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In late April we had the opportunity to participate in one of the most anticipated SEO conferences for digital marketing professionals, BrightonSEO. Thanks to the pandemic, our entire team was able to attend the conference virtually. Events like these always lead to new ideas and renewed enthusiasm. Here are our top takeaways from Brighton this year.
Top SEO Takeaways
The internet is a low trust environment. You have to work to build trust and become an authority.
– Bianca Matos, SEO Specialist
Tell a story with your brand and marketing. Make the business purpose clear to your audiences. Whether it’s how the product or company was made, how it started, or a social mission that the brand is working on (I.e., a non-profit or charity), sharing these stories demonstrates expertise and authority organically.
– Jess Pieprzak, SEO Specialist
The biggest takeaway for me was the Blue ocean vs. Red ocean approach that was spoken about in the presentation: “SEO Challenges & Wins for Small Businesses” which emphasized the importance of aligning marketing objectives to customers/site visitors (blue ocean) rather than the competition (red ocean).
– Emily Punnett, SEO Specialist
A big take away from me was that client often have an unconscious bias towards agencies – so it’s important to include only valuable data when reporting and provide justification for their investment (bottom line, do not just add what you think should be on the report).
– Jess Pieprzak, SEO Specialist
B2B has more complex sales funnels than B2C. You are usually targeting a ‘buying committee’ not just one person. Your marketing strategy needs to reflect this complex user journey.
– Bianca Matos, SEO Specialist
Focus keyword research on under-valued queries such as long-tail and low search volume keywords. Together, these keywords often yield much higher traffic and conversions as they are much more aligned with user intent.
– Cassie Schooley, Content & GBP Specialist
Continuing to focus on the most valuable work that our team does, and not getting pulled away with minor requests. It’s such a fine balance, but we need to make sure that the work we are doing is moving the needle.
– Mardel Davis, Account Manager
Content length and quality are not enough for SEO in 2022. You also need more elements in the mix: authoritative authors, content that targets specific user intents, and more than just well-structured “words on a page”. We will need to focus on highlighting authors, utilizing video and imagery and avoiding on-page-fits all approaches to content creation.
– Jenna Lamb, Digital Marketing Manager
Top Tips from Brighton
Looking for patterns of success in your social media or content marketing to help determine what was successful and repeat it.
– Bianca Matos, SEO Specialist
When you approach technical SEO audits, be careful with what you focus on and how you utilize your time. Know that you can’t fix everything. Learn how to align SEO audit scores with business goals to get buy-in from the development team.
– Emily Punnett, SEO Specialist
Regularly update your keyword mapping to avoid cannibalization.
– Bianca Matos, SEO Specialist
Don’t overreact to SEO news.
– Emily Punnett, SEO Specialist
There is no need to create completely unique pages for LTK and LSV keywords, you should review existing pages to see where these fit best (main category pages, blogs, etc.)
– Cassie Schooley, Content & GBP Specialist
Write content with a purpose. Tie business KPIs to the content that you are writing.
– Bianca Matos, SEO Specialist
The best places to implement targeted search queries are facet pages and product category pages where content lives at the top or bottom of the page and products are listed in the middle.
– Cassie Schooley, Content & GBP Specialist
We are only one key piece in our clients’ sales process. W should know what their sales process looks like after that lead is generated. It can help us identify where else they might be missing out on opportunities.
– Mardel Davis, Account Manager
Ideas We’re Exploring
Schedule more creative thinking sessions, make sure to bring in people not assigned to the project for fresh ideas.
– Emily Punnett, SEO Specialist
Create personas for each person from the buyers committee, then create content for them that will lead to the decision maker completing the desired result.
– Bianca Matos, SEO Specialist
An element that I would like to explore more is how to set myself up to think more creatively. Too often I think of linear correlations when trying to problem solve, but using creative tactics we can think more broadly about the challenge, identify where it has been solved before, and lead to a creative solution rather than get bogged down into smaller details.
– Jess Pieprzak, SEO Specialist
One thing I found very interesting is the theory of “Bothism”. When you’re working on creative strategy, the theory of bothism is the ability to consider both sides of the marketing story and co-opt those sides to hopefully create a long-term strategy that generates revenue while also considering more than just the spending habits of the consumer.
– Jason McMannis, PPC Specialist
The thing I’m going to explore is the 3 R’s of creativity (Related Worlds, Revolution, Random Links). I found that to be a very interesting way of looking at creative problem solving.
– Jason McMannis, PPC Specialist
Being more effective at tying reports back to the client’s bottom line. Demonstrating that our work has resulted in leads/sales. Ask clients more about quality of leads and how they translate into sales.
– Mardel Davis, Account Manager
Being more effective at tying reports back to the client’s bottom line. Demonstrating that our work has resulted in leads/sales. Ask clients more about quality of leads and how they translate into sales.
– Mardel Davis, Account Manager
Brighton SEO was a great opportunity for our whole team to explore some new ideas and refresh our focus on our current projects.
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