For any of you who were for­tu­nate enough to attend Brighton­SEO this past week (2nd Sep­tem­ber), you’re prob­a­bly a bit like us and still buzzing from the amaz­ing ener­gy of the con­fer­ence. This past Brighton­SEO, being held at the Brighton Cen­tre for the first time, was big­ger than ever as stat­ed by founder, Kelvin New­man, and gave way to more speak­ers, more spon­sors and most impor­tant­ly more del­e­gates than ever before.

“We’ve gone from host­ing Brighton­SEO in a pub, to hav­ing 3,500 peo­ple at the Brighton Cen­tre for what was the stand out con­fer­ence so far, in more ways than one. It was a mem­o­rable moment to take a rhetor­i­cal step back on the day and take a moment to drink it all in and soak up the atmos­phere.” — Kelvin New­man

We have been thrilled to be part of so many pre­vi­ous Brighton­SEO con­fer­ences, but this one by far takes the cake. There were sev­er­al com­mon themes being echoed through­out the ses­sions last Fri­day, here are a few to note:

• Local search con­tin­ues to be a trend­ing top­ic with 50% of con­sumers per­form­ing local search­es end­ing up in store with­in a day says Stephen Ken­wright of search agency, Branded3.
• Voice search no doubt was the most com­mon thread of the day as Microsoft’s Pur­na Vir­ji pre­dicts that by 2020, 50% of all search queries will come from voice.
• Con­tent per­son­al­i­sa­tion is key to win­ning new cus­tomers as Kirsty Hulse from Many­minds states, ‘mar­keters see con­tent per­son­al­i­sa­tion as crit­i­cal to their brand’s suc­cess.’

Our #SEONow track this year had a fan­tas­tic line up of speak­ers, includ­ing Stephen Ken­wright, Direc­tor of Search at Branded3, and Tom Antho­ny, Head of R&D at Dis­tilled. In case you missed out, or would like to recap on any of the talks, here are the slides from all our speak­ers.

Strategy Session {10:00am}

Tom Anthony, Head of R&D, Distilled

Emerg­ing types of search

Stephen Kenwright, Director of Search, Branded3

Best prac­tice is not enough

Martijn Scheijbeler, Director of Marketing, The Next Web

How pub­lish­ers do con­tent mar­ket­ing

Lauren Greatorex, Content Marketing Director, Man Bites Dog

No idea? How to cre­ate B2B mar­ket­ing cam­paign ideas that sell
http://www.manbitesdog.com/wp-content/uploads/BrightonSEO-slides.pdf

Kirsty Hulse, Founder, Manyminds

Why we need to stop avoid­ing con­tent per­son­al­i­sa­tion

SEO Dystopia Session {2:30pm}

Mike Briggs, Head of SEO and Content Strategy, Skyscanner

SEO is dead

Jono Alderson, Global Head of Digital, Linkdex

Sur­viv­ing the machine rev­o­lu­tion: how to become the dig­i­tal mar­keter of the future

Luke Regan, Vice President, Managing Partner DAC Group/London

Poke­mon­GO impact­ing local search for busi­ness­es

Onsite Performance Session [4:10pm}

Fili Wiese, SEO Consultant, SearchBrothers.com

Mak­ing your web­site record-break­ing fast

Will Quick, SEO Director, Havas Ecselis

Attri­bu­tion: mak­ing sense of the chaos

{Slides com­ing soon}

Meghan Burton, Director of SEO, Epiphany

Why the “new key­word = new page approach to SEO” is bonkers

Here is some feed­back we have gath­ered from peo­ple who attend­ed Brighton­SEO:

“Brighton­SEO con­tin­ues to be the UK’s lead­ing SEO event in my mind (and among the best inter­na­tion­al­ly too!). At Equa­tor we are always try­ing and test­ing new things to stay at the fore­front of search, so the event always proves valu­able whether it’s from val­i­da­tion of our own think­ing and test­ing by the data and insights shared by oth­ers, or from gain­ing a fresh per­spec­tive on emerg­ing trends or tech­nolo­gies from indi­vid­u­als oper­at­ing in dif­fer­ent ver­ti­cals and sec­tors.

In a big­ger venue this time around, Kelvin and the team were able to cram in even more great talks and ses­sions, and the live stream video of the main stage talks meant that there was some­thing even for those who couldn’t attend in per­son.” — Andrew Steel, Head of SEO at Equa­tor

“Brighton SEO, as usu­al, pro­vid­ed the reas­sur­ance you need that what you’re doing for your clients is the right strat­e­gy. Whilst the speak­ers weren’t offer­ing ground break­ing tips and advice you can always pick up a few use­ful points or short­cuts to apply to your strat­e­gy when you get back. The new venue was great as you stand a much bet­ter chance of get­ting to go to the talks tra­di­tion­al­ly held in the small­er rooms. My main take­away was from Greg Gifford’s talk on Face­book Ads, Greg’s talks are always fan­tas­tic to lis­ten to and they’re full of use­ful insights. At Verb we’ve recent­ly start­ed run­ning a few local­ly tar­get­ed Face­book Ads and the way he makes you think out­side the box on what you can do with the radius drop pins and who you can tar­get real­ly is fan­tas­tic and a lit­tle scary at the same time! If you check out the link to his pro­file, some of his slides for his pre­vi­ous talks are up there or even bet­ter watch some of his talks on YouTube.” — Fred­die May­er, Senior SEO Account Man­ag­er at Verb

“Brighton­SEO is big­ger and bet­ter than ever, it’s amaz­ing just quite how far it’s come since my first in 2011. The new venue is in the per­fect loca­tion, right by the seafront, and it’s great to see so many new faces, both up on stage and in atten­dance. Roll on April!” — Richard Shove, Group Organ­ic Per­for­mance Man­ag­er, Buyagift

“If you’re an SEO in Europe, you just can’t miss Brighton SEO any­more. The event showed again that great con­tent, great speak­ers and great (social) net­work­ing is the per­fect mix. I loved it.” — Bas van den Beld, Founder & Chief of State at State of Dig­i­tal

Thank you once again to every­one who attend­ed the ses­sions on the Linkdex #SEONow track. And a very spe­cial thank you and con­grat­u­la­tions to the Brighton­SEO team for anoth­er suc­cess­ful event on the books. Until next time!