10 Things We Learnt From Brighton SEO 2019

Posted On: 19th September 2019
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Read Time: 1 Minute
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Last week a few members of the Echo team went to Brighton to take part in one of the world’s biggest SEO events. What did we learn? Keep reading!

 

If you haven’t already heard, Brighton SEO is a huge twice-yearly search marketing conference. It brings together some of the best in the business and hosts a fantastic range of talks about the latest updates, trends and tactics to help all those listening do their job just that little bit better.

Here are some of the things we took away from our visit:

1. Google Is Moving To Real-World Signals

In a great talk about the future of SEO, Greg Gilford highlighted that Google is becoming smarter and smarter (and don’t we know it!). In the same way Google moved away from old school black hat tactics such as white text and bad links, Google is looking less at keyword-to-keyword matching and more at real-world signals such as reviews, links to local entities and matching the intent of the user (we’ll touch more on this in a minute).

2. SEOs Love Memes

Beetlejuice’s Guide to Entities and the Future of SEO from Greg Gifford

3. Simple Marketing Campaigns Work Best

We learnt just how many marketers blow big budgets on marketing campaigns that just don’t mean a whole bunch. If your advert is too complicated to explain, it’s probably not right. Keep things simple and get the right message across.

Here’s a great example:

4. Content Shouldn’t Just Be About Length – It’s About Being the Best

Although having a good amount of content IS important for SEO and rankings, the focus should now be on making sure that it answers the questions users are asking and providing them with the best answer, rather than writing the same sentence again and again in different ways.

5. Keyword Research Is Changing Too

When carrying out keyword research many SEOs will focus on search volume when determining terms for their campaign. But as Google becomes smarter it recognising intent more than ever. Are users looking for advice on moving home, looking for a quote to sell their home or trying to book a moving company? Google now has a better understanding which means you’ll need to take this into account when completing the research for your SEO campaign.

6. You Need to Analyse Your Business and SEO Competitors

We’ve seen many times people get confused between business competitors and SEO competitors. These are different and need to be treated differently too. SEO competitors, are the websites that rank above you for the terms you want to be in the top positions for – although there is often an overlap between these and your business competitors, you’ll need to bear in mind the difference as it means you’ll be looking for different things during your analysis.

7. Google My Business Questions and Answers Aren’t Always That Helpful

We’ll just leave this here…

8. Not Enough Marketers Are Using Google Posts

Google posts is a free way to post updates to your Google My Business profile that shows in the results when users search your business name. This is a FREE way to tell Google and online users more about your business, services/products and promotions. Are you utilising it?

9. We Love Free Things – We Love Them Even More If We Can Eat/Drink Them

(Thanks SEMrush)

10. You Can’t Ignore SEO Anymore

According to a recent research project, 34% of companies do not invest more in SEO because they say it is hard to prove effectiveness, 7% because business owners or decision-makers do not like it and 6% because their previous experience has been poor. However, research shows that the effectiveness of SEO is more recognised by 85% of people – showing just how important it is for online businesses.

Struggling with your SEO strategy? Give us a call on 01733 286646 or drop us an email and our team are more than happy to help.

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Leah Brown at Echo Web Solutions
Leah Bull
Digital Marketing Manager
A real keyword geek at heart, Leah has over 4 years experience in SEO, PPC and CRO now working as the team lead at Echo. She loves trying and testing new techniques and strategies and sharing them for others to enjoy too.

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