BrightonSEO never fails to deliver and last Friday was no exception. The huge Brighton Centre was buzzing with digital marketing goodness! There were over 4,000 people from over 50 countries all there to learn from the brilliant speakers covering the hot topics in digital marketing including the future of search, content strategy, link building, online PR, eCommerce, mobile, technical SEO and much more.

The day was topped off by keynote speaker and advertising heavyweight Dave Trott, challenging us to simplify our messaging if we are to stand any chance of getting through to the ‘punters’. Understanding behavioural economics emerged as a strong theme for me throughout the day. This was certainly the main thrust of what Dave Trott had to say. Don’t get distracted by all the complexities of digital. Your number one priority should be getting the story and message right because, without that, you won’t cut through the noise. And if you don’t cut through the noise, well the rest of it doesn’t matter anyway.

Be more human

The theme of understanding the psychology of your audiences extends beyond just your customers. Understanding the needs of journalists and internal stakeholders were also highlighted as critical to successful SEO. It’s great to see the human angle coming across so strongly in what used to be such a tech driven conference. I think this really sums up the movement within digital marketing. Google is able to mimic humans better than ever through advanced AI and its RankBrain algorithm. As digital marketers, we need to focus on the story and the action we want people to take. Then back that up with solid digital execution.

Other themes that emerged were using SEO techniques to underpin business decision making and SEO as a contributor to broader business success.

With a packed full-day agenda across 8 different stages, it is impossible to summarise the whole day. Here are my key take-outs of three talks that stood out for me.

The future of search is understanding human psychology

Becky Simms, Managing Director, Reflect Digital

Becky Simms, Managing Director at Reflect Digital’s talk was a call for us to use our understanding of human psychology to create more impactful content. Digital marketing has become so measurable that it is easy to get lost in the numbers and the spreadsheets and lose sight of the humans we are trying to influence. As we know Economists have realised that people don’t always respond predictably or rationally to things like price and value.

Becky Simms, Reflect Digital, The Future of Search presentation

She identified four areas that we need to focus on to create persuasive content:

Ban uninspiring language – your content needs to be sticky, memorable and evoke emotion.
Strike a balance between self-obsessed and self-less language – don’t just broadcast about your own brand. Show that you understand the needs and wants of your target audience. Talk about how you can help solve their problems.
Static versus dynamic language – use language that inspires people to take action.
Visual, auditory and kinesthetic language – different people respond to different types of language – visual (I see what you mean), auditory (I hear what you say) and kinesthetic (It feels like to me). Use a mix of all these types of language in your content.

Becky shared a fun tool where you can rate your own content against these four criteria called ‘Rate My Content’.

Becky’s full presentation is available at www.reflectdigital.co.uk/FutureOfSearch

Progressive profiling and engagement triggers

Kenda Macdonald, Automation Ninjas

Kenda continued the theme of behavioural economics, looking at how we can combine an understanding of buyer behaviour and SEO to create customer journeys that drive conversions.

Thinking Fast and Slow

She highlighted Daniel Kahneman’s research (Thinking Fast and Slow ) that we have two modes of thinking. System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, automatic and constructed from rules and mental shortcuts. It is our autopilot system. System 2 is slow, manual, effortful and intensive. In order to understand this concept and apply it quickly, she likened System 1 to the cheeky yellow minions from the movie Despicable Me. Fast-acting, eager to serve, but emotional and liable to make mistakes! System 2 is therefore the criminal mastermind Gru – deep thinking, strategic, but there is only one of him, so he is slower. The minions get on with the day to day tasks and it is the minions that we need to get through to with our marketing messages.

Kenda Macdonald, Automation Ninjas, Progressive Profiling and Engagement Triggers presentation

SEO and the customer journey

There are five key stages that a buyer moves through before a purchase:

Completely unaware
Problem aware
Solution aware
Product aware
Most aware

When planning our content, we need to consider what mindset our target audience are in each phase. What content do they need to take action and move to the next step? Our marketing campaigns should nudge people along this journey towards a purchase by connecting with their ‘minion’ brains. We must think about the outcome that the person wants at each stage. If you’re not talking about what the autopilot minion is looking for, you’ve missed your chance.

We need to identify the search intent and search terms used in each of these five stages. Pushing out a one size fits all ‘buy now’ message simply won’t cut it.

Beetlejuice's guide to entities and the future of SEO

Greg Gifford, Vice President of Search at Wikimotive

Firstly what is an ‘entity’ and why does Google care about it?

Greg stressed that ‘entities’ are the most important concept to get your head around in SEO right now. They are the basis of all tactics in SEO. Rich snippets, answer boxes, links, reviews, local search are all based on entities. So what is an entity? According to Google an entity is:

“a thing or a concept that is singular, unique, well defined and distinguishable”.

It doesn’t have to be a person, place, or thing. It could also be a colour, a time or an idea.

Google used to do keyword to keyword mapping. ‘Does the keyword in the search match the keyword on the page?’ If yes then match. But it was only looking at patterns. It didn’t really understand the meaning behind the words.

Now with machine learning over a number of years, Google is much more able to understand the meaning behind a search term or content, rather than just mapping links and keywords.

What does this mean for the future of search?

Ranking is going to be much more about real world signals that can’t be faked. You need to stop worrying about old SEO techniques to trick the system and rely more on what Greg refers to as ‘old school marketing’.
Voice search is really about matching conversational searches to entites.
Mobile search will continue to make local search vital for everyone.
Stop worrying so much about keywords. It is going to be much more important to provide the right answers to queries based on what the person was looking for.
Real-world actions offline will affect how well your business performs in the search engine result pages.
Google My Business results now on mobile are blended – the results are not just in one place but are shown throughout the page on Google. Reviews, posts and business information will be shown in between other posts. It is important for businesses to spend time optimising their Google My Business profile. Upload high-quality photos, share posts with promotional offers and work on the new questions and answers section. It is highly likely that these questions and answers are going to start being used as voice search answers about your business. They are an important place to manage your brand reputation before your customers even reach your website.
Read your content out loud. Everything you say needs to sound like something you would say face to face to a customer. If it doesn’t, it’s time to change it.

Greg’s full presentation is available on Slideshare.

BrightonSEO happens twice a year, April and September. There is a ballot for free tickets, and it is well worth a day of your time to head over there. Why not check it out next April and perhaps I’ll see you there?

If you’re keen to see more from the event all the slides are available online: Presentations from BrightonSEO September 2019

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A Healthy Dose of Search Engine Optimism at BrightonSEO