Webinars are a format I have spent a lot of time in, both as a guest and as a host. They have a particular set of advantages and failure modes that in-person events do not, and the way I approach them reflects that. The main failure mode is talking at people for 45 minutes with no real interaction. The main advantage is that you can go deeper on a specific topic than a conference session usually allows, and you can do it with a highly targeted audience that opted in specifically for that topic.

What I Bring to a Webinar

My specialty is schema markup and structured data, and webinars are an excellent format for this kind of material because I can share my screen, walk through real examples, and show rather than just tell. A lot of technical SEO concepts that are hard to explain verbally become clear when you can see what they look like in a testing tool or in search results.

This is one of the reasons I prefer webinars over podcasts for technical topics. A podcast audience only hears you describe what a piece of schema markup looks like in Google’s Rich Results Test; a webinar audience watches you paste it in and sees the validation pass or fail in real time. That difference between describing and showing is where most of the actual learning happens, and it is why I structure a good chunk of any technical webinar around live screen work rather than slides.

Beyond schema, the topics I cover in webinar format that consistently generate strong engagement:

  • AI search and answer engines: What is actually happening with Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT search — what signals these systems use, which content types get cited, and what businesses can do to improve their chances of appearing in AI-generated answers.
  • Technical SEO fundamentals: Crawl issues, indexing problems, site architecture decisions. These are topics where seeing real examples makes a material difference in comprehension.
  • Schema implementation walkthroughs: I can walk through building local business schema, FAQ schema, or service schema live on screen. Attendees who work with websites leave with something they can implement immediately.
  • SEO strategy for in-house teams: How to prioritize a limited budget and limited bandwidth, how to communicate SEO needs to leadership, and what metrics actually indicate progress.

Hosting vs. Guesting

I do both, and they are different modes.

As a guest on someone else’s webinar, I bring subject-matter depth on the topics above. I am comfortable with prepared presentation formats, fireside Q&A, and panel formats. I answer questions directly, including the ones where the honest answer is ‘it depends on your situation’ — I explain what it depends on rather than dodging.

As a host, I structure sessions with a clear learning objective, pace them to avoid the energy drop that happens around the 20-minute mark, and build in interaction rather than just bolting Q&A onto the end. I have co-hosted webinars through SEOST and through SEO University, where the webinar format is part of how we deliver live course content. Hosting also means owning the parts guests never have to think about — keeping to a schedule, redirecting a rambling question back to something useful for the whole audience, and making sure a guest who is nervous on camera still comes across well.

Where the 20-Minute Drop Actually Comes From

Anyone who has run enough webinars has seen the same pattern in the engagement data: attention holds for the first fifteen to twenty minutes, then attendance in the chat and question queue drops noticeably. It is rarely about the content itself — it is almost always a structural issue. A single unbroken presentation segment past that point loses people who are half-watching while doing something else. The fix is not shortening the webinar; it is breaking the middle third into smaller chunks with a poll, a direct question to the audience, or a screen-share demo that forces a change in pace. I build that break into every session I host, and I ask hosts to build it in when I am the guest.

Technical Setup and Production

I use a quality microphone and camera. I know how to share screens without creating confusion. I test everything before the session starts. These are basic things that many webinar speakers ignore, and they matter — poor audio quality is the fastest way to lose an online audience.

I am comfortable with Zoom, Google Meet, StreamYard, and similar platforms. If your event uses something less common, let me know early and I will get familiar with it before the session. I also do a dry run of any live schema demo beforehand on the actual site or tool I plan to use on screen — live demos fail in front of an audience often enough that I would rather find the failure privately first.

I also keep a backup plan for every live demo: a set of screenshots from the dry run that I can drop in if the live version breaks or the internet connection drops mid-session. I have used that backup exactly once in years of doing this, but the one time I needed it, having it ready meant the session kept moving instead of stalling out in front of the audience while I troubleshot a login screen.

Audience Types for SEO Webinars

The webinar format works well for a few specific audience types:

  • In-house marketing teams who want a focused session on a specific skill or topic without the logistics of an in-person training day.
  • Small business owner groups organized by chambers, associations, or industry networks who want a digital marketing session that does not require travel.
  • Marketing agency audiences where I am speaking practitioner-to-practitioner about advanced topics like schema, AI search signals, or technical audit methodology.
  • Course and membership communities that want a guest expert session for their members.

What I Need From Your Organization

To run a good webinar, I need a clear picture of the audience before I build the presentation. Who are they, what is their existing knowledge level, and what do you want them to be able to do or understand after the session? With that information, I build toward a specific outcome rather than a generic overview.

I also appreciate a moderator who is willing to actively manage the Q&A queue rather than just reading questions verbatim. Good moderation makes webinar Q&A sessions significantly more useful. A moderator who groups similar questions together, cuts off a question that has drifted off-topic, and saves the strongest question for last does more for the session than an extra ten minutes of unstructured Q&A time ever could.

For in-person speaking options, see the SEO speaker for events page. For the full overview of how I approach speaking engagements, visit the SEO speaker page.