eSterling recently joined some of the best Digital Marketers at the the UK’s largest search marketing conference, BrightonSEO.

During the huge one-day event, we managed to attend a number of interesting talks encompassing everything from eCommerce SEO, Client Success and even a Q&A with John Mueller from Google. With a host of guest speakers from every corner of the industry, it was impossible to fit everything in but we have recapped our day below.

For the first session we went to a session that covered site speed, something that anyone reading this has probably heard a lot about of the past 18 months. Here we saw some great talks, the first from Rachel Costello from Deepcrawl who spoke about “how we can meet user’s high expectations”.

Secondly we heard from Polly Pospelova on “how to get a 100% lighthouse performance score” again this is something that people will be familiar with. As we have done numerous times I’m sure you’ve all been to Google’s Page speed insights tool and wondered how to get that wonderful score of 100. Here Polly shared the steps and processes used to get the magical 100 out of 100, we’ll definitely be using some of these tips on our sites in the near future.

Finally Chris Simmance talked about “how to trim js, css & external stuff to slim down & speed up your site”. He talked about how we can identify and trim down assets on individual pages that can help us reduce code bloat and improve site speed and performance on a page by page basis. You can view his slides here.

One of our SEO executives attended Search Presence Intelligence – Where Search Meets Business Intelligence by Stephan Bajaio – this was on how SEO can help other departments reach their goals. Stephan gave interesting examples with HR and Product Development.

For Product Development the example was about naming products. Through experience out SEO team will know how to create engaging and keyword rich product titles for more successful SEO campaigns.

This session also included, Why UX (User Experience) is SEO’s best friend by Luke Hay and Michelle Wilding-Baker this talk focused on how beneficial UX is that matches a user’s intent and how that can be determined by looking at search results.

The benefits of pulling together information that can then be used to decide on what elements a page should have, such as having an uncluttered, fast and mobile friendly website, something that we incorporate within all our projects.

The afternoon sessions were about link building and clever ways to get other websites to link back to your website and increase your site authority. The SEO Manager from Screaming Frog talked about ‘linkbait’ and how to create engaging and funny content to attract attention and hyperlinks to your site.

What you need is a good idea, something our SEO team works together with our clients to produce.

The second speaker gave some tips on how to build links for our clients by applying automated and personalised methods. He mentioned some seo analysis and link building tools and provide us with advice on how to utilise them in our link building strategies.

The last one focused on integrating the gamification technique to the SEO strategy.  An effective way to build links at a rapid pace by creating and launching a game that everyone would talk about and would love to share.

We then attended a session on Paid Search.

First speaker focused on how algorithms and automation systems can help us get a better idea of the overall ads performance and how to use data to get insights and knowledge that could determine business decisions and strategy.

The second one was about Local PPC. Here we picked up useful tips on how to build your local ppc strategy for location-based companies and make the most of your budget, such as location settings- radius, locations extensions, bidding, and keywords with geo- location.

The last session focused on other advertising platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, or display, they discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and the importance of retargeting.

This is something that is extremely relevant considering the continued increase in users on social media platforms.

For our final session, the focus was on SUCCESS. This talk was about how we can use data to keep our customers happy by Eli Zheleva. The discussion was about how we can better understand our client’s demographics, goals and provide reports that show a true representation of targets.

The core points in relation to our customers’ needs that we picked up from this talk were:

• Revenue is great. Profit is greater!
• Listen to our customers
• Know what our customers think about our service & how we can improve
• Get reviews but not to be scared of negative reviews!
• Keep an eye on competitors
• Focus on ROR

Over the next few weeks we will be putting together more in depth posts covering all of the talks we attended and what tips you can do to improve your website and SEO results.

In the meantime, if you need and help/information about our Digital Marketing services – SEO, PPC and Social Media, get in touch with us!