An iconic event in the SEO, and overall digital marketing community, BrightonSEO is a chance to network and learn from the best in the industry.
In fact, the conference is so popular that it’s now going global with brightonSEO USA taking place in San Diego in November 2023, an event which some lucky folks from the c3 team already have tickets (and flights) booked for. This is also an event we’re proud to be sponsoring and we’ve also got our very own Digital PR Manager, Eirini Theodoridou, doing a talk on ‘How to drive national, and city-specific coverage from your US digital PR campaigns’.
But sticking with good ol’ Brighton. As part of the content team, I got the chance to go down for the first time and am here to give you my roundup as a first-time BrightonSEO freshie.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it.
Malcolm Coles: Learn how to combine Google Sheets functions and do keyword analysis in 5 minutes
Being a content writer, it’s probably no surprise that I do love a bit of keyword research and analysis, so I’m always happy to learn new tips and tricks on how I might be able to do this better.
As someone who is definitely not a formula whiz, Malcolm Cole’s talk on using Google Sheets to your advantage was perfect for me! In his talk, Malcom explained the full process of doing keyword clustering using Google Sheets functions and did so in a way that was really engaging and easy to follow.
In terms of top takeaways, it has to be all of the handy formulas he shared to make life so much easier. You can find all of the formulas mentioned in Malcom’s talk on his blog here.
Hannah Brady: Killer content & multichannel magic: a chaotic how-to guide
If you didn’t know already, c3’s very own Hannah Brady presented a talk on the main stage (yes, auditorium 1) on the power of content and how you can apply this across different channels.
Given that Hannah is my manager/momager, I’m obviously going to be slightly biased, but the talk was truly so insightful. Here are just a few parts that really stood out:
- Proving that your content has a multichannel life beyond ranking and organic visibility is crucial
- Content needs to be sexy and fully aligned with overall business goals
- When auditing you need to look at attraction aka CTA, traffic, conversions, intent, and coverage (where the content falls in the customer journey)
- Hannah’s content flower framework – basically, this involves looking into how your content can work alongside SEO, PR, paid, social, and other marketing efforts
Oh, and don’t forget that “content puts the ‘fun’ in ‘top of the funnel’.” – Hannah Brady, 2023
Be sure to check out all of Hannah’s beautifully designed slides and wisdom over on SpeakerDeck.
Billie Geena & John Mueller
To round off Thursday, Uptake Agency founder, Billie Geena, and Google legend, John Mueller, joined forces to discuss a hot topic in the search community, Google and its updates.
Overall, this was a casual and easy-going session with a deck that was packed full of relatable SEO memes and thoughts about the industry. You can find the slides pulled together by Billie on SpeakerDeck.
However, a particular reason I’m mentioning this session in the roundup is that only a mere few hours later, the Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update was announced. Yes, I’m looking at you John. 👀
Grace Frohlich: Pirates should use maps: how to build a user journey map for search
Right before catching my train back up to Leeds on Friday, I managed to squeeze in a few more talks, and get a few more freebies. A stand-out talk for me that morning was by Grace Frohlich, SEO Consultant at Brainlabs, who delved into how, like pirates, SEOs can create their own (user journey) maps to obtain the treasure.
According to Grace, creating a user journey map can take just 3 steps:
- Lay a foundation by gathering relevant keyword research and deciding on data dimensions including funnel stage, search intent, topic groups, journey stage, and milestones.
- Get into the mindset of the user and identify where you will appear in their search journey. For this, Grace mentioned using ChatGPT to help pull together customer insights including motivations and pain points which I personally found a really innovative way of using AI.
- Categorise and map out your keywords to reflect the user journey. This involves assigning each keyword to the most relevant milestone and filling out your user journey map. Grace did go on to explain that this will also help validate the insights provided by ChatGPT, especially as AI is obviously not perfect.
Once your user journey map is complete and ready, you should have lots of key insights and be able to identify where to prioritise your time and resources.
Due to time, Grace gave a slightly condensed 3-step process, but for more information, you can read the full Wix blog she wrote on the 5 steps to building a user journey map for your SEO strategy.
Obviously, with so many great speakers taking the stage, this is just my personal experience and takeaways that I took from the talks I went to. If you’re curious about what our content team gets up to, and our approach to content strategy, get in touch today.
