As the world of search and SEO is forever changing, it’s essential for us to regularly attend industry conferences to keep up to date with the latest goings on in the search marketing sphere. Last month, MEC headed down south again to attend Brighton SEO – one of the largest search marketing conferences in the UK – to mingle with other like-minded SEOs and soak up the latest tips and tricks. This year’s Brighton SEO played stage to a huge number of industry leading experts and search marketers from around the UK and welcomed its biggest attendance to date.
The one day free conference covered a range of topics and current industry trends with a huge focus on content and the future of SEO. Here are our key takeaways from this year’s event:
Malcom Coles – general manager at the Mirror and founder of Usvsth3m.co.uk
Ignore SEO, instead focus on creating compelling content to generate shares, traffic and drive links. Make content responsive for audiences both on desktop and mobile.
Matthew Barby – digital consultant at Wyatt International
Harness the power of influences, find the right audience and produce the right content. Identify the key content hubs, drill down on key authors and find the top influencers of popular content.
Fili Wiese, Kaspar Szymanski – ex Google, Gareth Hoyle from Link Risk - Reality of Search Panel
Make the effort to remove bad links and prove it to Google – simply submitting a disavow file was not a recommended approach. The panel also agreed that it is much more difficult to recover from a second penalty.
Julia Ogden – ex journalist and head of content at Zazzle Media
Journalistic principles will help to shape the future of digital marketing and content. Put the important facts first, find what is trending in the news, use quotes to add credibility and provide a variety of content formats. “Platforms change, content remains the same
Stacey Cavanagh – head of search at Techmark
Start building good habits and land some links. Generate buzz with offline activities and conduct surveys. Discover 108 ideas in 30 seconds to generate new ideas and expand on other people’s thoughts. Use tools to get the content in front of the right people
Tim Grice - Director of Search at Branded3
If you are already in the top five of Google search results you have enough links to be at the top. Look at customer feedback/reviews, focus groups, social listening and market research. Be creative and audience lead, insightful, newsworthy and entertaining.
Pete Campbell - Founder and Director at Kaisen
Native advertising lets you promote branded content to people who instantly love it because they are targeted based on their interests. If you have click bait headline, clever formatting and encouraging people to link- you’ll win.
Overall, this was a great conference, providing us with plenty of information to put into practice for our client campaigns, as well as inspiration to explore new approaches and industry tools.
