I live and work in Tempe, which puts me squarely in the middle of the Phoenix metro and close enough to most of Arizona that travel is rarely complicated. When an event organizer in Tucson, Flagstaff, or Chandler needs an SEO speaker who can show up prepared and speak from real experience, I can usually make it work.

What I Actually Talk About

My background is in technical SEO, custom schema markup, and structured data. Over fourteen years working with clients through Salterra Digital Services, I have run site audits, rebuilt content architectures, and watched Google change the rules more times than I can count. My talks pull from that work — not from slides I borrowed or trends I read about last week.

The topics I cover most often include:

  • Advanced schema markup and what structured data actually does for visibility
  • How generative AI search engines are reshaping organic traffic
  • Technical site audits and what most teams miss
  • Content strategy built around search intent, not word counts
  • Local SEO for businesses serving a defined metro area

If you have a specific angle you need covered for your audience, I am open to a scoping conversation before I say yes or no to an engagement.

The Arizona SEO Scene

There is a real and active community around search marketing here. I co-host the SEOST / SEO Spring Training conference in Chandler each year with Clint Butler. That event brings practitioners together for a working format — not a pitch-fest, but sessions where people actually learn something and leave with something actionable. That same philosophy carries into every talk I give.

I also run SEO University, a live six-week cohort for people who want to understand search marketing at a level that holds up when the algorithm shifts. Teaching that program keeps me honest: I can not hide behind vague frameworks when I have a room full of people asking direct questions.

Serving Phoenix Metro and Beyond

Most of my local engagements are in the Phoenix metro — Tempe, Scottsdale, Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert, Peoria, and Glendale. I also speak at national events and will travel for the right fit. If your conference is outside Arizona, reach out anyway. The conversation does not cost anything.

For audiences in the Phoenix area specifically, see the Phoenix SEO speaker page. If your event is in Scottsdale, there is a Scottsdale-specific page with more detail on what works well for that market.

What Organizers Usually Want to Know

Format flexibility matters. I can do a keynote, a breakout session, a panel, or an internal lunch-and-learn. The content shifts depending on whether I am speaking to a room of marketing professionals, a company all-hands, or a group of agency owners. I tailor rather than recycle.

I am a US Navy veteran, which shaped how I approach preparation and clarity. I do not show up with a generic deck. If I take your engagement, I will ask questions about your audience and build something that fits.

Before You Reach Out

A few practical things worth knowing: I take a limited number of speaking engagements per year. I prefer events where there is actual audience intent to learn — not sessions padded into a sponsorship package. And I do not charge a standard speaker fee that I am hiding from you; if you want to know what an engagement costs, I will tell you directly after I understand the format and logistics.

You can read more about my broader speaking work and how I structure talks on the main SEO speaker page.

Why Arizona Is a More Interesting SEO Market Than It Gets Credit For

People sometimes assume that the important SEO conversations happen in New York, San Francisco, or Austin. The Phoenix metro is one of the fastest-growing business markets in the country, with a concentration of mid-market companies, regional franchises, and professional service firms that have real search marketing budgets and real competitive pressure. The SEO challenges in this market are not smaller than those in larger metros — they are in some ways harder because fewer local agencies have the technical depth to address them well.

When I speak to Arizona audiences, I draw on specific examples from this market: how local pack rankings in Phoenix split by neighborhood and service type in ways that matter to a business serving the East Valley differently from one serving Peoria or Surprise. How a Tucson-based business competing with Phoenix-headquartered competitors needs a different content and authority strategy than a business competing only locally. These are not hypothetical scenarios — they are problems I have worked through with actual clients.

How Speaking and Consulting Connect

Some of the best client relationships I have had started at speaking engagements. Not because I used a talk as a sales pitch — I specifically avoid that — but because when someone sees how you actually think through a problem in real time, they get a clearer sense of whether your perspective is useful to them. That is a more honest filter than a discovery call with a pre-built slide deck.

I do active SEO consulting through my consulting practice alongside the speaking work. The two inform each other: what I see in active client work shapes what I bring to the stage, and the questions I get from speaking audiences surface things I need to think harder about. That loop has been useful for keeping both sides of the work honest.

What a Productive First Conversation Looks Like

When an Arizona event organizer reaches out, the most useful first conversation is about fit, not just availability. I want to know: what is the audience hoping to leave with? What level of technical depth is appropriate? What other topics are already being covered at the event? And what does success look like for you as an organizer?

With good answers to those questions, I can usually say within the first conversation whether I am a genuine fit for the engagement or whether someone else would serve the audience better. I would rather have that conversation honestly than take an engagement where I am not the right choice.

Formats That Work Well for Arizona Audiences

The format matters as much as the content. A forty-five minute keynote at a chamber luncheon calls for a completely different architecture than a ninety-minute breakout at a regional marketing conference. For Arizona audiences specifically, a few format observations from doing this work for years in this market.

Lunch-and-learn sessions tend to work well for small-to-mid-size Phoenix businesses where the owner or marketing lead is attending. Ninety minutes is usually too long — people have operations to run. A focused forty-five minute session with fifteen minutes of Q and A often gets higher engagement than a longer session that loses the room after the first hour.

Breakout formats at events like SEOST work well for practitioners who want to go deep on a specific topic. That audience already has the foundational vocabulary, so the session can skip the basics and spend more time on the kinds of edge cases and judgment calls that practitioners actually face. That is a format I enjoy because the questions in the room are sharper.

For more on format options and how to figure out which one fits your event, the SEO speaker page walks through the considerations in more detail.