Engage 2017 Agenda

Engage 2018 Agenda isn’t available yet. Until it is, take a look at the 2017 Agenda for an idea of what to expect.

Conference Agenda

Click on the links to the left, to jump to the Engage Track you are interested in. Each track has four sessions throughout the day, but attendees will receive videos of every session.

Click on the tab to review the session topic, description, and speakers, and let us know if you have any questions.

MORNING KEYNOTE

AFTERNOON KEYNOTE

SOCIAL / CONTENT TRACK

BRAND / EXPERIENCE TRACK

LOCAL / MOBILE TRACK

SEARCH TRACK

MORNING KEYNOTE

8:30 a.m. – 9:20 a.m.

Governor Ballroom

Matthew Gardner – Portland Trail Blazers

Matthew Gardner oversees customer experience for the Portland Trail Blazers and Rose Quarter, working with team members across digital, analytics, and creative services to deliver an innovative, fan-forward online experience. Throughout seven seasons (‘years’ to most) with the team, Matthew has witnessed the rapid adaptation of digital marketing – from failed web shows and SEO-killing microsites, to the department recently winning back-to-back NBA Digital Innovation Awards. Away from the court, you can find Matthew climbing remote mountainsides or backcountry skiing at night (he always leaves coordinates just in case), wearing a light suit he created from scratch.

Moderator: Anna Hutson – Avenue

SOCIAL / CONTENT – Governor Ballroom, 4th Floor

You’ve Got Influence Over Me – Guiding You Through the Adventures of Influencer Marketing

Everyone’s talking about influencer marketing – that means everyone’s looking for influencers. The impact that influencers are having on social media and SEO, and the rise of micro-influencers, mean their relevance should not ignored. This session explores influencer marketing from top to bottom. You’ll learn how to become a more effective marketer by following the “Guide to True Influencer Marketing” unveiled at this seminar. And you might even hear a few stories of influencer marketing gone horribly wrong, and how to avoid marketing mistakes.

Topic Level: Everyone

SPEAKERS:

Matt Siltala Avalaunch Media

Ian Lurie Portent

Moderator: Scott Fish – 32° Digital

Dude, where’s my newspaper? Psychographics, Fake News and the marketers who love them.

This session will dive deep into one of the most important aspects of social advertising, audience targeting. Will and Marty unpack the mystery of content marketing in the age of audience targeting. Knowing whom to target with what has already become the most important skill of marketers and you can do it too! Evolutions in social psychographic targeting, now easily available, have quietly revolutionized how marketers ping the persuasive.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Marty Weintraub Aimclear®

Will Scott Search Influence

Moderator: Jessica Seidel – Louder Than Digital

Perfect Pages: Content That Ranks and Satisfies

The presentation will talk about strategy for the content creation process. We’ll discuss the pitfalls that many companies make, and how to prevent this wasted effort. Finally, the bulk of the talk will focus on creating “perfect pages” i.e. those pages that magically rank for 100s-1000s of terms and pull in 10x traffic through a combination of superior user experience and SEO.

Topic Level: Everyone

SPEAKERS:

Carolyn Shelby tronc

Cyrus Shepard Fazillion

Moderator: Trish Carey – SellerEngine Software

Improving SEO and User Experience – The Technical Side

With Google’s continued focus on mobile and UX, the speed of sites has become more important than ever. Jon will show you how to make your pages load like AMP pages without the AMP! Bill will add to this by doing a deep dive into technical SEO and show you how to analyze those results and make recommendations for changes.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Jon Henshaw Raven Internet Marketing Tools

Bill Hartzer Consultant

Moderator: Kevin Getch – Webfor

Governor Ballroom, Fourth Floor

LOCAL / MOBILE – Grand Ballroom, 3rd Floor

Everything You Need To Know About App Indexing, Mobile-First, and Technical SEO in 2017

In this advanced and future-facing conversation, Emily and Rob will answer burning questions related to mobile search, app optimization, voice search, and more! Join us to learn the answers to: What’s changed in native app indexing? Hint: a ton! What does “mobile-first” indexing actually mean and what will its impact be? How will ranking factors change or shift for voice search? What do marketers really need to know about AI assistants and chatbots? 

This is a Fireside Chat Discussion, no slide decks in this session.

Topic Level: Advanced

SPEAKERS:

Rob Ousbey Distilled

Emily Grossman MobileMoxie

Moderator: Cindy Krum – MobileMoxie

Voice and Assistant: The Bleeding Edge of Search

Excited about voice but not sure where to start? It may seem like uncharted territory, but it’s a natural evolution of search. Bing’s Purna Virji will highlight easy steps you can take with your regular PPC campaigns to best serve queries that originated via voice. Then, Moz’s Dr. Pete Meyers will show you how Google organic and voice are connected and how to rank for voice on Android and Google Home. You’ll walk away from this session on the bleeding edge of both PPC and organic voice tactics!

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Purna Virji Microsoft

Dr. Pete Meyers Moz

Moderator: David Mihm – Tidings

Future-proofing Your Local Search Rankings

It’s getting harder and harder to rank in local search results – more businesses than ever have basic citations covered, no one is handing out free links, and social media is just downright noisy. What’s a business to do? David will tell you what’s driving local rankings today and share his perspective about the dominant ranking signal of the future. Dana will follow up with how to build a marketing strategy by planning your tactics around that signal, and how to show Google that you’re a thriving business that deserves those great rankings.

Topic Level: Everyone

SPEAKERS:

Dana DiTomaso Kick Point

David Mihm Tidings

Moderator: Scott Hendison – Search Commander, Inc.

Non-Facebook Social

When it comes to driving traffic to your site, there’s more to paid social ads than just Facebook. Our two world class experts will be diving deeply into both Youtube and Linked-in, to help you get the most out of your ad spend, and a better return on your investment.

Topic Level: Everyone

SPEAKERS:

Paula Keller Search Influence

Manny Rivas Aimclear®

Moderator: Scott Hendison – Search Commander, Inc.

Grand Ballroom, Third Floor

SEARCH – Billiard Room, 2nd Floor

Do Links Still Matter? The Present and Future of Links for SEO

In this session, Mark and Ross will break down everything you need to know about today’s link landscape, including new data on the power of links for ranking, when links don’t make an impact and why, why superior content is the essential partner of link building, the most effective content for attracting links, and much more.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Ross Hudgens Siege Media

Mark Traphagen Stone Temple Consulting

Moderator: Kent Lewis – Anvil Media, Inc.

End to End Analytics

Investing in content and SEO is only the first step. Determining what you measure and which data can help pivot your strategy is how you outpace your competition. Kane and Leslie will show you how to create effective analytics frameworks and how to use them for solving organic marketing challenges.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Leslie To 3Q Digital

Kane Jamison Content Harmony

Moderator: Matthew Brown – Moz

Paid Search: Origins

It is the dawn of time. This earth we know so well is a smoldering, inhospitable place. No plants grow, no creature can survive. The hard, implacable rocks that form our mountain ranges are being crushed and folded by forces that will take millions of years to shape. These are the forces! This is the power that drives the hand that drives ‘PPC’, the mighty sales lager, with the world’s best lead generator for business.

Topic Level: Everyone

SPEAKERS:

Ada Pally Canadian

James Svoboda WebRanking.com

Moderator: Todd Mintz – 3Q Digital

Daft Punk SEO

When you have millions of pages SEO is like a Daft Punk lyric: “Work it harder, Make it better, Do it faster, Makes us stronger, More than ever, Hour after, Our work is, Never over”. Find out how big sites scale SEO and learn the processes that make Enterprise SEO successful.

Topic Level: Everyone

SPEAKERS:

AJ Kohn Blind Five Year Old

John Shehata Condé Nast

Moderator: Todd Mintz – 3Q Digital

Billiard Room, Second Floor

BRAND / EXPERIENCE – Library, 2nd Floor

Navigating the Complex Layers of Content Promotion 

Thanks to ever-changing search engine algorithms, pay-to-play models, and increasingly competitive markets, brands now have to promote content to get seen. Thankfully, content marketing has become the primary focus for most marketers, so there’s more than enough content to work with, right? But how do you know what content is the best to promote? Sometimes you might get lucky and see campaign success. Other times, it could cost you—literally and figuratively. That’s because, in order to see great results, you have to have great content to begin with. Find out how to get the content you need to be successful with paid content promotion—from initial strategy to final execution.

In this session, attendees will learn how to:

• Identify what makes content bad, mediocre or excellent to promote
• Leveraging content analytics to ensure you’re getting the most out of your content
• Partner with content teams and marketers to get more of the content you need to be successful

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Moderator: Mike Rosenberg – Veracity

Lights, Camera, Marketing

Phil and Justin will help you navigate the complexities of producing online video for ads, content, and social media. From production to analytics, you’ll learn tips and tricks to improve the quality and performance of your videos.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Moderator: Kent Lewis – Anvil Media, Inc.

Design / CRO

Help! I’m Doing Everything Right but It’s Not Working!

Do you use all the best tools, follow all the best practices, and listen to all the top experts…only to achieve mediocre (or disastrous) results? Maybe you have inconclusive or losing A/B or MVT tests? Or maybe sales plummeted after redesigning your site? You’re not alone. Relying on tools, best practices, and expert advice can actually do more harm than good because the old way of digital marketing no longer works. In this session, you’ll learn to spot weaknesses in your strategy and prioritize time and money where YOU need it most. This session will cover general CRO tips and CRO tips related to paid search like landing pages, ads, targeting options, etc. You’ll learn how to avoid common mistakes that even big brands make, and see what’s specifically worked in successful conversion optimization programs. You’ll also learn how to use data correctly to identify and prioritize problems and improve overall ROI.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Mona Elesseily Page Zero Media

Theresa Baiocco-Farr Conversion Max

Moderator: Anne Kennedy – Outlines Venture Group

Creative + Community = Great Content

Customer success isn’t just about creating the right stories. It’s about crafting the right balance of creative that engages your audience, not just with your brand but with each other. It’s about more than marketing, it’s about inspiring and galvanizing your community. Come join us and get actionable insights that will help move your digital marketing strategy from pushing out content to pulling together the customers you love.

Topic Level: Intermediate

SPEAKERS:

Moderator: Lisa Williams – Oregon Health Science University

Library, Second Floor

AFTERNOON KEYNOTE

4:10 p.m. — 5:00 p.m.

Governor Ballroom

Mobile-First Indexing: Rethinking Position Zero

Historically in SEO, URLs and content needed a one-to-one relationship. Urls could be in the index, or not in the index; or maybe a website has been over indexed or under indexed. But when you remove the URL requirement on indexing, content historically stuck in AMP, PWA, Native Apps and databases can be ranked and surfaced without urls. Potentially, as in Google Home or Amazon Alexa, it can be surfaced without even a browser. Buckle-up buttercup. This is the future of SEO!

Cindy Krum
MobileMoxie

Cindy Krum is the CEO and Founder of MobileMoxie, where she has been doing mobile marketing long before the iPhone even existed (you remember WAP browsers, right?). Known for her unmistakable firey red hair and technical expertise, Cindy is a thought leader in the search industry and the author of “Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are”, which gets 4.5 stars on Amazon. When she’s not traveling to conferences around the world or advising clients on mobile SEO, responsive design, mobile site migrations, and site-speed optimization, Cindy can be curled up on a couch with her dog, Ginger, and a good audio book!

Moderator: Kevin Getch – Webfor