Do in person guest speaker opportunities help SEO

Transcript

Hi guys, Welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk and Tea. 

Today's conversation, do in-person guest speaker ships or guest appearances help your SEO? With the conversation today is about oftentimes you can be invited to local networking groups or local universities, or maybe chamber of commerce's, or wherever it might be, where, actually, they want you to do an in-person speaking engagement. And so the question is, does that help SEO? And that's what we're going to talk about today. But before we begin, I'm going to introduce the tea we have today. Today we have a tea, it's a green tea that was gifted... Actually, I don't think it was gifted. My father bought this from China on one of his trips and I guess he gifted it to me, so technically it is a gift. So this is green tea that I drink every so often. I've really lowered the amount of green tea I'm drinking over the years, just because I work a lot, and so I need something with a stronger kick, but green tea is always something good to go to when you want something more soothing.

But let's go ahead getting this brewed, and then let's get chatting. So within a person guest appearances, it can be unusual in that you are now doing something that's off the internet. You're doing something in person and SEO is all about everything in person, right? So the question is, do in-person guest appearances or guest speakerships actually help you in your SEO? And the answer is it depends. Of course, it always depends. And it really comes down to if the company or organization that is bringing you to speak has a web presence. So oftentimes when a company invites you to speak, they need to do marketing. So they need to put an event up, begin to send emails out, Facebook posts. They will often put something on their website to notify people that an event is coming up. So saying all of that, it does help you if your organization has a website that has SEO strength. Now, if the organization doesn't really have a website, that hasn't much web presence, or there really isn't a strong website or [inaudible 00:02:00] profile, then it may not be worth it.

So let me give you an example of where it really makes sense. For me, I'm very involved still with my alma mater and for a lot of people getting a .edu link is a big target for a lot of people. If they can get it, they'd be very excited. And so oftentimes when I go back and speak with the university, it gives me an opportunity to get links from the university, either from its .edu site, or .org sites.

So oftentimes what I do is I go to the university and I go speak, and because I've spoken now, they'll usually be a newsletter or just a quick announcement or an event page where it says, oh, we did this and the speaker, Jason Khoo from Zupo, and I'll link to my website. So therefore, there is a value in doing in-person guest appearances because usually the organization hosting it will have marketing around it and they'll put it on their website. So saying all of that, it is usually worth it if you can be sure that the company, that organization, you're speaking with has that presence. And a great way to vet if it's worth it or not, is if they're inviting you to speak or do a guest appearance, they probably have done it before with other people.

So see if in the past, they've had other speakers and see what kind of marketing and PR they did to get marketing out for that event to then vet, okay, they did that for that speaker before, then they'll probably do that for me this time. So in that case, guest appearances and guest speaker ships are always worth it, and that helps you build your thought leadership and you can go out there and get to know more people. But in a strictly SEO sense, it's still makes sense if the organization has a strong website and they consistently do link out and everything to, the people that do speak for them.

So hopefully that's helpful. If you get invited to go speak for a local trade organization or company or university, it can be really worth it in that it might give you access to links that you may not have access to unless you did that guest speaker ship. So it's definitely worth looking into and investigating. So hopefully that will help you when you're being asked to speak or anything like that. It maybe can really open some doors to some link-building campaigns for you. I'm going to go ahead and pour this tea, which I already have. I'm going to enjoy some green tea, and I hope to see you guys again soon.

Thanks everybody.