BrightonSEO is the ultimate conference held to keep digital wizards up to date with the latest updates, tools and tricks in the SEO sphere. Two of our digital marketing strategists attended in September and found plenty of key information to takeaway and feedback to the office. The fresh sea air opened our minds to the potential of voice search, mobile progression, and the impending doom for non-HTTPS sites. Here’s 4 key takeaways we plan to integrate into our digital marketing strategies:
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Conducting quick technical SEO checks is key
Presented by Chloe Bodard at Ricemedia, a technical SEO presentation confirmed our beliefs about the importance of a technical checklist. Screaming Frog is our go to tool, which crawls a site and picks up most errors, which are easy to download and diagnose. Don’t underestimate the negative power of redirect chains, sitemap errors and worst of all, no index. We still acquire websites that are marked with ‘no index’, which tells Google not to index your site! She also spoke of our latest enemy; 302s. We can conduct a free SEO audit if your website isn’t ranking and create a list of technical SEO factors you may be missing.
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Voice search strategies are now needed
According to Duane Forrester at Yext, so many investments are being made in AI, there’s expected to be over 100 new Amazon Alexas and Cortanas launched by the end of 2017. Searches are now switching from written statements to long winded, fully-conversational statements and questions. Due to this you should find your long tail search queries and optimise for the core search engines powering these AI machines and you’re good to go. Remember AI only gives one result, and with answer boxes on the rise generated from marked up pages, you need to ensure every key piece of content on your website has structured mark-up. 
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Mobile optimisation should be standard
Did you know there are now more devices in the world than human beings? It goes without saying that your site should be responsive and optimised for mobile, but is it optimised for location searches? 28% of location searches result in a purchase, and 76% of people who use location search will visit a business on the same day. Are you on Google My Business and do you optimise pages with location keywords? If not, this should be a priority to ensure your business is present in search results when a potential customer is nearby. Our local SEO services can help you with this.
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Use free data to craft content with a twist
ONS government data is free to use and easily accessible, with statistics related to almost every industry. Find this data and get creative by adding a new spin on a statistic that relates to your industry. New conclusions attract attention, and Laura Hampton found this tactic generated media attention, gaining her clients quality backlinks.
All 4 of these key takeaways from BrightonSEO are valuable to SEO agencies and business owners alike, but take time and talent to implement. Our team of SEO experts are ready for you, so get in touch today! Call 01202 798820 or email hello@upperdog.co.uk.