On April 27th 2018 thousands of search engine optimisation enthusiasts/geeks from as far away as Japan got together to indulge in all things SEO, listening to the latest views and insider tips from the celebrities of the search world.
Held at The Brighton Centre, the event has come a long way since its humble beginnings in a pub. So much so that in almost every talk that I attended on the day, there was barely an empty seat.
There was so much to learn, but here are my best bits which I had to share:
Ecommerce SEO
- Katherine Khoo of Khoo Systems Ltd told us that despite almost half of product searches starting out on Amazon in the UK, only 21% of businesses sell on Amazon.
Voice search optimisation
- Katherine also gave us some great insights into voice search. Recent statistics show that 70% of voice searches are made using Alexa (and 71% of people searching are busy parents). Of these searches, Alexa sends 54% of traffic to Amazon in the first instance and only directs users to the top search result as a secondary action (PWC survey 2017).
User generated content
- Raj Nijjer, VP of New Business for Yotpo shared some interesting insights into consumer reviews for user generated content. Here are just a few:
- 7% of people leave a review
- Most reviews are 4 stars or more
- The unhappiest EU nation in terms of leaving reviews is France, with an average review score of 4.1 stars
- The happiest (or perhaps politest, as an audience member quipped) EU nation in terms of leaving reviews is the UK, with an average review of 4.5 stars
- Amongst the most loved in reviews was men’s clothing and in the most hated, health food topped the list
Optimising your website’s sitemap
- Vlassios Rizopoulos, CTO at Pricesearcher.com told us that only 33% of retailers list their sitemap in their robots.txt – in case you’re not techy – this isn’t a good thing.
Mobile First insights
- Mark Thomas from Botify advised a packed auditorium that we will receive a notification in Search Console when our website(s) have been migrated to Mobile First. Interestingly, he asked the room if anyone had seen a notification yet and no-one raised their hand. It’s speculated that Mobile First will roll out around July this year.
- Mark also said to use 410 codes to tell Google when something is permanently deleted from a website.
- I learnt that Barry Adams from Polemic Digital is hilarious. Perhaps more useful to mention though, is that he said if you’re using an overlay on your website (pop-ups) when Google rolls out Mobile First, Google will see the overlay on every page (very bad user experience).
Link building advice
- Greg Gifford from Dealaron explained something which may seem pretty obvious, but which was extremely satisfying to hear said out loud; you need unique links to win, so copying one of your competitor’s links to their websites won’t move you up in authority, but it will make them lose their advantage.
Insights directly from Google
- No one knows whether Google is male or female (seriously, someone asked this as a question in a Keynote session with Aleyda Solis interviewing John Mueller from Google). John’s response to the question “Is Google male or female?” was “I don’t have an official answer… I don’t think it makes sense to guess.”
- Finally – “SEO will live forever – do you agree?” This was Aleyda Solis’ final question to John Mueller, to which he responded “How do you produce content in a way that any machine can use it [otherwise]?” We’re taking that as a yes.
The latest and greatest in SEO marketing
To learn more about SEO I would highly recommend visiting Brighton SEO. If you’re interested in attending the next conference, it takes place on Friday 28th September.
For advice about how you can improve the search engine optimisation for your website, I’d be very happy to help. You can email me at hannah@idealmarketingcompany.com or you can call me on 01858 374 170.
