6 SEO Tips & Tricks We Learned at WTSFest 2024 in Philadelphia

At Cypress North, we’re all about growth, education, and improvement. I know we've said it before and may sound like a broken record, but it’s true. We LOVE learning and are always looking for ways to get better at what we do here.

That’s why we recently sent three members of our team to Philadelphia to attend the 2024 Women in Tech SEO Festival, also known as WTSFest.

If you’re not familiar with it, WTSFest is a full-day digital marketing conference hosted by Women in Tech SEO. WTS is a community for women in digital marketing to discuss the latest trends and innovations in SEO and marketing. The goal is to help members improve and change the industry through their work.

WTS succeeded: Our three digital marketers who attended the conference – Kathleen Hagelberger, Jasminstar Lysaith, and Alana Leveritte – came back feeling inspired and empowered by what they heard and saw.

They also picked up some new tips, tricks, and tools they’ve been sharing with the rest of the team that we can’t wait to start implementing in our work! In this blog post, we’ll talk about their six biggest takeaways from WTSFest 2024.

1. Taking a Playbook Approach to E-E-A-T

As an agency, we’ve spoken frequently about the importance of establishing Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T.) We take a holistic approach to SEO, so working with clients to showcase their industry expertise and develop trust with their audience is an important part of what we do.

During “From Guidelines to Growth: Unleashing the Potential of E-E-A-T,” Bianca Anderson talked about taking a playbook approach to E-E-A-T. The approach involves three phases:

• Establish a Foundation: Audit topic clusters
• Experiment: Innovate by using unique author insights
• Scale: Prioritize high-performing URLs when optimizing

Anderson also spoke about using Google’s E-E-A-T documentation to break content and quality questions down into actionable insights for content teams.

“One thing she called out was the opportunity for ‘productive perspectives,’ or real-life examples and relevant professional anecdotes that are unique to that writer’s experience and can demonstrate E-E-A-T in content.”
– Kathleen Hagelberger, Senior Digital Marketing Strategist & SEO Specialist

As a team, we’re looking forward to using these strategies with the content we create – both for clients and for ourselves.

2. Use Reddit to Your Advantage

In the same talk, Anderson also touched on the rise of Reddit in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and how to use the platform to your advantage.

Her advice was to use Reddit as a tool to see what users in your target audience are discussing or asking. From there, you can develop and structure your content based on your findings.

3. Be Proactive With Google Business Profiles

Last year, we published a blog post about why it’s so important to have Google and Apple Business Profiles set up for your business. But at WTSFest, our team heard great advice about being proactive with your profile.

In her talk “Driving Sales With a Localized Digital Customer Journey,” Krystal Taing advised setting up Google Business Profiles up to a year in advance of your business opening.

She explained that it’s easy for Google users to create a listing for your business without your knowledge or input. Setting up your profile ahead of time prevents users from creating a listing – and ultimately saves you the headache of having to go in and claim or merge the profiles.

4. Prioritize Accessibility

Our team found all the sessions at WTSFest insightful, but one of the most important talks came from Purna Virji. As an agency, we’ve already been talking about how to implement what we learned from “Make Inclusion the Default: Tips to Make Your Content Inclusive.”

“One of my favorite takeaways from her talk was that building for the average consumer satisfies no one because it creates a less optimal experience and you leave money on the table.”
– Jasminstar Lysaith, Digital Marketing Associate

During her talk, Virji explained that being inclusive is fiscally responsible and should be the default. By identifying and removing barriers to your content, you can expand your reach.

In addition to using subtitles on videos, choosing accessible fonts, and being careful with certain colors, Virji emphasized the importance of making your written content accessible. Writing should be easy to consume (something we stressed in our blog post on conversational writing) and intentional. That means getting to the point without all the fluff.

5. Save Time on SQL Queries

We’re lucky to have an awesome team of data analysts here at Cypress North. They often help us write advanced Structured Query Language (SQL) queries when we’re pulling data from Google Analytics 4 or Google Search Console’s BigQuery.

But thanks to a tool we learned about at WTSFest, we may not need to bug them as much anymore.

Sam Torres introduced us to the GA4 SQL tool during her talk, “This is BigQuery: Unlocking Limitless Data in the Age of Looker.”

As marketers, we aren’t as fluent as the data team when it comes to writing anything beyond basic queries. This tool will help us write those more complex queries without having to ask the data team.

6. Rethink Your SEO Training

One of the last talks of the day, “Let’s Train Our Way to a Better SEO Industry,” provided our team with tons of insights we’re looking forward to using in our internal trainings.

Natasha Burtenshaw-deVries talked about how we as an industry often fail to train SEOs past a beginner or intermediate level. She stressed the importance of making trainings realistic and structuring them in a way that helps continue growth.

Some of our favorite insights and takeaways from Burtenshaw-deVries’ talk included:

• Rethinking keyword research training to focus on understanding audiences and their pain points
• Including a SERPs scavenger hunt to make keyword research training more hands-on
• Finding small opportunities for daily growth and showing you’re invested in your team’s growth by providing meaningful feedback via video or an in-person meeting rather than just leaving comments in a Google doc

Professional development is a huge part of what we do here at Cypress North and we’re already excited talking about how we can potentially improve our training processes using what we learned during this talk.

What We Enjoyed About the Conference

While our trio learned a ton at WTSFest, they also had a lot of fun experiencing an in-person conference and meeting face-to-face with other marketers!

Something they all talked about when they got back was how helpful it was that the conference was broken up into four different segments throughout the day:

• Analyze talked about the current industry landscape and took an analytical look at day-to-day SEO tasks
• Advance was about improving what you already know and looking to the future of SEO
• Innovate focused on using new technologies and strategies to boost your work
• Empower was all about personal and professional growth

Our team also talked about the environment at the conference, and how the organizers made everyone feel welcome and at ease throughout the day.

“I enjoyed the overall atmosphere of the conference. They stressed their rules and code of conduct multiple times during the conference, making it a comfortable environment to learn and work.”
– Alana Leveritte, Digital Marketing Coordinator

Networking and meeting industry professionals in person was another great experience. The conference had booths and tables set up where attendees could chat with representatives from different companies and agencies.

After programming wrapped for the day, a conference afterparty gave our team more time to chat with others in a social setting. They even got to catch up with some of the conference speakers and ask follow-up questions.

Something else that was really cool for our team was seeing a client in action. WTSFest was held at Convene 30 South 17th Street in Philadelphia. Convene is a client we work with closely, and our team said getting to see one of their locations and experience their hospitality and amenities first-hand as guests was amazing.

Looking Ahead

I chatted with Kathleen, Jasminstar, and Alana when they got back from WTSFest, and it was hard to summarize everything they shared about what they learned in a single blog post – which is a good thing! They had an incredible time and learned a ton that we’re really looking forward to implementing in our work.

We love sharing our expertise and knowledge with the digital marketing community, but we also love to continue growing that knowledge. Going to conferences where we can meet other industry professionals and hear their different perspectives is a great way for us to do that.

As we look to continue our education and growth, we’ll be sending more team members to different conferences in the coming months.

Senior Digital Marketing Manager and Marketing O’Clock host Christine Zirnheld will head over to England later in October to attend SMX London. She’ll share her knowledge on mastering Google Ads for lead generation, and then get the chance to listen to other industry experts.

Several members of our team will also be traveling to California in November for brightonSEO San Diego.

We can’t wait to develop new connections and hone our skills at these upcoming events, and any future conferences!