Brighton SEO is “probably the world’s largest search marketing conference”. Happening twice a year and spread out over two days, it happens right here on our doorstep. Last month, I attended the conference, which of course, took place online this year.
What is SEO Marketing?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which in the simplest terms means: ‘the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.’ For example, if you type ‘dance fund’ into Google, the highest hit is: dancefund.org.uk because the content on our website is relevant to that particular search term. Hooray! This means people typing this into Google will find our website and we may be able to help them.
But a whole two days of talks about this? Yes! SEO covers many subjects within the realm of Digital Marketing: web design, google analytics, copywriting, content development…and loads more.
Having only recently started to learn about SEO, I looked through the vast list of talks by Brighton SEO Speakers and saw many that sounded really interesting, and could be useful to attend. I attended four talks that grabbed my interest and that could help me understand ‘what is SEO Marketing?’ and beyond.
Jon Earnshaw’s talk (Chief Product Evangelist at Pi Datametrics) whilst being a little more on the technical side, taught me to regularly check where our website appears in searches (SERP!) and furthermore, what different search terms bring up in results. This is certainly something I have already started to put into practice. (Jon also taught me what SERP is: Search Engine Results Pages!) It’s been useful to start looking into search terms people may use to find our website, and to see what other organisation’s appear in these searches.
Hannah Butcher (SEO Strategist, for Re:signal) spoke about Neurodiversity in SEO staff and inclusive workplaces. I felt attending this talk by another neurodivergent person could be useful. I already know I can’t concentrate in a large open plan office, and that I need ‘quiet time’ to focus and adjust to my surroundings to avoid overwhelm. The talk was aimed at neurotypical team members, and I found it gave me peace of mind to even know more people are attending talks like these.
Much of Brighton SEO is geared towards sales and growth, and it would be great to see more talks relating to the specific SEO needs of charities and non-profits. In addition to the many talks, there were yoga and creative workshops, which I certainly would love to see more of at future conferences– online and offline.
Whilst I’m sure attending the course in–person would be an entirely different experience, I was pleased to be able to dip my toes in and hope to be able to make it AFK (away from keyboard) someday. Big thanks to this year’s Brighton SEO Speakers for offering their time and expertise, and I hope this blog has given you, the reader, a little more understanding of the question ‘what is SEO Marketing?’
Dance Professionals Fund is grateful to Brighton SEO for offering complementary tickets to charities this year. Find out more about Brighton SEO.
