Brighton SEO Roundup & Local Business Boost
Brighton SEO is a two-day search marketing conference held twice a year. The conference gives some of the biggest experts in the field of SEO and marketing a platform to share their ideas, teach the next generation of the industry and talk about new and upcoming trends in the SEO space. Here are three presentations that we loved at this year’s autumn event!
Growing as an agency (Steve Butcher) (Aaron Rudman-Hawkins)
Steve and Aaron spoke about taking the big step of going freelance and how to best position yourself to be successful doing this. They then went on to discuss the next step beyond freelancing- building a successful marketing agency. One of their main points is that you will fail many times, but you must accept this is part of the journey and be prepared to start over. This in time will make you a stronger person outside of building an agency, too. The trick is to be resilient, have self-confidence and to be resourceful when developing and building a successful brand and business.
Inset: Michael Ryan of MR SEO
Another point that Aaron made was the importance of hiring the right people. In order to engage in growing a successful business you have to hire people with the same “DNA” as the company. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a mini version of yourself, just someone who shares your aspirations, values and ambition. Michael Ryan, owner of agency MR SEO in Essex stated: “I have to agree with Aaron on this point particularly. Since starting my own agency recruitment has been the hardest but also the most rewarding part of the journey. Finding good, dedicated people can help any agency getting to the next level. Any agency at the beginning is only one person. Being able to rely on others is huge for business growth.”
Having a team whose values match up with the business to make sure everyone is on the same level will almost certainly drive success.
Local SEO proof that Google my business drives engagement (David Whatley)
Google my business is proven to drive engagement and sales and is now largely considered one of the biggest factors in local SEO. One feature that is relatively new and not fully utilised here is ‘google posts’ where you can post upcoming events, important information about your business or push a specific product. This gives searchers more information about your business and also puts your listing more favourable in Google’s algorithms. Consistency is very effective with this kind of campaign as regular updates will drive local rankings as well as an increase in user visits.
David showed a very in depth, statistically driven case study his company carried out, highlighted how GMB posts increased engagement within that promotion and also drove an increase in offline sales, not just eCommerce.
Keyword research- user intent (Dateme Tubotamuno)
User intent tells us what it is our customers want. It’s a massive part of any successful SEO campaign. Getting in the head of the customer can help you target them more efficiently, thus leading to better leads and ROI.
When we focus on the keywords, we should target more on how to serve our website users/customers, that’s when we’ll see success.
Search queries can be segmented into different categories based on how precise the targeted user might search.
Transactional Queries, as the name suggests, are searchers are looking to achieve a specific action, most commonly in the form of a completing a sale or booking a service.
Informational Queries are queries are where the user is looking for an answer to a question. These can be used to generate traffic to the site where you can build a brand or push the user to another part of the site once they are there. Informational queries are great to answer questions about a service or product which once answered may help the user complete a transaction.
Navigational Queries are where a user is looking to go to a specific location. It is so important to not just focus on optimizing for keywords that drive converting traffic but also those that can provide user value and help potential customers find exactly what they are looking for, thus pushing them closer to a transaction.