The 8 biggest takeaways from BrightonSEO for digital marketers [April 2023]

Writer: Sophie Roberts, Managing Director of Koozai.

Couldn’t make it to BrightonSEO this Spring? Then you definitely’ve come to the best place! If you happen to’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 definitely’re in all probability right here in search of the largest or most related takeaways in your digital advertising and marketing technique.

Fortunately for you, we despatched a military of search engine marketing, PPC, PR and Content material specialists from the Koozai team all the way 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 lined all the principal talks and conferences in search engine marketing, Content material Technique, Hyperlink Constructing/PR, PPC and Paid Search so that you don’t should.

As common, BrightonSEO didn’t disappoint and this time round lots of the talks had been extra centered on technical search engine marketing, content material, and the influence of AI than in earlier years. Whereas there have been some actually attention-grabbing new learnings and insights to remove from almost all the conferences we attended, there are a number of headline takeaways that notably stood out to us as being price a point out for these of you that weren’t capable of attend.

So, for those who’re in search of the highest line on what the newest developments are in search advertising and marketing, in addition to a few of the professional perception on the forecasted influence of recent know-how reminiscent of ChatGPT and what it means in your digital advertising and marketing, then learn on!

With out additional ado, right here is our tackle probably the most salient learnings from BrightonSEO in your SEO, digital PR, PPC or content marketing...

The highest 8 takeaways from BrightonSEO (April 2023):

First up is our senior technical search engine marketing and knowledge guru, Gary Hainsworth. A passionate search engine marketing with over a decade of expertise within the business, Gary was everywhere in the main conferences at BrightonSEO this week and was impressed with a lot of them, notably these on the Friday, together with:

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

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

1)  The most important takeaway for Gary was AI and the way forward for digital advertising and marketing.
There may be quite a lot 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 will cope with this, or if the content material generated shall be “recognized” to them.

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

Layoffs from large tech firms and the elevated use of AI have occurred on the identical time, so there are worries within the business. This may depart some businesses behind, however usually 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 necessary to remain forward.

2) The second greatest takeaway for Gary was search engine marketing and Website construct know-how. Website speeds and crawlability are details for this, so the main focus is on server response instances, JavaScript frameworks and the way totally different gadgets see your website. The simplistic model is to maintain your website quick and to present alternate 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 it is very important 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 a little bit trip from her desk to affix the Koozai group in trying out 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 internet vitals”
• Sam Oh – “Absolutely automated hyperlink constructing – is it actually attainable?”
• Tom Pool – “Primary automation hacks for search engine marketing”
• Robin Allenson – “Automation recipes for search engine marketing success”
• Genie Jones – “Entity search engine marketing: how one can use the SameAs tag in schema to utterly revolutionise the sport”
• Ian Helms – “ persuade even the pickiest editors to take search engine marketing extra critically”
• Anthony Barone – “ future-proof search engine marketing technique for SME companies”

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

3) The most important takeaway for Kelly-Anne was from Nick Vines and why web page velocity issues. The web can 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 perspective. 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 is just not there to take your job, we should always use it to do the ‘boring’ stuff.  You’ll be able to present Chat GPT with prompts that will help you write code to make use of in Google Apps Script. This can assist with duties it’s a must to do on a regular basis like formatting sheets or slides and making them uniform reminiscent of the identical font color, font, dimension and so on. By doing this it could possibly actually enhance the effectivity of your work.

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

• Niki Mosier – “The worth of characteristic 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: how one can scale distinctive content material to 4M+ pages”
• Ashley Liddell – “The place ought to – and shouldn’t – AI & ChatGPT play a task in your search engine marketing technique?”
• Ashleigh Midday & Sunny Matharu – “Your metrics are my metrics”
• Chloe Smith – “How content material design impacts search engine marketing & accessibility”
• Dr Kiran Webster – “Why empathy must be a key participant in your advertising and marketing technique”
• Prashant Puri and Lomit Patel – “Information-driven search engine marketing & content material technique to scale 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 massive takeaway from the primary morning session on the Friday for David was the influence 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, notably if firms over use instruments like ChatGPT to spam the SERPs. On the identical time, increasingly more individuals are turning to search engines like google like TikTok and Pinterest first. All of this factors to 1 factor – the significance of “off web page search engine marketing”, 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 instrument than individuals first suppose. It’s not unusual for individuals to dismiss them, as a result of the person doesn’t should enter your website to get the knowledge they want. Nonetheless, Niki’s presentation highlighted that 17% of SERPs have them, they usually cowl about 50% of the preliminary SERPs on most cellular gadgets, so you possibly can’t actually keep away from them. We additionally noticed some actually attention-grabbing examples of how featured snippets can really drive substantial visitors, model authority, and consciousness.

Our Senior Paid Specialist, Joaquin Lopez (additionally affectionally recognized within the Koozai group 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 search engine marketing?”
• Dale Bertrand – “Cease writing search engine marketing articles: templated content material that ranks”
• Hinde Lamrani – “Congratulations, you’re going world! What you would like somebody advised you.”
• Sarah Presch – “The psychology behind inclusive worldwide search engine marketing methods”
• Natalia Witczyk – “Serps past Google”

Listed below are his prime takeaways from BrightonSEO this April…

7) The most important 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 amazing place to start out 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 observe to the purpose the place it could possibly have opposed results, TikTok incentivizes customers to curate their content material to place the perfect model of their message on the market. Don’t be afraid to delete posts that haven’t fairly landed, simply you should definitely check 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 consequence. Combining this natural technique with the benefit 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 search engine marketing methods from Sarah Presch. A terrific 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 in search of is there. Ensuring you may have precious content material is a should however it’s additionally necessary to have correct and related H1s and descriptions that match the content material you might be offering. Individuals have a tendency to recollect the primary and final phrases from a chunk of information so having the best key phrases initially and finish of your advert is essential. Ensuring that probably the most precious data is in the best place might result in you successful the clicking. Utilizing emojis is a good way to draw that click on as our eyes divert to apparent variations in a search outcomes. What’s much more attention-grabbing is that no matter high quality of product, buy behaviour is led by who has probably the most opinions. Our brains are socially wired, and we’ve a pure intention to mimic others round us. Asking for opinions out of your clients and displaying them in your product pages or in your advert may simply be the lacking piece that will help 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 marketing resources are additionally price trying out as they embody a whole bunch 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 for those who missed one thing or had been unable to make a specific discuss.

Alternatively, if you wish to study extra about how SEO,  digital PR, PPC or content marketing can leverage your digital advertising and marketing, then get in touch with us or try certainly one of our on-line digital marketing training courses.