As another Brighton SEO conference swung around, addmustard’s SEO team eagerly donned their passes and scampered the 50 yards between addmustard HQ and Brighton Dome to join the thousands of paisley-clad marketers gathered for the conference.
With three new faces in the addmustard SEO team, there was much anticipation, and with so many interesting titbits picked up from the enormous range of fantastic speakers, it was difficult to choose what to focus on for the addmustard roundup. Reluctant to add to the reams of summary posts, we at addmustard decided to focus on the three key points taken on board by the team.
Topic: Local and Mobile SEO
What became apparent during a great number of talks at Brighton SEO is the ever-growing importance of local and mobile SEO for businesses, particularly with regards to who can afford to take it lightly (no one, in case you were wondering).
Gregory Gifford gave an insightful presentation in the main hall and while receiving the most tweets for his deck, managed to fit 112 pop culture references into a passionate talk on Google’s recent updates and backtracks along with predictions for the future of location-based search.
Before the movie quote madness, Google’s Gary Illyes gave an updated insight into on-page SEO for mobile and presented Google’s dos and don’ts.
Lessons Learned: Mobile SEO
Studies have shown us that mobile searches have surpassed desktop, meaning mobile ranking factors for businesses are crucial.
Frequently stressed throughout was that on-page SEO for mobile has to be taken into consideration; Google cares about time and action. Key factors for mobile SEO are speed, user experience (UX), structured data and device responsiveness.
In order for this to be achieved, our technical understanding of SEO is more important than ever.
Lessons Learned: Local SEO
Google Pigeon has never been so significant. Gregory Gifford detailed local search ranking factors to help your rankings avoid flying south for the winter, and stated that the biggest local ranking factors are on-page and link signals. With on-page signals, as Gregory gracefully said, ‘don’t push out crap content, it’s quality [over] quantity.’
A pro link signal tip is to set aside the assumption that high-authority domain sites are the one; low domain authority sites are a wonderful tool for local SEO if they’re geared to your area and relevant to your field.
Our key takeaway? It’s now crucial to keep up to date with everything mobile.
Topic: Relationships
Somewhat of a curveball, one of the words repeated most often on Friday was ‘relationships’: Audience, customer, client, and team relationships. Throughout the day we were reminded of this simple point; without relationships, digital marketing would not exist.
Perhaps the crucial lesson is that we need to take a step back and remember that for all the intensive optimization we do, there are people on both sides of the computer screens. Remember this, and the customer no longer seems a fantastic character in the distance, but a person to connect with. As Dave Trott said in his poignant closing note, a three-part sequence of impact, communication and persuasion is crucial, and without all three, the relationship between digital marketer and customer will never flourish.
Thorough audience analysis was promoted, advising confidence to ask the audience. Relevant forums such as mumsnet offer honest opinions straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were, instead of wild guesses as to what it is your audience wants to see. Another excellent tip was learning to stop thinking about what you want to create, posting instead for your customer.
The final piece of advice was to build relationships before you need them, and to give without taking to build genuine relationships.
Lessons Learned:
This all may seem obvious, but here at addmustard, relationships are something we take very personally. Without strong relationships with our clients, we wouldn’t be able to work within their offices, training strong in-house client teams that sustain their success.
A huge thanks to Kelvin and the Brighton SEO team for having us after yet another fantastic and informative day.
