SEO Summit 2017: A Recap

Anticipation was in the air as a steady flood of attendees entered the room at which the Summit was to be held. As the people arrived, it was only a matter of time before the 4th installation of the country’s annual no-nonsense SEO event. When it was time to start, SEO Hacker’s very own Digital Marketing Consultant, Charm Villanueva, gave the opening remarks to officially kick-off the SEO Summit 2017.

The event was held at The Bellevue Hotel Manila last July 1, 2017. A variety of people from different companies came with one purpose in mind – to expand their horizons in SEO, and hopefully, apply it in their own endeavors to make their business grow to new heights.

SEO Summit 2017

As the anticipation filled the room, SEO Summit was officially starting, and I couldn’t be more excited. Here are a few photos from the event:

We were just waiting for the room to be filled up with attendees until we start the event. As I have said, to officially start the event, the opening remarks were given. The first speaker was about to take the stage.

Carlo Ople, PLDT’s current VP for Digital Marketing Strategy, was SEO Summit 2017’s first speaker. His presentation entitled “A No-Nonsense Approach to Digital Marketing” gave the audience a view on the Carlo’s decorated career in Digital Marketing, and how people can effectively understand Digital Marketing.

He used the numbers from different statistics to tell the audience how they could integrate the numbers into their strategies to make it a more efficient, effective, and successful one.

The second speaker was Growth Rocket’s current director for SEO, Marc Samson. His presentation – which was aptly titled, if I do say so myself – was “Don’t Panic, the Increase is Organic”. It was all about how the increase in a website’s traffic is, more often than not, organic.

Then, he went to talk about the technical aspect of SEO. From web development to running the website, Marc was the one that opened the audience’s eyes to what the importance of proper and effective web developing could mean to a person’s SEO campaign.

The third speaker is the current managing director of DEJAN Marketing, Dan Petrovic. He was a speaker at last year’s SEO Summit, and has come back to talk about how people could create content that optimized for readability and “scanability”.

Later in his presentation, he went into detail on how content creators should make their content, and what the content should entail. From offering value, building trust, and engaging the readers, all of this was covered by Dan’s presentation.

The last, but not the least, is yours truly. My presentation was all about “Doing SEO Right This 2017”. It was basically about what SEO has become, and how you, as a practitioner, could properly and effectively use SEO to improve your online presence.

I talked about how SEO has come a long way ever since its inception, and what it could be in the following years. Of course, I talked about a variety of things, from proper content generation to  to user experience and of course, the totality of SEO. But the message remained the same – SEO is constantly evolving, and we need to adapt every single time.

Here’s me, Dan, and Marc at the question and answer portion. The questions were submitted to sli.do using #SEOSummit2017, and the questions were constantly coming in, so we did our best to answer every one of them. The topics of the questions ranged from link building – “Is it possible to rank high without link building?”, effective title creation – “Hi Dan. Can you give me more tips on creating an attractive title?”, to the most random question: “who among you is the most handsome? please be honest”

The Summit officially ended during the awarding ceremony. Here’s me, Dan, and Marc posing in front of the camera for an amazingly successful summit.

Key Takeaway

Overall, this is the best SEO Summit yet. From the interactivity between us, the speakers and the audience to the happy faces that came out of the venue doors when the Summit ended. This year’s Summit attracted a lot of attendees, and I can’t be any happier.

My team (SEO Hacker) and I continue to innovate and strive for a much better SEO Summit. That is why the quality of the Summit – ever since its start back in 2014 – has continuously improved. It was started to disseminate the importance of SEO in the industry, and it has worked its wonders. So, I am proud to say that SEO Summit 2018 will be BIGGER, BADDER, and BETTER. See you all there!