 Hey everybody. Welcome. We're about to get started. Today is the day. Mazcon 2020. This is a new experience for us. I'm coming to you live from the Mazcon offices. I'm here by myself. But we're so glad you're here. We're so glad that you chose to join us today. We've been doing Mazcon a long time. It is the granddaddy of SEO conferences. The Super Bowl, the World Cup all rolled into one. We have speakers, some of the best speakers in the world lined up for you over the next two days, networking, all sorts of great events. Our goal since Mazcon is always has been, you know, one of the best SEO conferences out there. Our goal was to make Mazcon 2020 virtual, the best virtual conference of the year hands down. So we've got a lot in store. It's a jam packed day. You don't want to miss anything. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome our opening keynote, our CEO, the fearless leader of Maz, Sarah Bird. We're going to kick it over to Sarah. We'll see you in a bit. Welcome to the very first Mazcon virtual. It is my great honor to host you in this new format and new events. And I want to thank you for coming along the ride with us and trying something completely different. I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone. I appreciate you spending your time here with us. At the time of filming, we have people from over 26 countries. So this truly is a very global audience. I want to give a special shout out to those of you that are waking up super early or staying up super late to join us for this live event. I also want to assure you that this is going to be time really well spent. My hope, my aspiration is that you are going to leave Mazcon virtual more engaged and more inspired in your work. And I really believe that it's going to happen. Our speakers have been working so hard to create something really amazing for you. I also want to say that you have made a great choice to invest in yourself and your skills, your career. And that will also help your teammates around you. It's going to help the organization you work for. It's going to further that organization's mission and help your organization's stakeholders. It's really important to take time out to pause and reflect. I often notice that at any given day, I feel up to my elbows and alligators with work to do. And if I don't intentionally set time aside to slow down, to reexamine the context I am working within, and brush up my skills and get a change of perspective, I can just say stuck for a long time. So I'm so glad that you have chosen to do this with us. Let's continue. We've made it this far. We are still going SEO in 2020. I want to spend some time talking about the five sort of hot trends for SEO in 2020. And before I do, I want to share with you that one of the things I love about digital marketing is that it does change all the time. I've been doing this for over, well over 10 years now, changes all the time. And yet it also stays very much the same. So as I go through these five topics, we'll talk about how things are different and how things have stayed the same. The first hot topic in SEO 2020 is welcoming our robot overlords. We are seeing the impact of artificial intelligence and the opportunity in automation. Artificial intelligence has been impacting SEO for some years. We've had Rank Brain around for a very long time. And last October, Google announced BERT. What is BERT? BERT is Google's neural network-based technique for natural language processing. Google says that the BERT algorithm is its biggest leap forward in five years. And one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of search. So it's a big deal. And I'm sure you're going to hear a lot about it in the next two days. It affects one in 10 searches already. And Google uses BERT to get a better understanding of the better context around the individual words within a search. Now it's very important to understand that we cannot actually optimize for BERT just like we couldn't for Rank Brain. And what it really means is that marketers need to spend more time creating high-quality, relevant content that meets a searcher's intent than ever before. This is part of the overall trend that we hear us talk about in SEO, away from keywords to topics and to entities. And that brings me to my second hot topic, which I know we're going to hear a lot about in the days ahead here. Let's talk about entities. Google says that entities are things or concepts that are singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable. They don't have to be something physical. They can be an idea. They can be a concept. But it does have to be singular and unique, distinguishable, and well-defined. So Moz, for example, is an entity, but the color blue is not. So some questions to ask yourself. Does Google understand the entities on your site? Do you have control over an entity that maybe you could claim as a knowledge panel? Knowledge panel. That brings me to my third hot topic in SEO 2020. What the heck is a SERP anyway? SERP, search engine result page. In the olden days, it was 10 blue links. It was all pretty clear. And nowadays, we have knowledge panels, feature snippets, rich results, rich snippets, GMB, carousels, updated image search, voice search, interactive search, and Google actions now. In fact, a really fun game idea for your MozCon virtual experience would be to take a shot every time one of the MozCon virtual speakers says schema markup. Kidding, don't actually do that because you'll die unless, of course, you're taking shots of kale juice in which case you'll be very healthy and you should go for it. In addition to all these different kinds of SERP formats, sort of explosion of creativity and different ways to meet user intent, everything has gone very local, which brings me to my number four hot topic, localization of everything. Hyper local search is here. It's growing. Where a searcher is located is one of the primary ranking factors. It's going to determine what shows up. That means there's more opportunities to rank, but for marketers, it also means it's more complex to know how you're doing, how your search campaign is succeeding. I think we have also become all of us more painfully aware of how important it is that search is hyper local. Given that in this new world impacted by COVID, the experience we're having, is this shop open, is this closed, what news is relevant, is very hyper local. Man, the Google My Business team, I hope that they get a vacation sometime on the other side of this because they have been shipping new features like nobody's business. Get it? Nobody's business. It's a good joke. It's a good joke. Okay. Number five. The fifth thing I wanted to take a moment to talk about in SEO trends for 2020 is these new and ramping up search experiences. Google Discover is picking up a lot of steam here in June. Google just announced Keen, which seems to be sort of a Pinterest-like proactive search curation experience. And I personally believe that we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg on visual search. I have been saying that for a couple years, but I still think it's true. So maybe in MozCon 2021, when we're all back together again, we'll be talking more about these new and emerging search experiences. Oh, and all of these hot topics, none of them really matter if you don't have your technical SEO dialed in as a foundation. So we are going to spend some time in the next two days talking about your technical SEO because you've got to get that right. If you're feeling a little overwhelmed right now, that's normal, right? I just gave a whole list of things and changes and what's going on. And don't worry about it. Your MozCon virtual speakers are here to help. And while it is very good to keep abreast, important to keep abreast of what's happening in your industry generally, at the end of the day, of course, each of you, it needs to be looking at what is relevant for your particular industry, for your particular brand. And to go forward. And it's not as if anything else is going on to distract you from your career and improving your skills. Am I right? Plenty of time to focus on this. Okay, I know that is not the case. We are in a moment of historic, historic disruption. I wonder actually what major disruptions are happening wherever you live. Here in Seattle at the time of this recording, which again is late June, Lord knows what is going to happen between now and when MozCon starts. We are experiencing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and also a national reckoning of centuries-long racial injustice. And these events are drastically altering our lives and our consciousness. Our awareness has really been heightened as to how interconnected our lives are, how health, race, schools, global supply chains, politics, and our justice system are all connected. We rise and we fall together. So I don't know what is happening for each of you in your context, but I'm pretty sure COVID is a gigantic part of it. Global catastrophes like COVID, they change the world. And the legacy of this pandemic is going to last years and perhaps decades. It is going to change the way we move, we build, we learn, we connect. And I personally hope that this moment will change how we define who is considered essential and how we take care of the most vulnerable in our society. There is simply no way for our lives to resume as if none of this ever happened. And that's actually okay. I have been really inspired by the writing of Professor Ayesha Amend at the University of Toronto and her work, she has studied crises and people who have been through war and she has profound wisdom to offer all of us and surviving and ultimately, hopefully even thriving through crises. And she tells us that now more than ever, we really need to abandon the performative, embrace the authentic and that our essential mind shifts are going to require humility and perseverance. I think that's a great attitude to come into MozCon with humility and perseverance. She reminds us that change starts with each of us individually and that we're really experiencing and we're witnessing the super messy human transformations all around us. These transformations are honest, raw, ugly, hopeful, frustrating, beautiful and in some moments even divine. I love how she invites us to loosen some things up, some things that really do need to come undone. And with this historic disruption, I really hope that we can tear down so many of our false assumptions and find the courage to accept bold new ideas. And I wanted to talk about this calling, this notion of being called because I think each of us is being called to meet the demands of our new context. And I invite you to let this moment really impact you for whatever this is for you, both in your professional level, your personal level, our global community. There are a lot of brutal facts. Let them sink in. Let new awareness come to you. Let it change how you think, how you see the world because as Professor Amand reminds us, the world is our work. I want to say that again, the world is our work. This has always been true, but I think we feel it more in times of crisis because we're already disrupted and out of our routines and we're seeing the sort of cracks and the fissures that have already been there experiencing new stresses. So in this time of crisis when we are working on the world, I want you to never doubt that we are going to get to the other side of this. We're going to prevail and that each of these experiences we're going through are going to become the defining events of our lives that our character is being forged by these moments. And someday, no matter how hard and terrible and challenging this time period is, we were going to look back and we're not going to trade this time because it is going to be the threshold that brought us to a new, better, more holistic understanding of who we are and I believe a more just and healthy world. So I said at the top of my welcoming to you that I want you to leave MozCon virtual, feeling more engaged, feeling more inspired. I want you to learn new skills. I want you to make unusual friends or maybe even friends but in unusual ways. I don't know. You know, there are going to be projects that come out of this that you can't imagine right now. You are going to inspire people you haven't even met yet and we're going to help each other. Your speakers have put so much genius, energy, vulnerability and love into their talks. They're here to help you confront brutal facts about what is changing in our industry and challenges and I encourage you to really sit with that. They're also here to remind you and inspire you that you are going to prevail. We're all going to make it. And I think these moments are really when our professional community is at its best and the very best of you is being called forth in this moment in history. On the other side of all of these shifts, your wonderful, creative, brilliant, genius, resilient brain is waiting for you. Things are going to feel more natural. The work is going to make more sense. You're going to be more comfortable with changing or undoing things that are already in motion. New ideas are going to emerge that has not yet occurred to you while you have been in some state of denial or in recluse or in shelter. Please continue to embrace these mental shifts. Have faith in the process. We're here to support each other and I want you guys to support your families, your teams, your communities. This is a great remaking of everything and we have the courage to do that. No matter what happens next, together I know we're going to prevail. We're going to create a better world and we can do that by leaning into these conversations. So that is what I got for you on MozCon. I welcome you. I'm excited to turn you over to your speakers. But before I do that, I have to change hats out of my CEO self and into some housekeeping. My housekeeping, which is so important because while I cannot tell you what the future is going to be like exactly, I can tell you what the next two days are going to be like. Let's start with this very, very important concept, Beard My Heart. A MozCon is for everyone. So we've all heard stories of harassment and bullying and unpleasant things that happen at professional conferences. I've experienced some of them myself. It's the pits. That is not going to happen here. That doesn't happen on our watch. So there's no place for inappropriate behavior or bullying at MozCon. We have a code of conduct. We will not hesitate to ban people. We don't follow it with us. And if you feel unsafe or you see something where someone else looks unsafe, please do private message the event staff or any mozzer so we can handle it. Because as the Dalai Lama said, be kind whenever possible and it is always possible. Partners, we cannot have a conference without partners. So all of the virtual high fives to our amazing partners, we have 97th floor, base search marketing, call rail, crowd content and pages SEO magazine. Thank you. Thank you sponsors for making this all work. Another thing to call out. MozCon virtual is just for you. Your credentials cannot be shared, which by now you are probably realizing if you're wondering why you keep getting kicked out, it's because we can only be signed in from one device at a time on your credentials. So sorry. So sorry. Sarah, what about the Q&A? Yes, we have Q&A. We have Q&A during the sessions. Go to the session pages. The speakers are there to engage you in chat. It's going to be a lot of fun. Let's talk about networking. If you were an introvert, you're so delighted with this new way of doing conferences. And if you're an extrovert or someone who just they live for the networking piece, we're trying something different. There is networking. You need to jump over to the MozCon lounge where you can engage in group discussions, have important announcements and generally get to know your fellow attendees. So that's the MozCon lounge area. Recordings for all. You get a recording, you get a recording and you get a recording. It's my Oprah moment. I've always wanted one. You were going to get these recordings to take home with you to rewatch all your favorites, or if you're like me and you're sort of like parenting while you're also trying to do your job, you can chunk this up over time and watch sessions before your kids are up and after they've gone to bed because that's how that works. Also, feedback is a gift. And we're going to ask you for feedback at the end of every speaker's session. We share that feedback with them. They love it. They rely on it. We love the feedback. We do use it. We change things every year. We're always experimenting. Please, please, pretty please give us your feedback. Feedback, the good, the bad, the ugly. Social. Use MozCon, hashtag MozCon. You don't need to put a virtual at the end of it. That's just a waste of characters and nobody's got time for that. So hashtag MozCon. Use it. You can't abuse it. Well, you probably could, but I don't think you will. Present your slides and resources. We got two places. You can get those. You can download them from the session page, the particular session page, or you can go to the Moz.com website to our posted agenda and you will find links to the materials there. So get it. Use it. Enjoy it. If you are enjoying the music, we have curated a special playlist for you, and it is available on Spotify. So go there. Take a look for all your own MozCon jams. Last and the opposite of least, they're extraordinary MCs. Two of my favorite people, Brittany Mueller, Cyrus Shepard, longtime friends, a great inspiration to me, a great support for all of you. They are going to be guiding you through MozCon and introducing each individual speaker. We're so lucky to have them. Thank you. Thank you to our amazing MCs. And that is it. We are ready to do this. We're ready to rock and roll the very first MozCon virtual. I'm Sarah Bird. It's been my pleasure to welcome you. I hope you have an inspiring and engaging two days. Thank you.