My favorite moments from Ahrefs Evolve 2025

Ahrefs Evolve 2025 was an outstanding time. Phenomenal talks, beautiful location, great food—the whole nine yards.

I learned a ton because conferences like that are an absolute firehose of information. There were 20(!) sessions—including two panel discussions—in just two days. Lots to take in and absorb and act on there. But some of my favorite moments happened outside of the presentations:

Telling Tim Soulo about how I discovered Ahrefs

I discovered Ahrefs through the now-defunct Elementor Talks podcast on an episode from 2018. I started doing web dev stuff in 2020, which is probably when I listed to the episode. That's five years ago! I was just beginning to get serious about web development and Elementor Talks was practically my first introduction to a lot of topics within development, SEO, and the WordPress ecosystem.

It was definitely a chance encounter with life-altering content, and at some point I signed up for their newsletter (sign up for the content, check it weekly for the memes). During the past few years, their blog and newsletter has pretty much been my #1 source for relevant and insightful content on SEO and digital marketing. Today, I catch most of their content in my RSS reader, and I've listened through a couple of episodes on the Ahrefs Podcast (top-notch content, as always).

I was able to catch Tim Soulo in between sessions to tell him this story and he said (in a pretty thick Ukrainian accent), "Wow, that was years ago and my accent was a lot thicker, so you really stuck through it." I love getting share how a connection with a product evolves sometimes over years.

Meeting the writers behind the blog

As previously mentioned, I’ve been reading the Ahrefs blog for several years, and it was really great to meet the people behind the content. It’s one thing to read an author’s byline or message them on LinkedIn, and it’s quite another to talk to them in real life. There are real humans who are taking the time to write real things, and those real things happen to be pretty impactful in my journey as a writer, marketer, and strategist.

It was very handy to be able to pull up Zotero I could so refresh my memory on the specific articles that had impacted my thinking. Three specific examples:

• "AI Content Is Short-Term Arbitrage, Not Long-Term Strategy" by Ryan Law: Great article on the diminishing returns of cranking out slop content with AI for the sake of quickly boosting rankings. Quality over quantity wins in the long-term, and for that you need thoughful human-powered creation and curation. That article inspired my thoughts for "The Future of Writing is Bright."
• "Welcome to Zero-Click Search. Please Leave Your Traffic at the Door." by Louise Linehan: This article was pretty much my first introduction to the real traffic impact due to AI-powered search. Instead of clicking on a website from a list of Google results, people are just reading the AI summary and stopping there.
• "Best PPC Tools: My 9 Top Picks Under $300" by Mateusz Makosiewicz: Classic listicle-style article with a list of tools. This one was super helpful for me because I'm relatively new to PPC and online ads in general. Learning about the tools gave helpful context to how people are managing these types of campaigns. Plus, I learned from this article that many social platforms have public portals where you can see every ad currently running—great for seeing what your competitors are doing.

Meeting Cyrus Shepard

Cyrus Shepard's talk "What Google Doesn't Tell You About E-E-A-T" blew my mind, and I eventually got to meet him and tell him so. He was a super cool guy and really down to earth. The man is one of the biggest voices in SEO, and it's cool when you meet someone playing at that level and they just put you at ease. He even took the time to say goodbye on his way out from the after party.

Discussing project management and internal operations with other attendees

The thing about a conference like this is that most attendees work for digital agencies or do digital marketing in-house. Many of them are focused on doing the work or on leveraging the tools that help you get the work done versus thinking about how the work actually gets done.

I had the opportunity to ask a few attendees about project management and how they managed their web/SEO work in their companies. Based on my conversations (and my experiences working in different organizations), lots of places struggle with having the right processes, systems, and communication channels in place so people can work together well.

If the opportunity arises in the convo, I'll usually recommend Basecamp as a project management system (it's delightfully simple and caps out at $3600/yr—much better than pay per seat options). I also had the opportunity to talk with one attendee about how Midwest Roofing uses Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) as a turn-key framework for running a business from the operational side.

Sometimes it's good for folks to know that you don't need to build your systems from scratch and that essential business software doesn't have to cost so much.

Lastly, I love helping people see that they're doing project management without realizing it. For example, I had the opportunity to encourage one attendee to get a CAPM cert from PMI or simply go for the PMP if he had the required experience. He really liked the idea of something that would give him latitude as he progresses in in current role. And with "How is AI impacting our work?" being a key theme of the conference, I think project management is a skill that will always be needed because it's all about helping humans accomplish a goal, together. AI can't really touch that.

1:1 convo with Mark Schaefer

I didn’t know anything about Mark Schaefer before the conference, except that he was going to be speaking. On the first day I picked up a copy of his book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World from the Ahrefs booth, and I flipped through the acknowledgments at the very back of the book. Reading an author's acknowledgments is a good way to get into their head and what they think is important. Who you thank reveals something about who you are. From his acknowledgments, I learned that Schaefer is a man of faith.

I also learned from his bio that he had earned his MBA under Peter Drucker, who is known as the father of modern management. In my own life, Drucker's article "Managing Oneself" has been one of the most impactful reads—ever.

I happened to cross Schaefer at the afterparty, and I let him know that I really appreciated his talk about the lasting importance of creativity in the age of AI. From there, I ended up having the opportunity to talk with him over an Old Fashioned for about an hour about tons of cool things like:

• How he integrates his faith and his work. (It's about bringing a positive angle wherever you go.)
• Whether an MBA is worth it today (Depends—it's a good question—where are the gaps? Why do you want it? You'd need it if you want to teach, but not as a marketer.)
• What it was like to study under Peter Drucker. (He was a genius—a genius is someone who can take the complex and distill it to its essence. He was also very kind. Loved being a father and mentoring people.)
• Self-publishing vs. working with a publisher. (Publishers have lost their power. If you have a strong brand, you don't need a publisher.)
• The importance of building a personal brand. (Personal brand = freedom of choice)

It was an absolute masterclass, and it's amazing how people will open up if you simply ask good questions.

The best part was that he shared real stories from his experience, and those stories are priceless. Schaefer was so kind, wise, and generous. He shared everything he could in that time, and he helped clarify many pressing questions for me. That conversation was a major reason I moved my blog from WordPress to Ghost immediately after the conference.

Playing foosball with Jean-Guy Leconte

At time of writing, Jean-Guy Leconte is the Head of SEO at AT&T. At Ahrefs Evolve he was a panelist on a discussion titled "Getting Buy-In: Making SEO Make Sense to the C-Suite" along with folks from Hubspot, Microsoft, and WPP Media.

This was my favorite panel because there’s a lot of confusion and turmoil in the SCO world due to the way that AI is massively impacting search, and it's definitely a challenge getting the C-Suite to appreciate the technical nuances of search and its business value. During the panel, Jean-Guy Leconte stood out as a beacon of optimism as he encouraged attendees to have confidence in the work that they were doing for their companies. When asked what he's afraid of right now, he said, "I’m afraid of fear itself. Fear leads to bad decisions."

After the panel, I got to pick his brain about setting expectations and building team cohesion. He reminded me of the importance of managing up—it's one of those pieces of advice that bears repeating over and over.

At the afterparty, I noticed that he was casually knocking a ball around on the foosball table, I asked if he wanted to play. He said, "Sure" and then proceeded to smoke me. I probably made one point for every 15 he scored on me.

I quickly discovered that he grew up playing foosball in high school—with three balls at the same time. He taught me the mechanics of the game and how to always keep my left hand on the goalie—you always need to be playing defense.

It was one of those super cool random life experiences where you just have to be in the right place and the right time. When else are you gonna just play a random game of foosball with a high level employee at one of the biggest telecom companies?

Walking the Embarcadero at sunrise

On the day after the conference, I made it a point to wake up early so I could see the sunrise over the San Diego. I found a neat coffee shop called Spill the Beans that was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel.

The route followed the Embarcadero, which is a walking path right along the edge of the bay. It was a beautiful, clear morning, with super still water. I loved getting to FaceTime my wife and kids while looking out over the water and enjoying an Americano and an a egg and bacon sandwich with a Serrano/Habanero bagel.

Plus, my middle son loved seeing all the "bigh boawts."

Overall, it was a wonderful, peaceful end to a couple of action packed, insight-filled days. I took tons of notes, along with pictures of almost every slide shown, so I can always go back and revisit the learnings for a long time. But the key memories and experiences are what stay with you and color the experience. Those are the memories I'm most thankful for and the ones worth sharing.