmith

The client wanted to focus on the keyword ‘locksmith,’ and Joy thought it made sense. If there is a business close to you, Google would prefer to show that business than a business further away. There were 131 locksmith businesses in Indianapolis, which is a lot to compete against when you only have one location. Joy decided to focus on the keyword ‘locksmith Indianapolis’ instead, focusing more on long-tail keyword optimization. But the client didn’t care.

Joy decided to start showing clients how they can dominate the SERP by targeting long-tail keywords:

5. Find ways to show value — The realtor

Before 2020, the housing market was booming, but now the industry is struggling. Joy needed to show value to the client while the market demand was down. We might immediately think of showing the client rankings, which is difficult for local businesses because local rankings can be influenced by the time of day, among other factors.

Seeing her client becoming disheartened, Joy worked with Noah Learner, who took the aggregated ranking data and put it into Google Looker Studio to create a heatmap. This helped Joy illustrate value to her client.

The final lesson Joy shared is that failure can be an opportunity to grow our problem-solving abilities and skills — Pain + Reflection = Progress.

Last year, Crystal Carter shared her insights on the topic of video SEO. In her MozCon talk this year, she explored the rise of Perspectives, user-generated content (UGC), and the return of forums in the SERP, with an emphasis on maintaining brand visibility and authenticity — see her presentation deck here for more.

Google loves ‘hidden gems,’ using the term when they launched the new ‘discussions and forums’ SERP feature. There’s a reason Google is bringing this feature back:

1. Forums have always been “people-first,” where people share genuine opinions, first-hand experiences and typically have a heart. Forums have historical content, bring input from the human perspective, and offer answers for queries that can’t really be answered with AI.

2. Sometimes, intent isn’t as structured as we, as digital marketers, think. Sometimes, people are bored or are just online — these kinds of queries don’t fit into a funnel, but they still matter. Enter Reddit — forums fill content gaps.

3. User-generated content (UGC) through forums shows E-E-A-T in real-time. Think feedback on content quality, evidence of expertise, and verification/badges for trust.

Crystal mentioned something super interesting — forums follow AI chatbot patterns, including natural language, logical Q&A Forum topic flow, and feedback on topic quality. Forum discussions correspond to Gemini user journeys.

So, how do we optimize for this new SERP?

1. Make UGC comments crawlable and indexable. Have unique URLs for comments, keep your content indexable, and encourage shares. Amazon, for example, has ensured that reviews are crawlable and indexable.

2. Use schema for named authors, comment URLs, and interaction counters.

3. Show your work. Tell users how and when to contribute, and illustrate activity.

4. Cultivate good conversations. Moderate your space.

5. Can’t beat ‘em? Join ‘em. Join Reddit, speak to Reddit experts, engage with communities, and use Reddit for user-first content ideation.

6. Make sure your content is more “people-first.”

7. Fill content gaps.

8. Build trust signals into your posts.

9. Study forum discussions today to later understand Gemini and AIO tomorrow.

10. Look for communities in your vertical, find opportunities to contribute, create content for them, build your own and nurture your own.

Our final community speaker, Travis Tallent spoke on the MozCon stage for the first time, focusing on how to grow your SEO team in an AI world. Travis shared actionable insights on fostering a culture of continuous improvement by nailing the basics, cultivating SEO advocates across departments, and leveraging intelligent analytics to showcase your team’s impact — see his presentation deck for more information.

When ChatGPT launched, it thrust AI from the back rooms to the forefront of the public. Our job is to stay above AI in the hierarchy. Travis introduced a framework — ‘SOAR’ that helped Brainlabs see a 110% increase in SEO revenue in three years.

1. Streamline the basics. Align our SEO KPIs to the business's KPIs. Make sure reporting reflects this, and start with revenue.

2. Orchestrate our teams. Our boss can’t be the only one who believes in SEO. Get stakeholders in the room and build our SEO roadmap together.

3. Automate monotony. Anything done thrice should be automated. Automations don’t just save time — they can help with quality.

4. Reposition focus. The difference between fear and confidence is knowledge. Data is needed for better AI outputs, but data isn’t a cure-all.

If AI lives up to its promises, it could help humankind in the long run, and we need to be okay with that. We need to be compassionate, communicative and have great speed in making decisions.

Mozzer and Senior Search Scientist Tom Capper addressed Google’s ever-changing SERP during his MozCon talk last year. This year, Tom showed us how to tease apart the complexity of search engine results pages (SERPs) to find targeted opportunities in your space — see his presentation deck here.

When we hear search intent, we think of the big four: informational, commercial, transactional, and navigational. But search intent isn’t linear. One keyword can have multiple intents or even mixed intents.

1. Informational intent is typically at the awareness stage of the funnel. The searches we see for this intent are typically factual, such as a currency conversion or ‘what is’ queries. Featured snippets and People Also Ask SERP features are closely associated with informational intent. Informational SERPs are busy and are only getting busier.

2. Commercial intent is typically at the consideration stage of the funnel. Think about searching for keywords such as ‘laptops’ or ‘dinner ideas near me.’ Price and ratings are closely related to commercial SERPs, and product and review pages are the typical results we see on these SERPs.
   
   

3. Transactional intent sits at the conversion stage of the funnel and includes searchers who are ready to buy. Think about searches such as ‘fruit basket’ or ‘used cars.’ Localized keywords are typically associated with transactional intent, so we’ll likely see more local packs on these SERPs, along with “find results on” SERP features.
   
   

4. Navigational intent sits at the advocacy stage of the funnel. Example searches include ‘Amazon gift card’ or ‘Olive Garden menu.’ Sitelinks, Twitter/X boxes, app downloads, and videos are typically common on these SERPs

What happens next?

Rand Fishkin, founder of Sparktoro, joined Dr. Pete Meyers on stage for a live fireside chat interview on the future of the search industry.

Dr. Pete started by talking about the Google leak that happened last week, which Rand helped bring to light. The documentation leak provides additional context to what has happened over the past couple of decades in the industry of search. Rand mentioned that great content is the art of SEO, and how Google works is the science of SEO — and we should be looking at the science as well as the art. Dr. Pete believes one thing we’ve lost is experimentation and thinks we need to start experimenting again and to not take Google for their word. We typically treat Google statements as the most authoritative resource available; it’s time to question the search engine giant. Rand emphasized that we need to think about SEO geographically, letting us know it’s important to remember that everyone’s lived experiences of SEO are different.

Google ties entities together, and we know that the search engine values authorship. Rand mentioned he’s going to change some of Sparktoro’s strategies towards content, including publishing a few times a week on the blog and perhaps hiring someone who already has great authorship online. This leads us to the authority of brands, which Moz predicted to be an extremely important facet in the future of search with our launch of Brand Authority^TM at MozCon 2023.

Dr. Pete referenced search intent and how the new path that is forging in front of our very eyes leans heavily on intent. Building the trust of being there when people need something might be the key to the future of SEO. Rand emphasized the importance of community over content. Yes, let’s create content, but let’s create content that builds community.

Joel Klettke focused on building a story-driven marketing machine by setting a meaningful strategy, getting the right customers on the record, and using stories to differentiate and drive revenue across the entire buyer’s journey.

Buyers are more skeptical, inundated, and informed than ever, so everything is being scrutinized. Joel hypothesized that AI will obliterate quantity, challenge quality, and reprioritize connection. In the ‘fast and fake’ era, customer proof remains verifiable, relatable, and inherently unique. It creates connection and lowers perceived risk.

Joel introduced us to the STEPS framework, based on storytelling:

1. Strategize — Define our KPIs and the audience to influence. Tell the stories they need, where they are. Go beyond ‘Problem / Solution / Results.’
   

2. Team up — To make it happen, we need centralized documentation. If it’s on the calendar, it’s alive. And we must embrace proactive storytelling.
   

3. Engage — To make it possible, build an SOP. To make it work, map out comms. To make it stick, put it on the calendar. And remember proactive vs. reactive storytelling.
   

4. Produce — Velocity is everything: we need to go in prepared. Don’t ‘kitchen sink’ it. Our customers are always the heroes.
   

5. Share — Nibble, bite, snack, meal – how hungry are our customers for our stories? What do they expect at this point in their buying journey? We must have a plan and use our sawdust.

Azeem Ahmad joined us for a second year of MozCon madness. Last year, he talked us through how to future-proof our content strategies to stay ahead of the competition. This year, he dove into the successes of iconic marketing campaigns that have stood the test of time, with an emphasis on equipping us to use more audio and video in our marketing efforts.

Azeem took us through historical moments in advertising, from the first-ever ad in 1926. By 1955, TV took over radio and newspapers — at this point, advertisers had to embrace this new medium. By 2006, ads had come alive; by 2014, a new era of CTV devices began. Azeem then made quite the statement that we “don’t need to treat audio and video separately.” Azeem referenced user-generated content and how brands can make the most of it, referencing Alamo Theater’s reaction to a dissatisfied customer.

Media + Creative = Attention. Azeem told us that different formats of content get different types of attention from users. These formats include in-feed, short-form, and stream.

Brand + Sales = Impact. Most content types have steep retention curves, and knowing what works on each platform helps to flatten it.

Azeem finished his talk by giving us a free pie chart to take away, which shows how we should split our AV budgets:

To become a multimedia marvel, Azeem recommends:

• Creating product videos

• Showcase our offerings through demonstrations

• Hold live events

• Utilize social media

• Create advertisements

• Use customer testimonials

• Offers and sales

• Create a podcast

• Communicate our company culture

Effective marketing is more complex than ever before. With such turbulence in the digital marketing industry, we must utilize a number of skills to stay ahead, as Bethan Vincent shared in their latest Moz Blog post. Bethan followed up on this and joined us for the very first time on the MozCon stage with their talk on why even channel-specific marketers must start thinking beyond their domain and engage with the full brand surface area.

Bethan took us through the four horsemen of the marketing apocalypse:

1. GenAI

2. Structural inequality

3. Death of the free internet

4. Audience fragmentation

What does this mean for us as marketers?

1. Audience ownership, not rental. This solves structural inequality, death of the free internet, and audience fragmentation. Our relationship with audiences relies on trust.

We can build trust through: Proprietary data and information, increased brand visibility, being opinionated, and providing good overall experiences.

Metrics that will matter include: Returning sessions, engagement rate, subscriber rate, and integrated distribution metrics like email or CTR.

2. All roads lead to brand. This solves Gen AI, death of the free internet, and audience fragmentation.

We’re moving to the world of ‘solved query spaces,’ and basic information is now a commodity. We need to start caring about brand and communicating through perspectives.

1. Your future economic value rests on your preferences. This solves GenAI, structural inequality and audience fragmentation.

Bethan emphasized the concept of taste — user preferences matter. The skills we need to help us thrive here include: Deriving new conclusions by connecting disparate dots, communicating underlying nuances effectively, and developing and iterating on an idea.

2. We need to accept we can’t predict the future. This solves everything, potentially.

The only way to test the validity of any theory is to prove it wrong. Data is evidence, not truth.

Bethan ended with some takeaways: Focus on trust, not helpful content, optimize for brand preference, define and deliver quality, and diversify your approach —after all, it’s the one that is most adaptable to change that survives.

Following up on his talk last year about the evolution of content, Ross Simmonds closed out MozCon 2024 with his talk on how to survive the chaos with smaller budgets, bigger goals, and the AI advantage. Ross shared insight and tactics on how to navigate this new world on the back of data, as well as strategies that are grounded in traditional thinking, including storytelling and modern technologies, such as AI.

Ross mentioned there’s a shift in human behaviors online and different types of formats of content people are trying to consume. There’s more noise and chaos than ever, and the speed at which AI is changing is ridiculous. We need to take a step back and see this new world for what it is. The SERP is a chaotic mess, but the death of Google is highly overestimated.

The truth is, though, AI is taking jobs — the chaos is real. So, how do we win amidst it all? We need to not get so caught up in the chaos that we forget to create content that is worth reading, bookmarking, sharing and ranking. Ross suggests we go back to the fundamentals and then optimize. We need to focus on the real issues and the solutions to those issues. We need to embrace other growth channels that go beyond SEO — think about where our audiences spend their time.

We need to have a strategy where we create highly valuable content at scale that matches user intent and meets our customers where they spend their time. If we can crack the code, we can get impressive returns. We can’t control the industry, the algorithm, or the rise of AI technology. The thing we can control is our time and where we allocate that energy. Ross ended his talk by telling us that we need to keep showing up.

Phew! We ended the final day of MozCon 2024, partying it up at Garage. Did you sing karaoke? Take some awesome photos at our photo booth? Battle it up at the arcade? Conquer bowling? Be sure to tweet (or X) us your favorite memory or photo you took over the last two days so we can all remember how much fun MozCon 2024 was.

The learning isn’t over yet, though! Be sure to pre-order the MozCon 2024 video bundle to recap on this year’s talks. And don’t forget to Discover Moz with our latest generation of Moz features — powered by Moz data and the all-new Moz AI.

Safe travels to all, and best of luck trudging through the future of digital marketing. We’ve got this!

Read the day one MozCon 2024 recap.