Conference summary! They really are for the people who went to the conference, right? Hopefully this is a good replacement for those who didn’t make it and will be a good update for the people who did!
I attended BrightonSEO for the first time in person this year, and it was great.
A big shout out also to @errioxa on Twitter who has compiled all the slides into one handy google dandy sheet. And YellowBlue marketing who included them in a blog post. And Generation of viaducts who have put together a huge summary.
The things I learned at BrightonSEO April 2022 in a handy numbered list:
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If you don’t make your site accessible, you will be sued and @BillieGeena will punch you too (@billiegeena)
Billie’s speech was a must see on accessibility and the place it has in digital marketing. She has broken it down into dollar signs and what you are missing out on by creating inaccessible websites.
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Setting up multiple tracks is a blessing and a curse
BrightonSEO has a multitrack setup, with five different tracks throughout the day, so there’s always something you want to see. Unfortunately, this also meant that there was always something I wanted to see. From time to time I have sent a partner or friend to take a session I couldn’t on my own, but there are some sessions where I’ll just have to wait for the replay.
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Use social media to find dividing conversations and popular hashtags (@chimammeje/Copy Zenit)
Chima is the queen of topic clusters (and amazing outfits) and her talk on the subject blew me away. You did a great job talking about how clusters can support the sales funnel and how SEOs tend to think of the funnel in a counterintuitive way. The buy / click isn’t at the top of the funnel, it’s not the goal. You don’t want to force people to skip the entire sales funnel, especially when they’re not ready for it.
Additional tip from the speaker: Brits do not flavor their food properly.
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JohnMu has been in enough selfies that he can train an image generation GAN on them and create a website in the style of thisJohnMuDoesNotExist.
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Brighton has amazing vegan cuisine
I spent all my time in Brighton eating out at Nat’s (@_ca‘S) Brighton food guide, and oh my god. Boys. My girlfriend spent the last week talking about Really Happy Chicken’s vegan chicken. The Vibes at the Hope and Ruin were immaculate. And the food at the Flower Burger was beautiful. The United States must seriously catch up! 
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You don’t actually need the monthly search volume (@ thetafferboy / alsoasked.com /withcandor.com)
I loved Mark’s talk about zero-volume keyword research. I think it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers and lose sight of the fact that our tools can’t show us the full extent of the Google experience. If a question is asked online, it is a useful content avenue to pursue.
Additional speaker tip: AlsoAsked never gets monthly search volume, so stop asking.
Similar speech: I liked it too by Liraz Postan talk about the low search volume hidden gems
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SEOs can help (or harm) cybersecurity (@marquee)
I liked it Chris’ to chat IT security– SEOs can find a lot of things that other experts might miss. I really liked the tip about making sure you don’t tell everyone where to find your sensitive information. He sees that many sites do not allow sensitive pages in robots.txt, but this only allows hackers to know where the junk is! He suggests hiding it in the root and blocking things from there.
Additional Notes: Chris has one of my favorite Twitter handles.
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Robots.txt has more options than you might think (Philippine)
My first favorite action on a client site is to check out the robots.txt and I’ve read the specs – I like to think I know it pretty well. But Filli’s speech contained some information about robots.txt that I hadn’t heard before. For example, the clean-param robots.txt directive, which can be used similarly to the GSC URL Parameter tool!
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There is room for everyone in SEO
A group of SEOs and LGBT + allies.
Diversity was a buzzword for this BrightonSEO. B-Digital UK had a show strong with their first table. The sessions were led by a diverse crowd.
Ian Helms’ session on inclusive LGBTQ + campaigns was obviously near and dear to my heart. She has explained it very clearly for anyone who might be bewildered by the response they get for the Pride Month campaigns. And many of the suggestions can extend to other historically marginalized groups.
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Machine Learning can be used in internal link audits (@lazarinastoy)
My phone died from Lazarina’s session, so I’m super happy she has a write online where can I refer. Lazarina really achieves the intersection of content and machine learning in a way that makes me believe he is guiding me towards the right decision. She is great at explaining concepts and I can’t wait to see the replicate in a few weeks.
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“Menstruation” is not a bad word. Period. (@cloeivyroseseo)
Chloe’s speech was a concrete, funny and frank discussion of a topic with which almost everyone has some experience in one way or another. Her demand for honesty, compassion and understanding was measured against some explicit instructions: provide free products for the period, introduce menstrual health days, use fair and gender-neutral language, and feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable .
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SEO QA is always worth doing (@miriamjessier@sprawling@aleydasolis)
Myriam and Gianna talk about SEO QA (With tentacles!) was a great summary of everything you should think about in QA. A really fun talk, with hand puppets and a great quality checklist to take home!
Aleyda’s speech also affected this– According to the content king’s studies, 85% of SEOs have had a moderate to high SEO crash in the past year. Provided an education-focused quality control framework.
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You can get buy-in from management (@azeemdigital)
Azeem’s speech was fantastic – another that I’m not sure I will personally use in my daily life, but concepts can be universalized to help with all kinds of things. He put together a formula and blueprint on how to demonstrate the value of content strategies and their metrics, and how to use them to show what the investment could bring.
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It’s worth jumping on indexnow … now (@shwetiprabhu)
Shweti delved into the Bing index now API, which allows webmasters to let search engines know when a change has been made to their site. Even though she was just before lunch, she did a great job keeping everyone engaged and focused on the environmental impact of continuously scanning web pages for new changes. It is adopted by many search engines, so it is worth it jumping on the index now if you didn’t look at us well!
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Nothing is better than hearing someone say “I think I can do it now”.
I conclude on a personal note here: I talked about building your own crawler and one of the highlights of the trip for me was that people would walk up and say they felt they could try to code – that I had eliminated some of the fear for them. It was extremely rewarding. If you are reading this and want to try programming, do it now!
And that’s it for the April Brighton SEO, at least until the replays come out!
