{"id":3241,"date":"2019-09-19T08:47:06","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T08:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2019\/09\/19\/brighton-seo-september-recap\/"},"modified":"2025-03-05T16:51:34","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T16:51:34","slug":"brighton-seo-september-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.elixirrdigital.com\/us\/2019\/09\/19\/brighton-seo-september-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"BrightonSEO September Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, another BrightonSEO<\/a> conference has been and gone, and just like April, it was great. An incredible line-up (as usual), great topics and knowledgeable speakers, and a couple of free t-shirts!<\/p>\n

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Yet again, my biggest disappointment is that I couldn’t attend all of the talks. After all, there\u2019s only one of me (much to the relief to anyone who knows me).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a quick recap of a few of the talks I attended.\n<\/p>\n

The Future Of SEO<\/h2>\n

Greg Gifford, Vice President of Search at Wikimotive<\/h3>\n

First talk of the day was Greg Gifford<\/a>. 1st takeaway, this guy talks like me! Really, really quick, with a few bad words here and there. He was lively, engaging, and made the topic interesting and fun. Plus, his slides had 92 horror film recommendations (always a win in my eyes).<\/p>\n

His talk was titled \u201cBeetlejuice\u2019s Guide to Entities and the future of SEO<\/a>\u201d. It featured some awful, and therefore incredible, puns.<\/p>\n

Takeaways<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Entities (I’ll explain what these are in a moment) are the most important concept of SEO. They are basically the basis of everything we do.<\/li>\n
  2. To perform better in SEO, stop focusing on tiny tweaks here and there. Focus on providing the best answer to a searcher’s intent.<\/li>\n
  3. Google is beginning to use real-world signals to help rank websites (these can’t be faked).<\/li>\n
  4. Pay attention to Google patents. These will literally tell you what Google plans to do next.<\/li>\n
  5. Stop focusing solely on keywords and backlinks.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Entities and how they relate to search<\/strong><\/h4>\n

    Entities in SEO can be anything. They are the basis of everything we do. Google\u2019s understanding of an entity is that it is \u2018a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well defined and distinguishable\u2019.<\/p>\n

    Google used to look at keywords rather than the actual meaning of the intent behind the search. When the knowledge graph was introduced in 2012, this was Google’s first step towards \u201cEntity Search\u201d.<\/p>\n

    With Hummingbird in 2013 focus began to shift towards semantics. Then in 2015 and 2016 respectively, Google applied for patents for \u201cranking search results based on entity metrics\u201d, and \u201cquestion answering using entity references as unstructured data.\u201d From these points alone it is clear that Google is starting to focus on entity-based search.<\/p>\n

    So how does this actually relate to search?<\/p>\n

    Real world signals<\/strong> – these can’t be faked. Offline actions will help website rankings.<\/p>\n

    Search intent<\/strong> – this is more important now than the actual keywords!<\/p>\n

    Quick Trick<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Google my Business \u201cQuestions and Answers\u201d can be ridiculously useful. Use them as a \u201cpre-website FAQ\u201d. Any answers with 3 thumbs up will auto show, and in the future if someone uses voice search to ask a question similar to one already asked on GMB, then your answer may be read out.<\/p>\n

    [slideshare id=166637127&doc=brighton-gifford-download-190826201549]<\/center><\/p>\n

    Tim Soulo, CMO & Product Advisor at Ahrefs<\/h3>\n

    Following on from Greg, was Tim Soulo<\/a> from Ahrefs with his talk \u201cRethinking the fundamentals of keyword research with The Insights from big data<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

    His first slide backed up his entire presentation. In 4 years Ahrefs have seen traffic grow over 15x with a 60% Year on Year ARR (average rate of return) growth.<\/p>\n

    Ahrefs achieved this by breaking keywords down into 3 things.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. \n
        \n
      1. Traffic Potential<\/strong> – The more volume, the higher the traffic, right? Wrong. Look at the Total search traffic potential. Pages never rank for a single keyword, they rank for variations, long tail etc. Ahrefs undertook research that showed that the average page ranking number 1, also ranked for 1,000 other keywords, so look at the total search potential across all the keywords, not just one.Each search \u201ctopic\u201d has a search demand curve of its own, this is the \u201ctotal search potential\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        \"\"<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Business Potential<\/strong> – A metric that ahrefs use internally. They score keywords from 3-1. 3 being that your product is an irreplaceable solution to the \u201cproblem\u201d and 1, being that your product is barely relevant at all. Anything you give a score of 3 to, would be considered \u201cconverting\u201d traffic (potentially).<\/li>\n
        2. Ranking Potential<\/strong> – Everyone wants to rank number 1. However, again, Ahrefs conducted a study (based on 100k search queries) that showed that the top ranking page got the most total search traffic only 49% of the time. Basically, focus on search intent and cover a broad topic rather than a narrow one.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          [slideshare id=171510411&doc=pdftimsoulokeywordresearchbrightonseo-190913100719]<\/center><\/p>\n

          Onsite Technical<\/h2>\n

          Fili Wiese, Ex-Google Engineer & SEO Expert<\/h3>\n

          So I stand by my statement from April. Fili Wiese<\/a> has indeed forgotten more about SEO that I think I may ever know.<\/p>\n

          Fili shared how he sped up his own website, from challenges, to how he actually succeeded. As he pointed out, it’s our responsibility to make our site faster for our users, and we have to continually test.<\/p>\n

          Takeaways<\/p>\n