The incredible ladies of Croud’s US SEO team recently attended WTSFest 2024 (Women in Tech SEO) in Philadelphia, which featured speakers touching on the ever-changing dynamics of SEO. The conference was founded by the exuberant and spirited Areej AbuAli, with the goal of establishing “a global community of women in Technical SEO and beyond, helping thousands of women in SEO in marketing.” The values of kindness and respect were embedded in the conference, and the SEO community warmly welcomed our eager team to “the city of love.”
WTS explored everything from AI integration and customer-centric content to cross-channel collaboration and much more. While each session provided attendees with a wide range of strategies and insights for their SEO and digital marketing efforts, here are some highlights and key learnings that our team took away from the event.
Using E-E-A-T to drive SEO best practices
Manager of Organic Growth at Hims & Hers, Bianca Anderson, took to the stage to share key insights on the importance of content clustering, drawing on her experiences of implementing pivotal SEO strategies both at Hims & Hers and in her previous role at Hubspot. Per her recommendations, E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) is an effective framework to follow in order to improve web traffic, which was evident when she was solving for a drop in organic traffic after Google’s March 2023 core update. In order to resolve this issue, Anderson and her team audited content clusters and employed first-party research. This strengthened E-E-A-T and ensured their blogs were receiving more attention.
Integrating AI responsibly
The promise and limitations of generative AI were also major topics of discussion at the conference. Kavi Kardos, Director of Organic Growth at KlientBoost, unpacked the industry’s focus on AI in her session, "In/credible: AI & Our Appetite for Truth," which called for human oversight to mitigate AI's potential biases and errors. She suggested a balanced approach to leveraging AI in content creation. While AI can enhance efficiency and creativity, Kardos believes in addressing its limitations and pushing against the ethical concerns of AI.
Customer-centric and inclusive content
The controversial topic “pineapple on pizza” is how LinkedIn’s Principal Consultant of Content Solutions, Purna Virji humorously opened her discussion on the importance of inclusivity in content, and the important role that differences in preferences play.
Promoting inclusivity and customer-centricity is key to capturing diverse audiences, and Purna provided an energizing take on its importance. She took to the stage to provide insights that transcend barriers, addressing the use of hard-to-read fonts, nonjudgmental language, and excluding stereotypes. Broadening your audience fosters a more inclusive digital environment.
Cross-channel collaboration
Cross-channel collaboration between SEO and PPC teams on a cohesive digital strategy opens up great opportunities to unlock growth. In her session, Optmyzr’s Brand Evangelist, Navah Hopkins offered a roadmap to successful cross-channel collaboration, focusing on how more shared insights and learnings between these teams could lead to more effective marketing campaigns. Ultimately, this integrated approach would optimize both organic and paid efforts, ensuring that marketing efforts are not siloed, but instead work in tandem to achieve common goals.
Data utilization and analytics
Leveraging data analytics tools like BigQuery and Looker was a recurring theme in the conference. Chief Digital Officer at Gray Dot Company Sam Torres shed light on the importance of analyzing unsampled data for better decision-making in her session on "Unlocking Limitless Data in BigQuery.” These useful tools allow marketers to measure the impact of their SEO strategies more accurately. If we based our SEO strategies on accurate data, we could optimize performance in a more effective way.
Conclusion
The WTS Conference 2024 addressed the current stage of the digital marketing landscape while deep-diving into notable, trending SEO topics. Joining a growing community of woman leaders in the SEO space was an incredible experience for our team. As our industry continues to evolve, we look forward to using these insights to embrace contemporary SEO practices, leverage AI tools responsibly, and apply data analytics intelligently.
