So I analysed the talk titles to see what I was missing out on.
And here's my key takeaways.
1. The SEO industry still doesn't get marketing.
Of the 100 plus talks only 8 of the titles mentioned the term 'brand'.
As someone who spends a lot of time working with marketing managers, brand growth is a huge topic with businesses.
This is a worrying signal that the SEO industry is not talking about what matters in marketing.
2. Strategic and cross channel marketing had the highest percentage of talk subjects.
Before those drinking the social search juice get too excited, fewer than 10 talks mentioned the word 'social'.
Instead, this bracket covered topics such as strategy, cross platform content, PR and yes even PPC got a seat at the SEO talk table.
However, the talks in this bracket were definitely about going beyond SEO as a channel.
3. AI is still the talk of the industry.
A few years ago, AI would have barely been mentioned, today, and quite rightly so, it's the second largest talk bracket.
The AI talk subjects were across every subject from content to APIs, to LLMs and AI search.
4. Have SEOs bailed on content?
Content and creative-related talks were among the lowest featured topics.
It looks like content is no longer king in the SEO industry.
5. Tech SEO talks were highly specific.
The tech SEO talk titles were based largely on specific problems and concepts. Which makes sense.
TBH, I think we're well past the boom period of tech SEO and as we can all see AI and it's ability to code is developing at scale. I've publicly stated that I feel Tech SEO is on borrowed time.
Final Overview: The SEO Industry Has a Clear Indentity Crisis.
One of the staggering results of this analysis is that over 40% of the talks were about AI, strategy, and cross-selling outside of SEO.
And my bet is that these topics are going to grow.
But agency and industry rhetoric does seem to be avoiding the key reason people choose SEO as a marketing channel—to sell more.
When businesses sell more stuff, they grow their brands.
The split?
Only 27% of all talk titles were around meaningful sales or buisness growth.
73% were not realted to sales output.
I know which topics brands are more interested in.
P.S. This analysis was done with AI, but I have a full list of talk titles and examined them myself.
I also know the pie chart has typos, and AI data can be false, so I did a manual review on this. While there is a lot of overlap in the talk titles, and many could move into 2 categories, broadly, the data is correct.
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