Missed BrightonSEO or want to catch up and look through all the awesome stuff that you've learned today? We've got exactly what you need - here are the main highlights of today's conference!
THe Asymmetry Hack - A new perspective about creativity for brands growing up...
Brighton SEO Takeaways - April 2018
1. B R I G H T O N S E O T A K E A W A Y S
A p r i l 2 0 1 8
2. Out with the Old, in with the Niche:
Content for the Moments That Matter
Microdata may not make much sense in the industry of dating sites, but it is very
important for recipes websites
You should understand where to post funny video content (e. g. divorce is serious,
videos are irrelevant)
Images are crucial for ecommerce websites!
Marcus Tober | Searchmetrics
Depending on your audience you should structure information in its own unique
way – there is no universal approach
#BrightonSEO
3. Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Ad Copywriting Tips
for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Adwords
Ashley Ward | SEMrush
Using Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Ads, you can reach thousands of people for as little as $30 a month
Google Adwords tips: focus on humanizing your copy and use numbers in it; ask questions to provide
answers; for voice search, use long-tail copy and write like we speak. Update copies regularly
Facebook Ads hacks: utilize influencer marketing and emotions, run A/B testing, mind the funnel
stage of your target users, and make it fun!
LinkedIn Ads tricks: keep the ad copy short, keep InMails personal, informal and straight to the point;
provide solutions to professional problems, run micro-campaigns and utilize video content. Use local
terminology!
#BrightonSEO
4. How to Unleash The Power Of Unique Content
Be proud of your unique content and give it a proper shout-out!
Eleni Cashell | Hotcourses Group
Bear in mind that if freelancers put much effort into investigation, they may be
pitching the same content to different companies, so make sure to agree in
advance that it should be exclusive
Decide whether to rewrite or remove? Who's going to do it? Who is going to
benefit the most and who will do the most of work? Assemble your team - SEO,
sales, content, content providers
Get someone who deals with all the feedback. Have a template for feedback
#BrightonSEO
5. How Metrics and Data Drive Content
Effectiveness
Use different types of content for different purposes (education, sales, etc.)
Giles Palmer | Brandwatch Steve Rayson | Buzzsumo
Never been easier to create content - but never been harder to gain attention
See what's trending and hop on the topic early or choose niche content
Good data is everything. Sometimes the less is more. Write one time a month on a
research topic of a greatest quality you can do
#BrightonSEO
6. Optimizing for Search Bots
Mind the server errors: they might slow down how Google crawls the website
Fili Wiese | Search Brothers
Google is not very good at Javascript rendering for now, but it advances
Before migrating to HTTPS, improve your SEO signals
Make sure to stick to web standards!
You need to utilize server logs to identify which search bots are crawling your website
and what the issue may be
If your site is not optimised for mobile, you are years behind; start doing it right now
#BrightonSEO
7. Advanced and Practical Structured Data with
Schema.org
Do nesting, i.e. organizing information in layers, adding objects in objects
"Expected Type" tells you when you'll need to nest objects (think: itemscope
itemtype & "@type")
Alexis K Sanders | Merkle Inc.
It's extremely easy to make small errors in schema, so you need to always validate
and use testing tools
For voice search, use markup items that support it (like HowToDirection,
HowToTool, etc.)
Syntax - mind your commas, pay attention to red little Xs in SDTT
#BrightonSEO
8. Cut the Crap: Running Content Audits with
Crawlers
What gets binned? What stays? (Decide what to do with your pages)
Sam Marsden | DeepCrawl
Think of a content audit as of a spring clean: first, find all the unnecessary things
hidden away in your home (discover ALL of your URLs), decide what is off-limits
(take out core pages) and understand your reasoning behind what will go (create
a set of criteria for judging content performance)
Use spreadsheets: filter them by what you need to keep and examine ways you
can maximize the value of your top performing content
Content production is higher on weekdays, whereas the content engagement is
actually much higher on weekend. Delay the time when your content is being
published to the time when your audience is most engaged
#BrightonSEO
9. Linkbuilding at a Granular Level
Gregg Gifford | DealerOn
Build links based on real-world value beyond SEO
Regular size businesses simply can't afford the budget for the links, massive campaigns
don't work for them
Ideas for killer local links: sponsor local events (use Google, find someone searching for the
sponsorship, it's not that expensive), community service, local clubs/organizations,
neighbourhood watch websites - give them an exclusive discount!
What to do to build great links: ask the right questions, "clean up" opportunities, dive in
and get into the research, pull your competitors' links
#BrightonSEO
10. Big Links for £0
Laura Hogan | RiceMedia
What to do to get really good links?
* Look for unlinked brand mentions – all you need is to set up brand alerts
* Track down the journalists, you can get a fantastic traffic from their mentions
* Journo requests – get tweet deck and start monitoring your hashtags to be there
for the fresh opportunity
PR & news – the most common one. Talent acquisition works well for locals. For nationals –
get out of the box, go creative (it might be super interesting and not cost you a thing)
Newsjacking -– be ready for fresh high potential news
FOI requests are ideal for statistical releases (reach out to museums, hospitals, local
councils)
#BrightonSEO
11. Effective Ecommerce Link Building
Future-proof your link strategy
Find a relevant strategy, stop looking for tactics
Implement a campaign - don't waste money on huge pointless assets
Don't do guest blogging/posting, it's not popular anymore, nobody wants it
It's not about tactics, it's about working out what your customers need and using that to
build links
Marie Turner | Amara
Best working hacks: get buying from everyone, get ASA CAP advice for one of
your campaigns, create a chart to mark the team tasks and watch the time
#BrightonSEO
12. How to Identify Search Intent
Check the syntax
Anna Corbett | Base Creative
Identify the meaning of nouns and if there are any verbs in your query
Intent types: informational ('why', 'what', 'how'...), commercial ('best', 'compare'...),
transactional ('buy', 'vouchers', 'cost of'...), local ('near me'...)
Understand the situation of the searcher
Voice and mobile imply immediacy
#BrightonSEO
13. Must-know Secrets to the Perfect Keyword Strategy
Look where the searcher is in the funnel based on his intention
Brainstorm and get data for comparison purposes and build your portfolio
Stephan Spencer | SEO and digital strategy consultant
Slice your keyword portfolio by types of searches: informational, navigational,
transactional
Understand the pain points, fears, the frustration of the users to figure out the
gap between where they are and where they want to be and search for the
solution
#BrightonSEO
14. How to do Ecommerce Keyword Research
at Huge Scale
How to attack a keyword size that's large? Get rid of keyword "garbage"!
Patrick Reinhart | Conductor Tom Smits | Bol.com
You don't need a software, just Excel and some math
How to cut through the noise and determine where to focus:
* Apply rules to your set: make sure your combinations make sense
* Combine the totals to get your site's universe, then reach out to industries and
show off the great work you are doing
#BrightonSEO
The PIE methodology aids the prioritization of your keyword search
* Protect your page – 1 keyword
* Improve your page – 2 keywords
* Expand your page – 3 and beyond
15. Live Google Webmasters'
Hangout
Try to make as much as possible out of the old Search Console
Try to use a variety of data when it comes to page speed, including crawl visibility report
Organic SERP features are not something based on a simple meta tag, it's the matter of a
number of things that change within time
Algorithms are keen on re-evaluating data (that's why websites change their position)
There is no universal solution that works for all the websites – focus on the value you provide
your users with
John Mueller | Google Aleyda Solis | Orainti
Google is not interested in making everything not understandable :)
#BrightonSEO
16. Risks and Rewards of PBNs
Real PBN has the following characteristics: Unique content, website in its own
right, real traffic and rankings; Social accounts, citations, links, continually
updated; Unique IP address , unique template, unique logins; Footprint Free; Sites
all on varied servers, varied IP addresses, all sites in their own rights
Craig Campbell | Craig Campbell SEO
If PBNs are done properly you will get a nice uplift in traffic, but that's if you use
PBNs as a part of overall marketing strategy
Bad PBN is: cluster of sites on one shared server; whois details all under one
account; not frequently updated, no ranks or traffic; has hundreds of links being
sold on these websites
#BrightonSEO
17. Web Performance Madness: Critical Rendering Path
Optimization
More than 70% of all websites use at least one non-standard font. As a result: 114 kB
of additional data and on average 3 additional HTTP requests
Bastian Grimm | Peak Ace AG
If you can only do one thing, do this: go to your CSS file, look for @font-face and add
`font-display:optional` - there hasn’t been a safer & easier gain in web performance in
a long time
62% of all web traffic is made up of images and 51% of all URLs load more than
40 images per request
#BrightonSEO
18. Understanding Google Penalties
If you’ve received a manual penalty, you can request for Google to review your
site. This is what is known as a filing a reconsideration request. The main
recommendation is keeping reconsideration requests short, get to the point
quickly and state what you have done to fix the issues
Kaspar Szymanski | Search Brothers
Most penalties are related to onsite issues
Don't threaten Google with legal action over reconsideration requests
#BrightonSEO
19. Diving into HTTP/2 – a Guide for SEOs
With HTTP, people could look into the trucks, and find out all your secrets. With
HTTPS the road is the same, but we drive through a tunnel
Tom Anthony | Distilled
Imagine an HTTP request is a truck, sent from your browser to a server to collect a
web page. TCP is the road; the transport layer for HTTP. Outbound trucks carry an
HTTP request, while returning trucks are carrying an HTTP response
HTTP sounds great & HTTPS is secure. Why change? Small requests/responses
still take time; pages made of many files (many requests); mobile connections
increase latency
#BrightonSEO
With HTTP/2, multiple trucks can be on the road at once. The content of the
trucks are still the same. Just a new road / traffic management system
20. Killing Giants:
How to Compete with Big Brands in the SERPs
Ross Tavendale | Type A Media
Start with brilliant basics: UX, accessibility, crawlability and indexation; clean up old content
– 301 pages with links and no-index; revamp all internal linking to push to key pages; work
on speed and security
Metadata is written by a copywriter, not SEOs
Hreflang really works!
Plan the content formats you are going to use and sketch out the distribution strategy for
them ('create once, publish everywhere')
#BrightonSEO
21. Technical SEO in the Mobile First Indexing Era
Ensure your servers have enough capacity to handle a potential increase in crawl
rate on the mobile version of your site
Barry Adams | Polemic Digital
Visualize your internal links structure on desktop and on mobile. If some links are
missing on mobile, it will be a problem in Mobile First Indexing Era
Don't hide content on mobile, use structured data on both mobile and desktop
There is no reason to use overlays on your website. What is bad for users is bad for
Google
#BrightonSEO
22. Harnessing the Power of Facebook Groups
Reasons why Facebook groups work: Reach is so much better; Brilliant
engagement, the news feed algorithm just loves it; User generated content
Marie Page | The Digiterati
To run a successful group, commercial brands should be facilitating, rather than
pitching their own content
How to sell groups to C-level: Discover and address your customer pain points;
Customer service, where customers do half the work for you; Peer to peer advice
and support; Receive feedback; Use it to improve your product / services; Get
customer advocacy; Position you and your team as experts; Get content ideas
#BrightonSEO
23. Competitor Bidding: The Halo Effect
Test ad copy with USP : find what the market truly wants
Duane Brown | Take Some Risk Inc.
People cannot pick you as a solution, if they do not know you are an option
Don't bash your competitors
Always be testing
#BrightonSEO
24. Site Speed for in-house marketers: creating a
culture of performance
Maria Camanes Fores | Builtvisible
You have a mere 5 seconds to engage your visitors before they consider leaving,
and only one second before your conversions drop 7% which could cost you
millions in lost revenue every year
How can you make performance a habit?
1. You need people in your organisation to buy in, so showcase the metrics that
matter to them.
2. Before you improve your site speed, you need to identify which metrics really
matter to your business, understand them, and be able to reliably measure them.
3. Educate and empower your team.
4. Always work on your page speed. Site speed is never a one-off thing to do, and
your site will never be too fast. You should always be working on it and continuing
to optimise
#BrightonSEO
25. The PPC Automation Revolution is Coming
Arianne Donoghue | Epiphany Search
Recommended automation toolkit: Scripts (AdWords based scripts and Google
Apps based script); Excel plug-ins (ASAP Utilities, Analytics Edge, Bing Ads
Intelligence; Supermetrics Data Grabber); Data Visualisation (Supermetrics Google
Sheets, Google Data Studio, Microsoft Power BI)
#BrightonSEO
Scripts for bidding: weather-based bidding, real-time position bidding, 24-hour bid
scheduling
Analytics & optimisation resources: N-Gram Analysis script, Auction Insights
script, Hourly heatmap by day & device script, Audit landing pages script, Ad testing
with statistical significance script, A/B testing tool for your whole account script
The cold hard truth about reporting - Most of your reports will never get opened.
So, you need to focus reports on metrics that are valuable to your stakeholders