The much-anticipated BrightonSEO is back and we’ve got team Koozai on the ground getting as many key takeaways from the best search Marketing conference and training event.
Here’s all you need to know about BrightonSEO 2018.
What a Search Engine Can Teach You About Product Sitemaps
Vlassios Rizopoulos – Pricesearcher
Rizopoulous talked about the vertical search engine, Pricesearcher, and its mission is to give consumers the complete view. This talk saw an analysis of what PriceBot discovered and how you can use this information to help improve the crawlability of your site.
What we learned
Sitemaps Aren’t Being Used Effectively
91% of retailer websites use XML sitemaps. Only 61% of these contain product links, and only 54% sitemaps are regularly updated. That means retailers are making it harder for search engines to discover their content.
Optimise Your Product Titles
Only 17% of retailer websites include the brand name in a product title, a huge missed optimisation opportunity
Reference Your Sitemap in Robots.txt Files
Only 33% of retailer websites reference their XML sitemap in their robots.txt file, making it harder for the XML sitemap to be discovered by search engines
Command Line Hacks for SEO
Tom Pool – @cptntommy – Blue Array
Tom explored some quick wins with command line for SEO process efficiency. He delved into the complex world of crawl scheduling, keyword analysis and extracting useful data, all with simple commands.
What we learned
Use Commands for Efficiency
Some useful tidbits include combining a large number of files using the CAT command – super useful for combining lots of files from Keyword Planner or server logs. You can even use these commands to identify Googlebot hits in server logs.
There’s a Lot to Learn About Commands
This talk just scratched the surface of what is possible and it would be interesting to see if any of these functions can also be done in Windows.
Using Machine Learning Technology to Build Audience-Led Analytics
Chris Liversidge – @QueryClick – Query Click
This session showed us how to leverage machine learning to target channel budgets, influence audience-led analytics and how to drive an impactful multi-channel marketing strategy.
What we learned
Small Customers with Big Impact
A small amount of customers are responsible for meaningful changes in a client’s bottom line
Data First, Never Guess
Data should determine how likely a user is likely to convert.
Take GDPR Seriously
Consider our role as data controllers
Selling Across Search Engines and Multi-Channel
Katherine Khoo – @_kkhoo – iPages eCommerce
Katherine Khoo talked about voice control, micro-search engines and marketplaces, search advertising and how they are no longer limited to Google Adwords and social media.
What we learned
Is Amazon the New Search Engine?
Around half of all product searches now start on Amazon. Buyers treat Amazon as a search engine. However, sellers tend to favour ecommerce websites over an Amazon store.
Know Where Products Sell Best
The best place to sell a product depends on the type of product, e.g. consumer electricals convert better on Amazon and also have a lower CPC than Google Shopping.
Keyword Research Tools
Katherine recommended http://sonar-tool.com/us/ for product keyword research.
A New Era for the Digital Agency
Peter Watson-Wailes – @pwatsonwailes – Tough & Competent
Peter showed us how to stay on the front foot with out creative work and to not be outrivalled by the advertising industry, even with marketing budgets going down.
What we learned
Start Fighting for an Ad Budget
Your clients will take you more seriously if you have significant ad budget behind your creative content campaigns.
Foster Creativity
Have your team start doing things that they’ve never done before. Expect to step out of your comfort zone.
Go Big or Go Home
The world doesn’t need another blog post – someone’s probably done it before.
Diving into HTTP2 – A Guide for SEOs
Tom Anthony – @TomAnthonySEO – Distilled
Tom took us through the first major update to the HTTP protocol in 20 years, HTTP/2 and how it can improve site speed.
HTTP2 Can Solve a Lot of Our Problems
Tom introduces us to HTTP & HTTPS – explaining some of the limitations created by the small number of connections that can be opened between browser and server, and the fact that one request can only happen on one connection at a time. HTTP2 solves a lot of these problems and works like a better traffic management system.
HTTP2 is a Quick Performance Win
It can be a quick performance win, too: you can just roll out a CDN like Cloudflare to get the benefits. You can also set it up yourself if you have the right server set up.
There’s a Backup Plan if the Browser Doesn’t Support HTTP2
In terms of implementation – it’s interesting to note that HTTP1.1 & HTTP2 can coexist on the same server – a browser will fall back to http1.1 if it doesn’t support HTTP2 so you have backwards compatibility. This means that moving to HTTP2 is NOT a migration – unlike moving from HTTP to HTTPS. .e.g. you don’t have to change URLs and there are no real SEO risks to doing it.
Beyond Technical SEO: How to Deal with Rankbrain and AI in SEO
François Goube – @francoisgoube Lionel Kappelhoff – @Lionel_KL – OnCrawl
This talk offered informative data and actionable insights to boost your SEO with Rankbrain challenges and the evolution of SERPs.
Stay on Top of Your Crawl Logs
You need to actively manage your crawl logs
Every Human Forms Part of the Algorithm
Everyone is informing part of the algorithm. Always remember the human element. You can’t beat the search engines. Serve interesting straight to the point intent focussed content to search engines.
Diagnosing Common HREFlang Tag Issues on Page and in Sitemaps
Emily Mace – @IAmTheLaserHawk – Oban International
Emily explores what the common issues with HREFlang are and how to diagnose and understand them.
HREFlang is a Must for Multi-Language Websites
Emily gives us an introduction to the world of HREF langtags – which allow you to tell Google and other search engines which country specific pages should be served to. This is really useful, in fact it is an absolute must for websites that operate in multiple countries and languages.
Avoid Common Mistakes
She gives us some common mistakes that websites make such as making sure that you only reference URLs that actually exist, having hreflang tags that don’t match canonicals, and not having multiple HREFLang tag designations for one page. A really key error that people make is using IP serving – this is a big no-no because Google lives in the US. If you are IP serving certain content to Sweden then Google won’t see it at all!
Always Implement Best Practice
After introducing us to the problems, she explains how you can identify the problems. While Google can spot errors and fix them for you, it’s important to remember that Google isn’t the only search engine and it’s your responsibility to make sure things are implemented to best practice! Ranking tools are actually great for diagnosing problems – you can see what is ranking and where – is it the right URL for that region that is ranking? You can also use these tools to see who your main competitors are – if your main competitor is your own website from another region then you might have a problem! Finally, Google analytics can be used to make sure that traffic is coming from the right places.
Don’t Forget
For eCommerce site you can use SKU codes for automatic mapping of URLs!
10 Things Your Customers Hate About You
Raj Nijjer – @RajNijjer – Yotpo
Raj offers insight on how to use machine learning to gather insights about where we should be focusing our time and resource when it comes to eCommerce shoppers.
Evaluate the Content of a Review
Most customer reviews given are actually 4 stars or more. But according to Yotpo “that doesn’t matter”. It may give an impression of your business doing well, however the real data is within the text in the review itself.
Most Commonly Used Terms
The words that feature most frequently in product reviews are quality, service, fit, delivery and product. These are the topics that consumers are most concerned about (plus “smell” and “husband”!)
The Most Hated and Most Loved Sub Industries are
The ‘most hated’ sub industries are health food, office supplies, haircare, swimwear, lingerie. The ‘most loved’ sub industries are gifts, babies, men’s clothing, bath & body, coffee & tea.
Dealing with Tricky Development Resource
James Chapman
An in-depth look at how SEO work overlaps with the world of Web development as we see SEO work move away from spammy backlinks.
Clear and Concise SEO recommendations
Put our technical SEO recommendations across clearly and concisely.
Ask the Right People
Make sure we’re dealing with the right personnel. Ask help from Account Managers.
Be Up to Date with Client CMS Systems
Learn how our client’s CMS works.
How Metrics and Data Driven Advocacy Effectiveness
Steve Rayson – @steverayson Giles Palmer – @gilespalmer – Buzzsumo
This talked explored how to amplify your content and get it seem, as well as why you should really big its biggest advocate.
Social Referrals are Going Down
SEO is increasingly important with the decline in social referrals as people aren’t sharing as much
Get on the Trend Early
As content competition increases, average shares decline, so ensure its exceptionally good content, but get in a on topic early before the trend, or chose a niche topic
Quizzes Don’t Get Links
People don’t link to quizzes, they may share, but no backlinks. Research/stats content is referenced and linked to. Authoritive evergreen content consistently gains shares and links.
Get to Know Your Influencers
Get to know your influencers that you want to share your content, actually get to know them and create content that they would want to share, that works bespoke for their audiences
Predicting Ecommerce Transactions with Machine Learning and GA Data
George Karapalidis – @gkarapalidis – Vertical Leap
George discussed how to create a machine learning model that will predict ecommerce transactions based on historical data and how to use the results of the model to predict future transactions.
Use the Tools in your Arsenal
Basically, a discussion on forecasting using GA and search console data.
Use Vital Keywords to Focus on Growth
Analysing key keywords to focus on for growth
Data is Key
It’s essential to be a data scientist and a marketer.
How to Unleash the Power of Unique Content
Eleni Cashell – @elenicashell – What University
Learn how to harness the power of unique content to drive organic traffic growth; eleni showed us how with a radical approach.
Content is Still King
Unique long form Content is king and will be rewarded
Begin with a Content Audit
It’s time to cleanup your content with an audit. Think about who this change will affect. People don’t like change If you don’t tell internals and clients they may resist and you NEED their input and buy-in when making a big unique content audit change
Create Content Guidelines
Create guidelines for your unique content strategy, be consistent and stick to your line “we do not accept duplicate content any longer”. Promote your guidelines and be proud of your unique content strategy and the guidelines that go with it, so you can be proud that your site has 100% unique content as these changes will benefit your clients
Stay tuned for more roundups from BrightonSEO 2018.
The post BrightonSEO 2018 Recap – Part 1 appeared first on Koozai.com
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