Agenda 2024

PMax remains to be the topic that still raises the most questions, even with the most seasoned online marketers who have been using Googles most loved and hated campaign type for a while. But now have two years’ worth of data and experience with PMax, and Andrew is here to open the black box. Let’s get the magnifying glass out and have a closer look at:

– What settings help performance
– How to think about asset groups (and assets)
– When audiences apply
– How to structure P-Max campaigns for Shopping
– Scenarios for switching to Std. Shopping

You’ll walk away with a better understanding of what drives success with Performance Max, how to improve P-Max and when it’s better to run Standard Shopping campaigns.

Kabeer is a computer science engineer who turned into a SEO. And he does know about large-scale marketplaces as he worked with brands like Rocket Internet, Expedia, Qiagen and (eBay) kleinanzeigen. In this session, he will take a deep dive into how we can scale up / down relevant pages (in the order of 10M+ / 100M+) based on automations and thresholds. We’ll look at maximizing returns from faceted navigation, internal search as a goldmine, demand and supply balance and dynamic (internal) link architecture (involving search, category, product pages).

So many regulatory and technical challenges for more data privacy have been implemented over the last years and there are more to come. Online marketers have been worried (and still are) that advertising as we know it will cease to exist. This is true, and then it’s not true: advertising will stay, but it will change and become more challenging for advertisers from a technical point of view. In this session, Christian will discuss what all these changes mean from a technical perspective. We will look at the impact on performance marketing in particular, how Google’s Privacy Sandbox should be assessed, which problems are solved and shouldn’t worry you any longer and where you should shift your focus as new challenges arise. This session will focus on Google Ads as well as non-Google networks.

Get your magnifying glasses out because we will take a deep dive into how Google assesses page quality. Kevin will dissect the best practices from companies like IBM, Lending Tree, Course Hero, etc. who clean up their domains and drive big traffic increases. Combining his critical outside-in view with the inside-out view of experts working in these companies, Kevin will explain how you can bring your skills to the next level to measure and optimize for page quality on a single site and across a domain. No matter the size of your company, Kevin will show you what to take from these insights and which mistakes can easily be avoided.

Google’s changed their search ads again! Earlier this year, Google quietly announced a major change to how its search ads would show on the SERP – now occasionally only showing ads with one headline and replacing your descriptions with headline texts. These newest changes join Google’s other efforts to automate your ad copy and can potentially ruin your brand’s intended messaging. Additionally, these newly formatted ads are the smallest ads that Google’s featured on the SERP in nearly a decade.
With suddenly smaller and twisted search ads, many advertisers are struggling to optimize and take back control. At first, these changes may seem random and arbitrary – but there’s enough data within your account to understand how Google is showing your new ads. In this session, we’ll reveal new data on how and when Google is showing your ads with 1, 2, or 3 headlines, how these changes are impacting the performance of your ads, and tactics to optimize for Google’s newest changes to its search ads.

You are surrounded by fellow SEO experts and there is no better place to discuss and share our common problems – off the record, and in a small group. These are your people – they understand your situation. Often rated the best part of the event, sharing your problems with like-minded professionals is your path to answers, a little empathy, and a stronger professional network. Come prepared with an issue you are facing, a problem you are solving, or a question that needs answering. And then, be ready and willing to help others to overcome their challenges.

You are surrounded by fellow PPC experts and there is no better place to discuss and share our common problems – off the record, and in a small group. These are your people – they understand your situation. Often rated the best part of the event, sharing your problems with like-minded professionals is your path to answers, a little empathy, and a stronger professional network. Come prepared with an issue you are facing, a problem you are solving, or a question that needs answering. And then, be ready and willing to help others to overcome their challenges.

Stacey has been using purpose created stock images to build links since 2013. And oh boy, have things changed. Today AI has made it fast and easy to create images of any sort in seconds with a simple text prompt. To benefit from this rapid evolution it’s important to understand the weakness and strengths of AI imagery and to talk about platforms. In her session Stacey will discuss how you can (and should) use both manual and ai generated images to create links from exceptional quality websites and she’ll also share the role AI can play in deciding what images will be the most valuable link building assets.

Advanced PPC experts – it’s time to step up your game and start to fully leverage the powerful new features that Google Analytics 4 offers. Brianna is here to take a deep dive with you into the advanced usages of GA4 audiences. From building custom segments for Google Ads, fundamental filtering best practices, tools for ROI analysis, monitoring campaign performance, and identifying high-performing pages for remarketing, this session is going to be intense. Other key topics that will be covered are filtering paid data at all levels, custom report building, and mapping multistep conversion paths. If you are looking for strategic and tactical methods for harnessing the full capabilities of GA4 to gain deep insights and maximize the returns of Google Ads investments, this session is for you.

In this provocative closing session on our first conference day, we will delve into the complex relationship between social media and search engine optimization. Let’s find out if we are dealing with eternal love or a one-night stand. Sounds different? We promise it will be. Expect to learn how GenZ and Alphas search and find each other, how Search & Social work together harmoniously and how a fleeting affair can turn into true love, that will help you especially in these challenging times. After this romantic and wicked presentation performed by Bob Seeger, you will have plenty to discuss at our networking get together, right after this session.

Cloudflare and other CDNs can make your site faster, smarter, and better than your competitors. You can cut corners, unlock firepower, bypass dev queues, experiment, and transform your capabilities without having to code, and without having to spend a fortune. What? How? It’s time to unlock the full potential of your website for performance and conversion, and Jono has the key. You do NOT want to miss this session!

In this fast-paced session, Greg will share advanced tactics for Local SEO to help you win the local visibility war. Forget the basics that everyone always talks about, Greg will share actionable tips that are rarely shared at conferences. You’ll learn advanced local content strategies, tactics for building powerful local inbound links, and in-depth Google Business Profile tactics that cover both ranking and conversion factors. If you work with brick-and-mortar or local service businesses, this is a session you do not want to miss!

The optimization of feed quality demands a significant investment of time and specialist expertise. Large Language Models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT offer innovative solutions to streamline feed optimization processes. In this session, Alex will highlight the benefits and challenges of LLMs, showing how you can leverage them to your advantage and effectively integrate them into your marketing strategies (for improved feed optimization). You will gain a deeper understanding of how to implement these advanced tools in your strategy and learn a step-by-step approach to effectively deploying generative AI for feed optimization. We will cover how to identify the appropriate inputs, craft precise prompts, and conduct necessary validations to optimize your strategies. Are you ready to learn practical tips for using generative AI, not just for Google Shopping and RSA ad copy, but also for enhancing free listings, Marketplaces, SEO, social media, and display advertising? Then this is YOUR session as this approach has broad applications, from retail to the travel industry, showcasing the versatility of optimization techniques across platforms.

Are you ready to gain expert insight into customizing analytics to capture critical insights that support ongoing optimization, experimentation and business decisions across organic initiatives? If the answer is yes, then make sure to not miss this session. Brianna will delve into advanced strategies for leveraging analytics to enhance your SEO. You will learn fundamental filtering best practices using GA4 and techniques for tracking key user experience metrics like page speed. Tools and methods for conducting on-site keyword research and evaluating content performance through custom audiences will be demonstrated, and Brianna will show you how to identify mysterious organic traffic sources such as Google Discover and Free Shopping listings.

It’s a black box, we are losing control, more automation means less creativity etc. The list of complaints about Google Ads is long. How about we turn the tables and have a look at the opportunities beyond the obvious gains, that new campaign types and features offer if we use our experience and knowledge cleverly. Many capabilities within the Ads Interface, Looker Studio, or freely available scripts are often underutilized. In this session Nadine and Nils will offer you tips, tricks and yes hacks, that even the advanced search marketer has yet to discover. It’s a very practical and hands on session, and we will cover topics such as cover topics such as how to spend your money efficiently and choose your ROAS/CPA wisely, all designed to make you even better at your job and outsmart the competition.

Internal linking for websites with hundreds of thousands, and yes, even millions of pages is a challenge in itself. Emilija and Dan will take it a step further and unveil the secrets of optimizing internal links for such colossal websites. You will learn how to harness the power of BERT sentence embeddings and cosine similarity to navigate the vast digital universe with finesse. And after that we dive into the mar-tech realm of automated topical clustering and hub detection, all guided by the enchanting magic of eigenvector centrality. Sounds highly technical and geeky? We are not going to lie, IT IS. But this is SMX Advanced and if you are ready to embark on a knowledge-packed adventure where every click, every cluster, and every hub unlocks a new level of digital mastery, then this is the session for you.

This is SMX Advanced and you all know the basics of video and how important video is for your online marketing. So let’s take it a step further and discuss how to gain significant traffic for your website by using paid video. In this session Phil will show you the ideal length and structure for successful video ads on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram & TikTok and effective messaging frameworks that can be used to communicate your value proposition. We will look at best practices for implementing sequential video advertising, how to use targeting groups effectively and how to repurpose content for each platform. You will learn how to integrate a single campaign across multiple platforms and last but not least how to prove your success by measuring conversions and core KPIs.

Imagine a world where SEO’s compounding benefits can be validated and supported quickly with PPC and in return, the PPC budget can be maximized with proper SEO support. A product-led approach will help you to do exactly that and transform SEO and PPC into an effective growth engine. In this session, Myriam will explain how a pragmatic search strategy focused on outcomes over outputs will pave the way for a roadmap with feedback loops, testing frameworks, cross-functional processes, and distributed accountability. And all of these efforts, collectively, will establish a product-led growth model, that provides a clear path through digital marketing complexity, guiding stakeholders toward tangible and durable business results. This session is relevant for both PPC and SEO professionals.

It is going to be technical and very wild. Do we have your attention? Good! Because you won’t have seen this before. Martin will take a look at how image compression works in various formats, how to optimize for size, quality and compatibility, how to use srcset and <picture> to deliver the most appropriate version to browsers, how to use JSON-LD to let Google Search know about different versions and how images interact with HTTP and browsers. After this session, you’ll have a better understanding of how to leverage and optimize images for your users AND Google Search.