Brighton SEO September 2023

The One Where A Lot of People Talked About AI

Search Marketing Update – My Takeaways from Brighton SEO September 2023

For the second time this year, I am just back from Brighton SEO with a headful of updates, a massive list of new tools to look at, and a long to-do list of edits and additions to my digital marketing training. I could only make the main conference this time, and missed the fringe festival talks on PPC, Paid Social and Measurement but am looking forward to catching up on those when the recordings are made available.

The two days of SEO talks were heavily dominated by discussions around AI. Will it steal all our jobs? How can we use it best? Which tools work? And how do we stop all websites ending up essentially being the same? You could feel the fear. Pretty much everyone came to the same conclusion though. AI will be a tool that can help us get rid of some of more boring parts of our job, so we can spend more time on creativity, empathy, emotional work that will ultimately be rewarding. Oh and we need to QA everything it does. Over and Over. And then some.

As always I’ve tried to pick out a highlight from each talk I went to. So here goes. In my words, not theirs. A quick tour through two days of talks in just a few bullet points…

Ivana Flynn – How To Properly Use SEO, Branding and Brand Protection to Lower Your CPA

Your product might be amazing, but you also need to promote your brand. Protect your brand name – legally, with your PPC and through your SEO. Find Ivana on LinkedIn

Diana Wiredu – Master Your Messaging Beyond SEO

Good copy can’t fix bad messaging. Your messaging articulates the most important things about your brand and your product. Know your One Key Message, then translate it into strong copy. Make sure that matches with what your customers care about. Find Diana on LinkedIn

Tereza Litsa – How to Keep the Human Element Using AI for Content and SEO

Know your content strengths. Find the right tools. Rebuild your own processes using those tools. Train your team. Train your tools. Retain quality control! Find Tereza on LinkedIn

Alice Rowan – Write Your Own Website in 12 Steps

Every bit of content that you write is a chance to market your business, but no matter how good your copy is, no-one is going to read every single word! Sometimes the best copy you’ve written, is the copy people don’t need to read. Find Alice on Twitter/X

Chima MMeje – 15 Teardown Examples of Money Keywords Guaranteed to Lift Conversion

Put the immediate added value at the top of your content. Remove all the BS that stops people understanding what you do. Include Social Proof from your customers. Ask the right questions so when you get Social Proof, it highlights the factors you want to show off. Find Chima on Twitter/X

Pascale Bergmans – SEO Story Effect Optimisation

Aristotle outlined 3 modes of persuasion, in this order. Pathos – make us feel something.

Logos – is based on numbers and facts. Ethos – shows you off as a person and depends on credibility but this comes last. People don’t really care who you are, they care how you make them feel. Find Pascale on LinkedIn

Ryan Broderick – Memes in the age of AI

The guy that made the pope wear a Balenciaga puffer jacket was high on mushrooms when he had the idea. He had a hallucination of it then made the AI make it – so was this still creative? Find Ryan on Twitter/X

Jack Roberts – Scaling Up – How To Create Unique Content With Open-Source Tools

Use Chat GPT as an efficiency driver. It could create your first draft, create variations, or localise your content for different languages. It’s great for that but always QA the output. Find Jack on LinkedIn

Vanda Pokecz – Are SEOs Like Architects? An SEO Product Manager’s Story

SEO are like architects. Let them be involved in the foundations and you will get things right from the start. If you bring an architect in too late in the build, your bridge won’t stay up long. Find Vanda on Twitter/X

Gus Pelogia – Think Like a Product Manager and Optimise Beyond the SEO Bubble

Your CEO doesn’t care about Ranking, Visibility or other things in the SEO bubble – they care about Revenue. Find Gus on Twitter/X

Greg Gifford – The Secret to Being an SEO Superhero

You must be different from other agencies to get clients. You must do a good job or you’ll lose clients. Why do you do stuff the way you do stuff? Do you reassess or do you just keep on truckin’? Take a step back. Think about what other perspectives you could take to adjust how you approach SEO for individual clients. You’ll be more successful. Find Greg on Twitter/X

Billie Geena and John Mueller – An Update on Google Search

You don’t HAVE to follow Google updates – they come and go. And don’t hate Google for making them. Often updates reflect updated expectations by users and changes in the ecosystem. People want a great, useful experience on the web. Google tries to reflect that. Find John on Twitter/X

Everyone is still calling it Twitter.

Jess Peck – A Guide to Understanding Large Language Models and AI

Machines learn (or rather, can be trained) in lots of different ways. Some are like training a dog. Some are like teaching a primary school child. Some are just about pouring in tonnes of data and letting them look for patterns and relationships. This stuff is useful and helpful to understand before you really start using AI so put some time in! Visit Jess’s Website

Aleyda Solis – Embracing AI in SEO: How to 10x Your SEO Leveraging AI Bot

Aleyda talks very fast and there was a tonne of useful content in here. I need to go through the slides again and look a LOT of stuff up. Basically: there are so many things AI can help SEOs with – keyword research, writing meta content, identifying link building opportunities, content ideas (video and copy) – but they all need careful management and the right plugins to make sure the data you get is factual and up-to-date. Know which plugins to use. Write prompts carefully. And apply what you already know to the results you get. Find Aleyda on Twitter/X

Ellie Connor – How to Measure SEO Sustainability

The internet contributes to climate change more than air travel, and that grows as we use it more. What can we do? Reduce the energy needed to load a page. Reduce the user’s number of page loads. Make bot crawls easier. All of these things will also help your users use your page, and help your rankings. Find Ellie on LinkedIn

Anthony Leung – LinkedIn’s Secret Weapon: SEO Content

LinkedIn’s user base has nearly doubled in past 5 years. 46% of B2B traffic comes from LinkedIn so you shouldn’t be ignoring it or just posting once a month. The problem is getting engagement. Most people aren’t reaching anyone with their company content. Know what your audience cares about. Aim to stop them scrolling. Explain quickly what’s in it for them – you have 2 seconds to grab attention. For longer pieces, break up across the carousel with different headers or use a video. Find Anthony on LinkedIn

Ray Saddiq – Social is More Important for SEO Than You Think

Consumers are not stupid. They make micro decisions across multiple platforms to decide on who they trust, who they find credible and who they will buy from. This exploration and evaluation happens across search AND social. Stop considering them in isolation. Find Ray on Twitter/X

Meg Sharma – Level Up Your Content by Really Knowing Your Audience

People ask a question on Socials when they can’t find the answer through a Google search, so this is a good way to find ideas for content. Go into Facebook groups or Reddit or TikTok and look for your keywords. What are people talking about? Can you create content on that? Find Meg on Twitter/X

On the way home now and my brain is buzzing, with lots to go and look back over and even more to think about. Whilst quite a few people gave a talk on AI for this event, it was clear these are still very early days. A couple were great and really knew their stuff. At other times it felt a bit as if the keen kids had stuck their hands up to speak, then had a play and found something to say. It will be interesting to see how talks on AI shape up next year when speakers have more experience to share.

The next conference is in April 2024 and you can book your Early Bird tickets now on the Brighton SEO website. I’ve got mine. Do join me.