Brighton SEO day 2: networking, topical authority, quality & more
Friday, day two of Brighton SEO and generally the busier of the two days. After an exceptional breakfast and a drizzly walk to the venue I’m back in Auditorium 2 for the Search Success track.
Two really interesting talks (James had to cancel last minute and was really looking forward to his talk) from:
1. Evie Collins – How SEO can eliminate friction and super-charge your customer journey
Evie’s slides are behind a form on the Reprise Digital website.
2. Krystian Szastok – Competitor topical authority audits: the how and the why
Krystian’s talk gave a strong overview of topical coverage, authority and how Google might cluster content together to work out the strength of a particular voice/brand/website.
Krystian’s Twitter
Krystian’s Deck
Next up for me was some good old-fashioned networking. I met up with @myriamjessier and @jlwchambers to record a segment for their upcoming Halloween podcast.
I also got to speak with the a fair few people who I hadn’t seen in person before or for a very long time including Google’s Martin Splitt (@g33konaut), a very useful man to know if you work with JavaScript.
After lunch I very much focused on presentations to expand my own learning so went full on techie.
3. Pierre-Olivier Danhaive – Automating a scalable long tail keyword strategy for eCommerce
Pierre took us through how the company he works for scales long tail content generation. Not going to lie, I was a bit sceptical at first, having encountered similar tools during my career and actively pursued having them removed with positive results for the clients concerned. Initially I thought this talk was covering old, salted ground but Pierre went beyond the norm and actively explained the limitations and how they overcome them to produce viable solutions rather than large weak content dumps.
I am hoping that at some point I get to work on a client using his technology to give it a once over.
4. Pierre Couzy – Automation + organic search: How to use AI-driven insight to inform and action your SEO priorities
It was at this stage that I realised I was sat in a tool showcase. Not quite sales pitches but not far off. That being said it was genuinely interesting to hear Pierre talk about the latest innovation within Botify and the technology they are about to launch to make SEO change implementation and testing a lot easier. Edge SEO, service workers etc. but all bundled up in a nice simple to use package. Really useful for proofing changes prior to asking for full dev resource etc.
I will be keeping an eye on Botify and will let you know when I have had a good look at this new technology and their next iteration (due 2023), which promises to use AI to help with the process.
5. Michael Boosalis – Start by looking at your head: JAMstack SEO
I am a big fan of server technology and have always found the decoupling of front and backend via APIs and JAMstack really interesting, so it was good to get a full refresher into the technology, benefits, drawbacks etc.
6. Robin Allenson – ABCs of no-code SEO automation
Robin took us through some examples of how to automate SEO tasks using Similar.ai, who he works for. A very interesting tool indeed, working with Similar.ai’s recipes etc. Having not played with the tech myself I can’t really comment.
7. Richard Lawrence – How to create your own search quality evaluation algorithms
Really interesting talk from my ex-colleague who no works for Sanity.io.
Here Richard went through how you could distil certain aspects of the quality rater guidelines into a process to automate content quality checks. He has even implemented this into Sanity.io which is really interesting and has me adding the tool to my “must check out” list.
Richard’s Twitter
Richard’s deck
And that was it, apart from a six-hour return journey back home. Overall, a very positive Brighton SEO experience which rekindled my feelings for public speaking after a few years in lockdown.
A very well-organised conference with a lot of speakers giving up their time to present insights and provide learnings.
Check out my Brighton SEO day one musings, if you haven’t already. I’m off to fill in the speaker form for April, hopefully see you there.
