The 8 greatest takeaways from BrightonSEO for digital entrepreneurs [April 2023]

Writer: Sophie Roberts, Managing Director of Koozai.

Couldn’t make it to BrightonSEO this Spring? Then you definitely’ve come to the suitable place! When you’re working in digital advertising and marketing, or had been simply too busy spinning plates to make it to all the talks this time round, then you definately’re most likely right here searching for the most important or most related takeaways to your digital advertising and marketing technique.

Fortunately for you, we despatched a military of website positioning, PPC, PR and Content material specialists from the Koozai staff right down to the UK’s largest search advertising and marketing occasion on Thursday and Friday this week. In between a spot of lunch and a beautiful stroll on Brighton’s well-known seaside, we’ve coated all the fundamental talks and conferences in website positioning, Content material Technique, Hyperlink Constructing/PR, PPC and Paid Search so that you don’t must.

As regular, BrightonSEO didn’t disappoint and this time round most of the talks had been extra targeted on technical website positioning, content material, and the affect of AI than in earlier years. Whereas there have been some actually fascinating new learnings and insights to remove from practically all the conferences we attended, there are a number of headline takeaways that significantly stood out to us as being value a point out for these of you that weren’t in a position to attend.

So, when you’re searching for the highest line on what the newest developments are in search advertising and marketing, in addition to a number of the skilled perception on the forecasted affect of recent expertise corresponding to ChatGPT and what it means to your digital advertising and marketing, then learn on!

With out additional ado, right here is our tackle probably the most salient learnings from BrightonSEO to your website positioning, digital PR, PPC or content material advertising and marketing…

Table of Contents

The highest 8 takeaways from BrightonSEO (April 2023):

First up is our senior technical website positioning and knowledge guru, Gary Hainsworth. A passionate website positioning with over a decade of expertise within the trade, Gary was all around the main conferences at BrightonSEO this week and was impressed with a lot of them, significantly these on the Friday, together with:

Claudia Higgins – “Breaking down silos: how built-in knowledge units improve website positioning methods”
Claudia O’Shea and Sergey Lesnikov – “Methods to create a tradition of search”
Will Critchlow – “Methods to generate 8 million website positioning take a look at concepts”
Michael Boosalis – “Profitable Google’s coronary heart with CMS”
Chris Spann & Anna Uss – “Succeeding at scale: How Snyk doubled their site visitors utilizing Lumar & programmatic website positioning”
Jon Earnshaw – “Optimising for the SERP multiverse: a 4-step course of for fulfillment”
Anna Moragli – “Taking what you are promoting to the following stage with the ability of ecommerce website positioning”
Emanuel Hoch – “How PPC opened up probably the most environment friendly Content material Monetization Method for website positioning”

Listed below are Gary’s greatest takeaways from BrightonSEO this April…

1) The largest takeaway for Gary was AI and the way forward for digital advertising and marketing.
There’s a variety of dialogue in regards to the execs and cons of AI for digital advertising and marketing. The reality is we don’t understand how Google and different search engines like google and yahoo will take care of this, or if the content material generated will probably be “recognized” to them.

Generated content material has been seen as unhealthy for a very long time for search engines like google and yahoo, however customers are rather more accepting. Nearly all of customers are fantastic with it getting used, however there’s additionally an enormous push on customers eager to know what’s AI content material. How this will probably be used when it comes to authorship and EEAT is but to be totally decided.

Layoffs from large tech corporations and the elevated use of AI have occurred on the identical time, so there are worries within the trade. This can go away some companies behind, however typically we see an extra push into on-line advertising and marketing. How this ranges out will stay to be seen, however embracing AI to streamline your work is vital to remain forward.

2) The second greatest takeaway for Gary was website positioning and Web site construct expertise. Web site speeds and crawlability are details for this, so the main focus is on server response instances, JavaScript frameworks and the way totally different units see your website. The simplistic model is to maintain your website quick and to provide options for crawlers.

This isn’t all the time possible and people websites with bigger budgets will be capable to accommodate this, giving them an extra increase. For smaller websites and budgets you will need to get servers quick in your goal space as a precedence and to get a website which is navigable with JavaScript disabled.

Our proficient Head of Operations, Kelly-Anne Crean, additionally took just a little day trip from her desk to affix the Koozai staff in testing BrightonSEO, and attended a plethora of conferences, together with:

Nick Vines – “Why web page velocity issues, WITHOUT mentioning conversions as soon as”
Aymen Loukil – “What your Google Lighthouse rating hides from you”
Amir Glatt – “Optimizing 1 million web sites for Google core net vitals”
Sam Oh – “Absolutely automated hyperlink constructing – is it actually attainable?”
Tom Pool – “Primary automation hacks for website positioning”
Robin Allenson – “Automation recipes for website positioning success”
Genie Jones – “Entity website positioning: use the SameAs tag in schema to fully revolutionise the sport”
Ian Helms – “Methods to persuade even the pickiest editors to take website positioning extra severely”
Anthony Barone – “Methods to future-proof website positioning technique for SME companies”

Right here is Kelly-Anne’s greatest takeaways from the occasion:

3) The largest takeaway for Kelly-Anne was from Nick Vines and why web page velocity issues. The web could be the fifth greatest polluting nation if it was a rustic. This statistic simply blew my thoughts and made me actually take into consideration the significance of creating websites quicker and never simply from a customers viewpoint. By making websites quicker reduces the carbon footprint.

How can SEOs assist?

Use a inexperienced internet hosting supplier
Offset your carbon price
Make your web site quicker

Use this carbon calculator the place you possibly can estimate your web site’s carbon footprint.

4) The second greatest takeaway for Kelly-Anne got here from the discuss on automation from Tom Pool. Automation just isn’t there to take your job, we should always use it to do the ‘boring’ stuff. You may present Chat GPT with prompts that can assist you write code to make use of in Google Apps Script. This can assist with duties it’s important to do on a regular basis like formatting sheets or slides and making them uniform corresponding to the identical font color, font, measurement and so forth. By doing this it may possibly actually enhance the effectivity of your work.

A Sussex native, our Head of PR & Content material, David Wilson, took the quick journey to BrightonSEO this week, and visited quite a few the conferences on the Friday too, together with:

Niki Mosier – “The worth of function snippets Rohan Ayyar- STOP Dissing Rankings!”
Carrie Rose – “Proudly owning TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube SERPS”
Andy Timmins – “Utilizing Python with (Chat)GPT to assist automate content material creation”
Greta Munari – “The redemption of content material automation: scale distinctive content material to 4M+ pages”
Ashley Liddell – “The place ought to – and shouldn’t – AI & ChatGPT play a job in your website positioning technique?”
Ashleigh Midday & Sunny Matharu – “Your metrics are my metrics”
Chloe Smith – “How content material design impacts website positioning & accessibility”
Dr Kiran Webster – “Why empathy ought to be a key participant in your advertising and marketing technique”
Prashant Puri and Lomit Patel – “Information-driven website positioning & content material technique to cut back your buyer acquisition prices”
Dirk Schembri – “Making a future-proof content material technique with Topical Clusters”
Sante J. Achille – “Strategies and instruments to plan and create your content material”
Toju Duke – “The brand new period: embracing AI applied sciences in advertising and marketing”

Right here’s his tackle the BrightonSEO conferences he attended…

5) The large takeaway from the primary morning session on the Friday for David was the affect that social media platforms are having on search outcomes. Carrie Rose’s discuss confirmed how a pattern is beginning to emerge in that Google is beginning to prioritise person generated content material over branded content material. That is prone to proceed to be the case, significantly if corporations over use instruments like ChatGPT to spam the SERPs. On the identical time, increasingly more individuals are turning to search engines like google and yahoo like TikTok and Pinterest first. All of this factors to at least one factor – the significance of “off web page website positioning”, influencer advertising and marketing, and PR to make sure that your manufacturers and merchandise are being really helpful by others and proceed to dominate the SERPs.

6) The second large takeaway for David was about featured snippets from Niki Mosier. Featured Snippets are a extra helpful advertising and marketing device than individuals first suppose. It’s not unusual for individuals to dismiss them, as a result of the person doesn’t must enter your website to get the knowledge they want. Nevertheless, Niki’s presentation highlighted that 17% of SERPs have them, they usually cowl about 50% of the preliminary SERPs on most cellular units, so you possibly can’t actually keep away from them. We additionally noticed some actually fascinating examples of how featured snippets can truly drive substantial site visitors, model authority, and consciousness.

Our Senior Paid Specialist, Joaquin Lopez (additionally affectionally recognized within the Koozai staff as ‘Quags’), attended a number of conferences on the Thursday too, together with:

Rachel Pearson – “TikTok for search advertising and marketing”
Carlos Meza – “Is content material the king in trendy website positioning?”
Dale Bertrand – “Cease writing website positioning articles: templated content material that ranks”
Hinde Lamrani – “Congratulations, you’re going international! What you want somebody instructed you.”
Sarah Presch – “The psychology behind inclusive worldwide website positioning methods”
Natalia Witczyk – “Engines like google past Google”

Listed below are his high takeaways from BrightonSEO this April…

7) The largest takeaway for Joaquin was from Rachel Pearson. TikTok adverts don’t require massive advert spend to attain nice efficiency. The platform has a low barrier to entry making it an ideal place to begin promoting and reaping rewards. TikTok doesn’t penalize customers for deleting and reuploading content material if efficiency is weak. The place different social media platforms dislike this apply to the purpose the place it may possibly have antagonistic results, TikTok incentivizes customers to curate their content material to place the most effective model of their message on the market. Don’t be afraid to delete posts that haven’t fairly landed, simply you should definitely take a look at totally different captions or hashtags and optimise the place attainable to get probably the most genuine model of your story. Utilizing that data, having optimised captions and subtitles utilizing researched key phrases, ought to offer you a greater end result. Combining this natural technique with the convenience of TikTok promoting, you’ll be capable to increase your advertising and marketing and technique for fast wins.

8) The second greatest takeaway for Joaquin got here from the discuss on the psychology behind inclusive worldwide website positioning methods from Sarah Presch. An incredible takeaway from Sarah Presch was to optimise for the person and never for Google. Simply because your web site seems first doesn’t imply that the content material customers are searching for is there. Ensuring you will have precious content material is a should but it surely’s additionally vital to have correct and related H1s and descriptions that match the content material you’re offering. Folks have a tendency to recollect the primary and final phrases from a bit of information so having the suitable key phrases in the beginning and finish of your advert is essential. Ensuring that probably the most precious data is in the suitable place might result in you successful the press. Utilizing emojis is an effective way to draw that click on as our eyes divert to apparent variations in a search outcomes. What’s much more fascinating is that no matter high quality of product, buy behaviour is led by who has probably the most critiques. Our brains are socially wired, and we now have a pure intention to mimic others round us. Asking for critiques out of your prospects and displaying them in your product pages or in your advert may simply be the lacking piece that can assist you convert a click on into a purchase order.

That’s it! For these of you that wish to study extra about these subjects, our digital advertising and marketing assets are additionally value testing as they embrace a whole lot of articles, whitepapers, and digital advertising and marketing guides.

As and once we discover them, we’re additionally linking above to the slides from the BrightonSEO conferences we attended, so you possibly can recap when you missed one thing or had been unable to make a selected discuss.

Alternatively, if you wish to study extra about how website positioning, digital PR, PPC or content material advertising and marketing can leverage your digital advertising and marketing, then get in contact with us or try certainly one of our on-line digital advertising and marketing coaching programs.