It’s that time of year again, the Oncrawl team just came back from the BrightonSEO conference. FOMO is real, so for those that weren’t there, we’re here to give you a few highlights from the conference.
If you are among the lucky attendees, but couldn’t attend all the sessions, this brief recap of our top highlights is for you too.
BrightonSEO conference highlights
BrightonSEO is all about “helping search marketers meet, learn and do their jobs better.” As such, there was a wide variety of presentations on the agenda this year that addressed SEO and search marketing from unique perspectives. From the science of search, to information architecture, to self development, let’s take a look at some highlights and takeaways from the conference.
Rachel Pearson – TikTok for search marketing
BrightonSEO got started with a strong presentation by Rachel Pearson right out of the gates. We are all aware of the importance social media plays in digital marketing strategies, but have you ever hesitated to put yourself or your business on display via certain platforms?
Source: Twitter – Greg Gifford
Many have been skeptical about using TikTok for business because they consider it to be just for Gen-Zs, but over the course of her presentation, Rachel Pearson explains why the exact opposite is true. She shared some great tips for any beginners wanting to get started on TikTok and also asked the question: Is TikTok the new Google?
While the social media platform won’t be replacing the search engine any time soon, she made a good point that as search marketers, maybe we need to start looking past Google and meeting our audiences wherever they are. And all that was shared via some pretty stand-out slides.
Rebecca Berbel – Why you need technical SEO to build a great online strategy
This year, Rebecca Berbel from the Oncrawl team spoke about how SEOs from a wide range of industries have integrated SEO into their online strategies.
After conducting a number of interviews with SEO experts, Rebecca’s talk presents real life examples and great insight about how people really tackle technical SEO issues today. She addressed issues such as evangelization, monitoring and integrating non-SEO metrics just to name a few. You can find her full presentation here.
Source: Twitter – Sarah McDowell
Emma Russell – Exploring the psychological theory, Cognitive Load
What is cognitive load, you may ask, and what does it have to do with SEO? It’s actually a psychology theory that refers to the limited capacity for working memory that humans possess and that if presented with too much information, that capacity can be overloaded.
Emma actually gave us a preview of the subject during her podcast episode and her informative talk explained how it plays into SEO. She highlighted that search engines reward websites that consider cognitive load because the idea ultimately puts the users and their journey first. To enhance the user experience, sites should keep in mind three key principles:
- Write easy to digest headlines
- Make content skimmable
- Use simple imagery
You can watch the full presentation here.
Source: Twitter – Natalie Arney
Real-life SEO Podcast
Areej AbuAli – What the past decade can teach us about the next
Areej returned to the BrightonSEO stage this year to present Thursday’s keynote and it has been described as, “one of the most popular talks ever given at #BrightonSEO.” In her presentation, she shared a retrospective of the last 10 years of SEO by examining what we:
- Lacked
- Liked
- Learned
- Longed for
The retrospective was a great summary to see where we have come from, but it was also the trampoline to look forward to the next 10 years and to talk about where we should be heading. That is to say, focusing on creating your own space in the industry that encourages inclusivity and representation. Definitely worth it to take a look at the full presentation and rewatch the recording.
Source: Twitter – BrightonSEO
Aymen Loukil – What your Google Lighthouse score hides from you
If you work in SEO, you’re probably already familiar with Google Lighthouse, the open-source tool that measures webpage quality. While it’s important to monitor your web performance and page speed, it’s equally important to keep it all in perspective.
Source: Twitter – Aymen Loukil
During his talk at Brighton, Aymen Loukil put it perfectly when he asked the audience, “Do you mainly care about users or your Google Lighthouse score?” Your website was developed for human users, so you should focus more on enhancing their experience.
In his retrospective on web performance measurement methodology, Aymen shared fascinating insights about what the Google Lighthouse scores could be hiding from you and how to address the challenges that can create. You can take a look at the full slide deck here.
Julien Deneuville – Avoid SEO horror stories with monitoring
Who among us doesn’t have a horror story or two to share about SEO; maybe blocking the Google bot from crawling and indexing your homepage?
After biking all the way from Paris to Brighton, Julien took to the stage to share his processes and talk about the tools and methods of monitoring that can help you avoid such horror stories. He suggested using tools like Google Alerts, Uptime Robot and custom alerts from Oncrawl. Take a look at the full presentation.
Source: Twitter – Ana Filipa Gaspar
That’s all folks
We could go on and on about all the excellent talks that took place at BrightonSEO, but we’ll stop here. That being said, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments if there were any other interesting highlights we may have missed.
Overheard at BrightonSEO
Our team had a couple of pretty busy days during the conference, but they still got the chance to chat with a few people who stopped by the stand. Here are a few things we overheard at BrightonSEO.
“I’m excited to attend Giulia’s [Panozzo] talk about neuroscience for sure, but I think the best part of BrightonSEO will probably be the networking, meeting with other people, and even seeing the teams from Oncrawl and so on.”
– Marco Giordano, SEO Specialist/Web Analyst at Sika
“It’s my first time at Brighton and so far, I think it’s great. I’m happy to see the Oncrawl family with their very nice stand and I’m looking forward to the conferences as well, especially the conferences on content strategy and AI. In general, I think the advantage of the Brighton program is that it really addresses several different scopes of SEO from all angles.”
– Nicolas Nguyen, Co-founder & SEO expert at Semji
“What I like best about Brighton is probably being able to see people I don’t often get the chance to see because of remote work, but also getting to meet new people in the industry.”
– Clare Wade, Technical SEO Specialist at Alamy
“I’m looking forward to getting to see some old colleagues, getting to hang out with existing colleagues and who knows, maybe meeting future colleagues.”
– Roxana Stingu, Head of Search & SEO at Alamy
“I think we’ve got a lot of awesome talks coming up and tons of great speakers lined up for the next two days. I’m also really looking forward to the equality session.
– Areej AbuAli, Founder of Crawlina
“Today, I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of people, a lot of my friends, and also attending some of the talks, particularly the ones about information architecture and automation.”
– Suganthan Mohanadasan, Co-founder of Snippet Consulting
“Everything is going really well so far; the atmosphere is great, the people are lovely as usual, and the talks are very interesting. So far I’ve seen the talks on automation and on neuroscience. Giulia Panozzo’s talk was amazing: I think she could tell me the same story ten times and I would still be completely absorbed. I find it fascinating and there are always so many ideas to take away. Once we know how the brain works, we can apply it to our jobs. I think it’s brilliant.”
– Alizée Baudez, Multilingual SEO Consultant
