To kick off the day, we will share how communicators can leverage Google tools to streamline workflow and efficiently execute their multitude of day-to-day tasks.

There’s no lone magical metric to prove your work at strengthening your brand’s digital properties was successful. Nonetheless, Google Analytics provides a wealth of insights around to when, why and for how long users look at (or bounce away from) your content. In this session, we’ll pinpoint the Google Analytics metrics that are most useful to communicators—and share pointers for how to identify them quickly.

What we’ll cover:

• Creating and modifying your content relevant metrics in Google Analytics
• How to translate your audience’s conversion funnel into visible analytics you can actually work with
• Using Google Analytics to discover how long users are spending with content, and how many visit your site without ever visiting another page on it
• Figuring out your bounce rate, and sleuthing out the reasons why users are leaving your page
• Understanding the difference between your high-priority content and the content your users are actually reading
• Identifying the insights that point to slow load times or responsiveness issues

Type almost any search term into Google nowadays, and a list of videos accompanies the results. As it’s also owned by Google, PR pros must remember that YouTube is essentially the world’s second-largest search engine. We will share strategies for producing and promoting YouTube videos as strategic vehicles to convert viewers into subscribers, website visitors and customers.

You’ll learn how to:

• Use YouTube to generate traffic on your own site
• Measure the success of YouTube content using native analytics
• Convert viewers into subscribers and buyers
• Determine the budget you need for high-quality branded video
• Make a case to leadership around a bigger budget to build out your YouTube strategy
• Create avatars, banners and video thumbnails to help your audience find the right content

During lunch you’ll join your peers to network and share your thoughts on the day. You might even learn a few new best practices and cultivate new business relationships!

As communicators, we are driven by the need to provide a rich customer experience with our content. In an environment saturated with data platforms and content tools, is data driving the experience or is the customer need defining the experience? In this session, we'll learn how Cisco moved beyond data to truly focus on what matters most – delivering on customer key moments & expectations. We'll also play a game of SEO Jeopardy, when you'll have a chance to win some great prizes.

A content strategy that artfully deploys and refreshes existing and new evergreens—content that doesn't fade with the news cycle— is about much more than keeping your audience engaged year-round. In this session, Condé Nast's John Shehata will explain why his brands developed the Pinetree project to turn evergreen content strategy into a win for SEO, site architecture, workflow and culture at the numerous publications in Condé Nast's brand portfolio, achieving 200%+ increase in organic search traffic.

You'll learn:

• Why creating new content is not always the answer
• How updating existing content and consolidating old content can improve your SEO
• How evergreens can help restructure a website so it's as searchable as possible
• Step by step SEO process on optimizing your evergreen content
• How working evergreen content into your mix can change workflow and workplace culture
• When and why content decays, and what you can do about it

No communicator wants to see a buried crisis resurface to the top of their company’s search results, but it can seem impossible to avoid that fate when the web is awash in noisy and negative conversations about your brand. In this session, we’ll cover both proactive and reactive strategies that will ensure your brand’s Google and social media search results show the side of your brand where the grass is always greener.

You’ll learn how to:

• Understand what Google’s algorithm sees when it looks for mentions of your brand
• Monitor conversation thresholds to determine whether a negative story is a crisis with long-term SEO impact or just a momentary blip on the radar
• Use your CMS’ built-in features to generate headlines and featured snippets that organically outrank negative content
• Mine auto-complete data and context cards to develop a defensive SEO strategy
• Capitalize on a potentially viral moment to drive positive sentiment, then apply SEO tactics across multiple channels to keep momentum going

Since you can’t buy an organic search ranking, search engine optimization is a form of earned media, relying not only on the strength of your content but on third-party referrals. In this session, we’ll look at how Google and SEO tools can be used to maximize the return on your earned media efforts.

What you’ll come away with:

• Strategies for building relationships with the right journalists, bloggers and influencers whose prominence can boost your rankings
• Approaches to holistically integrate different channels and media platforms (e.g. YouTube), so that they boost each other together
• Best practices for maximizing your Google Ads spend
• Knowledge of inexpensive tools that let you to track and trend your domain’s authority

We'll close out the day by having our SEO experts provide quick, real-time audits of your website's ranking authority right from the stage! Concerned that the structure of your site's pages isn't optimized for search crawlers? Are there keywords you wished you ranked higher for? Don't be shy—our trainers have seen it all, and will provide some advice on how to make your brand as searchable as possible.