Ryan Sullivan
  SVP, Performance Services
  Performics

Ryan Sullivan is the Senior Vice President of Performance Services for Performics. He spoke about the rise of voice and visual search as well as shifting search behaviors. He believes the key is to use schema; maintain a balance between utility, transactional, and informational content; optimize for search engines; provide contextual aids about where your content is relevant; and use product feeds syndication.

  Binti Pawa
  Head of SEO, Director Food, Lifestyle & Luxury (FLL)
  Time Inc

Binti Pawa, the Head of SEO, FLL Group for Time Inc, spoke about the importance of load time and using AMP pages to maintain engagement with users. She touched upon Time’s own experience with the endeavor and the successes they have seen.

  Jason Stevens
  SEO Director
  Food Network

Jason Stevens, SEO Director for Food Network, spoke about the importance of site speed and how Google’s answer to customer demands for site speed was to develop AMP. Food Network has been developing their own AMP pages and saw tremendous load time drops once they had done so.

   Maile Ohye
   Developer Programs Tech Lead
   Google

Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google, spoke about how mobile search has already surpassed desktop worldwide and that customers can now use voice search on a variety of different products, including their phones. Customers need to be paying attention to their load times and bounce rates while working to provide an outstanding user experience.

  Adam Singer
  Analytics Advocate, Google Analytics
  Google

Adam Singer, an analytics advocate from Google Analytics, spoke about the importance of using data in marketing and how Google Analytics is working to help marketers. This help includes setting up a public demo account, a Data Studio for data visualization, and Analytics Academy – where people can take courses for continuing education in analytics.

  Dixon Jones
  Marketing Director
  Majestic

Dixon Jones, Marketing Director for Majestic, spoke about the research his brand has been doing into the role of backlinks and their impact on site success. They found that when brands were grouped by industry and they focused on trust flow, there was a high correlation with performance.

   Freddie Blicher
   Senior Manager, Corporate SEO
   Marriott Digital

Freddie Blicher, Senior Manager of Corporate SEO for Marriott/Ritz-Carlton, spoke about the challenges of understanding and interpreting the wealth of data available. He made suggestions about how to combine data sources to create a more comprehensive, holistic look at business progress.

  Austin Kane
  Sr. Manager of Search Marketing
  John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Austin Kane, Senior Manager of Search Marketing at John Wiley & Sons, spoke about the importance of valuing technical SEO. He explained that brands also need to have a proactive mindset, not just a reactive one. This means they should pay attention to strategies that can help them grow, rather than just trying to fix problems as they appear.

  Jacqueline Urick
  Head of SEO (SEO Manager)
  The Pampered Chef

Jacqueline Urick, Head of SEO for Pampered Chef, reminded us all that the developers on our teams are people, too! Improving communication can go a long way in helping everyone work together, as well as understanding the goals and pressing concerns of the different groups. Dashboards in particular can be helpful to show progress on SEO projects and to help developers understand your needs.

 
   Mark Munroe
   Founder and CEO
   SEORadar

Mark Munroe is the Founder and CEO of SEORadar. He reminded us that sometimes it can feel as though you have too many cooks in the kitchen when you are trying to design a website. Munroe also spoke about how easily things can go wrong with websites, but that sometimes it can be hard to understand what exactly changed. He recommends implementing monitoring processes and having deep visibility into the website.