Brighton SEO Conference Review 2022

The digital marketing department at Factory Pattern has come back from their trip to the Brighton Seo conference full to the brim with inspiration.

So, we thought we’d share some of the highlights from the speakers and their key takeaways.

If you haven’t heard of Brighton SEO, here’s a quick introduction.

What is Brighton SEO?

After attending the live event, I would say the Brighton SEO conference isn’t just about SEO. It’s more of a digital marketing conference, covering multiple topics such as content marketing, design, UX, business strategy, mental health, and diversity, and that’s just the topics I can remember.

The SEO conference is 2 days long and there are up to 20 talks to choose from per day, spread over 5 different auditoriums.

This does mean that you can’t be in all of the talks over the course of the 2 days so you have to plan what you want to see each day. The good news is, you’ll get access to the recordings so you don’t miss out.

They aim to host 2 conferences a year and bring together an impressive lineup of speakers who are experts in their field and share real examples and insights from their own experiences.

There’s also a good mix of content from highly technical, super-specific talks on SEO strategy to more creative and inspirational conversations.

You’ll find a mix of attendees at the event from big agency teams turning together to lone freelancers.

For this blog, I’ve selected 3 talks from the conference that focus on content. They cover how to prioritse your content and how you can generate traffic and leads from your content.

The Highlights from Brighton SEO 2022

How to get more traffic with less content

Our very first talk at BrightonSEO was in the main auditorium with Anna Gregory-Hall from Snaptrip Group.

Her talk was all about how to get more traffic with less content, and the process Snaptrip used to reduce its online footprint and still deliver on traffic.

She talks about doing a website spring clean essentially and how you need to audit your pages and identify which ones are of value and which ones are no longer serving the site. That way you can get rid of any redundant pages to help keep your site hyper-focused and relevant and spend the time fully optimising the pages you have left.

Key takeaways from Anna

Make a Keep, Redirect and Delete list from all of your website pages.

Keep – Pages generating value with traffic, a decent set of backlinks, and conversion data.
Redirect – 301 redirects to a relevant page if there are backlinks and traffic you want to maintain.
Delete – Don’t be afraid to 404 or 410 your page if you know it’s definitely not relevant and isn’t getting traffic or backlinks. Don’t be sentimental.

Top Tip – Use the Google Search Console API for Screaming Frog. It tells you whether the pages in your crawl are indexed by Google, the date it was last crawled, and gives you lots of juicy traffic information.

Content prioritisation

The focus of Sam Colebrook from iCrossing’s talk was on what content we should create. His talk reminded us of the importance of having a documented content strategy and how it works to transform business objects into a plan.

He talks about his work with Visit Wales and with ideas coming in from across the organisation and content calendars filling up fast, how his content prioritsation model ensured he focused on the right ideas.

Key takeaways from Sam

Prioritise content based on these three pillar questions:

1. What value will this content bring to our brand and audience? Not just focus on conversion, but consider the things you can mention in that content, how you can use it to learn and how it represents you as a brand.

2. How much effort will it take to bring this content to life? Think about how much research is needed, what assets need to be created, and whether this content already exists.

3. What chance will this content have to be visible to the right people? Think about whether you can target high-volume terms and are you able to rank highly for them and does it align with other promotional plans.

Top Tip: Make sure your content strategy is documented and visible to the whole organisation so everyone knows what is being priortised and why.

How to create content that actually brings in leads

In this talk, Araminta from Mint Studios talked about how to create a content strategy designed for customer acquisition and not just for generating traffic.

As a writer, Araminta has felt there is a disconnect between what companies and clients want and what we do as content marketers. Content marketers can focus too much on page views, backlinks, and traffic when the companies focus on their customers.

Key takeaways from Araminta

These are 4 things you can do that will help you to write content that brings in leads

• Write for every level based on expertise – make sure you’re adding to the conversation and being useful
• Target bottom of the funnel – people who know what they need and are actively looking for it.
• Use case studies, examples, and interviews – gives you an expert edge and gives your content more context and meaning
• Use key phrases based on customer pain points – talk to your customer service team to find out what your customers want before doing keyword research.

Top Tip: Use TikTok for research to find out what’s being searched and how needs are being addressed.

This was just a tiny part of the conference, and I recommend booking your 2023 tickets to hear from so many industry experts on all things SEO. In the meantime, we have written an article on How to write an SEO strategy that might be helpful.