When it comes to pulling crowd across the globe to speak, interact and engage on SEO, few conferences have created the kind of goodwill in such a short time as YoastCon has. With just 3 editions to fall back on, the event has already gained the confidence of the SEO fraternity across the world in terms of value and return on investment. Niche conferences are of immense value to entrepreneurs like us, as they constitute one of the best ways to stay updated on the latest trends in one’s domain and engage with the movers and shakers of the industry – not to mention the networking value of interacting with our peer marketers and fellow entrepreneurs as well.
Every year thousands of entrepreneurs and digital marketing professionals who cannot make it to the event follow its course online. While this post comes a little late, it’s better late than never! – Here’s a brief account of my experience at the YoastCon 2019 and the key takeaways I have brought home with me.
Nijmegen, The Netherlands, where the conference was scheduled to be held, welcomed me with a bitter chill. Coming from a tropical country, the sudden drop in the mercury took a little time to get used to, but the possibility of an amazing experience over the next 2 days kept me warm inside. Having enjoyed the Dutch hospitality and having refreshed myself, I headed to the event venue – De Vereeniging.
On the way, the city was a delight to watch. I reached the location well in advance and could immediately feel the electrifying ambience. The place was abuzz with professionals and trailblazers like Rand Fishkin, Alberto Medina, Jono Alderson and Els Aerts. The giant owl (Yoastie) added a dash of humour to the thrilling atmosphere. The entire event was perfectly organized – down to the last minute. Within no time I was settled in and the roller-coaster ride had begun.
Joost de Valk, CEO and online marketer and founder of Yoast, opened the conference with his spectacular keynote address. While he primarily focused on sharing several gems of insights on the technical aspect of SEO like Schema Markup and the latest updates to the Yoast Plugin, in many ways, he set the tone and pace for the interactions and discussions to follow. Over the next two days, a host of diverse topics around SEO were discussed from semantic search & link building to site migrations and SEO copywriting to artificial intelligence in search.
It would be redundant to elaborate here each section in detail, but a few sessions that struck a chord with me and enhanced my understanding of SEO exponentially deserve a special mention here.
Rand Fishkin, the founder of SparkToro, for example, really nailed it about the critical importance of brand-building through powerful content and smart SEO. It gave me a good dose of food-for-thought regarding out-of-the-box brand-building for not just our brand, but also the brands of our partners and clients. Consistency in content and accuracy in SEO performance are deeply interlinked – his session ingrained this point in me while also offering tips on how this feat can be achieved.
Jason Barnard, the leading search marketing consultant, speaker and author, made important observations on perceiving SEO through the lens of the Knowledge Graph. Key highlights from his speech were: “Make sure other sites confirm facts about you if you want to get a knowledge graph in Google and Bing. The more sites point out facts about you, the bigger the chance! And don’t forget to claim the knowledge graph!”
Links are the mainstay of Google’s ranking factor – naturally, this was one session I was eagerly looking forward to. WhiteHat SEO expert Kris Jones shared advanced link building techniques to build quality links in a scalable manner and offered several tips, tools and strategy to make those techniques work.
Fili Wiese, a renowned technical SEO expert, ex-Google engineer and a senior technical lead in the Google Search Quality team, shared excellent speed optimization tips for SEO to accelerate site traffic growth. Rudger de Groot, the founder of Mintminds Digital Optimizers, shared multiple real-life accounts of his personal experiences with data-driven experimentation. The revelation that nearly half of the companies out there have no real policy for stopping an A/B test came as a shock, and simultaneously, a wake-up call!
There were also snippets of wisdom to be gained from the speeches and discussions that were not directly related to SEO. Jono Alderson (digital strategist, marketing technologist and full-stack developer at Yoast) shared his three rules – (Be healthy, Be Creative, and Be Popular) that struck a nerve with me – we have adopted it as our mantra for 2019!
I had been following the YoastCon since 2015 when it was first launched. Like most entrepreneurs in digital marketing and web technology space, I too had long aspired to be a part of the thrilling 2-day event and get my fair share of learning, excitement, insights, and unparalleled networking opportunity – which was exceptional due to the perfect scale of the event (somewhere between too large and too small). So when I finally made it to the most recent edition in February this year, it was every bit I wanted it to be – and more!