The 2024 Sydney SEO Conference was hosted by Prosperity Media at Sydney’s Crown Casino. It was a fantastic day and I described the conference as “an absolute belter” on my LinkedIn post which has even been quoted by Ahrefs!
I strongly believe that attending industry events such as this conference, as well as regular SEO Meetups can help keep my overall knowledge up to date with the latest and greatest digital marketing strategies, tactics, tips & tricks.
The SEO industry is dynamic – it’s ever-changing – and you need to keep up otherwise you get left behind with outdated tactics that simply don’t work as effectively as they once did.
Sydney SEO Conference – My First Ever Conference
I wanted to share my brief thoughts on hashtag#SydneySEOCon as some of the brightest SEO minds jumped on stage and shared knowledge bombs, fascinating insights & practical takeaways.
Overall, I learnt many things from every single presenter but these were my Top 4 (I loved you all though!):
Jes Scholz – “From Search to Surfaces: Your Guide to Google’s Metamorphosis”
It was fascinating to hear about multimodal language models and how important it is in the future to build more diverse SEO strategies. Another thing was that we should be looking at serving content for a more conversational-based search world. She touched on the importance of internal linking to strengthen both UX & topical authority.
Favourite quote: “Google is looking for something deeper.”.
Nik Ranger – “Unlocking the Hidden Power of Internal Links With Machine Learning”
My word, I loved every minute of it – particularly the well-timed Simpson’s meme’s at regular intervals. Internal linking is such an underused tactic and the issue I’ve always had is automating the process leads to very poor anchor text suggestions and most of these suggestions aren’t contextually relevant.
Right now (or as I thought) internal link optimisation is either following that flawed internal linking process or you spend hours and hours optimising internal links one by one, page by page which is nearly impossible for an enterprise SEO client or website!
Nik and her team at Dejan SEO have managed to combine the speed of automation but also the quality of manual internal linking by using machine learning & python – super insightful!
Favourite quote: “..but why would you internally link to a Paid [Search] landing page..?”
Tim Soulo: “Keep Your Enemies Close: How to do Competitive Intelligence with Ahrefs”
An absolute legend in SEO. I haven’t used Ahrefs for a while now but seeing some really cool (and new) tools could be a game-changer for both enterprise and local SEO. Also, thanks for the “White Haired SEO” kids book. My daughter is loving it!
In the past, I’ve often used SEMRush as a keyword ranking & keyword insights tool and then Ahrefs as a link building or authority-based comparison tool.
I appreciated how honest Tim was when describing the Domain Rating (DR) of any given website. “It’s not accurate” he said. The crowd at the conference gasped but he quickly explained that it’s an estimation so don’t take the value at face value, use it as a comparative tool. The key here is that Domain Rating (or website authority value) is “directionally accurate”. It’s very useful for benchmarking & competitor analysis as well as developing well-rounded SEO strategies. I’ll be investing in this tool in the future for sure!
Favourite quote: “Our tool isn’t perfectly accurate but the comparative insights you gain are.”
Greg Gifford – “How to be a Local SEO Superhero”
Another absolute legend in the SEO community. For those of you who haven’t seen Greg at a conference – I would strongly recommend you see him in the flesh! One thing that really resonated with me is when he said “don’t focus on keywords, focus on people & their experience” (I’m paraphrasing here).
This theme was mentioned a number of times throughout the day and I could really relate. Look at the intent of the cluster. Satisfy what that person is searching for so they don’t have to look anywhere else. Satisfy that intent, cluster keywords not only by theme but by intent, then create content matching it – simple. Intent. Intent. Intent.
Favourite quote: “F*ck links” (to add context, he was talking specifically about Google Business Profiles – I don’t want that used against him because it gave me a great laugh!)
Key Takeaways From The SEO Conference
Overall, I really enjoyed my first ever SEO conference. It was easy to follow, the sessions were well-timed and the panel was intriguing. It’s so important for SEO
Also, a shout out to both James Norquay & the Prosperity Media team for putting together such an impressive conference – well done!
See you at the Sydney SEO Conference in ‘25 y’all!
Reach out to Leadlly Digital Today! (For a FREE DIGITAL AUDIT!)
Ready to dominate Sydney’s local search results? Contact our expert SEO team today for a personalised strategy! We offer local businesses a FREE DIGITAL AUDIT (valued at $1,500) so we can show you that we know our sh*t, basically.
