BrightonSEO is by far the biggest search marketing conference in the UK and its long awaited September 2014 edition did not disappoint. The Verve Search team attended and came away with some fantastic tips and tricks on Content Marketing, Analytics, Link Building and SEO! Below is our Slideshare deck which covers the main highlights and takeaways of the day. For the avid reader, a more in-depth account of each speaker’s presentation is covered underneath.

This is a collaborative post by the awesome Verve Team who attended the conference: Areej AbuAli, Manil Fernando, James Finlayson, Matt Lindley, Glen McMurry, Elina Eronen Piper, Anastasija Timoscenko & Luke Walmsley

Don’t forget to check out our BrightonSEO 2014: Exclusive Video Footage featuring behind the scenes video interviews with the speakers and highlights of the ‘Greatest Tips Session’.

Here’s a more in-depth look at each presentation, in chronological order:

Strategy

Predicting the future of Google, and why it’s no longer a search company

Google owns you and all of your data, it’s only going to get better/worse. They are buying every technology ever, at least $16,711,000,000 recently, and that is just what we know of

They are trying to understand things rather than just index them. Structured data is an example of this, along with their purchase of wavii for over $30 million

Google doesn’t want to be the company that didn’t react or change as a business

Content isn’t king. Context is. It will matter more where your users are and what they are doing. Content will still be important but it will all be relative to context

Google will know more about your customers than you do. It will know if you are at home, it will know what kind of things you are interested in based on emails you open, it will know your eating interests

My slides from @brightonseo on “Predicting the future of Google” are up http://t.co/9rAxVt1fKe #BrightonSEO — Ian Miller (@millerian) September 15, 2014

A great lesson from @millerian – Google is spending a lot of money on finding out more about us – what we like and who we are. — BrightonSEO (@brightonseo) September 12, 2014

Why we all need to study momentology

The #BrightonSEO Strategy session's about to begin!Our Matt's speaking & he has something pretty exciting to show you http://t.co/6tX2IR0f5G — Linkdex (@Linkdex) September 12, 2014

SEO teams should be working with media buyers to optimise the entire search funnel

The purchase funnel could include the discovery phase, buying phase, leaving a review

Any purchase that happens doesn’t just happen on your website

It’s important to think about what other pages the user will be visiting at each stage of the buying cycle

Launched a dedicated website to further the knowledge in momentology

Illustrated marketing concepts

SEO is a two sided education coin with learning on one side and teaching on the other.

To be in SEO, you have to be really good at learning. We’re all good at learning but we aren’t that great at teaching

If you really want your client to understand something you need to walk them through it step by step, not just spew everything at them at once

Attention needs curiosity and focus

Doing something with someone is a great way to pass on knowledge

Work to get lightbulb moments from your clients

Facts vs. wisdom. Take your client through the journey of learning by writing on the chalkboard, not showing them the finished idea on the chalk board. The idea is to start with a blank canvas and add to it, learn step by step – use the element of white space to make a point.

SERPs

One Click Curve to Rule Them All

Catalyst CTR study is the most up to date, but just looks at the first page

Data shows that people are far more willing to scroll below the fold and even on to the second and third pages.

Branding plays a huge part in CTR – around a 10% difference on P1 clickthrough. Smaller brands need to know where and when to fight their battles.

CTR studies are useful for forecasting, benchmarking and opportunity analysis

NetBooster looked at 1.2 million unique search queries, 65m clicks, and 311 million impressions from 54 brands – involving the collection of 100k csv files over 4 months

The new CTR data shows decent CTRs past the first page – the full whitepaper will launch soon.

What’s wrong with the current CTR curves

CTRs used for forecasting is vital – both in winning business and working out what’s feasible.

How can one CTR curve work for informational, transactional and navigational searches when the intents are so different? They can’t.

Launched OpenCTR

My #BrightonSEO talk this morning – improving seo forecasting with better ctr curves http://t.co/E72SAyZKK4 — Alec Bertram (@KiwiAlec) September 12, 2014

Local SEO VS. Organic SEO

Local is, compared to organic, relatively simple

It’s all about NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency

There aren’t shortcuts to local, just make your way through citation, citation, citation

Categories are vitally important – and also frustratingly something that Google’s constantly updating.

When a branch moves, if you don’t change Google last you’ll end up with duplicate listings.

Onsite

Programmatic Content: Is this the future of content?

Content factors can be summed up in the Content ARC:

A: Audience

R: Relevant

C: Compelling

A: Audience R: Relevant C: Compelling Content has to relate better to the audience in a compelling manner

Programmatic Content is another layer of content that is geared towards engagement Audience -Through Google Analytics to understand your performance Relevant – To enhance content tagging Compelling -To ensure that content is being served efficiently

Paid media is using programmatic content; for example: utbrain, Taboola, yahoo

Content is not just a traffic generator…it’s how you keep the visitor on an accelerator!

How to get your boss to care about canonical tags: A lesson in SEO Persistance

1 great takeaway from @Ideasfordad #brightonSEO talk… If businesses we work with don't understand #seo that's entirely our own failing. — Ben Leah (@Benleah) September 12, 2014

SEO is an abstract keyword and can be limiting to use within a digital marketing industry

Driving presence wherever it can be organically driven is vital

Technical natural search should be prioritized

Put your customer hat on -Think of the customer’s struggles and needs

Consider if you are using the right language to communicate with your clients

Cannibalisation: The SEO’s biggest nightmare and how to identify it

There are four types of Cannibalisation:

1. Internal Cannibalisation

2. Subdomain Conflict

3. International Conflict

4. Semantic Flux

1. Internal Cannibalisation 2. Subdomain Conflict 3. International Conflict 4. Semantic Flux Internal Cannibalisation is when Google is not sure which page to return How to fix it? Decide on the page you want to return and give it authority Theme it uniquely and well Get your structure right

Monitor the visibility of your content daily

Always investigate suspicious flux

With subdomain conflict – rearchitect or agree ownership

Be aware of semantic cannibalisation – it’s increasing!

Links

How to leverage content curation, build links and grow your search visibility

Content curation is a great way to create content quickly and effectively

The 5 types of content curation are aggregation, distillation, elevation, mashup and chronology

Curation provides more content sources, creates better content ideas and identifies friendlier content format

You can search for good content on Quora, Reddit and Tumblr and set up RSS feeds where possible

You can set up Buzzsumo alerts to get email updates on the best, most shared content in your niche

A good example of a content mashup is NomadList.io

A good example of content aggregation is Aleyda’s own AllSEOSoftware.com

Thank you all for your kind words about my session! You can get the slides here http://t.co/RRriuC4Rn0 #brightonSEO — Aleyda Solis (@aleyda) September 12, 2014

Breaking SEO out of silos with PR & marketing

Why should one work with PR and Marketing? Because good relationships with social media teams mean more people will see your content which, in return, equals to more publicity and, therefore, links.

Relationships across agencies are really important

PR agencies are rightfully worried about engaging due to SEO’s history of spam

Talk to PR teams in terms that they care about – brand awareness, spill over into traditional press etc

Use SEO tools to show changes in traditional PR metrics – e.g. FreshWebExplorer to show change in share of voice

My slides from #BrightonSEO yesterday – Breaking SEO out of Silos with PR &Marketing http://t.co/v5tBALLCht — Laura Crimmons (@lauracrimmons) September 13, 2014

Earning links through audience segmentation

Earned content is all about risk – there’s far less risk in it than old-style link building, but there’s a new risk – a concept flopping. That’s why it’s so important to understand your audience.

Making sure that you’ve got Demographic and Interest Reports set up in Google Analytics is invaluable in finding out what demographics are actually important (i.e. converts)

Similarweb provides a decent chunk of demographic information for free

Online personas are often different from offline personas – not because the people are different, but instead because they behave differently online.

SocialMention is a good social analysis tool (not as good as Radian6 etc but it’s free)

Givememydata.com is a really quick and free way to start segmenting up Facebook data to help with your persona development.

HEY GUYS. Here are my slides from #brightonseo http://t.co/0zeVOfDZBv — Kirsty Hulse (@Kirsty_Hulse) September 14, 2014

72% of Internet users do not speak English: International outreach

Translation, tone and outreach are very different in different markets

Getting cheap translation can really hurt a project

Depending on a country’s beliefs a piece can be received in radically different ways – be aware of how it will be received in that country before outreaching and modify your targets accordingly

Create different propositions for the different markets – provide access to different people, data and visual assets.

If you don’t have an international team and want to test this, you can start by outreaching in English – most journalists will speak it anyway.

Best tips for international outreach: It’s ok to do outreach in English for foreign media. Be confident – international outreach has less competition so you are pretty much guaranteed success. Start with the best English content that can later be translated if needed. Stay flexible with the campaign and outreach – but remember not to contact all the sites you come across, focus on sites that already have a voice on your topic.



Data

Bringing sexy back: How a story can enhance your data and client relationships

Know the story you want to tell with your data

Make it approachable for a client, they don’t have time to interpret what you mean

Visualize your data in cool new ways.

Think outside of the box

Thanks everyone for joining my session. Here is my PPT with all the links! http://t.co/rXoWLibBDe #brightonseo – ENJOY! — Aaron Friedman (@AaronFriedman) September 12, 2014

Do you know the real story you data is telling you or are you still stuck reading a fairytale?

You must trust your own data; you can’t do anything if you don’t think your data is correct

Objectives, KPIs, and targets are very different things; treat them as such

Planning is crucial, even with data. What will you need? Who will be asking for it? Who will pull it?

Talk to each other – ask about new functionality, tell others about how you do things

Here's my #BrightonSEO presentation on getting the real story from your data, http://t.co/pVJ5KtDQij. Feel free to pop over any questions — Emma Haslam (@ehaslam) September 15, 2014

Advertising analysis: Beyond the numbers.

Look at what triggers emotions and causes actions

Trust is one of the most valuable emotional triggers

70% is the most effective motivating discount when dealing with value hunters

Instant gratification phrases work – with ‘book now’ working better than any other.

Research competitive adverts to find out what’s working and what you can learn from.

Here is Alexandra’s slides

My #brightonseo slides http://t.co/KYvJj8wcPH to recap my speech! Thanx everyone for coming — Alexandra Tachalova (@AlexTachalova) September 12, 2014

I’m Drunk … Karaoke Drunk #donttryspellingksraokdrunk

40% under reporting bias when self reporting drinking habits

65+ year olds drink most on a Monday , far more than any other age demographic

, far more than any other age demographic There is a big increase in drunk tweeting leading up to Christmas

Tweets including the word “hungover” statistically lag 12 hours behind other drunk tweets

Technical

Log file analysis: The gateway to assessing crawl behaviour

Crawl budget: number of URL Crawled

Higher Authority = Higher Crawler Budget

Filter by User Agent (GoogleBot) using tools such as Gamut and Splunk

Investigate: Crawl budget waste Most and Least Crawled pages HTTP Response Code Robots.txt Sitemap – Which pages are crawled less than you would like; CSS/JS – Are those files observed?



Slide deck from my #BrightonSEO presentation on log file analysis http://t.co/APM0rsgLr9 — Tom Bennet (@tomcbennet) September 12, 2014

How well does Google know your site?

Active and inactive pages Crawled pages ratio Active pages ratio

Explore all pages Get GoogleBot queries from Logs

Extract organic visits from servers logs Map this info and get complete image Consider pages for what they are worth

Measure SEOefficiency Prioritise SEO actions on daily basis Distinguish between valuable and useless crawl



Proactive measures for good site health

Link Monitoring Negative SEO Ahrefs New/Lost links GWT link dates Most common anchors Keep a record of link numbers

Getting hacked Security issues/content keywords GWT Update plugins Routine backups Regular password updates

Referral Spam Identify problem sites in GA Block bots in Robots.txt Exclude in GA & block bots at profile level



Hacking Google docs to detect and diagnose penalties

If something hits a certain threshold…getting notifications is essential

Google Docs can be used to monitor clients

Splitting the data up by medium

Google Sites can create dashboard for google docs data

Using google docs, the following can happen: Can create the mother of a dashboard Compare multiple sites quickly Make an awesome tool Export files in different forms



Semantic

Structured data and rich snippets: What’s left

Rich Snippets: After the Fire – my talk at #BrightonSEO – http://t.co/O3jFbstpbd — Matthew Brown (@MatthewJBrown) September 12, 2014

The semantic web & structured data, a journey into the unknown

Semantic web is a collaborative movement led by international standards body the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Fill Freebace with your client’s data. You get followed links and it is still the main source for information for Google’s Knowledge Graph

Best Buy used structured markup on all of their products and got conversions of 5-11 times higher than without

Standardize markup data. Recently there have been numerous markup languages that have been verified by the big players in the industry but we need to get this down to just one accepted language (schema.org)

Facing the challenges of semantic web Create more cases Standardization of markup formats Develop platforms to ease adoptions



My slides + blogpost: The Semantic Web & Structured Data – #BrightonSEO – NotProvided.eu http://t.co/sDnxzmYqmB — Jan-Willem Bobbink (@jbobbink) September 12, 2014

The Owl and the Hummingbird: Make ontology work for you

W3C chartered the OWL (Web Ontology Language) Working Group as part of the Semantic Web activity in 2007

The lexicon (bank of keywords) was THE most important part of Google’s algorithm. When Hummingbird came in the Lexicon advanced to include grammar and understand meaning semantically

Hummingbird is a complete re-write of Google’s algorithm

Organize your site like a library to make it easier on Google. Take a good look at your categorization

Fuzzy ontology is a domain or knowledge representation which is unclear and imprecise in nature as to what it relates to

Ontologists are working on ways to measure fuzziness with measurements of logic

You don’t need to go to battle over links if you win on relevance

A page beats a page, not a site beats a site

The evolution of Search in a post Hummingbird era

SEO is the glue between all the different areas; management, marketing, editorial, development

SEO has become more of a strategic element within the company

Hummingbird is important because it is getting better over time, actively learning from users

Hummingbird update has three main elements: Contextual Search Conversational Search Semantic Search

Checklist SEO has to go away. Google is way smarter than just reading keywords; build pages around topics rather than one landing page for one keyword.

From 2013 to 2014, site speed is the biggest game changer in ranking factors within Google

If you want to have good rankings and you use information to bend your relevance, then there is a possibility that Google will no longer rank you in the future

Content

The secret to newsworthy content

I uploaded my #brightonseo slides over the weekend on the Secrets to Newsworthy Content. Here's the link: http://t.co/9Q79mDMGyt — Andy Miller (@andyjm101) September 15, 2014

Becoming a publisher: Creating high quality content at pace

Analytics

Auditing your Analytics Set Up

GA Project Stages:

Initiation Analysis design Implementation Testing

Where does audit fit in?

Understand the business problem

Understand the knowledge of client

Specify issue

Specify tasks

Write recommendations

Propose further opportunities

Effective visits – why they are more important than visits

Effective visits = Visits – (visits * bounceRate)

It represents a real quality of traffic and value

It reflects to: on page optimization and conversation rate optimization

Tools for keyword research: Searchmetrics, SEMRush

Tools for traffic tracking and data extraction: Google Analytics, omniTure discover

Tools for page optimization: SEOmoz, ScreamingFrog

And that’s a wrap to our comprehensive BrightonSEO September 2014 write-up! If you’ve made it this far, then congratulations and thank you. Now please leave us your thoughts in the comments below on all your favourite bits of the conference (including the after-party) and your key takeaways!

See you in BrightonSEO 2015!