Brighton SEO – 20 Simple Search Marketing Takeaways from April 2022

The Glastonbury of Search Marketing – My Takeaways from Brighton SEO

The Brighton SEO conference pulls in SEOs and marketing professionals from all over the globe. Search Marketers come together to share learning, moan about Google, set Twitter on fire with love for each other’s talks and take some time out to get our heads around our ever-changing world.

But it can be daunting….  The first time I attended at least 70% of the content went right over my head. A few years on, and some of them still do – but don’t let that put you off.  Whether you’ve been doing this since the days of Ask Jeeves… or you’re a Marketing Apprentice who has been in your job a few months, you’ll come away able to do your job better.  I was delighted to see Leanne, one of my recent students here today.

So, my mission this time has been to distil each talk I have attended into a simple piece of advice. Hopefully these won’t go too far over your head…. The Twitter tag for the speaker is after each one, do follow them.

Day One – Thursday 7^th April 2022

1. Title Tag Rewrites – Don’t be scared of Google rewriting the title. Usually, the rewrite is better than yours – Google is showing that it understands your page and what users want and using that instead. @MordyOberstein
2. The 3 Pillars of SEO are Technical (does your site work?), Content (relevant, useful to your customer and discoverable) and Links (other sites like your content). Find your weakest pillar and work on it first @LidiaInfanteM
3. What is the Purpose of your SEO? It is Product Driven? Mission Driven? Or Story Driven? Use that to inform your content and link strategy @DBertrand
4. Set it and Forget it is NOT an option for Google Business Profile. Set reminders to make sure your photos are updated for seasonality, monitor your reviews, and check the photos people may have uploaded for you @ClaireCarlile
5. Make your SEO strategy user-based rather than competitor-based. Focus on storytelling, reviews, FAQs, suggested search, your online community, your company story – not just chasing high volume search terms @SEOTransformer
6. Your SEO reports are bloody awful. I don’t even have to look at them to know that. You are tracking the wrong stuff. You are overloading people. You are sharing pointless information – and a kitten dies every time you put Bounce Rate on a report @GregGifford
7. Monitoring and reporting are NOT the same thing. Split them out. Your client doesn’t care about most of the things you (should) care about @SimonLesser
8. Do you have lots of content on your Product Pages but very little on your Category Pages? You are probably putting your efforts into the wrong area. It doesn’t need to be long, but get the right long tail keywords onto your Category Pages now @PaolaDidone
9. Put time into your SEO Audit quotes to include stuff you can see with your own eyes and brain, not just what the tools say – User Experience, Look and Feel, Site Content and Behaviour – not just which links are broken @RLiraz
10. Avoid SEO f*** ups by including training on how to do things properly for your clients in your SEO Audit pricing @Aleyda

Day 2 Takeways

1. Remove unused Javascript. Form and map plugins only need to have their code on the particular pages they are used, not every page.  Use a performance plugin to only load that content on the contact page. A quick win to speed up your site. @LouiseTowler
2. Check and update all the internal and Social Media links to your site so they have HTTPS not HTTP. Check all the links on your Social profiles. Use Screaming Frog to check your site. This will improve load speed. @CrystalOnTheWeb
3. UX matters for SEO. Test your UX/CRO alongside your SEO because they do overlap e.g., adding copy to a Category page might pull in more traffic through better SEO, but might damage Conversion Rate because products are less visible.  @WillCritchlow
4. The UX process in a nutshell: generate ideas and identify issues, create hypotheses, measure the impact on conversions and justify the resources to make the changes.  You can do a lot of this with free tools such as Microsoft Clarity and Google Optimize. @ObanIntl
5. If there is stuff showing up for you in the search results that you don’t want: get the right stuff in. Identify your top brand queries. Find the gaps where you don’t have content.  Source experts and work with them to add content in those areas if it adds value to your audience.  @JakeGauntley
6. When writing B2B content, start by deciding which of the buying committee you are writing for. The End User? An Influencer? Or the final Decision-Maker? They may well be coming from different angles. @AdrianaKStein
7. Turn your Keywords into Questions – what questions can you transform your keywords into? Can your SEO work help you rank for that question and other equivalent questions? @KorayGubur @RebBerbel
8. Use different search intents to come up with clusters for your online content – what different reasons drive people to come to your site? Use those as your blog categories @SEOBazon
9. Don’t teach your people how to do something.  Work with them until they believe they can do it @Kirsty_Hulse
10. You know who’s a nice person? Most people.  For everyone that has been a dick to you, there are 2,000 rallying to support you @Kirsty_Hulse

So, the moral of this story – BrightonSEO IS for you…It doesn’t matter how early (or late!) you are in your marketing career.  It doesn’t matter if you are a content writer, a technical geek, a generalist, or a super specialist.  You can be the sort of person who seeks out company on the Solo Attendee WhatsApp for beers. You can be the sort of person who buys some sushi and has a night off with Netflix.  You can also be the sort of person who goes back to their room and writes a blog for the first time in years because they are buzzing with ideas.

Register for your Brighton SEO ticket now.  You can get access to all this edition’s talks online in a couple of weeks, or even better, come in person in October.