Last week was my first time attending the Raleigh SEO Meetup. While I previously didn’t have the chance to check them out before, the experience demonstrated the true value of this group. We also were able to connect with them in a fairly awesome manner too …
We are all big fans and believers of Moz and how their product reports actionable data to grow digital marketing strategies. Their CEO, Rand Fishkin, was speaking at a local conference. We were hoping to connect with him and share perspectives on some of the latest digital trends. We tweeted at him, invited him out for drinks, and discovered that he was going to speak at this month’s SEO Meetup.
With that news, the entire Reunion founding team spent last Friday night indulging our passion—talk digital marketing and continue to learn, as well as strategize to apply, the latest SEO strategies. The Raleigh SEO Meetup claims to be the most successful SEO meetup in the United States.
They did not disappoint.
Rand spoke for an hour about Moz’s 2015 study outlining the most current search engine ranking factors. A social hour followed his presentation, and we were excited to get a deeper dive into some of his thoughts on the current state of the industry.
Here are some of my key takeaways from the presentation:
- Great content alone does not rank. Without a strong link-building strategy, even the best content will not be seen in search engines and will not have the opportunity to influence.
- In order to be digitally dominant, you cannot just focus on certain elements. All of the different strategies work together: internal and external links, on-site keywords in meta and body copy, local citations, structured data, site engagement. All of these things, collectively, are part of Google’s extremely sophisticated algorithm, and ignoring certain parts will not create success.
- Every search is different because every person is different. There are more and more opportunities across multiple digital verticals to create influential touchpoints. Use them. Use social. Use paid search. Build content. Do SEO the right way.
- It’s important to always remember that just because correlations in data exist, it isn’t always a cause-effect relationship.
- Rand might have the coolest mustache in all of digital marketing.
It was a really great event, and it is one that I’ll be excited to attend in the future. The one thing I may have enjoyed more than all of the great learning and strategy conversation was the applause that Reunion Marketing got during the meetup. It was louder than Rand’s!
… Okay, okay. We may have been the drink sponsors, but that is besides the point. It was a great event, and we always love the opportunity to to learn and connect with other industry leaders in our own backyard! Keep up the great work, Raleigh SEO Meetup!