#it’s about embracing her differences and understanding she’ll never be fit for the modern world.

[shadowedvales-gone]

at long last, jane’s future verse has been published to my carrd, and you can read it here, if it interests you! i am quite excited to start developing this verse for her more— thank you to everyone who voted on my last poll in relation to my final decision!! ily all. thank you for always loving me and jane and putting up with my constant changes and rants about how she was done so dirty in canon. i never expected to be writing her for so long on tumblr, with so much support from such wonderful people! just makes me a little emotional sometimes. you’re all the bestest. ❤️

[mrsgiovanna]

The Beguiling (Hades! Don Giorno x Persephone! Fem! Reader)

This concept has been on my mind for the longest time. This is loosely based off the lore of Hades and Persephone, set in a modern mafia AU, with Giorno as Hades and the reader as Persephone. 🥺💖🐞

TW: Kidnapping, yandere themes, manipulative behaviour, disordered relationship dynamics

Word count : 6.3k

“The truth of the matter I believe to be this. There is, as I stated at first, no absolute right or wrong in love, but everything depends upon the circumstances, to yield to a bad man in a bad way is wrong, but to yield to a worthy man in a right way is right.”

- Plato, Symposium

Being the Don of a mafia is a difficult task, being so far removed from everyone and everything else. Some would even say, its like being part of an entirely different realm…

Extremely beautiful but entirely unapproachable, Giorno didn’t appear in public very often, the burden of running the organization had brought many threats to his safety. Granted, he was able to thwart any plan to even remotely harm him, but one doesn’t have time for such annoyances when you wield as much power as he did. Taking over something so big at such a young age changes a person, and Giorno was no different, he was always seen as aloof and calculating, but there were other dimensions to his character that he was painfully aware of, but would not reveal to anyone else… yet.

“Don Giovanna, are you ready to go? The driver is ready for us,” his consigliere spoke in an even, respectful tone while addressing his don.

“Yes, we can leave, have you informed Fugo of the change in our plans?” Giorno’s voice was monotonous, soft and polite, but conveyed no emotion. The task at hand today was not a pleasant one… he hated having to deal with defectors and had avoided it up until this point. This case was different… the defector in question was your brother. You had always held a special place in his heart ever since he encountered you upon taking over Passione. You were always kind towards him, and all your conversations had brought about a sense of peace within himself. Nonetheless, he dismissed it as a simple juvenile crush, and continued with his mammoth task of remolding the diseased organization, excising the ‘tumors’ to allow for a healthier, better, stronger Passione to emerge. Sacrificing his youth, his personal life and precious friends in order to attain his dream, he was not going to let anyone destroy everything he had worked so hard to create.

As the years went on, there were many times that your path had unwittingly crossed with the young don’s which only intensified his feelings for you, but given the nature of his lifestyle, he tried to convince himself that loving you from afar would be good enough, but Giorno’s resolve- unshakeable in every other scenario- was quickly waning in this regard.

Meeting with your father was painful, his demeanor reminding Giorno of a shadowed figure from his past who had changed his life forever.

“He’ll have to be dealt with, you understand this, correct?”

“I’m aware of this, Don Giovanna. I… I’m willing to take any punishment you see fit… please keep my daughter out of this… I can stake my life on her innocence in all of this,” your father spoke emphatically, desperate to protect you, appealing to the don’s humanity. Giorno furrowed his eyebrows, surely your father knew he wouldn’t harm you in any way- was it normal for people to be this terrified of him? The sharp slam of a door and a greeting from a honeyed voice snapped Giorno from his thoughts.

“I’m home, I hope you’re hungry, I’m making octopus salad, squid ink risotto and I’ve got chocolate fondants for dessert… oh goodness! Don Giovanna- I’m sorry… I, um…” you stuttered embarrassingly as your gaze landed on the blonde’s handsome face and shifted to the ground immediately. Before Giorno could answer you to try and quell your discomfort, your father interjected, sending you away from the room. The young don was completely awestruck by your ethereal beauty, as if you had been crafted by the gods themselves, descended to create joy in an otherwise dull world. He made a silent promise to himself- he had to have you as his own.

“(Y/n), please give us a moment piccolina, I’ll come to you as soon as we have concluded our meeting,”

“Of course, please pardon my interruption,” with a small nod of your head, you took your leave, wanting to start making the dishes you had just rattled off. As you busied yourself with your preparations, your mind kept returning to Giorno, he was always calm and pleasant, but you hadn’t seen him with that kind of expression before. The fact that you hadn’t seen your brother in days didn’t bode well with today’s events… you hoped he was okay, but you experienced first-hand how aggressive he could be, something, you were told, he had shared with your mother. You didn��t have much of a relationship with her as her job had taken her away from the family a bit too much. You understood now that you were a young adult, but your emotions still vacillated between acceptance and resentment when you observed the families of your friends.

“You know… because of the difference in our ages, you’ve always told me that you cared for me as a father would care for a son, as a result, our relationship has always been cordial… its allowed us to speak frankly as we have always done in the past,”

“Yes, Don Giovanna… this is true.”

“Please, I’ve told you many times before, call me Giorno…”

“Alright… Giorno,”

“Good, good, see? That sounds better already. As I was saying before, if your affections for me run that deep… accept me as a son-in-law and allow me to marry (y/n) and you will never have to worry about her safety again. Nobody would ever think to harm her if they have to contend with me first,”

“What? Are you asking for permission to marry my daughter? I don’t think she has even considered something like that… you’ve barely spoken to each other…” your father was battling to make sense of Giorno’s request, if one could even call it a request.

“I don’t think you understand the situation you’re in… your son has singlehandedly created a colossal mess; we’d be in the middle of a turf war if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of my consigliere. That’s not to say other people wouldn’t want to exact their own personal brand of justice. I can guarantee you though, if she’s under my care, none of those things will ever reach her.” Just as the consigliere was about to speak, perhaps, an attempt to rationalize with the don, a sharp sideward glance from the latter had left all suggestions unspoken. The silence in the room was palpable… uncomfortable, until it was broken by Giorno.

“I’ve loved (y/n) for as long as I’ve known her, the best place for her would be with me, my strength is unparalleled… this is probably a lot to take in right now, I’ll allow you some time to come around to the idea, I’d hate to have to take her by force, but, if that’s what it will take…”

“Are you threatening me Don Giovanna?” asked your father with a restrained bite to his voice.

“Of course not, I’m merely making my intentions clear, my reach spans well beyond anything you could ever imagine… well, I’ve said all I need to in this instance. I’ll be back for her in three days, I trust you’ll be able comply with my suggestion. I’ll be taking my leave now.” With a flourish of his cerulean blue coat, Giorno and his consigliere left your home. Your father cursed his position, but there was little he could do about it. Finding you blissfully tinkering in the kitchen, his heart broke, knowing already that this was one of the last times he would be seeing you like this… or at all.

“You don’t agree with what I’m doing, do you, Lorenzo? You know I’m good at reading people, although you’re not even trying to mask your disdain,” asked Giorno, breaking the silence on the drive home.

“Well, if I’m allowed to speak freely, I don’t think you’re going about this in the right manner. She’s going to be terrified and resentful because you’re effectively abducting her, so in brief, I don’t agree with this at all,”

“Fair enough, and for the record, obviously I’m aware that she’s going to hate me… at first anyway, but she’ll come to understand eventually. Anyway, what’s done is done, in three days, I’ll be bringing home my goddess.” Giorno turned his attention to his phone and with that Lorenzo had backed off, knowing from years of serving Giorno that there was no talking to him when he resolved to do something.

“Father, you’re so quiet… did something happen?” you asked, part of you not wanting to know the answer to that question.

“It’s a mess, but don’t worry about that, I’ll handle it. There is something that I have to speak to you about though… it’s about Don Giovanna, he would like to see you in a few days, nothing serious, just be sure to keep your schedule open for the day,” your father explained, only divulging half the truth of your situation.

“He wants to see me? Do you know why? Have I done something wrong?” you were curious as to what Giorno could possible want with you.

“Of course not dolcezza, he just wants to have a chat with you, I think he’s just making sure that you’re alright… that’s part of why he was here today.

“Oh, alright, I’ll be available. Anyway, dinner’s ready, once you get washed up, we can eat,” you glanced up at your father to see his face contorted in grief. “What’s the matter? I know you don’t like talking about things that have to do with your occupation, but you’ve been like this ever since Don Giovanna left,”

Being too much for him to bear, he pulled you into a vicelike embrace, almost as if you would disappear if he let you go, which was not entirely false. “Aww, it’s okay dad, everything will be fine, come on, the food’s getting cold, you need to eat,” with that, you both ate in a comfortable silence as you always did, before you both retired for the evening.

While you tried to prepare yourself for your “meeting”, your soon to be captor was busy creating your sanctuary, or rather, overseeing the creation of your sanctuary- there was no reason why your surroundings couldn’t be as beautiful as you were, his aim after all was to get you to fall in love with him. Large, glittering mirrors with gilded frames adorned the walls of the hallways that lead to your room. Inside, was everything one could ever hope to have; an extensive closet filled with things that were made especially for you, various trinkets and baubles carefully selected for you, state of the art electronic devices, albeit with restrictions on the amount of things you could access… just for the time being though. If you were to start off as a bird in a cage, it should be a bejeweled cage worthy of a rarity like you.

As it got closer to the time you’d be seeing Giorno, your nerves started increasing exponentially, you knew that under normal circumstances, having to meet with someone like him without knowing what the subject matter would be was intimidating, but this feeling was something else altogether. As if something in your gut was telling you to cancel- to run- but you dismissed those feelings, and prepared yourself for the engagement.

“Buonasera cara, you look especially charming this evening…” he greeted you with a velvety voice that masked the true nature of him being there.

“Buonasera Don Giovanna, thank you for the compliment,”

“Shall we leave, (y/n)?”

“Um, okay… I just need to fetch my things and let my father know that I’m leaving…”

“Alright, perfect, actually, would you mind if I followed you? I’d like a quick word with him before we leave,” his expression was so charismatic, you felt guilty for not inviting him inside immediately.

“Of course, I’m sorry, please do come in.” you say as you stepped aside to make room for Giorno to enter. You lead him to the study and went to fetch your coat and purse to go, giving yourself a onceover in the mirror to make sure you were presentable and with that you kissed your father on the cheek and left.

The restaurant that you and Giorno went to was completely empty except for a single table set up for you both and the staff that were going to serve you, you found it odd, but dismissed it as one of the nuances of leading a mafia, privacy was of utmost importance. Ever the gentleman, the young don pulled out your chair for you and seated himself across from you.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me (y/n), I appreciate you taking the time to do so,”

“Of course, although I have to admit, I’m a little confused as to why I’m here,” you say with a nervous titter. The waiter brought a bottle of wine to the table, probably preapproved by Giorno already, and with a small nod, it is poured out into the awaiting glasses for the two of you.

“You will understand soon enough cara, come, lets toast to something… ah! To new beginnings…” he suggested with a sardonic smile.

“New beginnings? Okay… to new beginnings, salute!” with a confused smile and a delicate clink of your glasses you both took a sip of your wine. As the night went on, you were having a wonderful time, however, it seemed like your alcohol was getting to you faster than usual.

“Are you alright, cara, you look a bit out of sorts, come, I’ll take you home,”

“Thanks Don, I… I’m sorry I don’t know-” before completing the rest of your sentence, your consciousness faded and you fell into a strong pair of arms. Giorno sat you back down and made a quick call to his driver before picking you up again and placing you in the awaiting car to take you to your new home. As he gazed lovingly upon your face, he knew that the road is going to be a tedious one, but you would love him one day.

Your head pounded incessantly as you tried to open your eyes. The sensations on your skin were unfamiliar- soft, silken, so inviting, lulling you back into the deep slumber you were trying to break. Was this a dream? Your eyes finally opened to an unfamiliar room, you gathered the courage to sit up in bed, still unsure if you were in a dream or not and tried to rub the sleep out of your eyes. Looking around the room, feeling a sense of panic enveloping your very existence, you ran towards the large, ornately carved door to try and leave the room, but it was locked. The windows, it seemed, were crafted from reinforced glass as they would not break regardless of what was thrown at them. Left with only one option, you began to cry out for help, surely someone would be there, it was too well kept to be an abandoned building.

Listening to the commotion from outside the room were the guards and servants tasked with making sure your requests were fulfilled, but more importantly, they needed to ensure you were safe and didn’t escape. Giorno had a way with people, a charisma that both scared and enchanted those around him. Disobedience was not even a fleeting option for those who served him, partly out of fear, but mostly out of devotion to the young don. Giving each other a knowing glance, your guard decided to call his boss to come and subdue you before you had hurt yourself.

Your throat felt raw from the shouting and hyperventilating, your skin shimmered, veiled in a thin layer of sweat and your eyes shifted this way and that, trying to spot something you could exploit to leave the room while your captor was away. It dawned on you that as terrifying as it was to be in that place, it would be even worse if you had to face whoever was holding you there, choosing rather to contend with the fear of the unknown, than putting a face to your jailor. As if even thinking of something willed it into existence, your worst nightmare materialized as you heard the door being unlocked.

“Tesoro… please stop, you’re hurting yourself,” your eyes widened when you heard the velvety voice addressing you with such tenderness.

“Don… Giovanna? Where am I? What are you doing here? Please, I need to go home, I don’t know who brought me here…” you could barely articulate yourself with your shaky voice.

“I know that you’re extremely scared and confused… there’s so much I need to explain to you… but please, first, let me look at your hands, you are hurt, I can take care of that,” it was only after he spoke that you saw the bruises blooming on the delicate skin of your hands and arms. You still stayed rooted to where you were, but Giorno inched closer, materializing GE to heal your injuries. His heart stung when you silently grimaced at the pain of his ability rejoining the blood vessels that had broken, but he hated seeing your beautiful skin being marred like that.

“Don…”

“Please, call me Giorno…”

“Okay… Giorno… can we go now? I need to go home, if we stay any longer the people who put me here might come back or send others, I…”

“Tesoro… this is your home now… the person who brought you here was me… what is the last thing you remember from yesterday?” The young don circled around you and sat you down next to him at the foot of the bed.

“Why? Why did you bring me here? Are you insane? I can’t stay here, I… don’t understand what the hell is going on! I need to call my father,” seeing you start to get agitated again, Giorno pulled out his phone and motioned for you to take it.

“Here, call him, he has already agreed to this arrangement. You’re not safe my love, I’m sure you know about the recent transgressions courtesy of your cretin of a brother. People are angry and want revenge, and unfortunately you’re in the direct line of fire. So it was decided that you would come and live with me, you’ll find all your belongings here already, mixed with things that I believe you would like. I will give you anything your heart desires, lavish you with all the love and attention I can. All you need to do is stay here… near me… nobody can challenge me…”

You heard the words, but nothing was making sense to you. You decided to take up your captor’s offer to speak to your father, who confirmed his entire story. Feeling dejected, empty and completely alone, you sank to the floor as violent sobs wracked your body. Seeing you in this state filled Giorno with dread as he lifted you off the lushly carpeted floor, but he knew he would be able to get you to love him eventually. This was this the initial shock; he was willing to wait for you to acclimate to your surroundings.

Thus began your life of isolation… your routine, if you could even call it that, consisted of waking up in your palatial room, begrudgingly having breakfast with your green-eyed abductor and sulking around for the rest of the day. Giorno put a lot of effort into making sure that you were comfortable and tried to interact with you as much as his schedule would allow him to. Initially, all of his attempts to speak to you were ignored, you wondered if the awkward silence even bothered him at all, but he always had a peaceful expression on his face. If nothing else, he was very patient with you, and at times you tested his patience on purpose, goading him to anger, in those times though, he simply left you alone in your room, not allowing you to leave for a few days, instructing your handlers to confiscate your electronics, not even offering you a sliver of human contact… you needed to think about why you were in that position after all, so there could be no distractions whatsoever. Those isolation periods would thankfully not last long enough to tip you over the edge though, and like a ray of sunshine after a storm, he’d come to unlock your doors and add color back into your world. You always were more affectionate towards him after a few days on your own, which, you reasoned, was due to the lack of any interaction at all as opposed to having any genuine feelings towards him. Giorno wasn’t picky though, he accepted your gentle touches and embraces all the same, one day… soon… you would undertake those gestures solely on your desire to do so.

Surely enough, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, you had warmed up to him, settling into an oddly satisfying domestic life with the don. The more of yourself you gave to him, the wider your world had gotten, until you eventually had free reign over the entire estate. You soon had come to realize that if you had just played your part, and listened to him, complied with his simple requests, his kindness towards you was limitless. Giorno had remained as attentive as ever, picking up on every little change on you from the subtle change in the color of your blush to the miniscule changes in the length of your hair after its trimmed, nothing escaped his well trained eye. He beamed when you started to wear the clothes and jewels he bought for you, seeing it as a sign that you were slowly starting to accept him. The truth of the situation was that you had, against your better judgement, fallen in love with this living deity.

“Giorno… the weather’s warming up quite beautifully, why don’t we train outdoors from now on instead of working out inside?” you suggested while you kneeled on the bed behind a seated Giorno as you undid his elaborate hairstyle and brushed out the product from his hair before he took a shower.

“Hmmm… alright bella, I suppose we could do that, I’m sure the fresh air would do us both some good,” as he got up, he bent down to place a chaste kiss on your forehead before heading into the shower. For a fleeting moment, you thought about your old life, you had earned back the liberty to speak to your family, well, your father, and some friends, but the fractured relationships weren’t the same. Pushing those negative feelings to the back of your mind, you waited for Giorno so that you could both go to sleep, but your heavy eyelids fell shut. His patience with you was never more evident than in these moments, never once overstepping your boundaries or initiating intimacy that would make you feel uncomfortable. Emerging to see your sleeping form, he pulled up the covers around you and climbed into the other side of the bed, facing you, he clutched your hands in his, allowing himself to close his eyes as well.

“We’ve managed to locate her… you aren’t going to like this though,”

“Just tell me where my daughter is, I’ll decide the rest,” your mother spoke bluntly to her partner.

“She’s living with some mafia boss; I think he’s her boyfriend or something. You never see her out on her own, she’s always with him. I’ve got people watching your husband’s house, she’s only been there once, with the cocky bastard in tow. The security at his place is insane, worst of all, we think he’s a stand user,”

“Stand user? Don’t make me laugh, that means nothing, we’re stand users too, every ability has a weakness that can be exploited,” your mother lit a cigarette and took a long drag, musing on what her first move should be. After a moment of contemplation, she had her sights set on her old marital home, deciding that your father would be able to provide the most complete description of what is going on. She portrayed a nonchalant exterior, but your mother was very worried for your safety. She had a powerful stand of her own, in fact all the members of your family were powerful stand users- except you. Your mother worked closely with a foreign organization dedicated to studying supernatural phenomena as such, most of her time was divided between her travels on behalf of the organization and work that she would need to do onsite at their headquarters in Washington. Over her lifetime, she’s found herself in many precarious positions, so she decided it would be safer if she stayed away from the family in an attempt to keep everyone safe… upon hindsight, that was a fatal miscalculation. To describe her mood after speaking to your father as livid, would be an understatement.

Not wasting a moment, your mother called her associate and made her way to the don’s villa, hell-bent on taking you back from his dark clutches.

“Bella, are you ready to go?” Giorno called to you as he pulled on his coat while you put on your last accessory. You never turned down an opportunity to go out, even though your outings became slightly more frequent, you were completely captivated by discovering the different facets to Giorno’s personality. As much as he was fervently observing you and curating an ideal world tailored to you, you were learning a lot about him and the circumstances that fashioned him in this manner.

“Yes tesoro, sorry for keeping you waiting… what is it?” you were met by a wide-eyed Giorno, and it hit you… Tesoro… the name trickled so effortlessly off your lips, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t really thinking…”

“Don’t apologize amore, as long as it’s you, I don’t mind…” he softly replied, as he stroked your cheek with the back of his forefinger. You heard a faint clatter accompanied by the ring of Giorno’s phone, informing him that there had been a security breach. The soft expression on his face was gone, as he gripped you with a protective arm.

Before you had time to ask him what was going on, you heard your name being called out by a voice you barely remembered, one you didn’t think you’d hear again.

“Mother?” your voice was a whisper. Your mother looked at you, disdain skewing her features before turning her attention to Giorno, whose grip continued to tighten around you.

“(y/n), I’ve come to take you away from here, it’s obvious leaving you in the care of your father was a mistake. And you, step away from her this instant, you will regret it if you don’t,”

You hadn’t noticed the swarm of black suits that had surrounded you all, ready to pounce at Giorno’s command. His intense gaze had not left your face while your mother spoke, searching for the slightest tell indicating you might have known about this, but you were just as perplexed as he was… the guilt of him doubting you twisting his features even further.

“It’s alright, stand down men… while you really have a nerve of breaking into my property, I feel that this can be solved amicably, I’d hate for (y/n) to have to contend with any discord between us,” he spoke with a calm, even voice but that didn’t match the fury brewing in his eyes.

“Amicable? You take my daughter away from her home and you still feel like this is something that can be talked out of? You really are a piece of work!”

“Better to be the overbearing lover than the neglectful mother…” Giorno’s tone was dripping with cynicism as he handed you to one of your awaiting guards.

“You sick bastard!” your mother cried out. As if being pushed back by a glowing force that you couldn’t quite discern, the young don was thrown backwards. You hated feeling so powerless. Giorno sat up and smiled mockingly, before launching into an attack of his own you assumed, as you saw a similar golden glow envelop his body, and the bodies of the security personnel backing him up.

“Please, stop it! All of you!” you wanted to run out between them but you were restrained by your guard. It didn’t take long for Giorno and his men to restrain your mother and her associate, taking care to leave them largely unharmed while you were still present. Giorno had made one fatal error though… blame it on overconfidence or his need to constantly check on you, he had turned away and left himself wide open for a last ditch attack from your mother as she broke free. At that very moment, your body moved itself before you could even think, and faster than you ever thought possible, pushing him out of the way with only a second to spare, as the attack hit the very spot he had stood on just a moment before, shattering the marble flooring on contact. The room was enveloped in silence, Giorno motioned for his guards to leave the room, as did your mother to her partner.

“(y/n) … tesoro mio… are you okay? You… you saved me…” he said as he kneeled next to your shaking, winged form, combing his hands through your hair as he tried to get a look at your face. You looked up to see Giorno with a wide eyed golden figure hovering over him, approaching you was your mother, with a luminescent humanoid woman matching her footsteps.

“Tesoro, it seems you’re a stand user after all,” mentioned Giorno, still gazing at you, this time with an expression you hadn’t seen from him before. Completely overwhelmed by the recent events, you sat for a moment, trying to regulate your breathing with the exercises Giorno practiced with you when your anxiety overwhelmed you.

“So these are what stands are… they look terrifying…” you say, finally managing to normalize your breathing and take command of your senses once again. “where is my stand then? I presume these two figures belong to you and mother.”

“Yours is different amore… are you able to walk? Come with me…” Giorno lead you to one of the mirrors so you could see how your stand manifested; you had large wings that had sprouted from your back, your eyes glowed colorlessly, and you had luminescent geometric patterns running down your face and body, akin to the patterns you would find on a circuit board. “You have what is known as a phenomenon stand, this means that it changes your body rather than manifesting a separate entity,”

“I see…”

“We can figure out the extent of your abilities another time, for now I need to see those injuries,”

“Excuse me? You’re not doing anything further with her, I’m still serious about taking back (y/n),” interjected your mother sarcastically.

“Are you trying to anger me on purpose? I loathe having to repeat myself. Do not mistake my unwillingness to kill you this very instant on anything other than respect for (y/n),”

“Likewise…”

“You’re both so selfish!” surprised to hear you raise your voice that much, both parties were stunned to silence.

“I’m a person with my own will, I have feelings, thoughts, desires, dreams… but neither of you bother to consider any of that… Giorno, you essentially abducted me, under the ruse of protecting me, I’m sure you would have found a way to keep me safe while I lived my own life, if it was that important to you, but you weren’t interested in that… if you had just approached me like a normal person, I’d still have fallen for you… well I guess now we’ll never know … And you… mother- I use that term liberally- abandoned me… abandoned us, I don’t care what the reasons were, you left me to grow up without a mother, and now you come here and ridicule me with this dramatic display of affection,” your voice began to crack but you wouldn’t let them see you cry, not so soon after finally finding your voice, so you left them there and went off to your special spot in the far corner of the estate. You knew that Giorno created that little piece of heaven for you strategically, as it was visible from his study, but it served as your safe place, and it was what you needed right now.

Giorno’s mind was clouded and he felt an uncomfortable suffocating sensation in his chest. Glancing at your mother it was apparent that your emotional outpouring had affected her as well.

“I think its best if you leave,”

“Wait, Giorno… perhaps this approach wasn’t the best way to do this, I underestimated you…”

“For the sake of curiosity, what do you propose?”

“That’s going to depend on how you answer my next question…”

“For someone with as few options as you have, you’re incredibly brazen,” shot back Giorno, clearly becoming tired of the conversation.

“I spoke to her father before coming here… he told me about my son… is… is he dead?” speaking earnestly this time, your mother steeling herself for what the young don would say to her. He observed her intently, debating whether it would be safe to divulge any information to her.

“That’s classified information,” he said, knowing full well that the idiot was alive somewhere, unable to be a threat to anyone again, unfortunately he couldn’t divulge this information to anyone. If she was smart enough she would be able to figure it out for herself, any more than that he could not offer.

“I understand… Fine, I’ll back off, (y/n) can stay here… but I need to speak to her, to explain everything, when she’s ready though…”

Giorno contemplated for a moment, feeling oddly moved by the change in your mother’s demeanor, he found himself agreeing with her, “Fine… I’ll allow it, but I can’t have you here, never again, if you need to see her, we’ll come to you… if that’s all, I need to check on (y/n)” Your mother took her leave, thoughts of the bizarre events of the day dominating her thoughts.

You listlessly played with the water in the fountain you sat beside, eyeing the way the sunshine made the droplets that fell from your fingertips look like gems. Hearing the scrunching sound of grass being stepped on, you knew that Giorno was approaching you. Unwilling to turn around to face him, you continued to look at the water.

“May I sit with you?” his voice was tender and didn’t match his imposing figure. Looking up his striking face, framed by golden waves, you nodded wordlessly.

“Talk to me cara…”

“What do you want me to say?”

“What’s on your mind…”

You paused, thinking carefully before starting to speak. “There’s so much on my mind… I… I just can’t understand you. You bring me here under the most dubious circumstances, but treat me like I’m the center of your world. I want to hate you for taking me away from my world, but I’ve never felt as loved by anyone in that world as much as I do here with you. How can you look at me with eyes so gentle now, when those same eyes were ready to kill not even two hours ago? How am I supposed to make up my mind about you when your every action contradicts the next?”

“It’s simple bella… I love you… you’re above the rules I set for everyone else… my one weakness is you, I’m sorry, I just don’t know how else to be, it’s either everything or nothing. Perhaps, forget about what you think and focus on how you feel… You know, we aren’t that different, the two of us… so many parents between us and barely enough traits among them to make up one good guardian, having to basically raise ourselves, so much pressure from such a young age, being scared of what lurks in the dark, experiencing so much physical pain, you just become immune to it. I have to admit, I was jealous of that brave assault by your mother, I don’t know if anyone would do the same for me… except you of course… you almost died to get me out of harm’s way… and just when I thought I couldn’t love you any more than I do…”

The gentle way he cupped your chin, as if you were made of crystal, and the swirl of emotion in his eyes, compelled you to act on your impulses, kissing him passionately, releasing some of the pent up emotions and frustrations that have been building up for the longest time. His free hand curled itself around your waist, while your hands tangled themselves in his hair. Resting your forehead on his, you hear him murmuring affirmations of his love for you.

“I love you too, Gio,” the words just rolled off your tongue as if you were always meant to say them. Giorno, seemingly moved by your placid declaration, buried his face in your hair, inhaling the floral scent of your shampoo that he loved so much. What you didn’t see was the sardonic smile blooming on his handsome face. He always was a master at deception… although, it couldn’t be classified as deception if most of what he said was true… could it? He didn’t want to play the sympathy card today, but it was the only way he could firmly cement your place with him for good. Pulling away for a moment, looking at the love-struck expression on your face as you softly move your hand from his hair to his chest, he could see that you were finally complete- entirely devoted to him… there was no room for guilt this time.

[s0nofursa]

abshhduw dude that cuddling ask got me so SOFT!! I NEED TO CUDDLE MY HOMIES NOW GOD!!! if ur willing can u write up some 👏tyzula👏 HCs

THABK U yes anon u have fantastic taste. cuddling as a concept is simply 👌👌👌 chefs kiss

tyzula hcs:

okay so tyzula to me is all about HEALING. in general i think it’s great pairing because it’d be SO cathartic to azula. ty lee is played off as the dumb girly acrobat but if you look deeper into her character, she is EXTREMELY wise, and without going too far off topic, she has an excellent grasp on who she is and who other people are (no matter how hard they try to hide it). in azula’s case, she’d benefit greatly from having ty lee as a confidant/partner because ty lee would be the one to initiate important conversations and help azula with self-reflection. she would be a fantastic listener, nudge azula in the right direction without straight up telling her what she needs to work on, and just overall be a positive influence on someone who spent so much of her life under the influence of someone so toxic to her formative mentality. in short, an azula redemption arc would involve a lot of gf on gf healing.

ty lee would give fantastic back rubs. these calm azula down like nothing else in the world can. she is embarrassed to ask for them but when she needs one ty lee just knows.

because azula is so starved for real positive affection, she can’t understand why ty lee is so goddamn nice to her even when she hasn’t done anything worthy of praise. waking up in the morning to a forehead kiss and breakfast in bed? huh???? finding love notes and reminders to eat from ty lee after she leaves for work??? wha???? getting cute calls and texts from her just because?????? WHOM????? but whenever she’d be visibly confused ty lee would just b like omg that’s just what people do when they love each other, why are u so ??? and azula would realize that she’s never actually experienced that love before, that unconditional love from someone who actually cares about your happiness, and not just your usefulness. this is yet another way ty lee is beneficial to azula’s healing process; she will lead by example.

i’d like to add that over the years with ty lee, not only does azula get used to that feeling of being loved and appreciated, she develops positive habits she avoided/never had the chance to develop under ozai. simple health things like drinking more regularly, getting more sleep, engaging in self care; all things she neglected in the name of spending 100% of her time being the perfect pawn.

because ty lee and azula are so different, i think they could pull each other out of their comfort zones in a really cool way. i talked about this in my last hc post with zukka but it definitely fits here too. ty lee would ABSOLUTELY get azula to embrace her girly side (something she’s never felt comfortable exploring fully) by taking her to get manicures, dressing her in pink gowns and doing her all up in dramatic makeup and jewelry and then bringing her to dinner at fancy restaurants, showing her social media etc in modern aus, all of that lovely shit. it would be really freeing for azula as a hardcore warrior and just fun for her to finally explore freely, without anything getting in her way. in the same vein, azula would show ty lee some more intense fighting styles, dress her up in that sharp ass firenation armor, and take her off-roading.

azula would get super flustered anytime ty lee was physically affectionate to her. ozai def never hugged her or anything, and she sure wasn’t letting zuko very close when they were little. so having never actually experienced touchy touchy lovin, she goes beet red any time ty lee puts her arms around her waist from behind or grabs her hand to hold as they’re walking. she also has absolutely NO idea how to navigate “cuddling” but ty lee finds it adorable and has no problem guiding her through it. at the end of the day azula grows to love physical affection and gets better and better at reciprocating, much to ty lees delight.

azula falls asleep on ty lee. like all the time. party because she works her damn self so hard no matter what she’s doing and is super quick to pass out after a long day, and partly because ty lee is one of the first people she finds she can actually be vulnerable around. ty lee thinks it’s adorable and after another half hr on the tv, she’ll carry azula off to bed, careful not to wake her :)

[elsanna-shenanigans]

December Contest Submission #18: No Longer Here

words: ca. 2500 setting: Modern AU lemon: no cw: Mild language, incest guilt

Anna can’t sleep. She’s tried to for the past half an hour, but tonight’s events prove to be too much for her mind to let pass; and her restlessness doubles knowing that her sister still hasn’t come to bed either. She slips out of the covers and opens their bedroom door. Her footsteps are quiet along the carpet, listening for any worrying sounds. There’s a dim source of light coming from their living room, and Anna goes to it.

Walking through the hallway with the outlet that doesn’t work, the overhead light that flickers if you turn on the dishwasher, and the cream-colored walls riddled with patches to cover large holes made long before they moved in.

She finds Elsa, sitting on their lumpy couch with a blanket draped over her. Elsa turns around and smiles at her sister, under the light of their lonely desk lamp Anna can still see the puffiness under her sad eyes.

“Hey,” Elsa says softly.

“Hey,” Anna replies. She wonders if her eyes carry the same sadness.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Not really, it’s- I mean I guess I’m a little cold,” Anna lies.

Elsa opens up the blanket and tilts her head towards it, her smile grows more inviting even if her eyes say something different. “Come here. I’ll keep you warm.”

Regardless of whether she’ll take the invitation or not, Anna moves forward. “You sure?” she asks her sister wearily. “You’re still not mad at me for earlier?”

Elsa’s smile falters, but she can’t possibly think they weren’t going to talk about tonight. Maybe she was hoping to have this conversation on another day. Anna sees the same look she saw hours ago, a stress that comes from trying to keep the peace for a whole damn year, and failing. A stress that says she’s barely holding it together. It hurts to see Elsa try to take the burden on for both of them, but she knows her older sister’s too stubborn to let her carry her share. “I wasn't…” She sighs, “Anna, I was never mad at you. I just didn’t like how you acted in front of mom and dad, that’s all.”

Anna finally decides to sit with Elsa on the couch, warm arms welcome her into the fabric cocoon, hastily renovated to fit two. Her sister’s embrace feels as it always does: safe, secure, loving. She hears a soft, happy hum from Elsa when she leans into her shoulder, but peace won’t come so soon, so easily. “Well then maybe dad shouldn’t keep calling you a groomer,” she replies, holding back the other, more horrible things he said tonight.

If they weren’t in public, she would have reamed out the bastard. And her mother too, who let him say nasty things to Elsa while she stared blankly at them. It’s been so long since Anna’s seen any emotion from her.

“They’ll come around eventually, but until then we just need to keep taking the high road.” Elsa takes a second too long to answer, but it’s enough for Anna to know that her hope is weaning too. Anna’s hope died long before.

She looks ahead at their dark, paint-chipped wall devoid of any decorations and certainly any family portraits. They don’t even have a TV yet, just a laptop propped up on a small coffee table. Anna had the silly idea of painting a fireplace on it where they could “warm themselves up” during the winter. And while Elsa doesn’t necessarily object, Anna knows she’s holding out hope for a bookshelf when they knew can afford it.

When they can afford it…

It’s a miracle they could afford to this apartment to begin with. It’s a miracle their upstairs neighbors aren’t stomping around like elephants right now. It’s a miracle their power hasn’t gone out in two weeks.

But the life they’re living right now doesn’t feel like a miracle. It feels like a punishment, a condemnation for choosing themselves against the world, a heavy cost for love. Sisters shouldn’t love each other the way Anna and Elsa do, and yet here they are defying logic. But what good is that doing for them, right? Is love not enough? Do they no longer deserve a happily ever after?

The thought of that makes Anna’s skin burn with anger. She sits up quickly, startling her sister and taking a large portion of the blanket with her. “Why do we want them to come around, Elsa? Why do we keep going to these fucking dinners with them? It’s been a year and nothing’s changed, they still hate us- hate you- and we just have to sit there and…listen to them talk about us like we’re not even there. I hate it!”

“Anna, they’re our parents,” Elsa says in a tired tone, as if she knows that excuse doesn’t work that well anymore. “Understand where they’re coming from, what if you had kids and one day you found out they were in a relationship together?”

Anna scoffs, “I’d sure as hell be much more understanding than those assholes. Like yeah maybe I wouldn’t get it, and I’ll be freaked out at first, but if they were like you and me they’d love each other so much, I’d see it. I’d know what that love looks like, and I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.”

Elsa looks all ready to ask another question, but something inside her hesitates. Instead, she sighs and clutches at the blanket left on her lap. “Yeah…”

Curious about how she would answer it, Anna asks, “What about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you had kids, and they told you they were dating, how would you react?” It’s a little softer than the question Elsa asked, a little less real. They didn’t tell their parents they were dating, they got caught.

Elsa keeps her eyes fixed on her lap, really pondering this question. “I…well it’d be a lot to take in certainly.”

Anna knows her too well, she knows that Elsa wants to say more and really tell her how she’d react. But anything more would be a painful admittance of their parents’ mistake. Still, she prys one more time. “But would you hate them? Would you kick them out of the house and force them to live with friends and in homeless shelters until they found a shitty apartment to move into?”

Elsa looks at her with wide eyes, utterly shocked at the notion. “Of course not! At the end of the day, they’re still my kids and I love them.”

“Then you’ve already shown more kindness towards hypothetical children than our own damn parents have shown to us.”

Once again, Elsa looks poised to say something but hesitates. It’s not the time, the dinner tonight still weighs heavily on them both. She looks at her sister and says with eyes threatening to tear up again, “Anna, please. Can we not do this tonight?”

“I…okay. I’m sorry.” Anna drops the subject, disappointed yet understanding. A year might be enough for her to see their parents’ true colors, but for Elsa it’s going to take a little longer. Anna takes the blanket and places it once more around them both.

She remembers when they bought it. Three months ago at a thrift store, the same day they bought their couch. Elsa loved it because it was so big and soft, Anna loved it because the dog stitched on the corner looked just like the one they had when they were kids.

She missed Olaf.

Elsa, as a sign of gratitude, opens her arms again to invite Anna back in. Anna’s embrace feels the way it always does: warm, strong, calming. On the hard days, when she gets too caught up remembering their past and the nightmare they had to live for a little while, sometimes this is all she needs. When they once again settle into the couch, Elsa replies, “No, it’s not your fault. You don’t have to apologize for anything, you were just speaking your mind. I wish I could do the same, but…”

She trails off, but Anna doesn’t need to guess what she was about to say.

“You still think this is your fault.”

Elsa bites her lip, and looks at Anna with a guilty expression, “I just keep thinking…what if I never kissed you underneath our apple tree? What if I’d just waited a little longer for mom and dad to leave so they didn’t catch us? What if I let that boy Hans ask you to prom instead of taking you myself?”

“Well, you definitely shouldn’t feel bad about Hans,” Anna responds with an amused grin. “I heard he got arrested for trying to rob a gas station with a water gun.”

That assurance doesn’t seem to be enough, however, and Elsa squeezes Anna’s hand. Maybe to try and assure herself, or maybe so she makes sure her little sister doesn’t leave her. “Still, I think that maybe at least your life would be a little better if I’d kept my feelings in check a little more.”

This is new, at least for Anna. She’s always suspected that Elsa’s held on to this guilt, but it’s the first time she’s ever vocalized it.

She looks at her older sister with narrow eyes, the orange glow of the lamp accenting the severity of her gaze. “You really think that?”

“Yeah, I do,” Elsa replies sadly.

“Then you’re an idiot.”

“Wh-what?” It’s a risky move to go with an insult rather than comforting her sister, but thankfully Elsa looks more confused than hurt.

Taking this as a good sign to continue, Anna places her hand on Elsa’s cheek and makes her keep eye contact. She knows her sister gets antsy when she gets too serious, but Anna needs her to listen. And she needs to see her eyes. “Elsa, you didn't make me go to prom with you, I chose to do that- hell, slow dancing with you to Thinking Out Loud is what made me fall in love with you in the first place. You didn’t force me to kiss you underneath the apple tree, I was counting down the seconds till mom and dad left so I could kiss you again like we did the night before. And you didn’t make me move into this apartment with you, I wanted to. I wanted to spend every one of those moments with you. And I want to spend every moment with you, good or bad, because I love you, dummy.”

Anna seals her statement with a kiss. It’s a little awkward to start given their position on the couch, but once she tilts her head up and Elsa moves down a little, their sitting arrangement becomes an afterthought. For a brief moment, their troubles melt away.

They’re no longer in an apartment barely large enough to fit one person, with a broken heater, and a roach problem. They’re no longer the scandalous sisters who had all images and mentions of them scrubbed from their parents’ social media accounts. They’re no longer the disgraceful outcasts that they see in the mirror when the other one isn’t around.

They’re just Elsa and Anna, in a world only they know, with a love only they can understand. And the fire cast upon them will never burn brighter than the fire they built together.

When they part, Anna adds a phrase she picked up a while ago. Something that always makes Elsa blush for some reason, “To the moon and back.”

Elsa smiles, containing her honest feeling of bliss, and replies softly, “And I love you to the sun and back.”

Anna rolls her eyes amused, “Elsa, you gotta find a better phrase to say than that.”

The smile fades into a frown. “You don’t like it?” Elsa asks, and Anna swears she adds a little bit of sadness in her voice just to drive in the guilt.

“I don’t like this image of you walking across the sun for me,” she explains. “The sun's really hot, you know? It’s on fire.”

“Well, maybe I’d walk through fire for you.”

Anna closes her eyes for a second as those words hit her like an arrow to the heart. “…okay, that’s a good one.”

Elsa grins proudly and leans forward for a kiss of her own, much more chaste so as to leave Anna wanting more. “See? I can be romantic.”

It’s highly successful, but Anna’s too proud to admit it or to grab another kiss in response. Instead, she scoffs and says, “I never said you couldn’t, you dork.”

“You’re a dork.”

“Well, you’re a bigger dork for loving me.”

“You’re an even bigger dork for loving me.”

“Fine, then I guess we’re both dorks!” Anna concedes. “Hopeless, emo dorks with shitty parents and a shittier apartment.”

It was nice to feel normal for a second, but they can’t hide from their predicament forever. Escapism can only take you so far, and they try to use it sparingly. Lately, however, it seems like it’s getting harder to escape from their reality, as if something needs to change unless the life they’ve built for themselves might come crumbling down.

And where would that leave them?

That’s something they can’t afford to think of right now. One day at a time, that’s how they have to take this. Elsa rubs her sister’s arm and instills a little bit of hope, “My coworker said they might have a vacancy at his apartment complex soon. It’s a little more expensive, but I’m hoping if I get that promotion, then we can afford it.”

And Anna contributes her own hope too. “I’ve got an interview for a restaurant position on Monday. Hoping that goes well so I can finally start helping with the rent.”

“I’m sure it will.”

Anna wants to believe…has to believe. If not, she’ll spiral down into a nightmare torrent of anxiety that Elsa will have to rescue her from. And she won’t do that to her sister, not after all she’s doing to keep them together.

But this night cut a little deeper than the others, and Anna needs to know. “…hey,” she says softly.

“Hey,” Elsa replies.

Anna looks into her eyes, searching and…pleading. “We’re going to be okay, right?”

Elsa smiles and kisses her forehead, “Always.”

Anna smiles because she believes her. “Good…” And she wants to say more just to keep the conversation going, just to settle in the solace with her sister, but a long yawn betrays her. She says defeatedly what Elsa already knows, “I’m tired.”

Smoothly, Elsa slides the rest of the blanket onto Anna and places her hands on her arms. “Let’s get you to bed.”

They take the same path Anna took earlier, neither in much of a hurry to get to the bedroom despite another yawn escaping Anna’s lips. Elsa opens the door and leads her inside, pulls back the covers and lays her on the bed, lays down the other blanket and kisses her one more time. Anna falls asleep with a smile on her face.

Half an hour later, Elsa goes to bed too.

[kurainburdened]

👫 ft. saizo KJNHM

bHey guess what you asked for saizo but youre getting like everyone

Knock of Sasuke Saizo

Lol I like to bully him,

His is funny because it’s so completely one sided right now, if only slowly pulling results. But lets see what I can do with the local tsundere ninja, as the company liked to call him

Maya and Saizo are two complete opposite souls pulled together by circumstance. Maya is overbearing, fun loving and silly. Shes finally out in the real world and poor Saizo has to pull on reigns to keep her from doing anything too crazy. That’s already a big job for most people but for someone like him? Well it’s easy to see how their relationship got to how it is.

But Mayas genuineness does indeed begin to wear him down. She goes out of his way for him. After all, job or not, he’s still risking his life for her and she wants to do what she can for him even when he’s being a huge meanie! The more he tells her it’s impossible for htem to be friends the more of a challenge she takes it as. And she wont stop until theyre best buddies!

I like to imagine a scene where someone is trying to kill saizo who can barely move from the fight and Maya stands in between them. The person cant kill the kurain master because shes useful so they at least try to fight her enough to deter her but she keeps getting back up.And shes getting in really bad shape, she can barely stand but she still pulls herself in front of saizo. Like yes she’s weak, yes she doesnt know the firs tthing about fighting but she will NOT let anything happen to him if she can still move. Of course in the last second the cavalry comes. and Saizo probs gives her a thorough scolding.  

Now for some fun hcs!

Maya ends up trying to learn how to defend herself and to his surprise she actually has an aptitude for the sword. Something no one saw coming and something only a trained ninja could even recognize. She’s not so good with her feet so it’s kind of hard to tell for most people. She also has good instincts and after quite a bit of time, He actually gets her to be pretty good! The two can gave some good fights, tho of course Saizo still dwarfs her but Maya has fun fighitng him. YOU CAN BET that once she starts getting some level of good she’d try sneak attacking him. It wields some painful results at first, but after  bit he becomes able to send her presence specifically so she doesn’t get as hurt. The first time she genuinely is able to sneak up on him she’s so proud of herself. That is, if that happens. But it’d be cool if it did.

Sakuhito

So I hc that Maya ends up finding out about sakuhito the same way it goes in the prologue. Though it takes longer after meeting them for her to revea that. She kind of plays around with sakuhito for a bit. She’ll muses loudly like ‘huh thats funny thats different from what you told me before. Thats sooo strange. Whats going on here,’ she sees him sweat and desperately try to cover it up for a bit  before kind of letting him off the hook and shrugging like ‘ah well must be my imagination. anyway!’ and changes the subject quickly. One day shes finally like ‘so who are you? cause its definitely not the emperorer’

She gets what it’s like to be in big positions of power so she plays with him a lot. Tries to get him to loosen up. This mostly takes the form of her playing little harmless pranks on him. Something to make him smile. As well as give her a good laugh. You can bet she sets up a banana peel in front of him. It’s all in good harm and nothing harmful and nothing that would put his position in danger

When theyre alone Maya teaches him fun kid things. She excitedly recounts all sorts of fun tales she’s heard, complete with reenacments that sometimes gets herself hurt during the action scenes, sometimes sakuhito. She doesnt care. Maya is probably alot more daring around him than anyone should be allowed to be in front of the emperor but it always works to her favor. All she wants is to get his mind off all the big heavy stuff he has to deal with in the outside world. When theyre together in her room, she wants him to just feel like sakuhito.

I feel like this might result in him feeling the need to distance himself because she ends up being able to tear his mask off a lot easier than she should be able to. And he has a job to do. He cant let anyone know of his presence but maya is absolutely RELENTLESS.

Maya and Sakuhito are very similar in that they have theyre fun childish sides but this never means that they are people who shirks their responsibilities. Which I think is a big comfort for Maya because I like to imagine in the presence of other people they’ll be all stiff. Maya and Sakuhito bow deeply to each other and are like ‘It’s an honor to meet you Emperorer Kuze’ ‘Yes as with you oh powerful Kurain Master’ and they’ll glance up and theres this small smile and glimmer in they’re eye and they share a giggle before coming back up. Them talking to each other politely feels more like a game of pretend, compared with others when they’re playing their assigned roles.

Now time for fun hcs!

I like to imagine if they’re stuck in a gathering of important figures, Maya and Sakuhito will find themselves together and they’ll look like they’re having important conversations, and sometimes they are but others Maya’s just cracking jokes with him in a hushed tones. Sometimes Sakuhito has to start into a coughing fit to hide a laugh.

Of course Maya doesn’t do this all the time. She has a good sense of responsibility and time and place, but there’s also something fun about sharing in these secret conversations. It’s a feeling akin to passing notes in the middle of class with a close friend.

These two have conversations thats just two people of similar personalities and backgrounds who can connect and understan each other in this way that not a lot of other people can They have a lot of fun and when they’re together they can just be themselves. And it’s a bit of a relief from their usual lives. They give each other a place where they can be themselves.

I like to think that they’re kind of like each others safe havens. Like theyre home when they’re with each other.

These two get so good at reading each other so if something happens in a room, they literally just have to make eye contact and immediately theres this understanding. They can make hand signals that no one else understands but them.

Ohh Maya gets kidnapped and she sends a letter thats supposed to make sure no one suspects anything but later when Kuze is relaying this to Sakuhito Maya says something odd that makes Sakuhito raise an eyebrow. Like it’s something small that no else would think twice about but he just KNOWS and he takes a look at the letter and it makes mention of a story character who gets kidnapped, And its one of the stories she had told him about and hes immediately like. MAYAS BEEN KIDNAPPED. and everyone else is like. isnt that a jump? but he just KNOWS. he can tell from just these small things that somethings wrong and theres something in his gut that just makes him so sure of this

oh man i want modern au for all your muses i just tried imagining modern sakuhito but idk how thatd even translate

Munenori

I feel like she tends to do the same for munenori that she does for Sakuhito but rather than it being a concentrated effort at first, with like a purpose she just can kind of naturally be herself. I think that has to do with the fact that Munenori isn’t pushing himself like sakuhito is to keep up the mask of someone that is just the opposite of himself.Her relationship is something more relaxed where she just is herself and munenori appreciates it

I feel like this relationship is very mutual in that, Maya really loves and respects him. She respects how dignified he is. How he holds himself as a leader and how he leads. She’s fascinated by him because he doesn’t treat her like others do and he seems to genuinely enjoy her presence rather than just putting up with her. There’s this natural pull she feels where she wants to learn more about him. In turn munenori appreciates how shes never let the power she has get to her head, rather it’s not in her to ever let her power control her like it has others. She’s so genuine and has this aura of fun about her but also never shirks her own responsibilities. I also feel like he’ll be one of the first to realize her tactical abilities and that she’s much smarter than she or anyone will give her credit her. Like this relationship is built on a lot of mutual respect.

When these two are together I like to imagine it’s more like two like minded people with differing energies that come to converge when they’re together. It’s a friendship that on the outside looks so strange but for these two it’s so natural. They’re like minded enough to enjoy one anothers presence but different enough for them to be able to learn and grow from being together. The ways they differ allow for them to have these interesting conversations. While they don’t agree on everything they can usually walk away from disagreements feeling like they learned something. I guess if I had to describe it, you wouldn’t ever imagine it but their brains are kind of on the same wavelength. Like they can just enjoy each others presence and grow from each other, but when things get bad, something happens with the war, they stand on equal footing and can help support each other. Give insight that the other lacks

Roberto

Her relationship with Roberto is interesting because he meets her on much different circumstances than she does with the other two. Maya is trying to really embrace her responsibility and in doing so leave parts of herself behind. It’s not like she’s all business all the time but there’s not as much room to be herself. That’s why Roberto is someone she really connects with. He brings out this side of her that’s shes trying to lock away and just the mere presence of him is making that impossible for her.

These two are people with similar energies who feed into each other. When they’re together it can be explosive chaos because there are ZERO brakes. Interestingly enough it’s usually maya with the reservations. Because she’s here to work. She’s here to study. Yes she has fun, yes she can be silly, but she can’t be her usual rule breaker self when she’s here. She wants to be respectful to the kingdom that allowed her to study under their royalty. So she can’t exactly go around burning the place down.

That’s why Roberto is kind of like her kryptonite. He so naturally and effortlessly pulls her entire personality out where she likes it or not. That’s kind of good but kind of bad. He encourages those impulses that usually most people would tell her no. It’s good in that Maya has more room to breathe, but sometimes he encourages her to do things she shouldn’t. But I think because he’s encouraging this side of her that everyone tells her is bad, she feels more like she can trust him. Like she can entrust this side of herself to him.

Now for some fun hcs

Maya and Roberto get so good at avoiding guards it’s like a game of hide and seek. They end up becoming really acquaintd with all the nooks and crannies of the palace. They end up exploring the castle more thoroughly and even find hidden passageways and they explore a lot together. Like they have all these cool adventures.

[michaelandy101-blog]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-mozcon-virtual-2020-final-agenda-2/

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

We’re just about a month out from this year’s MozCon and we couldn’t be more excited! If you’ve never considered it before, it’s high time you became acquainted with the idea of a “couchference” — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we’ll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry’s top speakers, you’re in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you’ll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren’t able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we’d love to hear what talk you’re most excited for in the comments. (All talk times are in Pacific, so keep that in mind when planning your day! We promise we won’t judge if you’re watching in your jammies.)

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year’s virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings?

This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she’ll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, “building a brand” is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer’s woes. But it’s unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn’t realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn’t have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn’t do the job — but hadn’t seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he’s used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We’ve all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don’t get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they’re ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you’ll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

“Machine learning” and “automation” aren’t words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we’re greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what’s expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand’s ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what’s expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That’s a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What’s the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn’t know about SEO. This year, he’s back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn’t be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn’t usually a marketer’s forte. In this session, you’ll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn’t dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland “unique selling propositions” that aren’t unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that’s any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you’ll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You’ll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn’t guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Wil Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared.

Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs.

This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That’s a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing… we can’t wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I’m going to MozCon Virtual!

Source link

[isearchgoood]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3fUdb10 #blogger #bloggingtips #bloggerlife #bloggersgetsocial #ontheblog #writersofinstagram #writingprompt #instapoetry #writerscommunity #writersofig #writersblock #writerlife #writtenword #instawriters #spilledink #wordgasm #creativewriting #poetsofinstagram #blackoutpoetry #poetsofig

[fmsmartchoicear]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[timeblues]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2zXI3y5 More on https://seouk4.weebly.com/

[bfxenon]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[localwebmgmt]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[nutrifami]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[daynamartinez22]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[xaydungtruonggia]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

Posted by cheryldraper

We're just about a month out from this year's MozCon and we couldn't be more excited! If you've never considered it before, it's high time you became acquainted with the idea of a "couchference" — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we'll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry's top speakers, you're in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you'll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren't able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we'd love to hear what talk you're most excited for in the comments.

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year's virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings? This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she'll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, "building a brand" is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer's woes. But it's unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn't realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn't have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn't do the job — but hadn't seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he's used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We've all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don't get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they're ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you'll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

"Machine learning" and "automation" aren't words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we're greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what's expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand's ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what's expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That's a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What's the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn't know about SEO. This year, he's back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn't be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn't usually a marketer's forte. In this session, you'll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn't dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland "unique selling propositions" that aren't unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that's any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you'll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You'll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn't guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Will Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared. Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs. This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That's a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing... we can't wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I'm going to MozCon Virtual!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[michaelandy101-blog]

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/the-mozcon-virtual-2020-final-agenda/

The MozCon Virtual 2020 Final Agenda

We’re just about a month out from this year’s MozCon and we couldn’t be more excited! If you’ve never considered it before, it’s high time you became acquainted with the idea of a “couchference” — a full-fledged conference held from the comfort of your home office space, real office space (depending on your local quarantine phase), or even your sofa.

On July 14th & 15th, we’ll be charting brand-new territory with MozCon Virtual: with a choose-your-own-adventure two-stream show, robust opportunities for online networking, and some of the industry’s top speakers, you’re in for all the turbo-charged SEO education and peer interaction of in-person MozCon with none of the troubles of travel. Plus, at $129 per ticket (including full access to the professionally produced video bundle, a $350 value!) you’ll access incredible marketing thought leadership at an unheard-of price:

Nab my ticket and video bundle for $129

And remember, this is a great opportunity for our friends around the world and those who aren’t able to travel to experience the MozCon magic live! If this will be your first time attending, we’d love to hear what talk you’re most excited for in the comments. (All talk times are in Pacific, so keep that in mind when planning your day! We promise we won’t judge if you’re watching in your jammies.)

Read on to see what your favorite industry leaders are speaking on this year!

Tuesday, July 14th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Keynote – Welcome to MozCon Virtual 2020 + State of the Industry

Sarah Bird, CEO of Moz

Sarah has a storied history of kicking MozCon off with a bright, sparkly bang. The fearless leader of Moz will be welcoming each and every one of us to this year’s virtual event, laying out all the pertinent details of the conference, and setting the tone for two jam-packed days of learning with a look at the State of the Industry.

9:25am – Keynote – Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy Crestodina, Co-founder and CMO, Orbit Media

Everyone wants to do it, but no one really knows what it is. So what is thought leadership? What isn’t it? And how does it affect search rankings?

This presentation is a data-rich perspective on the oh-so-popular topic of thought leadership, filled with practical takeaways for becoming an authority. And it’s all about the relationship between thought leadership and SEO. We’ll see how the research answers the questions and informs the tactics: Can brands be thought leaders? Can it be outsourced? Do you need to publish research? Or strong opinion? And how does it attract links and authority, rankings, and qualified visitors? Learn how a personal brand combines with content to drive big wins in SEO.

10:20am – Stream 1 – Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon McGuirk, Head of PR & Content, Aira

In her talk, Shannon will challenge the desire for virality over consistency when it comes to digital PR and link building campaigns, while exploring the impact on the industry, team morale, and client expectations. By honestly sharing her own shortcomings, she’ll push you to learn from your own campaign failures using tried and tested frameworks that’ll mean you can face any creative campaign or outreach struggle head-on.

10:20am – Stream 2 – Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle – Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Robin Lord, Consultant, Distilled

How can you harness the vast power of Google data to gain special insight into city- and product-level brand awareness? Robin will lead us on a journey through his Google Trends methodology to use Adwords search volume data for better brand intelligence.

11:15am – Stream 1 – How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Phil Nottingham, Brand and Video Marketing Strategist, Phil Nottingham Ltd.

As funnel-based marketing becomes less effective and harder to measure, “building a brand” is frequently touted as the panacea for all marketer’s woes. But it’s unclear how this can be achieved scalably and with a limited budget. Large enterprises resort to huge creative advertising campaigns that get their names out there by force of spend alone — but this isn’t realistic for the smaller companies and the number of impressions is not the number of people impressed. In this session, Phil explains how modern brands are built through advocacy more than awareness alone, offering a deliverable method of brand marketing to radically shake up your content strategy.

11:15am – Stream 2 – The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Alexis Sanders, Senior SEO Account Manager, Merkle

Users are at the core of everything we do in modern SEO. However, finding and understanding audiences can be daunting. Alexis will cover how to find your audience, share tools that are available for all price points, and show ways in which she’s found audience research to be useful as an SEO.

12:10pm – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:55pm – Keynote – Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Marketing Scientist, Moz

Too often, we take a once-and-done approach to keyword research, but Google changes at the pace of information, and that pace speeds up even more during a crisis. How do we do keyword research in fast-paced industries and during world-changing moments? Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for adaptive keyword research and spotting trends as they happen.

1:45pm – Stream 1 – A Novel Approach to Scraping SEO Data

Rob Ousbey, VP Product, Moz

Throughout a decade in SEO consulting, Rob needed to extract data from websites on many an occasion. Often this was at scale from sites that didn’t have an API or export feature, or on sites that required some kind of authentication. While this was primarily a way to collect & combine data from different SEO tools, the use-cases were endless.

He found a technique that helped immensely, particularly when traditional tools couldn’t do the job — but hadn’t seen anyone using the same approach. In this very tactical session, Rob will walk through the steps he’s used to extract data from all sorts of sites, from small fry to the giants, and give you the tools and knowledge to do the same.

1:45pm – Stream 2 – Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

Francine Rodriguez, Manager of Customer Success, WordStream

Let the robot uprising begin! We’ve all heard horror stories about the dangers of automating your tasks, but now is not the time to deny yourself extra help. Robots never sleep. They don’t get tired or overwhelmed by their to-do lists, and they’re ready to work round-the-clock to accomplish whatever task we set before them. In this talk, you’ll explore all the areas were automation is kicking butt in PPC — and how you can harness the power of robots to make more time for other efforts.

2:35pm – Keynote – Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

Ross Simmonds, CEO, Foundation

What does it take to develop a content engine that drives results? In this presentation, Ross will share data around the power of having a content engine, tools & strategies for content ideation, tools and tactics for content creation, and frameworks that brands can use to ensure that their content is distributed effectively after hitting publish. This presentation will help you not only uncover content-market fit, but also capitalize on it.

3:30pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

4:30pm — Day One is in the books!

Wednesday, July 15th

8:30am – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

9:00am – Welcome to Day Two!

Cyrus Shepard, emcee

9:10am – Keynote – Accessible Machine Learning Workflows for SEOs

Britney Muller, Senior SEO Scientist, Moz

“Machine learning” and “automation” aren’t words SEOs need to fear. Machine learning enthusiast and ambassador of technical SEO Britney Muller shares a series of workflows intended for any SEO to access and use in their everyday work — no intimidation required.

9:55am – Stream 1 – How to Be Ahead of the (CTR) Curve

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte

Let’s face it: Carrying out SEO magic is all in vain when you’re forgetting about how your brand and products are being surfaced in the SERPs. By not properly analyzing or enhancing our organic CTR, we’re greatly limiting our potential. Izzi will help you create the perfect SERP engagement strategy by covering practical ways to uplift your significant CTR, such as remedying your critical keyword rankings that could soon be lost, leveraging brand-empowering entity features (and assessing the risks of doing so), more intelligent testing of rich & featured snippet optimizations, and a whole lot more. CTR-you-ready?? You better be!

9:55am – Stream 2 – How to Go Beyond Marketing for Clients: The Value of a Thriving Brand Ecosystem

Flavilla Fongang, Brand Strategist, 3 Colours Rule

Too many marketers serve their clients the bare minimum of what’s expected from an agency. To stand out among the crowd, cultivate real loyalty, and maximize the lifetime value of your clients, you have to go beyond mere marketing — developing a thriving brand ecosystem that aligns with the brand’s ultimate goals. Flavilla Fongang shares her tried-and-true framework for optimizing the customer journey, improving acquisition and retention, and going beyond what’s expected to serve your clients well.

10:50am – Stream 1 – How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss

Brian Dean, Founder, Backlinko

Creating content is easy. But getting people to see your content? That’s a different story. Brian Dean shares over a dozen practical strategies that you can use to spread the word about your latest blog post, podcast episode, or YouTube video.

10:50am – Stream 2 – Google My Business: Battling Bad Info & Safeguarding Your Search Strategy

Joy Hawkins, Owner, Sterling Sky Inc.

What’s the harm in a little misinformation here and there? In the realm of local SEO, Joy Hawkins is here to outline exactly that. When it comes to local search and Google My Business, bad info can be make or break for your campaigns. Follow real data from a recent case study that illustrates why strategic decisions should be based on accurate information — and what can happen when that info is bad, wrong, or just plain incomplete.

11:45am – Birds of a Feather discussion groups

Connect and chat with like-minded marketers on a wide range of digital marketing topics!

12:10pm – Keynote – Runtime: The 3-Ring Circus of Technical SEO

Michael King, Managing Director, iPullRank

Mike redefined technical SEO and its importance in our industry back in 2016. In 2018, he taught us everything we didn’t know about SEO. This year, he’s back to share the hottest technical tactics to up-level your efforts, plus the case studies and data that should be guiding your decisions.

1:25pm – Stream 1 – Everyday Automation for Marketers

David Sottimano, Independent Marketing Consultant, Opensource.org

As a general rule, we shouldn’t be doing things that a computer can do better. However, a lot of automation is achieved through programming expertise — and that expertise isn’t usually a marketer’s forte. In this session, you’ll learn how to gather data, use machine learning, and automate everyday tasks for marketers using low-code or no-code solutions.

1:25pm – Stream 2 – Red Flags: Use a Discovery Process to Go from Red Flags to Green Lights

Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner, Kick Point

Ever get a few months into working with a new client and you’re thinking “if only we’d known…”? Or how about when you start that new job, except you can’t seem to make any forward progress because you’re always mopping up prior mistakes? Running a discovery process at the start of a project — or even as its own project — will help you turn those red flags into green lights.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – Competitive Advantage in a Commoditized Industry

Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director, Discoverability, VMLY&R

SEO isn’t dead — it’s commoditized. In a world where search companies are a dime a dozen and brands tout bland “unique selling propositions” that aren’t unique at all, how can you avoid drowning in the sea of sameness? What are you doing that’s any different from every other SEO firm? In this talk, you’ll learn how to find, activate, and articulate your competitive advantage. Learn how to identify unique strengths and innovative offerings that equate to competitive advantage through these real, working examples so you can bring them to life in search. You’ll leave with actionable tips and homework to help your search business stand out — and that you can use with clients to help them find their competitive edge, too.

2:20pm – Stream 1 – I Wanna Be Rich: Making Your Consultancy Profitable

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist, Moz

How will your company weather the next update? How will you avoid layoffs and salary cuts? Being a master of SEO doesn’t guarantee that your consultancy will succeed. After a decade and a half of experience, Russ Jones will outline the techniques that will keep your clients happy and your bottom line healthy.

3:10pm – Keynote – The CMO Role Has Been Disrupted: Are You Ready for Your New Boss?

Wil Reynolds, Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive

CMOs have the shortest tenure in the c-suite, and the CMO role has been eliminated at some of the largest brands. CEOs are now asking tougher and tougher questions about the value of marketing — and oftentimes marketers are not prepared.

Connecting your data and building your data flywheel is one way to support the swift answers CEOs expect from their CMOs. We need to get stronger at bridging our day-to-day work to the value it drives. And more than ever, “brand lift” isn’t enough to satisfy CEOs.

This presentation will start at the top. How businesses are run, how CEOs talk, and how we as search marketers can use the data we have access to everyday in new ways to answer the questions of the c-suite and raise our visibility and value in organizations.

4:15pm – Networking

Open time for attendees to connect with other attendees and MozCon partners.

5:15pm – That’s a wrap for MozCon Virtual 2020!

See you there?

Chatting with speakers via Q&A, connecting with peers and potential partners over Birds of a Feather groups, absorbing all the knowledge for another fruitful year of marketing… we can’t wait to share it with you! 

Yep, I’m going to MozCon Virtual!

Source link