SEO communities around the world are struggling to get back to normal after COVID-19. Ahrefs is looking to highlight different communities globally to see if we can reignite some of them. If you want your community featured, send me a message. Raleigh, North Carolina, is where I’ve called home for more than a decade. It’s a community that I know and love, so I’m featuring it first. It also has one of the largest and oldest SEO communities in the world. But why Raleigh? And what makes it special? Let’s find out! History of SEO in Raleigh A lot of the SEO history in Raleigh goes back to a single company: Websourced. I’m told that, at one point, this was one of the largest digital marketing companies in the world. That was 20+ years ago and be
SEO meetups
We’ve got a few different groups in Raleigh, and we’ve been lucky enough to keep them free for people over the years, thanks to some amazing sponsors. This isn’t easy, though. Most of the similar groups in the U.S. have gone to a membership model and/or have fees for attending the events. It’s always a struggle to keep the lights on. But we’ve industry email list been lucky to have people passionate about the SEO community who spend a ton of time and great effort to make these events happen. On top of that, we’re lucky to have a talented pool of local speakers, a community that supports new speakers, and enough recognition to a point where we (sometimes) pull in bigger speakers.
Raleigh SEO Meetup
Raleigh SEO Meetup labels itself as the most successful SEO meetup in the U.S. This was definitely true at one time, and we could pull 150–200+ people for our monthly events. We’ve had a lot EL Leads of formats like conference-style presentations, informal hangouts, live audits, SEO training sessions, lightning talks, and discussion panels over the years. In the good times, we had nice event spaces and provided food and drinks. In the bad times, we were at a restaurant, bar, or even a library. We tried going back to in-person events after COVID-19, but we just don’t have the draw yet. We had some great speakers, but there was little interest in the events. It might be that people lost the
