The latest insights into Google and AI search from the Brighton SEO conference in October 2024 by Adam Smith, Head of SEO at Brick Digital.
BrightonSEO, one of the UK’s biggest digital marketing conferences, is a hub of SEO excellence, bringing together over 5,000 attendees twice a year. It’s an event filled with presentations, panels, and workshops, all centred on Search Engine Optimisation. What’s more, Brighton’s weather was surprisingly pleasant for an autumn month.
Lorenzo and I covered as much ground as possible over the two-day period, attending different talks before meeting for lunch to trade notes. One benefit to this approach was the freedom of movement, and being able to take a moment to talk with industry leaders, asking questions and gaining new insights to strengthen our own efforts.
Moving to and from to attend various talks and panel discussions from industry leaders, I was thrilled to have some of my recent “SEO suspicions” confirmed, as well as having my horizons broadened to new ways of thinking and approaching challenges. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in all things SEO, and am pleased to be able to share my insights with you here.
Brighton SEO Highlights
- Topical Relevance Gap
- Heads of SEO Roundtable
- Are We In A Race To Zero Clicks From Search?
- Algorithm Updates Panel
- A/B Split Testing
- MeasureFest
- SEO for Brand Recognition in AI Language Models
- Summary
Topical Relevance Gap
This talk focused on a case study of how a major women’s health website had lost Google rankings due to the abundance of sexual health topic articles placed by a digital PR agency.
As it transpired, the problem wasn’t an overabundance of anchor text in their backlinks, rather an overwhelming majority of articles linking to the website about sexual health as a topic.
Curing the problem in one fell swoop, the agency simply deleted all of the pages being linked to from the offending articles. The thought of gutting a website in this manner might lead to feelings of discomfort, but the site’s overall Organic rankings and traffic began rapidly climbing back up as a result – proving that sometimes, drastic changes can be for the best.
Speaking with the presenter afterwards, she confirmed that the deleted pages on the website were articles, rather than “money making” pages like an ecommerce category or homepage, which would have required a very different strategy.
One final point of interest was the use of IBM Watson AI to perform the topics analysis. Historically, we have conducted our topic analyses through Semrush and other tools, but the use of AI to perform this task offers new and exciting prospects. What’s more, the tool was also used by the company to uncover ‘topical gaps’ and new opportunities, such as a boiler company missing out on opportunities around heat pumps. In short, it’s great to learn from other companies reaping the benefits of artificial intelligence, and we at Brick Digital are continuing to explore our own applications of AI to enhance our workflows.
Heads of SEO Roundtable
There’s an element of secrecy around this event, and an overall understanding that “what happens at the table stays at the table”. Industry insights on AI tools, search trends and team management are shared, and many of the topics focus on the “secret sauce” of SEO, and are therefore not discussed beyond the room.
I can, however, share one particularly exciting moment in which Google NoteBook LM was discussed. This tool is being used to generate audio versions of content, offering new possibilities for brands in podcasting and video dubs. After the session, I experimented with it myself and saw impressive results, especially for shorter content pieces. This could be a cost and time-efficient alternative to an “explainer” video, as it doesn’t require the hiring of an expert or camera-confident presenter to speak authoritatively on the subject – the tool can create this “expert voice” for you, based on the content of the web page or article provided.
Note: Google NoteBook LM went viral over that weekend and was subsequently covered by Forbes, Washington Post, etc., hence why I am able to share this with you now.
Are We In A Race To Zero Clicks From Search?
The session led by Marcus Tober from SEMrush provided essential insights into the changing landscape of search. He highlighted how Google is giving Reddit preferential treatment to train its AI models and emphasised the importance of seeing Reddit as a top-of-funnel competitor.
He also mentioned brands setting up their own subreddits, with Purple Pillow shown as an example of a company succeeding in this tactic. We would love to share some data or statistics around this as proof of their success, but unfortunately, as with all events of this nature, information often moves too quickly to capture in one go. We’ll be reviewing all the video of this talk in the near future and share any key details.
There was also discussion around ranking factors for AI Language Model / AI search results. This confirmed findings from my own investigations with AI search success being determined by a variety of “Entity” factors, including supporting content, recommendations and reviews from relevant websites beyond dedicated review platforms like Trustpilot – I will write a blog post explaining all of this in detail in the future.
Algorithm Updates Panel
I managed to secure the last seat at the back of a packed-out room to listen to a discussion panel about the radical August 15th Google Core Algorithm updates and future updates.
One of the speakers was unable to attend, so the Brighton SEO organisers had parachuted in John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google. He’s known in the SEO community for providing insights and guidance on Google’s search algorithms, debunking SEO myths and helping digital marketers to understand how to create better content and websites.
Considering the topics were about future-proofing against Algorithm updates, all of the talk was very reactive. However, I was able to glean the following from John Mueller’s comments:
- In 2023 Google’s focus was Helpful content.
- In 2024 Google’s focus is Experience.
- Google is tailoring its results to show what the average user wants to see, as well as addressing what users have expressed wanting to see but feel is missing.
One attendee likened the experience of trying to interpret Google’s algorithm updates to deciphering a complex puzzle, which is not entirely inaccurate. I had the opportunity to ask John Mueller about ‘Heartfelt Content’ – a term that’s intrigued many of us over recent months – and while his response didn’t provide much clarity, it reinforced the need for SEOs to stay adaptable.
A/B Split Testing
I observed an excellent talk around A/B split testing from TrainLine, noting the small changes that had the biggest impact.
As you would expect, adding pricing to Meta Titles and applying Product Schema Markup to pages that may appear in the Google results tends to increase Click Through Rate and, by extension, organic traffic. This mirrors the approach we use at Brick Digital, so while it’s not “new” information, it’s beneficial to have your strategies confirmed by a nationally recognised website with an extensive data set.
Naturally, many onsite changes were discussed – more than I can recall in fact – so I will be reviewing this presentation. It’s worth noting that if you ever attend Brighton SEO, it’s worth paying extra for video presentation access at a later date, meaning you can catch up on anything you might have missed and share knowledge with colleagues.
MeasureFest
MeasureFest is a smaller event that was absorbed into Brighton SEO and runs throughout the conference.
I observed a fantastic presentation around Matomo Analytics, a paid alternative to Google Analytics 4 that only uses 1st part data, meaning it’s GDPR compliant, doesn’t need a cookie consent banner and circumnavigates a multitude of issues GA4 has with EU countries. It’s an impressive solution – so much so that I’ve already recommended it to one of our clients who operates in the EU.
SEO for Brand Recognition in AI Language Models
Lorenzo and I sat together for the chance to hear a talk from Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Comms at Wix. Our notes were extensive to say the least, yet we still struggled to keep up with the speed at which the slides played out.
We’ll be reviewing the footage of the talk at a later date, but there are some key interest points to highlight at this time, including:
- AI search algorithms
- robots.txt can disallow pages not important to AI search
- Custom GPTs for Brands show up in AI search
- UGC content strategies
- Seeing Reddit as a competitor for industry relevant content and conversations
- Specificity (what, when, why, how) in content to increase visibility
- Content opportunities outside of rankings – expertise, authorship, video, events, etc
Summary
BrightonSEO continues to be an invaluable event for SEOs at all levels. From validating our existing strategies to uncovering new tools and techniques, we left the conference with actionable insights that we’re already implementing at Brick Digital to stay ahead in this ever-changing industry. If you plan to attend BrightonSEO yourself some day, meticulous planning and strategic networking are key to getting the most out of the experience.
