And I’m not the only one who thinks so:
There are many friendly people in SEO that I am grateful to have met through this conference. Those of us who live down under don’t often get the chance to connect with each other at big events like this (at least not without a crazy trip).
Congratulations to James Norkey and the Prosperity Media team for organizing such a great event. You will definitely see me again next year.
To give you a feel for the event (and hopefully convince you to join me next year), here are my top meals.
Both times I have attended this conference, the Prosperity team has gone out of their way to recruit top five star venues.
In the heart of Sydney, both venues were easy to get to and close to many attractions for interstate or international travelers to enjoy.
You can also expect five star service from the venue staff and the food and drinks provided throughout the day exceeded my expectations. None of that apocryphal conference coffee here.
There are also a number of great sponsors (including Ahrefs, of course) supporting the event. We shared a stack of our SEO kids books for beginners and white haired SEOs with participants:
Not to mention the after party overlooking the harbor. It was a great place for people to let their hair down, enjoy a few drinks on the Prosperity Media tab and engage in deep and interesting conversations. Just what a girl needs to find knowledge graphs with Nik Ranger or Google’s useful content updates with partners.
It was a fun day all around!
Some conferences have a feel to them where you know you’ll mostly be around partners, or entrepreneurs, or general marketers. The Sydney SEO Conference was not like that.
There were about 300 people at the event and I was pleasantly surprised by the diverse range of skills and interests in attendance. I met marketing partners, agency owners, internal teams and department heads from businesses. There were also some non-SEO developers and WordPress experts.
If you’re anything like me, then chatting with other attendees at the breaks or social events after the conference is where you learn some super interesting stuff! It’s honestly my favorite place when I go to conferences.
My best SEO related package came from Georgia Tan, who shared some awesome things she’s been working on with her team around “digital shelf optimization” for clients like Pepsico. It’s about going beyond Google or other search engines to optimize products for specific e-commerce, marketplace or app platforms where people shop.
I also learned some great non-SEO tips about living in Andorra and the digital nomad housing options available. It’s worth checking out if you’re looking for a nomad-friendly place in Europe as your next base!
The speaker line-up provided bombshells of knowledge for every attendee, regardless of SEO role or experience. It wasn’t the case that only one or two speakers were the standout favorites here.
The diversity of the presentation topics was mind-blowing and every attendee I spoke to walked away with new insights and useful tips relevant to their role. That’s how you know a conference has nailed it with its speaker lineup.
If you’re feeling a little FOMO, don’t worry. Here are my favorite foods from each speaker that you can also walk away with.
| Speaker | Theme | Packed food |
|---|---|---|
| Jess Scholz | From Search to Surfaces: Your Guide to Transforming Google | Jes made a strong case for the seismic shift that the search is on the verge of in the Gemini era. Google is moving away from using schema.org and its ~1,400 defined entities to understand content towards Gemini’s ~175 billion parameters. As a result, Google is re-educating people to stop searching with just 2-5 words and instead adopt longer, conversational, content-rich searches. |
| Jonas Grünfeld | Digital PR trends for 2024 for top results |
Jonas shared three practical digital PR strategies.
I especially liked his point about how there are two types of affiliates: content-based or expertise-based (content-free). |
| Nick Ranger | Unlocking the hidden power of internal links with machine learning | Nick’s speech was mind blowing in the best way! He covered exactly how he uses machine learning to programmatically improve internal linking on websites. You can test the model using the LinkBERT demo. |
| Sally Mills | SEO Automation: Taking back our time | Sally shared next-level tips on how she uses AI to automate tasks like web scraping, mapping redirection, and bulk conversion of keywords and intents to local maps. So many golden nuggets to make boring (but essential) processes more efficient. Check out her free automation scripts. |
| James Norkey | Affiliate SEO and Ecommerce Development: What’s Working in 2024 |
James’ talk included rapid-fire advice for 30 minutes straight. Some of my favorites include:
|
| Ana Luna, Benjamin Cleary + Georgia Tan (Panel) | Moving the Needle: Searching for Enterprise-Scale Campaigns | Georgia, Ana and Ben answered questions about SEO at the mid-market or enterprise level. There were some great takeaways for insiders and entrepreneurs looking for ideas on how to implement their strategies or get buy-in from non-SEO executives. |
| Tim Sullo | Keep Your Enemies Close: How to Do Competitive Intelligence with Ahrefs | Tim shared practical use cases for using Ahrefs as a competitive intelligence tool, including 3 metrics, 3 actionable tips, and 3 tools, including my favorite, the portfolio feature. You can use it to compare a section of a competitor’s website to yours, or track all of your competitors as a batch so you get up-to-date competitor stats whenever you need them. |
| Greg Gifford | How to become a local SEO superhero | Greg’s presentation was dynamic and full of local SEO hot tips. I especially liked Greg’s advice about getting links from churches, charities, and other hyper-local, reputable organizations in your area. Local links like this tie into his advice to turn your blog into a local destination and a place locals turn to for content about the area, not just your services. |
| Regan McGregor | Trust or bust: Beating users and bots in SEO | Regan took a deep dive into all things EEAT with some great examples of how to run a detailed EEAT based brand check. My favorite tip was to use Google search operators like [example.com -site:example.com] to find brand mentions indexed on websites other than your own. |
| Aaron Taylor | The Third Pillar of SEO: User Interactions | I’m biased towards paying close attention to all things combining SEO and UX. So Aaron’s talk about the impact of user interactions on SEO has a soft spot in my SEO hearts. My top picks:
|
| Dejan Mladenowski | Programmatic SEO: A Winning Formula for Scaling Growth | What an energetic speaker to end the day with! I liked Dejan’s tips for getting the most out of programmatic SEO. And it wasn’t about massive AI spamming at scale. I liked his takeaways about using APIs, next-level programming internal links, and inserting hreflang programmatically. My #1 tip was to only consider a programmatic SEO campaign for keywords and topics with more than 20,000 searches per month if you want ROI. |
Final thoughts
Good vibes, fun people and expert speakers. What else do you need?
With some top-tier speakers already secured for next year’s lineup, including Aleyda Solis, Kyle Roof, and Cyrus Shephard, I encourage you and your team to join me at Sydney SEO Conference 2025.
See how much fun these people are having? This could be you next year.
See you there 😉
