Day one of MozCon 2023 started off with opening remarks by Cheryl Draper, who set the stage for the event and highlighted the theme of the future of search. She emphasized the need to stay updated with the ever-changing landscape of search, including topics like machine learning, artificial intelligence, TikTok, and Google Analytics 4.

The first speaker, Lily Ray, discussed the impact of Google’s core updates on search rankings. She shared her personal experience of facing difficulties with a core update and emphasized the importance of understanding user behavior, world events, overhauls to search, relevance shifts, and intent switching when dealing with ranking changes. Lily recommended prioritizing fixing these issues and creating content that aligns with user intent.

Chris Long, who gained attention with his talk on Advanced On-Page Optimization last year, spoke about the need for SEOs to shift from a defensive mindset to an offensive one. He encouraged SEOs to identify new content opportunities, choose pages to optimize, prioritize technical SEO issues, gather data for key initiatives, and conduct experiments. Chris also highlighted the role of AI in SEO and the need for SEOs to embrace it.

A special announcement was made by Melissa Rae Brown regarding Moz’s new metric, Brand Authority, which is now available for Moz Pro and Moz API customers. This metric aims to measure the unmeasurable aspects of brand influence.

Jackie Chu focused on navigating complex systems to prioritize SEO projects. She emphasized the importance of finding allies within legal, business, and engineering teams to ensure that SEO initiatives are taken seriously. Jackie also highlighted the significance of accessibility in SEO and provided a checklist of web accessibility guidelines.

Overall, day one of MozCon 2023 covered a range of topics related to the future of search, including ranking changes, offensive SEO strategies, brand authority, and navigating complex systems. Attendees were encouraged to stay engaged through social media using the hashtag #MozCon.