Brighton SEO stormed into Brighton last week with nearly 100 SEO experts presenting on 100s of relevant SEO marketing topics. This SEO conference has become extremely popular the world over, it was great to see so many people discussing SEO & digital marketing. Brighton SEO runs a great conference and arrived with THE Best SEO experts for a jam-packed day, and the town played a good host.
Here are Rumble’s (Relevance CEO and Professor of Digital Marketing at IUM) top 13 talks and key takeaways and resources from Brighton SEO.
1. Christoph Cemper, Link Research Tools – Links
- Every crawl on your website can affect your rankings thanks to live Google Penguin updates
- Make sure you audit all of your links, not just a slice
- You can make 404 Pages AMAZING – have a go – how creative can you get?
- Conversion Rate Increases with Rank because so does Trust – people trust higher rank
- Top Tool: Link Research Trace
2. Jo Turnbull & Daniel Furch – Searchmetrics – Google Algorithm
- SEO is about putting the user first, using tailored content
- Split your keywords and content into Awareness, Consideration, Transaction, Retention
- Explore user intent and write content for that intent
- Find top performing articles & optimise this , i.e. re-purpose content
3. Duane Forrester – Yext – Future of Search
- Mobile is the most important area to concentrate on – 57% of users are on mobile, through apps and mobile search
- Areas to watch – AI/Assistance/Voice Search
- 7.4 B devices on the planet – more than people
- Watch out for connected cars, tablets, LoT devices
- The growth of « near me » is flattening out as it becomes assumed by users
- 28% of location searches result in a purchase
- Don’t let search engines decide your fate by not marking up
- Voice Search – context will influence search. There is only one search result in voice search
- Look into Google Home/GAssistant, Amazon Echo, Contana, Siri
- To succeed in Voice Search go long-tail, and go for conversational inquiries – by creating detailed answers. Markup content, keep code clean, ensure accessibility, and use HTTPS
- To succeed in Augmented Reality, markup content, digitalize products, be mobile-friendly, use HTTPS
- Check out these tactics used by successful brands: loyalty programs, Amplifying CSR, YouTube, customer journeys, rewards for social media engagement, SEO-PPC-Social blending
4. Amy Harrison – Write with Influence – Content Marketing
- Watch out carefully for the customer disconnect which will happen if you don’t have a story
- Remember to ask yourselves why a prospect might want to buy something
- You must deliver on your promise (no fake promises)
- Check out the Price Point Challenge and if you are high price you have to have a great story
- Make customers want you
- Outline the pain points, and then show how it would be a bad idea not to use your goods/services
- People are looking for a transformation, not a transaction
- Outline USPs to your customers
5. Chelsea Blacker – BlueGlass – ROI in Content Marketing
- You must show value and grow with your clients, or they will leave
- Remember: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion
- Awareness Metrics = Organic Rankings, Organic Traffic, Social Traffic, Referral Traffic, Inbound Links, Retargeting Lists. Content Types = Blog Posts, Infographics, HTML5
- Consideration Metrics = Sales Leads, Sales Accepted Leads, White Paper/E-Book Downloads, Email Lists, Phone Enquiries Consideration. Content Types = Webinars, White Papers & E-Books, Case Studies, Comparison Guides, Industry Analysis, Thought Leadership Articles
- Conversion Metrics = Revenue, Transactions, Cost per Conversion, Bounce Rate, Abandoned Checkouts, Exit Pages, Event Attendees. Conversion Content Types = On-demand content, Demos & Trial Content, Event Attendees, Experimental Marketing
- Re-purposing your Blogs or Content Items – discover how the numbers have changed post-optimisation
- Another way to prove ROI is by measuring your retargeting list
- Board Level Metrics = revenue, net profit, YoY, organic visitors
- 87% of shares are copy-pasting the URL – rather than really sharing using social/bookmarking – look into ‘Dark Social’
- Another route is comparing Organic to PPC and what it costs
- Top Tools: Coverage Book (for PR Stats), Buzzsumo
- Reading: This article on Dark Social Sharing , « Who Moved My Cheese » by Dr K. Blanchard, « Blue Glass 100 Ways to measure ROI »
6. Sam Charles – Float Digital – Content Tools
- Management tools: Self Control Add-On, Trello
- Content tools: Uber Suggest, Quora, Answer the Public, askreddit, related content for WordPress, Blog signatures, Hotjar
- Social tools: Canva, Jetpack for WordPress, Click to Tweet, Buffer
- Mistakes tools: Grammarly for Chrome, Hemingway App
- Content marketing tools: Buzzsumo
- Image tools: pixabay
- E-mail tools: boomerang for G-Mail, Canned Responses
7. Crispin Sheridan & Seth Besmertrik – Attribution Models
- L’Oreal spent $1.92 billion in advertising, 30% of which was digital
- We are in an Advertising Age
- Marketers are spending a LOT, but not showing up where it matters
- All these little keywords in the keyword research represent millions of people searching – you can put a value on this
- You must earn attention
- The customer is now in control, you must avoid what he/she doesn’t like
- Customers really don’t care between organic and paid search – they care about value – they expect value = Customer 1st Marketing
- Search volume represents how much people want something
- Consumers need to be educated, to be helped to decide and to be given them support
- Optimise for reviews of competition
- There is only one algorithm that matters = consumer heart and soul
- Why doesn’t management BUY in and glaze over……they don’t speak your language
- You have to show the problems – « look we are showing up 1% of the time for 97 million people searching for problems that your product and service could solve »
- Questions are MASSIVE – optimise for questions? e.g. « how to do washing? »
- SEO & Content is a long-term game with long-term value – you must show this value for management to buy in
- SEO works throughout the customer journey – Awareness, Consideration, Transaction, Retention
- To prove SEO you must have a tight cross-channel attribution model in place
- Cross-channel attribution is a bit like a basketball game – lots of people are involved in every goal
- X-channel attribution can be difficult owing to high-value items, a long sales cycle, multiple channels, many media types…..
- Create a Lead Generation Report to cut through the politics
8. Fili Wiese – Search Brothers – Link Building
- Make sure you have a clean backlink profile
- Get your disavow file right
- Links are an essential part of the Google Algorithm – in fact, the World Wide Web was created as a group of hyperlinked pages – so are surely a very important Algo factor for Google
- Build links to drive conversions NOT Page Rank
- If it doesn’t drive convertible traffic – don’t bother
- No-follow is OK as it can lead to conversions
- Create links through websites with similar visitors
- Be helpful
- Link building is a long-term strategy
- Stop wasting money on links that do not convert
9. Dixon Jones – Majestic – Link Building
- Links, Content and Rank Brain are the most important Google Algorithm Factors
- Page Rank IS still with us
- Not many pages on the web are really valuable
- Internal links have a big effect
- It is very difficult to relate count of links to actual rank
- Pages have different power
- A linking page could be linking to many other pages – will have less value than you might have thought
- All calculations are at page level
- How to get links – get influencers (BuzzSumo), engage, define asset, launch, monitor
- Engaging is the hardest part
- Digital Assets……innovative ideas, press releases, pre-mailing content, new products, industry analysis
- Tools: Rapportive, Sprout Social, Hub Spot
10. Greg Gifford – Dealeron – Local SEO Link Building
- Links are votes for your website
- More votes you have the more you win
- Follow /No Follow is irrelevant
- Build links to build traffic
- 2 links can win the race – quality, not quantity
- Our role is to increase linking domains, rather than links per se
- Push for authority & influence
- Local links are relevant
- You need to add value
- Create real-world relationships
- Local links are easier to get
- Local links are hard to reverse engineer, and hard to replicate so are good to build
How to build local links
- Pay for sponsorships, donate/volunteer, get into the community, share useful info, be creative, use client relationships that already exist
Ideas
- Local Meet-ups – offer facilities, Local Directories, Local Review Sites, Event Sponsorships, Local Resource Pages, Local Blogs, Local Newspapers, Local Charities, Local Clubs/Organisations, Local Calendar Pages, Local Interviews, Local Business Associations, Local Art Festivals, Local Guides, Homeowner Associations…..
PROCESS
- Pull all links from competitor websites, and even similar websites, and all your links, ask your client which links they would like – and they should pay
- Rinse & repeat every quarter
- Talk about value-add, never links people might not understand
11. Marcelle Antones – Verve Search – Outreach/Digital PR
- Create work that sparks emotion
- Practice diligence when sourcing info
- Your data MUST be credible
- Find really interesting angles
- Top listings are good
- Get an expert on your side – offer the expert free publicity
12. Hana Bednarova – Tecmark – PR Links
- People link for a reason – it is all about relationships
- Create newsworthy content
- Find out what is newsworthy and valuable to the journalist by using media kits and finding out about their users
- Tailor your content to the journalists’ style
- Approach journalists when they want
- Watch out for content that has been featured before
But how do you get journalists to link to you?
- E-mail journalists only including the most insightful and most interesting data, and a story to journalist – the rest of the information should be on the landing page
- Use raw data download, a real-life story, original photography, “try it out” – people have to link, content related to a product you have on the site
- Tools/Resources: Pexels, This list of publications which are happy to link
13. Simon Brisk – Click Intelligence – Automated Outreach
- Automated outreach will help you for 10-20%, but tailored outreach is 20-40%
- Manual Outreach is best, but maybe use a CRM to collect the data and know where you are