BrightonSEO - Day 2 Summary

It’s important to remember BrightonSEO’s tagline: ‘a long way from a room above a pub’, when talking about Day 2 of the conference. Viaduct Generation, alongside most of the attendees, paid homage to the origins of the conference by going to the pub the previous night. When the Friday morning of BrightonSEO rolled around… well, you can imagine that some of the VG team were a little groggy.?

By some miracle, the more responsible members of the team made it to the 10am start. With the promise of some great talks, exciting discussions and free coffee, the rest of the team brushed ourselves off and went head-on into BrightonSEO day 2.? Seeing as our ‘split up and look for clues’ methodology worked so well on day one, we decided to keep on the same track.?

If you haven’t already, check out our BrightonSEO April 2022 Day One blog .?

Auditorium 1: The Main Stage

The Main stage promised some awesome talks over the second day of BrightonSEO. VG set up camp in the huge Auditorium 1 on the Friday as members of our team rotated through the different stages.?

SESSION 1: Content Management

The content management talk discussed many of the pain points for content writers, editors and managers everywhere. All three talks discussed the quality of the content in conjunction with output, user experience and readability.?

Emilia Korczynska - How we scaled our content ops from 4 to 40 posts a month in under 2 months?

Emilia had a tough job opening up the Main Stage Friday morning. Luckily enough, by covering the age-old business struggle of balancing content quantity with quality, she had a captive audience.?

Emilia enlightened us with her content strategy, which she calls the Content Ethics System. This system involves the delegation of tasks across a team of writers, editors and proofreaders in order to streamline the entire process whilst maximising content creation.?

The Content Ethics System employs a ratio of 10:2:1 of writers, editors and proofreaders.

Emilia made sure to hit home on the need for extremely detailed, thorough briefs. Being super specific in your briefs enables writers to produce high-quality pieces of content that stay consistent over time.

Using Emilia’s system, editors produce detailed briefs including:

• Titles and headings
• Talking points (intro and conclusions)
• Images with captions
• Text links

Once the writer has written the content, it is first checked by the editor to make sure it hits every point in the brief. After this, the proofreader does a final check of the copy before publishing the content across all social channels.

Such a simple strategy has worked wonders for Emilia and her team, taking them from 17k to 27K monthly visitors (an increase of 53%), an almost 100% increase in organic keywords and a 500% increase in organic keywords on the first page in just 9 short months.

Adrian Imms - Drowning in content? How to tackle ‘digital hoarding’?

Adrian Imms , a digital content specialist at the University of Sussex gave an insightful talk that went against the grain for many content writers out there. Adrian’s points resonated with the old adage of ‘quality of quantity’. Adrian rightly pointed out that content creators are sold on the idea that the more content that they pump out, the better. After all, they’re creators, it’s in their name.?

Cutting a client’s down even by half to have solid content that is topical and doesn’t duplicate data can be very effective in your strategy.?

This may mean deleting a lot of content, which can be sacrilegious for many. Adrian explained that creating an extensive amount of content can end up being more harmful than beneficial. He argued that deleting content is actually a skill in itself for content creators.?

Doing the research to learn what content can be deleted is necessary and important. What are the problems? Many clients will most likely put up a fight.?

When you’re doing a big clear-out, you’ll want to keep this or that. Realistically? It all ends up sitting in the attic never to be looked at again. The same applies to this content.?

The deletion of content centres around user experience. By “clearing the clutter” the users will be able to find the content that they want more quickly, more easily and will also notice a dramatic improvement in the service provided.?

Emily Hill - Content readability for SEO?

Considered a grey area by many, Emily from Write My Site prompts us to ask why Google cares about readability, especially seeing as it’s not officially a ranking factor.?

Emily argues that instead of focusing on ranking factors, we should look at the wider issues of accessibility and usability. If visitors to our site can't understand the content on your page, how can we expect them to engage??

Given the average UK adult’s expected reading ability, it is highly likely that a significant chunk of our audiences will find our content difficult to read, even if they are specialists in the field.

You don’t have to dumb down your content to amend it for readability. Emily put theory into practice by showing us some tools that we can use to optimise for readability. These included:

• Readable - this tool that highlights the differences in how your copy appeals to your addressable audience—those with high proficiency in your subject matter—and a mass market audience.
• SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant - most marketers will have used this before, but the tool gives you a plain language score.
• Wordpress SEO Plugin - again, a tool known to many. Using a traffic light system, the tool analyses readability factors such as too much passive voice, paragraphs that are too long, and other similar metrics.
• Grammarly - though Grammarly is not an SEO-focused tool, it can still help with readability analysis and help your writing to be more succinct.
• Hemingway Editor - referencing Ernest Hemingway’s terse prose style, this editorial tool can assist you in making your writing bold and clear.

Of course, there is always an element of personal judgement, but these tools can assist you throughout the writing process and in proofreading checks.?

Emily demonstrated that you really want to cap your sentences at around 20 words. Using simpler language can have a sizeable impact on content readability. All in all, Google simply wants us to make our content nicer to read.?

Catch up with Emily’s slides here

SESSION 2: Creativity

Max Hoppy - How they teach you to be creative at Google?

Max Hoppy , Chief Instructor and Co-founder of Bind , then shared some techniques for creativity in marketing and beyond.?

‘Where do you have your most creative thoughts?’

34% said while exercising.

20% said in the shower.

13% said while falling asleep.

2% even said while on the toilet.?

But how do we master this creativity? Max explained that we need to navigate the ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ states of mind.?

• The "alpha" state allows us to create as our conscious and unconscious minds expand.?
• The "beta" state is where our subconscious and conscious minds contract, limiting creativity.?

The environment we’re in is critical to access these different states. Not only this, "we need stimulus". Creativity occurs when random links are unexpectedly and revolutionarily drawn between two or more realms. He put forward the ‘three Rs’ for creativity:?

• Related worlds - thinking about where and how this problem has been solved before.
• Revolution - changing the rules and thinking differently about a problem.
• Random links - forcing connections between unrelated thoughts.?

Max concluded with his Golden Rule: do not mix reductive and expansive thought sessions in the business. Segregating these sessions with clear signalling (perhaps, scheduling them on different days) protects the "alpha" thought processes and nurtures creative thought-structures.

You can find Max Hoppy’s slides here.?

Aaron Rudman-Hawkins - The uncomfortable truth about link building and what you can do about it…?

Aaron Rudman-Hawkins of the Evergreen Agency interestingly addressed the widely contested and competitive realm of link building. Despite clients commonly demanding arbitrary link-building KPIs, Aaron outlined how to better understand the "link reality" of your client to avoid wasting time and money on unnecessary link building.?

The shift from ‘link-building’ to the sexier-sounding ‘Digital PR’ isn’t to glamourise the role, he argued, it marks a shift in the focus of PR campaigns.?

Most link-building comes from low-quality sources such as "mummy bloggers”, whilst higher quality links are secured rarely and randomly. Aaron argued our approach to link-building needs to shift via a content-first approach. By creating truly insightful content which promotes a good user experience, high-quality,? organic links will come.?

Aaron underlined that content is scalable, measurable, and provides a guaranteed ROI. Aaron’s talk seemed to align with the core values of SEO to promote useful, quality content organically.?

Take a look at Aaron’s slide deck here.?

Corrie Jones - How to create genuinely compelling content for your customers

Corrie Jones of Untapped Digital compared compelling branded social media content to a good first date: authentically exciting and creating a desire for more.?

Corrie underlined the social-media holy trinity: customer data, creativity, and psychology.?

Psychographics, particularly on social media, classifies people according to their attitudes and aspirations: what do they dream about? What strong opinions do they hold? She recommended ensuring that your content is creatively social-first and "fit-for-purpose". Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience… would you care? The average brand engagement on socials is <1%.

"Social media is the world’s largest focus group"

Corrie outlined the power of leveraging social media content features for engagement. Using the example of Instagram Reels Visual Comment Responses, she demonstrated how brands can generate consistent engagement and value through daily customer engagement.

It's time to move away from criticising "vanity metrics" and start leveraging them to propel your brand, she argued. Corrie urged us to disrupt the stigmas of ‘the social media manager’. She makes a case for the social media manager as at the front-line of identifying "water-cooler" trendy content that is #relatable.?

View Corrie’s slides and transcript here.?

SESSION 3: User Experience

Grecia Garcia, PhD - No more excuses: how to get your team doing UX as a part of your digital marketing now?

Grecia Garcia from Oban International spoke about the importance of UX, sharing tips and resources to improve user experience including simple A/B testing and experiments. This talk would be an incredibly useful introduction to UX for many starting out in their careers or those wanting to gain foundational knowledge.?

Grecia explained the different user journeys for different landing pages. A user on a product category will behave very differently than on a homepage, for example. She also explained the importance of localisation for UX as users display different behaviours in different countries.

Recommending tools such as UXtweak , UsabilityHub , Google Optimise , and HotJar , Grecia discussed how improving UX should be data-driven, not simply intuitive. Heat maps are particularly useful to identify the parts of the page that catch users’ attention.?

Give someone 5 seconds to look at your website and tell you what it’s about.??

Take a look at Grecia’s slides here.?

Jake Gauntley - How to leverage SEO when your brand site doesn’t actually sell anything?

If my brand’s website doesn’t actually sell anything, I don’t need SEO, right? Wrong. As Jake Gauntley , SEO Account Director at Reprise Digital , explained in his talk your brand site acts as your official shop window. SEO maximises the visibility of your catalogue in that shop window, bringing more traffic to your site.?

Not only that, but SEO for your website can help protect your brand and prevent misinformation about your products. Your website can be an informational hub for customers who need help, add value, and gather data that can be used in your campaigns. Using toilet paper as a surprisingly effective example, Jake’s talk was an insightful and interesting exploration of SEO for non-selling sites.?

You can find Jake’s slides here ?

SESSION 4: Strategy

Azeem Ahmad - How to get Buy-In (and ?$ too!) from your Management, with an ROI Driven Organic Content Strategy

Azeem Ahmad spoke to the complexities of creating a sustainable and long-term content strategy and built on ideas from Andi Jarvis ’ keynote presentation about “bothism''. Azeem showed how we can gain buy-in and develop trust by taking an ROI approach to SEO and PPC strategies for long-term reliability and sustainability.?

As of January 2022, ‘Tracking ROI in Digital Marketing’ returns 15,800,000 results.?

A well-quoted stat is that on average, 20% of organic traffic will convert into leads. 14.6% of leads turn into sales conversions on average. This means that is a website had:

Of 16,194 website visitors, 3239 would become leads. Statistically, this would mean 386 sales.

But what about the cost??

Let’s say this website paid ￡4000pcm for digital marketing.?

That would be a cost of ￡10.36 per sale. Think about your client, is this feasible??

Azeem shed light upon the value of mid/low performing channels for high trust/ buy-in for SEO and PPC strategies. As SEOs, we can’t bank on high-performing, high-trust unicorns.?

Azeem stressed the importance of holistic multi-channels frameworks that can work interdependently.?

He finished up the talk with three golden rules:

1. Show the ROI of your organic content.?
2. Demonstrate multi-channel thinking.
3. Use the trust vs. performance model.

Take a look at Azeem’s deck here.?

Sophie Brannon - SEO Strategy: Where the F**k do I Even Start?

Sophie Brannon outlined her go-to approach to complex clients - surprisingly enough, the website is the last step.?

1. Gathering data. Sophie stressed the importance of understanding the business goals and success metrics of your clients and mapping out their target market and profile.?
2. Use an (ever-growing) audience funnel (7 steps now?! Remember when it was 3?)
3. Performs a competitor gap analysis to glean content opportunities. Do not rely on just this step! As always, think outside the box and get creative.?
4. Keyword mapping. Get your sh*t organised to avoid cannibalisation and structure your strategy.?
5. Planning out content based on her Stage I insights. Only after a thorough audit does Sophie start considering the website and any existing issues it may bring up.
6. Prioritise high impact, low effort tasks.?
7. Ongoing Evaluation. A content strategy is not a ‘set it and forget it’ task, figure out what works methodically.?

Sophie's slides can be found here.?

Omar Odino and Diana Avelar: How Western Union Achieved Business Results Using AI and Mar-tech as a Game Changer

These days, you really can buy anything online - even a potato with your face! That was an example given in a presentation by Diana Avelar (Head of SEO Strategy) and Omar Odino (Chief Growth Officer) at Kleecks , discussing how AI and Mar-tech can boost SEO strategy. In a world of booming e-commerce, the landscape is competitive and customers have high expectations.?

Technological change is fast, organisational change needs to catch up.?

Marketing technology and artificial intelligence can empower your SEO strategy and revolutionise the SEO value chain. The pair concluded on the power of Kleecks to optimise your SEO strategy to reduce costs, boost revenue and give marketers more time.?

Find Omar Odino and Diana Avelar’s slides here.?

Auditorium 2: Absolute Digital Stage

The absolute digital stage was pretty aptly named as some of the talks discussed topics that would usually be tear-inducing for most marketers. Particularly us in content. Luckily, we were in the safe hands of our talented speakers that looked into technical SEO and what search will look like in the future.?

SESSION 1: Site Performance

Louise Towler - How to improve Core Web Vitals on a WordPress website?

Does your WordPress website look amazing but run at a snail’s pace? Louise Towler of Indigo Tree presented on the topic of how to improve the Core Web Vitals of your WordPress site.?

Louise recommended loading fonts locally onto your hosting, auditing and reducing third party code, fixing 4xx and 3xx errors, and removing unused JavaScript. For images, she recommended specifying dimensions and converting them to WebP, preloading images and excluding them from lazyload.?

Louise packed so many actionable suggestions into such a short presentation!?

View her helpful slides here.?

Crystal Carter - Why security is the new go faster stripe?

We all know that page speed and website security are key ranking factors, but how do they impact each other? In this talk, Crystal Carter , head of SEO communications at Wix , explored how improving your website’s security can also increase your site speed for both users and search engines. Funny and engaging, Crystal’s talk featured great tips for boosting security and speed on your website.?

SESSION 2: Future of Search

Tom Greenwood - Web design for people and planet?

Tom Greenwood , founder of Wholegrain Digital and author of Sustainable Web Design , spoke about a topic close to our hearts: the environmental impacts of web designs and SEO. As a self-proclaimed ‘sustainability nut’, he explained that we need to be more sustainable in web design.?

Pointing out that the emissions created by the internet are huge, Tom’s talk focused on how a new approach to web design can improve the sustainability of our industry by reducing server load and the amount of data transferred through networks.?

Sustainability in SEO and user experience go hand in hand.?

Arguing that we need to shift our mindsets, he gave a range of suggestions such as reducing autoplay videos, using more efficient coding languages such as C, C++, Rust and JavaScript, and choosing to rely less on big or coloured images.?

These small changes can reduce our website’s energy usage and improve their performance, providing a better user experience for everyone.?

Kara Thurkettle - Search in the Metaverse?

By 2026, 1 in 4 people will spend at least 1 hour a day in “The Metaverse”.

That was one of the statistics Kara Thurkettle , Senior SEO Manager at Kaizen , opened with in her talk about search in the Metaverse. By 2026, 30% of the world’s organisations will have products and services ready for the Metaverse, she also cited.?

In her talk, Kara spoke about how augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology will impact consumer behaviour and search. Augmented shopping and NFT marketing activities are quickly becoming a reality. DFS are ahead of the curve with this by enabling customers to try a sofa in their space through their smartphones .

Augmented searches are increasing, such as search what you see and user VR/AR queries. Kara pointed out that product demos and virtual tours can be used by brands to enhance user experience. Aka: Google’s turn-on.

Kara then gave some tips on optimising for AR/VR shopping using keyword research, creating visual strategies, implementing 3DModel Schema for AR/3D images and many more techniques. Closing the talk with a discussion on the ethics in the Metaverse, Kara left us all with a lot to think about. ]

You can find Kara's slides here .

Eilish Hughes - SEO in a sustainable future

Eilish Hughes of Tug argued that SEO has a responsibility to become more sustainable. She spoke at length about Ecosia , the search engine platform which plants trees for every search, and how to optimise for this search engine as it is adopted by more people.?

In an unrelated note, we loved her tweet on Monday!

SESSION 3: Data and SEO?

Micka?l Serantes - The Top Overlooked Data Points that Add Value to Site Audits

Going beyond the classic KPIs, Oncrawl’s Micka?l Serantes focused his presentation on ways to enhance your site audits using often-overlooked data points.?

Being an SEO is like being a private investigator.

Micka?l discussed how we can compare KPIs to analyse the impact and correlations of them, digging deeper to get better insights. For example, he recommended combining backlinks with word count or core web vitals to enhance audits.?

Essentially, better tools and more data can help us better analyse what strategies are having an impact on SEO.??

Harry Sumner - Stat Packages: The Secret Recipe to Getting SEO Implemented

Harry Sumner , Senior Search Director at iCrossing UK presented on the topic of stat packages made by trusted sources such as Google and Facebook.?

He focused on the tools Prophet and CausalImpact , which can illuminate the potential growth of a site if it implements a good SEO strategy. The platforms contextualise organic growth against competitors’ SEO efforts, and build the business case for SEO to get greater buy-in.?

Harry recommended using Prophet to get initial sign-off on SEO strategies and compare to competition, then using Causal Impact to prove value after around 3 months. This, he explained, will show the cumulative impact driven by the strategy.?

View Harry’s presentation here.?

Nils De Moor - SEO Tool Overload, Google Data Studio to the Rescue!?

Do you ever feel that you use lots of different specialist SEO tools, resulting in a sea of data that can become overwhelming? Nils De Moor , Cofounder and CTO of Woorank , spoke about the benefits of using Google Data Studio to streamline your data and build a single source of truth.?

He demonstrated this by creating a query sheet in Google Sheets, and explaining the Levenshtein Algorithm which measures the edit distance between two sequences. According to Nils, everyone in the auditorium could call themselves a certified data scientist! *adds to CV*

You can find Nils' slides here.

SESSION 4: Search Intent

Adriana Stein - How to determine search intent for a B2B audience?

Adriana Stein , Founder & CEO at AS Marketing , took a close look at how psychographic marketing is playing a role in search intent, and why SEOs need to be aware of it. Adriana highlighted the differences in search intent for B2B audiences and B2C, and how to get it right.?

Psychographic marketing forSsEOs is the process of attempting to understand customer thoughts and feelings to better help provide the right SERPs. This is becoming even more critical as Google updates are increasingly centred on UX.

The main difference between B2B marketing is the buyer committee, Adriana explains.?

In any business, you will have defined your target audience and target market. You may even have designed customer personas. However, in B2B sales, you’re not trying to convince one person to buy the product, but multiple. Chances are, for a software company, there’s not going to be just one person calling the shots.

Creating content that focuses on the specific buyer committees is key. Adriana broke up this process, emphasising the importance of streamlining buyer personas to tailor the content towards them.? A key part of this was to conduct keyword research and cluster these to figure out which keywords are more B2B focused rather than B2C, and creating keyword maps to decipher what keywords are best for certain pages. For instance, using more specific keywords on pages later in the buyer journey.??

View Adriana’s deck here.?

Koray Tu?berk Gübür & Rebecca Berbel - The secret life of queries: parsing, rewriting, and SEO?

Google does not use search terms to rank. SEO is a shifting landscape.It was very interesting to hear Koray Tu?berk Gübür of Holistic SEO & Digital and Rebecca Berbel of Oncrawl bounce off of each other as they broke down some very complex points on semantic SEO.?

They began by looking at more primitive versions of Google, and how they functioned when it came to determining search intent. Since then, many algorithms have been released; the pair went on to demonstrate how many different patents are now used to determine search intent across the internet.?

At this point, they showed their expertise by explaining how these complex patents work in relation to learning search intent through semantics and keywords clusters. They focused on building topical relevance between keywords to group targeted queries.?

Rebecca Berbel explained how Google now attempts to transform queries into questions to figure out the semantically related keywords that are related to specific searches. As such, it is able to better predict what people are searching for.?

Google uses many different aspects to determine the right question, taking into consideration the time of the day and the location in which the particular search is being made. Early versions of Google focused largely on synonyms, but now semantics are what Google is using to help learn the secrets behind search intent.?

View their slides here.?

Felipe Bazon - How to use search intent to dominate Google Discover

Felipe Bazon talked about how to dominate Google Discover with search intent. Felipe was able to provide some key insights into the importance of Google Discover and how Google web stories can be invaluable, even in a short space of time.?

He began by explaining that if you understand what kind of content your consumers are searching for, you don’t even need to rank as Google Discover can do the legwork for you.

“Every search is intent”

He used the example of one client’s website who were receiving a lot of organic traffic seemingly from nowhere. Google Web Stories was the reason behind these spikes, as users engaged with topical stories. Felipe went on to demonstrate the dramatic spikes in organic traffic after learning the search intent of his consumers.

Felipe advocates the value in consistently providing new Google Web Stories. He also shows the value Google Discover in gaining traffic outside of the SERPs and fostering multi-channel thinking.

Felipe’s slides can be viewed here.?

Syndicate 1 & 2: Kleecks Stage?

SESSION 1: Health & Wellness

Chloe Smith - Menstrual health in SEO?

Chloe Smith of Blue Array SEO opened up a conversation about menstruation in SEO, highlighting the need for education about menstruation and the language around it to break stigma in a generally unreceptive industry.?

69% of menstruators have gone into work instead of calling in sick with menstrual health issues.

Chloe highlighted the cost of such presenteeism is much higher than that of absenteeism: damaging to both people who menstruate and people who don't.?

To tackle this problem, she suggested that managers lead by example by starting the conversation so that their subordinates can continue it. For instance, she suggested integrating menstrual health education into onboarding workflows, providing free period products in the office, and introducing menstrual health days.?

Not only will these things make your employees more productive, she argued, but they will feel physically and psychologically safer and happier.

You can see Chloe’s deck here.?

Kat Nicholls - How to take care of yourself when researching/writing about difficult topics?

Happiful’ s Kat Nicholls underlined that not all subjects are created equally. If we approach writing about cake the same way we do writing about mental health or global tragedies, we will inevitably end up with burnout and psychological strain.?

"When we take information in, it changes us”?

To take care of ourselves, Kat outlined a proactive approach that permits and reminds us to consistently check in with ourselves to refine and improve our experience. She encouraged us to ask ourselves:

• Are you taking your breaks??
• Are you re-communicating and upholding your boundaries??
• Are you relying on your support system??
• Are you engaging in your decompression activities??

She argued that we are humans, not robots, and that we need to remember this.?

Kat’s slides can be viewed here.?

Charlotte McIntyre - Staying sane: how to prioritise & manage your mental health as an SEO

Charlotte McIntryre , Marketing Manager at Huler , gracefully shared her mental health toolkit for navigating the SEO industry. Stress, depression and anxiety accounted for 50% of all work-related health cases in 2020/21, she explained, highlighting the importance of mental health at work.?

In the SEO industry, our mental health can be damaged by clients with unrealistic expectations of their SEO, growingly unmanageable workloads, work from home troubles, and, of course, the frustration and stress of algorithm changes.?

To prioritise our mental health in SEO, Charlotte urged us to draw (and stick to) clear boundaries, avoid constant comparisons to others, and ask for help when we need it. Her point ‘control the controllables’ resonated with us; there’s only so much you can ever do so it makes no sense to stress about the uncontrollable things such as Google algorithm updates.?

Throughout the talk, she reiterated that especially in the realm of SEO, "mental health is everyone's responsibility".

Take a look at Charlotte’s slides here.?

SESSION 2: Auditing

Luis Bueno Tabernero - How to do an ASO Audit Like in the 90s

Luis Bueno Tabernero , SEO and ASO Manager at Photobox and founder of the Expats SEO community in London, used ‘90s movies as a running theme in his presentation about App Store Optimisation (ASO) audits.?

His step-by-step ASO audit included:?

• Audience analysis: who is the app for? Who are your competitors targeting?
• Audit the app features: download and try out competitors’ apps and analyse the way they make you feel.?
• Pay attention to the visuals of your app’s page: ensure an eye-catching appearance that makes it clear what type of app you’re selling, what the benefits and features of the app are and what makes it unique.?

Luis recommended focusing on the graphics and screenshots to the app look appealing. A preview video can increase app downloads by 20-30%, he pointed out. Another important aspect to audit is the metadata - is it optimised for App Store or Google Play??

He also foregrounded the significance of reviews. Luis recommended replying to all app reviews, regardless of whether they are positive or negative.?

Luis’ slides full of 90s film references and top tips can be found here .

Rasida Begum - Dealing With the Roadblocks in Technical SEO?

Rasida Begum , Senior SEO Consultant at BrainLabs , discussed some of the difficulties that can arise with technical SEO. Beginning with a slide showing the infamous black and blue/white and gold dress that went viral on the internet because people interpreted it as different colours, Rasida Begum drew a comparison with technical SEO where people see different sides of the picture.?

42% of brands do not have a good understanding of technical SEO.?

This means that there is a major knowledge gap, creating difficulties for tech SEOs trying to demonstrate the benefits of their work.?

To overcome this problem, Rasida recommended that:

• SEOs should use clear and simple language when explaining audits and deliverables.?
• Educate stakeholders about SEO with personalised information that is tailored to their role and concerns
• Share results (with clear before and afters) with stakeholders.?

Given that stakeholder buy-in is one of the big challenges that prevents SEO strategies moving forward, she explained that educating stakeholders is one of the best ways to get buy-in and overcome roadblocks in technical SEO.?

Limor Barenholtz - Don’t be a Cannibal: Identifying and Avoiding Keyword Cannibalisation

Limor Barenholtz , SEO Director at Similarweb and self-professed SEO anthropologist offered insights about keyword cannibalisation.??

She recommended some ways of identifying keyword cannibalisation:

• Checking Google Search Console to see how many pages rank for the same term.
• Keeping a map of URLs to keywords.
• Using site: search to search the target phrase.
• Monitoring organic traffic share over time.

Limor shared advice about how to fix the problem, beginning by creating a keyword map, isolating duplications, ensuring each URL has its own unique phrases, and then aligning the site and PPC efforts to this plan. She also recommended auditing website content and rankings frequently. SEOs should focus on creating topic clusters rather than chasing keywords, she mentioned.?

You can access Limor’s slides here.?

SESSION 3: INCLUSIVITY

Ian Helms - Not just pride month: crafting LGBTQ+ inclusive campaigns year round

Inclusivity is essential, but getting it right seems to be an obstacle that many companies still trip over. Ian Helms , Director of Content Marketing at Wpromote addressed this in his talk, pointing out many examples in which companies have attempted to show their inclusivity of the LGBTQ+ community, but have missed the mark.?

It is about showing your support all year around, and not just highlighting your employees who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community in June (Pride Month), he argued.?

This Tokenism is actually what holds inclusivity back, and these employees should be recognised just the same as any one else, at any time throughout the year. This is an issue we focus on at Viaduct Generation, so we pretty much had to hold ourselves to our seats to avoid jumping up and down.

Rainbow washing is also another issue that Ian has seen happen all too often. He explained that whilst they symbolic rainbows are very much an important part of showing your support, it’s important to not only use the right rainbows but that covering your branding in logos isn’t quite enough.?

Changing your logo to a rainbow during pride month is great, but it shouldn’t stop there. Sending emails that have gender inclusive language is a small change that can be made with little to no fuss but can have a huge impact on making a whole community feel included and valued by a company.?

You can view Ian’s slides here. ?

Billie Hyde - Is your site accessible? No? Why the f*ck not?

Billie Hyde , Learning and Develop Manager at SALT.agency brought a tonne of flair to her talk, starting by asking everyone in the room whether their websites were accessible. After a small show of hands she addressed everyone whose websites were not accessible:?

“Why the f*ck not?”

She explained that it is very easy to make your website accessible, yet many organisations still overlook or ignore accessibility in web design. many people who are excluded from using your website if you don’t prioritise accessibility. Millions of people are excluded from using websites if you don’t prioritise accessibility.

15% of the world’s population lives with a disability.

Billie explained many ways that people can make their websites more accessible, starting with simply asking questions of how they can make a difference. She also recommended using the many tools available online to identify aspects of a website that currently make the site inaccessible. For example, she suggested having buttons replacements to help those with certain disabilities manoeuvre your websites more easily, or implement image alt text which is often overlooked.

She concluded by noting that a simple yet great place to start is by sending out a written commitment to consumers to show your awareness and intention to make improvements, holding yourself accountable and in turn building trust and loyalty.?

You can view Billie’s slides here.?

Izabela Wisniewska - Running business around a 2 year old: lessons learned from mum/business owner life

Izabela Wisniewska , co-founder of Creatos Media , provided an enlightening talk on the challenge of running a business while raising children. Using her own experience as a mother who runs a successful business, she shared her insights to help those who want to do the same.?

It’s no surprise that time management is key to juggle important deadlines or meetings. Ending on an inspiring note, Izabela told the audience to be curious, intuitive and brave just like your children.?

SESSION 4: Digital PR

Maddie Davies - Using digital PR strategies to widen your target audience?

Maddie Davies of Propellernet opened the Digital PR Showcase looking at an issue all PRs eventually run into: adverse clients who don’t understand link building SEO.?

She immediately connected with everyone in the room with anecdotes of times she had either under or overestimated a client’s SEO knowledge. Highlighting the importance of patience, Maddie demonstrated ways we can remove the complexity of explaining PR to clients - no matter what questions or reactions they might have.?

Isa Lavahun - How to be the ultimate double agent: PR and link builder?

Digital communications consultant Isa Lavahun spoke of her challenges of combining her previous role in a traditional PR with link building.

By listing the metrics of traditional PR and link building side by side, Isa illustrated how both fields are simply using different means to reach the same ends. She also made us laugh when she used the “Return of The Mullet” as an example to demonstrate how PR’s can use different softwares and platforms for trend forecasting.?

From all the great advice Isa gave, the main takeaway was to use all resources available to create original, linkable assets that fill a gap in this very crowded market.

View Isa’s deck here.?

Jane Hunt - Pain vs performance: the influence of digital PR on our mental wellbeing

Jane Hunt , co-founder of JBH Digital PR agency , closed the showcase by focusing on mental health. A refreshing end to a day full of talks that focused on clients, KPIs, and search engine users, her talk hit home with many PRs and SEOs who are familiar with burnout. Through real emotion and sincerity, Jane was able to connect with the audience using stories of all the times she had felt overwhelmed by her workload, or disappointed in herself for not achieving KPIs.?

The part of her presentation that most resonated with us was when she explained that her agency decided to drop their biggest clients in order to ensure the mental wellbeing of their employees. This revelation left us all thinking: How far am I willing to go to ensure the mental wellbeing of everyone in my own agency?

You can look at Jane’s slides here.?

Showcase Stage

The showcase stage on the second day repeats talks from the day before, we covered the topics on our Thursday post. ?

KEYNOTE

Kirsty Hulse - Compassion, Confidence, and Giving a Few Less F**ks

We’re not going to lie, our energy levels were falling by the late afternoon. Even with coffee and sugar waffles being dished out in the exhibition space, we needed a bit of a pick-me-up. Confidence coach Kirsty Hulse’s keynote speech sorted us right out.?

In her uplifting and funny presentation, Kirsty discussed the topic of confidence. As a former SEO agency owner, she was relatable to SEOs whose confidence is tested by a dynamic and ever-changing industry. Kirsty now runs her own confidence coaching business Roar! Training and performs as a stand-up comedian.?

She explained that she once struggled with confidence. She worried that she was incompetent, unattractive, not good enough - all worries that everyone in the audience had also experienced at some point in their lives.?

Kirsty tackled common misconceptions about confidence. Many people assume that confidence is a fixed trait - some people are confident and some aren’t. They also assume that confidence is binary - you either have it or you don’t.?

“Our language around confidence is a mess!”?

Instead of being binary or fixed, she argued that confidence is simply about being more you, a concept that all of us at Viaduct Generation loved. Kirsty also brought in some great comparisons between the language of business and confidence.?

In SEO terms: we’re constantly chasing ‘ranks’ and obsess over ‘beating our competitors’.?

Kirsty shared how this can be immensely damaging to our confidence.?

Some of the most memorable points of her keynote were her tips on managing nerves. Kirsty compared nerves to really needing to wee. “It’s a passing psychological phenomenon”. As soon as the cause of your nerves is over, you feel completely fine. She also showed us the ‘and what’ method.?

“I’m really nervous about public speaking.” … “And what? It is nerve wracking”?

Kirsty’s talk was a thought-provoking end to the BrightonSEO conference. As our team all left the Brighton Centre along with our fellow marketers, we thought about the disconnect between online SERP competitions and us, in person, inspired and energised for another great evening of networking and socialising.?

BrightonSEO shows us how we can share knowledge to better our skills and practice. Can we bring this to our businesses? Kirsty encouraged us to work together to promote happiness and confidence, not just in our ability as SEOs, but in ourselves. One common theme of BrightonSEO 2022 was the need to look outside of our competitors and focus on originality and authenticity to succeed. Let’s stop thinking about each other as competitors online. Let’s act just like we would in person, celebrating each other’s wins and empowering the SEO industry.?