Key Takeaways From BrightonSEO: April 2019

It’s that time of year again! Last Thursday the digital team here at Thissaway set off to Brighton for the biannual search-marketing conference, BrightonSEO. It was my first time going and listening to some of the savviest people in the industry was intriguing. Here are some of our key takeaways…

Tanesha put on a thought-provoking talk about PPC and how to win business from your competitors. Considering 85% of the ‘above-the-fold’ area in Google SERPs is Paid Search Advertising means it came as no surprise that PPC can be the fastest way to instant competitor customer conquesting and here are some ways to do just that.

Be smart when it comes to location. Research has shown 80% of shoppers use mobile in stores so think about that in context of your competitors and start targeting ads to their geographic locations. Next time a customer goes to price check in your competitors store, you’ll be right there offering an even better deal.

The use of SKAGs is one way to win over your competitor. Users are impatient, and they don’t want to trawl through to find what they’re looking for – make your super relevant content top of page.

If applicable to your industry, using a ‘cancel’ or ‘deal’ keyword could just be your best friend. When a customer is leaving a competitor using a ‘cancel’ keyword such as ‘cancel subscription’ it could work very well as the customer is likely to be looking for another service from another competitor – let it be you.

The slides: Land grab: How to win business from your competitors

Coral spoke about some interesting ways to repurpose existing content to help with strategy. One way was to repurpose existing blogs for outreach to quickly obtain links, increase brand awareness as well as coverage, increase referral traffic and improve trust flow. But how?

Well firstly choose the right content. Do your research and see what’s trending on platforms such as Twitter, Google News and Google Trends. Then, consider your audience and whether it is a regional, national or trade publication you should be targeting. Next, write the right press release and then outreach, create a media list or use an existing one and make sure to personalise each email to get more cut through with the journalists and ensure you give as much information as possible. Then… wait, track and repeat.

Coral exhibited how this can really work with her case study showing how 5 pieces of content gained 19 pieces of coverage, 23 live links, 11% increase in referral traffic YoY and 38% increase in organic traffic YoY.

The slides: How To Repurpose Existing Content To Help With Your Strategy

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness “of the creator of the main content, the main content itself and the website” and Lily took us through how it can affect your website as well as five quick tips to improve your E-A-T.

Lily talked us through how various E-A-T factors can play a role in affecting a website’s performance. It’s really important that your website doesn’t have deceptive content and that you ensure transparency with your users which can be done by showing your expertise through external reviews, a strong “About Us” page or user generated content and comments.

We’ve been talking about how much E-A-T matters for a while, and Lily emphasised why: Google is relying on you to help make the internet a better place and if you wouldn’t trust a website, why should search engines? Knowing all this is great but what’s even better is Lily’s five quick tips to improve your own E-A-T and leveraging it for SEO success…

The slides: Leveraging E-A-T For SEO Success