Bigger and better than ever before, it was impossible to see all of the great talks at Brighton SEO. However, I’ve tried to round up some of my key take-aways in 4 areas; design, social media competitions, link building and content. Enjoy!

Design

An engaged social media community and a well performing website are both ways things that influence SEO, so it’s no wonder there was some great advice on how to achieve both of these thing using design. 

  1. To be successful on social media, you need to work as a team with a designer and developer.

  2. Only share good images. Ensure they are branded, bold and crisp.

  3. Ensure the copy matches the image.

  4. Challenge your audience to think.

  5. Don’t be afraid to take risks, just know the limits.

  6. Use human faces to make human connections.

  7. Be able to react quickly. Have an up to date set of image guidelines ready for designers.(Sprout Social has some great guidelines)

  8. Have a set of easily customizable product/event image templates that anyone can update.

  9. Marketers should explore tools like Canva and Pablo to create visual content

  10. Don’t put a play button on an image that isn’t linked to a video. Just don’t. 

  11. When designing for mobile space is a premium. Design from mobile up.

  12. There are great mobile emulators available online, but always check on a real device. Something might work well with a cursor but be a major UX issue when trying to tap on a mobile device.

  13. Sometimes you need to let go of old techniques and not be afraid to try something new

  14. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Hamburger menus are a well-known icon on mobile, why change it? 

  15. Always look for inspiration.

Social Media Competitions

Iain Haywood ran a great session on why you should run a competition and the best ways to plan and execute it. It didn’t really fit with any other sub heading so it got its own.

  1. Competitions need to be fun.

  2. The heart of fun is Comic Sans. (Hopefully Iain was joking)

  3. There are two types of people who will enter a competition; People who care about the competition and people who care about your brand and the competition.

  4. Don’t be carried away by your engagement statistics - incentivisation changes people’s interaction. 

  5. The more fun the competition is, the less incentive is needed to make people enter.

  6. A competition needs a skill-based entry and is judged. A giveaway takes no skill to enter and has a random draw.

  7. A technical based competition is the best way to  collect data and get useful engagements

  8. Put competition answers in a place that makes the audience engage like a video or image.

Link Building 

Thanks to the penguin update, high quality, relevant links are essential for a good SEO strategy, so of course there were lots of opions on how best to build links, but my favourite quote comes from Samuel Scott “Links are just a natural by-product of good marketing and PR”

  1. Get links from press requests as Journalists are always looking for contributors. Use tools like HARO and the #JournoRequest hashtag to find suitable journalists.

  2. Use Wikipedia. Fix broken links and add them in your own listings using tools like WikiGrabber.com

  3. Sponsor local events related to your industry for quality, relevant links

  4. Reach out to bloggers and build a team of content influencers.

  5. Supply content to publications relevant to your niche.

  6. Start with smaller publications and build up a reputation

  7. Use backlink research to see who’s linking to your competitors and see if you could do the same.

  8. Use Buzzfeed. Anyone can create content so if you can create a high quality relevant article, you can increase traffic and links.

  9. Use promoted posts to get social lift on Buzzfeed articles.

  10. Use raw data and turn it into something more engaging, this will make it more interesting and make it more likely you will get links

  11. Do back link discovery. It can help you prioritise your backlink tasks

  12. If you’re reaching out to journalists, make sure they cover the right industry. If not you’re wasting everyone’s time. 

  13. Some of the best links come naturally from great content and good PR

  14. To be good at PR you need to be good on the phone

Content

As we all know, good content is the base for a successful SEO strategy, so here are a few tips on how to make your content rock. 

  1. Good ideas rarely look liked good ideas at their inception.

  2. People will only share your content if they look good doing it.

  3. Make sure your content adds value to whoever sees it. If it doesn’t, what’s the point?

  4. Learn from your failures

  5. Work out what  metrics you will use to define a successful post

  6. People don’t share formats, they share ideas

  7. Make sure your data is credible

  8. Connect emotionally with your audience

  9. Is your content easily shareable?

  10. Ask yourself, who, what where, how, why?

  11. You can always create interesting content from boring industries

  12. Think about the best way to present your data, make it visually appealing

That’s it for what was another brilliant Brighton SEO, you can see all of the slide decks here: Slideshare

If I could only take one thing from this years Brighton SEO it would be my favourite quote from Samuel Scott “Links are just a natural by-product of good marketing and PR.” Use this as a reminder to create the best and most relevant content you can.