BrightonSEO 2018 Recap – Part 4 (With Slides)

Coming in with the final of our four blogs recapping BrightonSEO 2018, here’s our final rundown of the talks with actionable takeaways and slides.

For more BrightonSEO slides, check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 of our BrightonSEO 2018 roundups.

Search Beyond Google

Jitka Jizerova – @jitka_wcn – Web Certain

In the field of international SEO, Google is not the only search engine we should optimise for. This talk by Jitka Jizerova introduces three more of the world’s main search engines:

What we learned

Baidu (China)

Censorship is high in China – the so-called ‘Chinese Firewall’ puts bans on forbidden words and slows sites down massively when they are hosted outside of China. When marketing to China online, make sure to host your site locally and employ a native copywriter to translate your content in Simplified Chinese. Don’t link to any Western social media sites – use WeChat and Sina Weibo instead. Keep in mind that Baidu places more importance on Alt Tags and Header Tags than Google does – however, it is not penalising as heavily (yet) against duplicate content.

Yandex (Russia)

Yandex is the main search engine in Russia, although Google has the highest market share on mobile due to its sales of Android phones. Because Yandex spans 11 time zones, its employs a local linking system which allows you to target locally. Yandex has an algorithm which recognises the entire context of a piece of content, which is why quality content with excellent grammar is paramount. Yandex is also used in the Ukraine, Belarus, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Naver (South Korea)

Naver is regarded as a community platform rather than a search engine. SERPs show very personalised search results that are divided in various categories, including ads, UGC, blog content, magazine content, news, apps and much more. Brands are advised to create content for each of these categories. Naver also has its own social platforms: Blog and Café (the latter is a forum). It comes recommended to update these regularly.

What We Learnt from Spending £1,000,000 on Facebook

Guy Levine – @guylevine – Return

View guy’s BrightonSEO slides here.

In this session, Guy offers useful insight gained when spending a million on Facebook. He analyses an audience-first approach and the importance of measurement, rules and attribution.

What we learned

Real Talk

Clicks don’t buy anything – people do!

Personality Profiling Tools

Guy showed how he used personality profiling tools to get a sense of how an audience is likely to respond to a message, combining IBM’s personality insights tool https://www.ibm.com/watson/services/personality-insights/ and the quick app development tool Buzzy https://buzzy.buzz

Utilise First Party Data

Capitalise on all of the 1st party data you hold (whilst you still can, pre-GDPR)

How to Report on SEO in 2018

Stephen Kenwright – @stekenwright – Branded3

This BrightonSEO presentation saw Stephen covering out-of-the-box tools and how to make the most out of reporting on data.

What we learned

Predictive Measures of Success

Start reporting on predictive measures of success. Rankings are not necessarily appropriate in a powerful performance report. If you’re doing a good job with SEO, the ranking system will be very personal. You’re never going to give everyone an accurate view of your performance. Instead focus on predictive measures of success. To include Page speed, Link metrics, User Metrics.

Consider Conversion-Based Alerts

For unexpected results, you should be covered by traffic/conversion-based alerts. If you know what to expect. You should know what equates to unusual behaviour to catch unexpected results.

Get Ahead

Once you have this information, you can report ahead of time. Make stakeholders aware you are expecting a drop because of seasonality for instance.

Why Brand Signals are Replacing Authority

Ade Lewis – @AdeJLewis – Teapot Digital

This talk from Ade welcomed a new way of thinking about ranking factors: brand…

What we learned

Eyes Peeled for Fake Link Profiles

Since the dawn of old school Google’s reliance on authority left them open to manipulation, focusing on external links, but it became easy to spot fake link profiles.

Make Content and PR Work for Your Brand Values

Google evolved with Penguin, embracing content marketing and digital PR – but we’re still focussed on building authority – but Google is moving away from authority and looking at non-link-based authority signals.

Brand = Personality = Business

Brand is a personality of the business, sum of all the customer experiences, and what they have to say about the business brand =reputation. Have a set of brand values to define your business – otherwise individuals within the business will project their voice as the brand. The guidelines ensure you’re all using the same voice.

Befriend Google

Personal experience recommendation is based on whether you know, like and trust the brand – the same applies for Google, our job as marketeer is to make Google know, like and trust our brand.

How to Identify Search Intent

Anna Corbett – @AdeJLewis – Base Creative

Anna talks about the importance of understanding search intent and gives us some easy ways to do this:

What we learned

Consider Modifiers

Look at the search query: the easiest way is looking at modifiers such as “best” (commercial searches), “how” (informational searches) and “near me” (local searches).

Understand Intent

Look at paid ads. If they exist at all it implies a commercial or transactional intent. Go further and look at the emotional triggering and calls to action. Remember that ads aren’t subject to the same level of quality algorithm as organic results so take them with a pinch of salt. You can even run your own tests and measure CTR of the ads.

Look at search snippets. Quick answers can imply an informational search, shopping results can heavily imply a transactional search. Local pack implies a local intent.

Understand the Situation of the Searcher

Voice & mobile search tend to imply that the person either is out-and-about or doesn’t have access to a screen. These searches can imply immediacy.

When a person is searching from a desktop they are more likely to do research and planning.

Location can also imply intent: If you do a search in Brighton for chips – you want to eat the kind of thing you get in a chippy, but in Germany it means a bag of crisps

Four Critical Elements for the Perfect Keywords Strategy

Stephen Spencer – @AdeJLewis

This talk covered the process of auditing a website, including audits, marketing opportunities and practical advice for businesses.

What we learned

The Right and Wrong Keywords

Keywords need to be relevant, popular and attainable.

What are the wrong keywords? They may be vanity keywords, synonyms that no one uses. Stephan gives us an example where a bank says that they can’t use the word mortgage on their website – you have to use home loan. Problem is, no one searches for home loan.

Types of Searches

There are different ways of slicing and dicing this. A good way of looking at it is by thinking about the funnel and identifying where in the funnel the user is.

Also worth thinking about is long-tail queries – even though the search volumes for single terms are low, in aggregate it can really add up. They also tend to be less competitive.

Knowing Your Target Market

Know them intimately! You should try to develop personas for them. Give them names, know their routines!

Understand their pain points – what are their challenges, fears and frustrations? Identify the keywords that identify what their pain point is.

Think about structure in terms of thematic mapping – start with broad keywords at the top of your structure i.e. “Music”. Then next level down could be genre i.e. “Dance music”, then further down “House”, then maybe particular artists at the next level, and so on.

Doing Keyword Research

Look not just at search volume but also at ideas, trends, seasonality, geographic variants, and mine competitors for information.

Some useful tools that Stephan has found – a range of tools is important so that you can look for corroboration. Some of the ones he introduced were:

• Google suggest (the suggestions that come up when you are typing a query)
• Soovle: A free tool that gives you auto-suggestions from a range of websites including Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia and Amazon all simultaneously (wow!)
• Ubersuggest: Collects a massive amount of suggestions from Google suggest
• Answer the public: You can put in a keyword and it identifies question-based queries that people use that contains a particular keyword (this also uses Google suggest)

Top GA Customisations Everyone Should be Using

Anna Lewis – @AdeJLewis – Polka Dot

Anna’s talk showed us how to use Google Analytics to its maximum with helpful tips on customisation, dimensions and events.

What we learned

Set Up Events

Making use of GA and ensure you have events setup and are using the data.

Explore Custom Dimensions

Make more use of custom dimensions. Split customers by weather, content labels, added to cart etc… and analyse their behaviour in groups.

Ensure Funnels are Set up Appropriately

You want to see where users are dropping out!

The Math Behind Effective Reporting

Dana DiTomaso – @AdeJLewis – Kick Point Inc

In this interesting talk, Dana explains the importance of calculated metrics in Google Data Studio to make the most out of your reports:

What we learned

Use Google Data Studio

To look at historic revenue data for clients that don’t have eCommerce. In order to prove ROI. (image attached). You can then evaluate the value of paid for referrers.

 

Users Buy Things, Sessions Don’t

Why does G! report on sessions as a primary metric rather than sessions as the focus. Make sure your reports focus on users.

 

Keep Your Reports Simple

Your clients want to have a relaxing time. They don’t want an 18-page report.

Pre-emptive Reputation Management

Julia Logan – @AdeJLewis – Irish Wonder

Julia taught how to stay on the front foot with reputation management and not to only worry about your reputation when something negative has happened.

What we learned

Brand reputation risks from SEO

Suggested searches that come up when you type into google, searches related to, “people also asked”

Consider the Impact on Rankings
If something bad starts ranking organically how do you get rid of it? Negative SEO won’t often fix it and could make it worse, pushing it down with something positive is a lot of effort for minimal effect.

Every Positive Mention Helps

Outreach your positive brand message as much as possible, actively use social media and engage with your social mentions, social channels let you counter negative channels in their environment

How to Expand to Different Markets

Sabine Langmann – @sabthelab – Webgears

Sabine’s BrightonSEO talk showed us how to think about all the following before expanding to other markets in order to avoid having to invest time and money in a domain consolidation process, which may result in your local visibility plummeting.

What we learned

Manage your Hopes and Expectations

Try to find the numbers to back up your decisions.

Get to Know your New Markets

Look into your target group’s purchasing power and shopping behaviour; your competitors; the gaps in the market.

Assess your Resources and Workload

Make sure your existing markets won’t be suffering.

Localisation

Make sure search engines know which page should rank for which searches. Dedicate time to server structure in order to achieve fast site speed. Have location-based subdirectories in place.

Learn from Your Mistakes

Keep testing and reasoning, making sure you’re still invested in the right markets.

AI in Marketing: From Insights to Experiences

Adela Popilkova – Microsoft

The average lifespan of a company is plummeting; you have to stay ahead of the curve, otherwise you might seize to exist as a company. Adela’s BrightonSEO talk tells us more…

What we learned

What’s in Store for the Future?

The rise of digital assistance and more apps being powered by AI, meaning that voice search will become more important than ever.

Artificial Intelligence Can Help Us

AI will help us turn data into insights to help reach new audiences; improve customer engagement, for example, smart chat bots; increase operational efficiency, which will allow you to focus on strategy and creativity, and

Artificial Intelligence is technology that learns from us and finds ways to be helpful. It amplifies human ingenuity with technology. At this stage, Microsoft’s AI can find cancer clues in search queries, help farmers identify conditions that influence their crops, help blind people navigate and ‘see’ the world. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, start investing in AI solutions for your company.

For more BrightonSEO slides, check out part 1, part 2 and part 3 of our BrightonSEO 2018 roundups.

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