Each year, the BrightonSEO conferences never cease to amaze with their line-up of speakers and workshops as well as the amazing opportunity it provides to learn, network and immerse yourself in all things search marketing.
After each edition, we usually like to share a recap that highlights what we thought were the most interesting conferences and key takeaways.
However, we want to change things up a bit this time around. While at the conference, I asked a number of attendees two simple questions:
- What was your favorite session?
- What was the key takeaway from that session?
Thankfully, what happens in Brighton doesn’t stay in Brighton. So without further ado, let’s take a look at our ultimate round-up of overheard at Brighton.
Overheard at BrightonSEO
“I particularly enjoyed Nathan Height’s ‘Diversifying beyond Google’ session.
The key takeaway for me was the importance of targeting more niche conversational keywords and incorporating these into our SEO content strategies.
While relevance has long been a key ranking factor and an indicator of quality content, his talk did emphasize how we – as strategists and content creators/writers – should consider adjusting our approach to better cater to the rise in voice search, Google’s AI search summaries, and the call for super-specific answers to our audience’s queries.”
– Leah Russell, Content Manager at Neural Edge
“The conferences are great, but the real magic happens outside the conferences. My favorite part of the day is meeting people from all over the world. Talking to people is often where I learn the most.”
– Omi Sido, Senior Technical SEO at Canon Europe
“I really enjoyed all three sessions in the Practical Technical SEO track; every single lecture was amazing. What stood out for me, though, were all of the little things, the very specialized SEO elements, that they spoke about. There are a lot of small things that nobody would ever think about like optimizing head elements in your page for website speed. Those small things on every page, that affect everything, are the things that are really overlooked and I’m glad they spoke about them because they can make a big difference when it comes to site speed, loading time and how Google actually reads your page.”
– Milica Kovacevic, Technical SEO at Geeky Tech
“There were so many great sessions today, but my favorite is probably ‘Is SEO killing curiosity?’ I really appreciated the idea that brands should be going beyond searchers’ original desire for finding an answer and instead trying to satisfy their different levels of curiosity. It was also interesting to learn that there are different profiles of curiosity and I realized that I’m something more of a clarity seeker in that sense.
The curiosity profiles help brands give different people what they’re looking for by appealing to different behaviours at different times in different formats such as clarity, novelty or exhilaration.”
– Lucy Inskip, Content & SEO Lead at Third Space Learning
“My favorite session was Lazarina Stoy‘s master class ‘Introduction to machine learning for SEOs.’ The key takeaway was how adding great context to something complex makes it so easy to understand. And on Monday, there will be a whole classroom of people who are going to use machine learning.”
– Roxana Stingu, Head of Search & SEO at Alamy
“Well, my favorite session so far was from Marcus Tober, ‘Are we in a race to zero clicks from search?’ I really liked his insights into showing the Perplexity.ai search and how affiliate links are being placed, even though that’s not quite what [Perplexity] is all about, that’s not their USP. That was a really interesting analysis, I really enjoyed that. That has been my favorite so far, but I must stress the day isn’t over, so there are lots of good talks coming up as well.
The key takeaway whenever I come to these events is always to be inspired and be practical. Take what’s good and apply it as quickly as you can.”
– Luke Gosha, Head of AI at StrategiQ
“My favorite session from the day was ‘How to grow traffic with a site-wide spring clean” by Jenna Kamal. The key takeaway, I’d say, is that it’s absolutely OK to cull your content. And you can still grow your traffic if you do so.”
– Charlotte Howe, Content & SEO Editor, Third Space Learning
“My favorite talk of the day was Nikki Halliwell’s talk on ‘How to overcome SEO challenges in website migrations.’
My key takeaway is that you should get a migration briefing document and make sure that you’re well prepared before your migration. It’s also OK to work as a team; you don’t have to try and figure it all out on your own. You can collaborate and make sure that you’re getting stuff done together. It’s not a battle of who’s doing better and who isn’t. It’s about working together and getting it done as a team.”
– Shannon Halliwell, Freelance Content Writer
“My favorite was a session from Charles Meaden who talks about ‘Mining the SERPs with off the shelf tools to find SEO gold’.
A key takeaway is that it’s incredibly easy to scrape a lot of useful data from any part of Google search results that a lot of people aren’t aware of. And that can be done using just off the shelf SEO tools and plugged into BigQuery at next to no cost. Go and check out Charles’s slides and download his material.”
– Nick Andrews, Head of SEO at Kingfisher
“Well, interestingly, my favorite talk was from Jon Earnshaw, ‘Beyond the SERP multiverse – optimizing content in the age of conversation.’ He really went in depth into the SERPs and how much people use autocomplete.
I thought it was fascinating that actually 25% of the blue links on the SERPs will not make it into the AI Overview and he had some really good data on it.
My key takeaway was that getting your link in the SERPs is not enough to get your content into AIO.”
– Sophie Bessemer, Head of Content & SEO at Third Space Learning
“Actually, my favorite talk was the first of the day, ‘Proving SEO worth in 2025 by diversifying your organic traffic.’ My key takeaway from that session is that SEO is changing, it’s becoming multi-channel and multi-platform.
I think we all knew that, but seeing how it actually works and seeing what impact your brand presentation can have on rankings and SEO is really important. So, now I can go back to my clients and tell them that 2,000 word articles don’t work anymore. You have to have a brand, you have to have content created for search in other platforms in order to rank and you have to create brand awareness. SEO no longer works in separate channels like it did before.”
– Arianna Lupi, Founder & CEO, Aprendo SEO
Wrapping up
Although I was luckily able to talk to a lot of people, it feels like we only scratched the surface of what was covered at this edition of BrightonSEO. However, from what I can glean, there was something for everyone.
It was interesting getting to hear what a lot of the other attendees thought this time around and I hope you enjoyed. Feel free to share what you thought stood out at the conference and we’ll share it in a social media round-up!
