After recently joining Cariad’s SEO and PPC team, Rory and Leanne were delighted to get the opportunity to head down to Brighton for the highly anticipated BrightonSEO search marketing and training conference.
We asked them to write an account of how much they learned on the day…
#BrightonSEO
Though sleep-deprived and apprehensive about the day ahead (due to the incredibly early morning start), we were equipped and ready for the largest SEO conference in the country.
When we first arrived we were overwhelmed by the amount of people that were attending – people had come from all over the world and we were excited to get going. Once inside, we were handed a bag of freebies (yay!) and decided to go to Auditorium 1 for the first batch of talks about content.
The first speaker was Marcus Tober, whose talk was ‘Out with the Old, in with the Niche: Content for the Moments That Matter’. His talk was based on recognising and understanding how users search and the kind of content that needs to be published for users to find the product that they are looking for.
Next up was Eleni Cashell on ‘How to Unleash The Power Of Unique Content’. She told the story about how she had to rewrite all of the content on the Hotcourses Group website as it was all duplicated content from other websites and wasn’t getting the conversions they wanted. Her solution was:
-
- Don’t copy text in the first place (Use Copyscape to check for duplicate content).
- Redirect to the canonical URL.
- Clean up your content.
- Provide a deadline for your copywriters to submit alternative content.
- Set clear rules about what they can and can’t write and why.
- List the content which needs to be completed (on a spreadsheet so everyone is clear on what has and hasn’t been done).
- Read over and publish… Done!
From here you will then need to track the traffic to ensure maximum conversions and success. Her talk was very engaging and I took a lot away in terms of good and unique content.
After these talks there was a small break which gave us a chance to walk around the different exhibition stands. There were some recognisable faces such as SEMRush, Deepcrawl and Bing.
When it comes to keywords…
One of the highlights was listening to Stephen Spencer. He spoke about keywords, pointed out a number of tools which lend a helping hand when it comes to choosing the right audience, and showed how using targeted keywords can increase high quality traffic to your website through organic search.
Here are a couple of the most useful tools which can be used to improve your onsite SEO:
Answer The Public
Answer The Public is a great tool for generating key questions surrounding a particular phrase or topic, making it perfect for generating content ideas and deciding on a blog title. While the initial display of data is very visual, if you select the ‘data’ tab, it segments the data into specific categories which makes it easier to pick the ones you want to use.
Google Trends
Probably one of the most interesting tools for discovering data and determining which keyword or long-tail phrases to use is Google Trends. What we love about this SEO tool, is that you can filter down the data available and personalise your search based on your country, region or even city. This is highlighted both visually (different shades of blue) and statistically through figures.
Google Adwords
Google Adwords is one of the most highly recognised Google platforms in the world, and rightfully so. The platform displays measurable data that can be utilised straight away, displaying pages of ‘new ideas’ with their monthly search volumes. As with a lot of SEO tools, you can make your search more specific depending on your business or target market.
When it comes to UX…
On the topic of keywords, Anna Corbett explained that we need to become more literate in online marketing because humans have the edge over search engines. She spoke about each user experience being different, depending on the mode of search being carried out, for instance mobile, voice recognition and desktop all require different lingo and intent.
There are also a number of different types of searches a user can choose, similar to the sales funnel:
- Awareness (educating yourself on a topic or finding what’s available on the market)
- Consideration or choice
- Purchase
- Retention
All in all, it was an amazingly interesting Conference and we’ve learned a lot more about SEO which we’ll be putting into practice as a result. If you would like to find out more information about SEO and how it can generate high quality traffic to your website, fill in our online contact form or call us on 01992 582 824.
