CMSEO Day 2 Speakers (Source:Grant Simmons)
After a long but productive and enjoyable Day 1 of CMSEO and an early night, the team was raring to go for Day 2.
The success of Jonathan’s presentation and all the positive feedback from visitors to the SEOButler stand—in search of swag and conversation—had us all in a very upbeat mood.
First up was Gael Breton, founder of AuthorityHacker and one of the foremost authorities on building, well… authority sites.
Gael spoke of taking the Kaizen approach to site-building.
Kaizen is a concept first pioneered by Toyota.
It helped revolutionize Japan’s manufacturing industry and turn it into an economic powerhouse in the wake of World War 2.
The element of Kaizen that Gael focused on was the idea that small, incremental changes can have an enormous impact on outcomes.
Gael decided to apply this approach to his sites.
Here are some of the results:
Gael implemented more small changes that made a big difference, and this inspired him to share tactics that “most people on most sites” can employ to improve them.
To fit in with the Kaizen approach, Gael set the following rules for his strategies:
Here’s a selection:
Search Volume (Mostly) Doesn’t Matter
The majority of searches on Google now result in zero clicks.
Thanks to featured snippets and other search widgets, queries that can be answered in under 300 characters have experienced a precipitous drop in traffic.
As a result, there are far better metrics to look at then search volume when you’re doing your keyword research.
If you use Ahrefs, focus on Clicks, Clicks Per Search (CPS), and Traffic as useful metrics rather than Search Volume.
Focus on complex topics (i.e., ones that can’t be covered in a featured snippet) to ensure maximum clicks
Build Hubs, Not Pages
This is a concept best illustrated with graphs. Perrin Carrell does a fantastic job of that here.
Don’t Be Too Smart with Content
As a content creator who loves writing and editing long, well-researched posts, this one kills me, but…
The Authority Hacker team spent over three weeks full-time on a comprehensive “How To Make Money Blogging in 2019” post.
Guess what?
It tanked.
So the team went back to the drawing board.
Gael told the writer to “just read what was ranking and rewrite it.”
The spun post performed significantly better.
Here’s Gael’s advice on how to achieve similar results.
Optimize Your Outreach
Gael and his team sent out 600,000 (!) outreach emails and then drilled down on what works.
One of the best things about CMSEO is that it isn’t all SEO all the time.
There’s certainly more than enough SEO insights and hacks to make CMSEO worth more than the price of admission.
Like Jonathan’s Sleeping Giant talk the previous day, Travis Jamison focused more on the big picture of growing a successful digital marketing business rather than the SEO nitty-gritty.
Travis is a serial entrepreneur turned VC (though he’s not fond of the term.)
He successfully bootstrapped over a dozen small businesses—several of them leading to seven-figure exits.
In the wake of that success, Travis shifted his focus to investing.
He founded SmashVC to, in his own words, “be the type of partner, investor and mentor that I wished had existed for me earlier in my career.”
Travis shared some of what he’s learned along the journey from founder to angel investor by advising attendees on how to apply investment principles to their SEO projects.
Travis shared many more nuggets, including the surprising fact that AOL still makes $144M per year from dial-up internet subscriptions.
Hungry for more?
Travis was kind enough to share his deck here.
They may be notoriously stingy with their conference swag, but Ahrefs remains the industry standard for many SEOs when it comes to backlink analysis, keyword research, and much more.
CMO Tim Soulo took to the stage to explore some lesser-known applications for ahrefs that had every SEO in the room scribbling notes.
I’ve only given you the bullet points for Tim’s talk because he too has been kind enough to share his deck on LinkedIn.
He gives step-by-step instructions and examples for each of the points above.
Tim even super-sized the deck from nine to 11 unique things ahrefs can do for you!
For many SEOs, Google is the be-all, end-all.
But there’s another Alphabet property where there’s money to be made applying principles similar (but different) to Google-focused SEO.
Nick Nimmin is both a popular YouTube content creator and an authority on how to produce and rank YouTube videos.
He’s convinced that many SEOs are leaving money on the table by not focusing on Youtube as a revenue stream.
And he shared his thoughts on how to change that.
Not surprisingly, the best way to dig deeper into how to rank on YouTube is by watching a video on YouTube.
Do Nick a solid and boost his watch time.
Give his YouTube for Beginners playlist a good, long look.
Grant Simmons is the VP of Search Marketing at real estate powerhouse Homes.com.
In his 25+ years in SEO, he’s worked for some of the biggest companies out there, like UPS, Paramount, and Puma.
Apparently, he’s also a big fan of The Rock.
I lost count of the number of The Rock references (and photos) Grant got through during his presentation.
But each one of them illustrated a valuable point about building Rock-solid SEO.
**This very un-Rock and roll, but I missed the last 20 minutes of Grant’s presentation.
I hope to update his takeaways ASAP.
CMSEO 2019 wrapped up with a spirited AMA featuring Matt Diggity, Stacey MacNaught, Nick Nimmin, Kyle Roof, and Barry Adams.
And just like that, CMSEO 2019 was officially over.
But the afterparty was just about to begin.
* Apologies to Stacey MacNaught and Viktor Karpenko. I was on-duty in the SEOButler booth during their presentations.
Tune in tomorrow for our final day of CMSEO 2019 coverage.
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