BrightonSEO 2022: A long way from a room above a pub

By Rachel Ball, Senior Manager, Organic Performance

SEO can be quite difficult to explain; it is intricate as there’s a lot of jargon, acronyms, and rapidly changing terms in the field. It is all about reading Google’s guidelines, assessing SEO case studies, intimately understanding website data, and making well-informed decisions.

Over the years, brightonSEO has grown from a small gathering into a hugely popular event, with thousands of search marketers flocking to Brighton seaside twice a year. As a first-time attendee, it was a great opportunity to network with great SEOs, learn more about industry news, exciting case studies, and interesting ideas to bring back to Wavemaker.

When I explain what I do to people, they frequently assume ‘I do something with Google’ or that “I work at Google”. Being at this year’s brightonSEO, surrounded by people with whom I can immediately discuss the finer points of my day-to-day, was a unique experience. It was exciting to overhear conversations about cannibalisation, robots.txt and SERP features as I walked through the streets of a busy city centre.

MeasureFest: Talks on the sunsetting of Google Universal Analytics

MeasureFest was a fringe event that took place the day before the main conference. The topic of many MeasureFest talks was the recent Google announcement about the sunsetting of Universal Analytics. Replacing this tool, that most digital marketers use for a lot of our day-to-day work, is a new version that looks and feels very different to the current version.

SEO is constantly evolving. Google Search Advocates keep us on our toes with algorithm updates, feature changes, and off-the-cuff tweets. Many of the speakers have worked in SEO since the days when you could trick Google into thinking your website was hyper-relevant to a specific keyword by simply repeating it at the bottom of the page in white text on a white backdrop. They’ve seen Google products come and go, and they’ve weathered the storms of algorithm updates that wiped out entire websites.

The MeasureFest experience was excellent in providing context for previous Google updates, and what we might expect in the not-too-distant future as features evolve with more and more data.

BrightonSEO: an assembly of world SEO experts

The first day of the conference was a huge success, with around four thousand attendees. Smiling SEOs were milling around the stalls in the exposition areas, helping themselves to embossed branded notebooks and sweet treats from our favourite SEO tools and services.

There was an incredible line up of speakers, with industry legends like Aleyda Solis kicking off the day, and an energetic keynote speech about strategy from Andi Jarvis.

The diversity of viewpoints at brightonSEO was encouraging. Some speakers have been in the field since its inception, present at conferences regularly, and remember the Panda algorithm update from 2011. Others are new to the field and have never talked in front of an audience before, although they did an excellent job, nonetheless.

I had to pleasure of talking SEO with John Mueller, one of Google’s best-loved Search Advocates, and Jason Barnard, the King of Brand SERPs; a fantastic way to close the day. I left feeling inspired and excited to be a part of this amazing community.

brightonSEO is all about meeting great people in the SEO community and having interesting conversations over a pint, as we all try to figure out Google’s secrets together.

SEO and UX: A trend to watch out for

To assign talks to rooms, the event organisers send out questionnaires prior to the event to gauge how much capacity each talk will need. When introducing the UX talks, the moderator commented that it’s interesting to see SEO trends change year-on-year through the answers of the questionnaires and that it was especially interesting to see the topic of UX quite literally taking centre stage in the largest conference room at brightonSEO, when not too long ago it would have barely made the bill.

The talk from Will Critchlow on ‘What to do when what’s good for user experience, isn’t good for Google’, was packed with actionable insights that I’ll surely apply to my own work – such as using Google’s Search Quality Evaluator to rate important webpages and a great framework to manage scenarios where multiple channel teams are carrying out tests that may interact with one another.

A long way from a room above a pub…

While the talks were incredibly useful, I found I learned the most when talking over a beer at the nightly after parties, which were a unique chance to rub shoulders with some of the best and brightest minds in the industry in a relaxed setting.

The people who built the software you use, the people whose twitter you turn to for advice when a Google update drops, and the people whose books you’ve got on your nightstand, could all be found under one roof (or sometimes on the stage, singing karaoke), and if you buy them a beer, they might just let you in on some priceless, personalised knowledge to take back home with you.

The brightonSEO slogan featured on the banners and screens at each stage reads: ‘a long way from a room above a pub’, and yes, the scale of the event is a long way from its humble beginnings, but really, what makes it such a special event isn’t so distant. It’s all about meeting great people in the SEO community and having interesting conversations over a pint, as we all try to figure out Google’s secrets together.