In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, keeping up to date and staying ahead of the curve is an ongoing challenge. In April, I attended BrightonSEO, one of the largest search marketing conferences in the world. The conference, as always, was filled with innovative ideas, cutting-edge strategies, and insightful discussions led by search industry experts. It provided a unique opportunity to not only understand what your peers are doing but also to gather practical tips and strategies that can be immediately implemented for our clients.
As search becomes ever more competitive, the insights from BrightonSEO 2024 are more relevant than ever. Whether you’re a small business owner trying to carve out a niche without a massive inventory, a content creator looking to double your leads with engaging blogs, or a seasoned marketer refining your PPC campaigns, the knowledge shared here can create some quick wins as well as improve long term strategies.
This blog covers my personal highlights of what was discussed at BrightonSEO this April some of which you can apply to your digital marketing efforts right away. From thriving in competitive niches without relying on backlinks to leveraging advanced Google Analytics features for deeper insights.
So whether you’re looking to refine your approach or revolutionise your strategies, read on to discover how these key takeaways from BrightonSEO 2024 can help you enhance your search marketing playbook.
TL;DR
Thriving Without Backlinks: Focus on content depth and the structure of your content, optimise for featured snippets and create a strategic plan for your internal linking.
Evidence-Led SEO Strategy: Find out what your baseline performance looks like, estimate traffic increases from incremental keyword improvements, and prioritise based on increased revenue and traffic.
Leveraging PMAX for Lead Generation: Refresh PMAX ad creatives regularly, integrate CRM with Google Ads, and use detailed customer personas to target PMAX effectively.
Gathering First-Party Data For E-Commerce: Adapt strategies like quizzes and free samples to gather first-party data without relying on a sale.
Improving PPC Lead Generation: Assign conversion values to prioritise conversion actions, analyse lead close ratios by area, review quality scores and adjust bids based on seasonality.
Shopify SEO Insights: Optimize your Shopify platform by focusing on above-the-fold content, internal linking, and using collection page schema markup for better visibility.
Competing with Big Brands: Focus on Core Web Vitals and content quality to outperform larger competitors.
Cross-Channel E-commerce Strategy: Buying journeys are more complex than ever, think about the full journey and keywords at every stage as well as what their next action is.
Using GA & GTM: Harness the full potential of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to track user engagement, review conversion paths and review blog engagement rates.
Auditing Your Google Tech Stack: Review marketing tags regularly, implement consent mode, and migrate to server-side tracking.
Creating Categories: Identify and establish new markets by focusing on unmet customer needs and long-term category building, be prepared to fail, keywords won’t guide you here.
Thriving in Competitive Niches without Backlinks
In SEO, backlinks have long been seen as a key activity that drives SEO success. However, the landscape is changing, and it’s possible to carve out a competitive edge even in saturated markets without relying on an extensive backlink profile. This strategy relies on several core principles: content depth, structural integrity, optimising for featured snippets, and strategic internal linking.
Content Depth and Originality: The first step is to create content that goes beyond the surface level. In-depth content that offers unique insights or presents information in a new way can naturally attract attention and engagement. In a world of generative AI, these LLMs set the minimum standard of in-depth content however without unique insights or perspectives it’s unlikely your content will be indexed. By focusing on originality and your unique perspectives your content builds on what generative AI is able to create.
Strong Structure: A well-structured webpage does more than improve readability, it also improves search engines understanding of the document and how best to rank it. A logical flow using headers, subheaders, bullet points, images and paragraphs breaks up the text and makes it more digestible for both readers and gives structure to search engines. Users tend to skim-read most content so highlighting important areas of text helps your key points stand out.
This structure is crucial when you aim to capture featured snippets, which we’ll look at more below
Optimising for Featured Snippets: Featured snippets provide a significant visibility boost and can be targeted by answering questions directly and clearly in your content. Formatting content to include concise, explanatory sections that directly respond to common queries using a Q and A format can increase your chances of landing in this position.
Internal Linking: Effective internal linking ensures that search engines and users can navigate your site comprehensively. It spreads link equity throughout your site, boosting the performance of individual pages. Linking should be strategic, focusing on linking to relevant content that enhances the user’s journey, thereby increasing the overall site’s value and user engagement.
Creating Comprehensive Content Briefs: Start with a detailed content brief that outlines the main and secondary keywords, analyse competitor pages, and sets a clear structure for the content. Creating a content brief for each piece of content, even if you’re an SEO, ensures that every piece of content is optimised to stand out in the competitive niche. This is especially important if you use freelance copywriters who may not be experts in what’s required to rank well in organic search.
Implementing these strategies can help your site grow and improve rankings without depending solely on backlinks. This approach not only makes your site more resilient against algorithm changes but also enhances the user experience, leading to better engagement and conversion rates.
Winning with an Evidence-Led SEO Strategy
An evidence-led SEO strategy relies on data to guide decisions, reducing guesswork and focusing efforts on what truly works. And as an SEO it stops you falling back to the classic ‘it depends’. This approach involves several important steps that can transform your SEO activities from tactics to an in-depth strategy.
Identifying the Size of the Prize: Understanding the potential benefits of your SEO efforts starts with identifying the ‘size of the prize’. This means quantifying the opportunity that improving your rankings can bring in terms of click-through rate and traffic, which then lead to improvements in conversions and revenue.
Creating a Performance Baseline: Before implementing changes, establish a performance baseline. This involves tracking your current SEO results to understand trends and predict future performance without intervention. This baseline is crucial for measuring the impact of your strategies and making informed adjustments as you move forward.
Calculating Incrementality: Once you have your baseline, the next step is to calculate the incrementality. This involves predicting how improvements in keyword positions and click-through rates could increase traffic. This data helps in understanding which changes will have the most substantial impact on your SEO performance. This is also known as forecasting.
Prioritisation: With potential gains identified and quantified, prioritisation becomes easier. Focus on the SEO tasks that will deliver the biggest improvements first. Prioritisation ensures that resources are efficiently allocated, thereby maximising ROI on your SEO efforts.
Implementation and Checklists: For successful implementation, use checklists for different sectors to keep track of all necessary actions. These checklists help maintain a consistent approach across your campaigns and ensure that no critical steps are missed. They also give you a playbook for future SEO strategies in those sectors.
Testing and Learning: A core component of an evidence-led strategy is the continuous cycle of testing and learning. Use platforms like seotesting.com to create key tests and track their outcomes. This continuous feedback loop allows for iterative improvements, adapting your strategy based on what the data shows works best.
By following an evidence-led approach, you position yourself to make smarter, more impactful SEO decisions as well as achieving greater buy-in from your organisation or client. Forecasting your search performance increases the effectiveness of your efforts and also ensures that every action is justified by data, which leads to sustained, measurable improvements in your SEO performance.
Leveraging PMax for Lead Generation
Performance Max (PMax) campaigns in Google Ads offer a powerful way to maximise visibility across Google’s entire inventory of ad placements in one single campaign type. Typically PMax campaigns are used in the B2C world, especially eCommerce, however, this talk was about using PMax for B2B lead generation. Here’s how you can leverage PMax to optimise lead generation efforts.
Refresh Ad Creative Regularly: PMax campaigns, by their automated nature, make it more challenging to optimise than a traditional search campaign. Keeping your ad creatives fresh and engaging is key to maintaining high performance. Regular updates to your images, headlines, and descriptions can prevent ad fatigue and keep your audience engaged, thereby improving click-through rates and conversions. This is also key for B2C PMax campaigns.
Integrate your CRM system with Google Ads: Linking your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, such as Hubspot, Salesforce or Zoho, with Google Ads, allows for richer data sharing and allows Google to improve targeting. This integration helps tailor your advertising based on detailed customer profiles and previous interactions, leading to more personalised and effective campaigns.
Review and Utilise Customer Match Lists: Make use of Google Ads’ Customer Match feature to upload lists of customer details and tailor campaigns directly to these audiences. This can be particularly effective for re-engagement campaigns or upselling products to existing customers as well as giving Google additional signals about your current customers to enable it to find new ones.
Use Competitors as a Signal: Incorporating insights about competitors into your PMax campaigns can provide strategic advantages. By identifying what your competitors are doing well and where they might be lacking, you can position your ads to better capture consumers in the decision phase.
Personas as Asset Groups: Develop detailed customer personas and use these as the basis for creating asset groups within your PMax campaigns. This allows for more targeted messaging and ad placement, which can lead to higher conversion rates as ads are more closely matched to user expectations and needs. You can then structure your campaigns based on the product or service.
Campaign and Asset Group Segmentation: Structure your PMax campaigns by creating separate campaigns for each product or service. Within each campaign, use asset groups tailored to different customer personas. This segmentation allows for finer control over ad performance and optimisation, ensuring that each segment is targeted with the most relevant and effective content.
By applying these tactics within your PMax campaigns, you can enhance your lead generation efforts, making use of Google Ads’ extensive network and capabilities. The key is to remain flexible, and continuously test and refine your strategies based on performance data.
Gathering First-Party Data for eCommerce
eCommerce platforms can greatly benefit from adopting strategies that are traditionally used in B2B marketing to improve sales later in the funnel. These methods increase the number of potential customer contacts, which can then be used to help ad platforms find your next ideal customer, but also deepen the understanding of customer preferences and needs. Here’s how you can implement these strategies in an eCommerce context:
Utilising Guides and Lookbooks: Guides and lookbooks are excellent tools for showcasing products and providing valuable information to potential customers and can work for most if not all, eCommerce products. By creating high-quality, visually appealing guides and lookbooks, you can gather their details and help them to explore your offerings and move them closer to making a purchase.
Offering Free Samples or Early Access: Incentives like free samples or early access to new products can significantly boost first-party data collection by attracting customers interested in trying new products before committing to a purchase. This strategy can not only improve sales by alleviating any product fears with a free sample or by building excitement for new products but allows you to use other channels to stay in front of your audience.
Implementing Quiz Campaigns: Quiz campaigns are an engaging way to interact with visitors and capture valuable first-party data without needing to sell something first. By designing quizzes that help customers decide which products are right for them or discover something new about their preferences, you not only provide value but also collect valuable data on customer demographics, preferences, and behaviours.
Rich Data Collection: The data collected from quizzes, free samples, and interaction with guides and lookbooks can be incredibly valuable. This information allows you to tailor marketing efforts more effectively to those who have already shown interest in your product as well as giving you more first-party data to work with, without requiring a sale.
Leveraging B2B Tactics in a B2C Framework: By adapting B2B strategies such as lead nurturing and detailed data analysis into the eCommerce space, you can create a more robust strategy for not just attracting leads but also converting them into loyal customers.
Implementing these strategies requires a thoughtful approach where the customer’s journey and experience are at the forefront of planning. It’s about creating touchpoints that engage your potential customers and provide them with reasons to engage more deeply with your brand.
Improving PPC Lead Generation
Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns are a staple of digital marketing, but there’s always room for further optimisation to maximise leads, and reduce costs which both lead to an improvement in your return on investment. Here are some advanced strategies that were spoken about at BrightonSEO that can be used to enhance your PPC campaigns:
Assigning Conversion Values: In the B2B world assigning conversion values can be a challenge as you’re generating leads rather than direct sales with a value attached to them. For B2B this isn’t about perfectly tracking conversion value but rather understanding each conversion action’s relative importance and impact on your business. For instance, a form fill might be worth more than a newsletter sign-up. This helps automated strategies allocate budgets more effectively and optimise campaigns towards high-value conversions, especially when combined with a tROAS strategy.
Analysing Lead Close Ratios: It’s crucial to look not just at the leads generated but also at how they convert to sales. Analyzing lead close ratios by area or service can provide insights into where your PPC campaigns are delivering the most valuable leads, allowing for targeted improvement and budget allocation. This is especially useful if you have limited budgets or if travelling further afield to deliver a service.
Reviewing Quality Scores: Quality scores in Google Ads play a significant role in determining the cost and effectiveness of your ads. Regularly reviewing and optimising for higher quality scores can reduce costs and improve ad placements, enhancing overall campaign efficiency. For those with smaller budgets, this can make the difference between a successful campaign and one where the cost per conversion is too high.
Seasonal Adjustments: Incorporate seasonality into your PPC strategies. Understanding how your products or services perform in different seasons can guide you in adjusting bids and ad emphasis throughout the year. For example, increasing bids during your peak season can capitalise on higher search volumes, whereas scaling back during off-peak times can conserve your budget. Using the seasonal adjustments tool in Google ads gives the smart bidding algorithm more information and can improve performance.
Portfolio Bid Strategies: Use Google Ads’ portfolio bid strategies to manage bids across multiple campaigns based on a set of performance targets. This approach allows for more effective use of your advertising budget by dynamically adjusting bids according to the fluctuating market conditions and campaign performance. Just be careful which campaigns are included in your portfolio strategy otherwise the system can start to optimise towards the lower value conversions or increase budgets in brand or remarketing campaigns.
By refining these elements of your PPC campaigns, you can not only increase the efficiency of your advertising spend but also enhance the quality and relevance of the leads generated.
Five Years of Shopify SEO: Key Strategies for Long-Term Success
Over the last five years, Shopify has become one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, and SEO has played a crucial role in the success stories of many Shopify stores. Although Shopify is not a platform we work with at Capsule, it’s the eCommerce platform I would recommend to most small businesses over alternatives such as Wix or WooCommerce.
At BrightonSEO Lorcan Fearon at StudioHawk revealed some tried and tested strategies that can help you boost your Shopify store’s SEO performance.
Optimising Above-the-Fold Content on Collection Pages: The content that appears above the fold on your collection pages is pivotal. It should provide clear context about what the page offers, why they should buy from you as well as links to other relevant collection pages.
Enhancing Collection Pages: Build out your collection pages to include more detailed, useful content. This not only helps keep potential customers engaged but also signals to search engines that your pages are rich in information and worthy of higher rankings. This could include pulling out key blogs and guides that help users make a decision.
Schema Markup for Collection Pages: Implementing schema markup on your collection pages can help search engines better understand the content of your pages and improve the way your pages are represented in SERPs. This can lead to enhanced visibility and click-through rates.
Internal Linking from Established Pages: Use your established collection pages to link to newer or less visible collection pages. This internal linking strategy helps distribute page authority across your website, boosting the SEO performance of individual pages and helping newer pages rank quicker.
Use of Heatmap Tools: Deploy heatmap tools such as Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity to analyse how users interact with your pages. This data can inform adjustments to your page layout, content placement, and overall user experience, optimising your pages for better engagement and conversions. Use these tools carefully as they increase page weight and loading times which can impact your conversion rates. It’s recommended to add these for a few weeks to collect the data and then they can be removed while you analyse the results. Once changes are implemented on the site you can then add these tools again to review the performance changes.
Managing Canonical URLs: Shopify’s canonical URLs out of the box aren’t set up in the most ideal way and are something worth reviewing if your site uses Shopify. Ensuring canonical URLs are correctly set up and that you link to the canonicalised version ensures you avoid duplicate content issues that can negatively impact your SEO. Regularly check and update these as needed, especially when making changes to your theme.
Restructuring the Head Section of Pages: Keep critical SEO elements like title tags and meta descriptions at the top of the head section. This helps ensure they are prioritised by search engines, even if other elements fail to load properly and break the head.
By focusing on both the technical and content aspects of SEO on your Shopify store you can enhance your store’s visibility, user experience, and ultimately, its commercial success.
How to Outperform Big Brands without Thousands of SKUs
Competing with big brands when you have a limited product range might seem daunting, but there are strategic ways to carve out your niche and succeed. Several tactics were discussed that are designed to help small to medium enterprises (SMEs) enhance their online visibility and sales, despite having fewer SKUs than larger competitors.
Optimising for Core Web Vitals (CWV): Ensure your website excels in Google’s Core Web Vitals, which measure the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of your site. A fast, smooth, and stable user experience can help your site rank higher than competitors, even those with more extensive product offerings. This is due to the fact that larger organisations have less flexibility and their strong brand authority means they are able to use this to rank well.
Leveraging Social Media for Topical and Keyword Research: Use platforms like Reddit, Facebook communities and X hashtags to understand current trends and topics of interest in your sector. This can be a goldmine for keyword and content ideas that are currently under the radar of big brands and traditional keyword planning tools, allowing you to create content that meets a specific, emerging demand.
Enhancing Collection Pages with Rich Content: Similar to what Lorcan had success with on Shopify, improving your collection pages by adding longer, more detailed content that educates users can see significant ranking improvements. Not only does this improve SEO, but it also enhances the user experience by providing valuable information that helps in the decision-making process. The key is to structure this content in a way that still allows quick, easy visibility of the products.
Educational Product Descriptions: Even if your products are well-known and buyers know exactly what the product does, enriching product descriptions with educational content can differentiate your offerings. Explain the benefits and applications of your products to help consumers make informed decisions, fostering trust and loyalty.
Monitoring and Adapting to Changes in Consumer Behaviour: Stay agile and ready to adapt to changes in consumer interests and behaviours. By being responsive, you can quickly capitalise on new opportunities that arise, often faster than bigger companies can.
By focusing on these areas, smaller businesses can effectively compete with larger brands. It’s about being smart with your resources, targeting your efforts where they can make the most impact, and always staying ahead in terms of product knowledge and customer engagement.
Cross-Channel E-commerce Strategy: Integrating Customer Journeys Across Platforms
In today’s digital landscape, the customer journey is increasingly complex and spans multiple channels and even devices. To effectively capture and convert leads, businesses must adopt a cross-channel eCommerce strategy that considers these varied paths seamlessly.
Understanding the Full Customer Journey: 44% of product searches start on search engines, but the journey doesn’t end there. Customers often engage with multiple touchpoints across different platforms such as social media, video and reviews before making a purchase decision. It’s crucial to map out these journeys and understand the interactions at each stage.
Beyond Single Keyword Targeting: Modern SEO and advertising require a strategy that goes beyond targeting single keywords that are typically at the bottom of the funnel. Instead, think about the comprehensive information needs of your customers throughout their journey. This means creating content that addresses various stages of the buyer’s journey and splitting this information across multiple pages to cater to specific intents. It’s important to remember that each keyword can have multiple types of intent and that users prefer to consume content in different ways.
Unified Messaging Across Channels: Ensure that your messaging is consistent across all platforms while being tailored to the strengths and user expectations of each channel. This unified yet customised approach helps reinforce your brand message and aids in building customer trust and recognition.
Optimising for Conversion at Each Touchpoint: Each channel in your strategy should be optimised for conversion. This includes not only the main PDPs but also social media, email marketing, and mobile apps. Tailor the user experience and call-to-action features to align with how users interact with each channel, using softer conversions such as discount codes and newsletters further up the funnel.
Integrating these elements into your e-commerce strategy creates a more cohesive and dynamic online presence that engages customers at multiple points along their journey, enhancing the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts and increasing conversion opportunities.
Harnessing the Power of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for Enhanced SEO Insights
Using Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) effectively can provide invaluable insights into your website’s performance and user interactions. These tools are essential for data-driven decision-making and optimising your digital marketing strategies. Here’s how to leverage GA and GTM for better SEO outcomes:
Linking Google Search Console with GA4: An east one but often forgotten, start by integrating Google Search Console with your Google Analytics 4 property. This allows you to view your search traffic data alongside other analytics data, providing a far richer view of how users find and interact with your site.
Utilising Conversion Paths in GA4: Dive into the conversion paths feature in GA4 to understand the multi-touch journeys users take before converting. This insight can help you fine-tune your marketing channels and focus on the paths that most often lead to conversions. This is also important when reporting the value of your work as an SEO to stakeholders, for example, you can show that while paid channels might be the final touchpoint in a sale, your blog content or guides are one of their first touch points.
Engagement Rate Reports for Blogs: Use GA4 to track the engagement rate of your blog posts. This metric can reveal which content keeps users interested and engaged longer, helping you to replicate successful topics and formats. You can also view which blogs or guides drive direct conversions which you can then replicate across other content on your site, as well as knowing what to promote on social channels and newsletters.
Adding Conversion Values to Lead Events: Assign monetary values to different types of lead-related events in GA4. This allows you to see not just the number of leads generated from specific actions (like phone clicks or form submissions) but also their estimated value, aiding in ROI calculations. This is something that has been mentioned across several other talks at the event which highlights the importance of this.
Optimising Your GTM Container: Ensure your GTM container is optimised for performance and accuracy:
- Use Templates: Instead of custom scripts, use GTM’s built-in templates wherever possible. These templates are kept up to date by their providers so you never have to worry about manually updating scripts.
- Look-Up Tables: Implement look-up tables in GTM to manage complex variable definitions and rules in a more streamlined and error-resistant manner.
- Selective Pixel Firing: Consider whether pixels need to fire on every page. Restrict them from firing on sensitive content or where they do not add analytical value.
- Regularly review tags and triggers: Google Tag Manager access is typically given to a whole range of departments, from web developers to marketing teams to analytics teams and this can quickly add bloat to your container if no one takes ownership. Setting up regular tag, trigger and variable reviews keeps the footprint of your container to a minimum and avoids confusion or complex documentation when handing it over to others.
By becoming confident in using these tools, you can gain deeper insights into your website’s performance, user behaviour, and the effectiveness of all of your digital marketing efforts.
Auditing Your Google Tech Stack for Optimal Performance
In digital marketing, the efficiency and capability of your tech stack can significantly impact your overall marketing performance. An audit of your Google tech stack ensures that everything is tracking correctly and you’re complying with data privacy legislation.
Checking Tag Presence and Duplication: Start your audit by checking for the presence and proper implementation of tracking tags across your website. Use tools like Google Tag Assistant companion or a tool such as ObservePoint to identify any duplicate tags that might be slowing down your site or skewing your data collection. Duplicate tags can cause users and sessions to be counted twice, which looks great until your traffic is halved when the problem is solved.
Ensuring Correct Tag Configuration: Verify that all tags are configured correctly. Incorrect configurations can lead to data loss or errors in data reporting. For example, if conversions aren’t tracking correctly then ad platforms can struggle to drive the right clicks to your site. Using the Tag Manager preview mode can help you quickly check your conversion actions and other tags are all firing correctly.
Consent Management: Ensure that your consent management platform (CMP) is properly configured to communicate with your tags using Google Consent Mode v2. This is crucial for compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR, which affects how you collect and handle user data. It also allows more granularity when it comes to users who opt into analytics but not remarketing.
Privacy-Enhanced Mode for Embedded Content: If your site uses embedded content from third-party services, such as YouTube videos, make sure they are set to privacy-enhanced mode. This prevents cookies from tracking users across websites, which is important for user privacy and compliance.
By regularly auditing your Google tech stack and ensuring each component works optimally, you can maintain a robust digital infrastructure. While this isn’t something that will improve search performance, it does ensure compliance with evolving digital standards and regulations.
Creating Categories: Innovating in Untapped Markets
Creating categories involves identifying and establishing new niches or sub-markets that are not currently being served by existing products or services. This strategy can be particularly effective for brands looking to become market leaders in new areas however it’s a very time-consuming, challenging area to work in as an SEO. Here’s how to approach category creation based on insights from BrightonSEO:
Identifying Unmet Needs: The first step in creating a new category is to identify needs that are not currently being met by the market. This involves deep market research, including social listening on platforms like Twitter and Reddit to understand consumer frustrations and desires that are not addressed by existing offerings. You can’t rely on keyword research, search volume or other traditional methods for gaging interest as this hasn’t yet been established, you’re creating the demand for these searches.
Building Awareness: Once a potential new category has been identified, the next step is to build awareness. This involves educational content, marketing campaigns, and perhaps even influencer partnerships to get the word out about this new category and why it matters. This is where you start to create the search volume that your content already targets. A good example of this is Hubspot, which helped launch the concept of inbound marketing and is now ranking strongly for these now high-volume keywords.
Becoming the Solution: Position your brand as the primary solution within this new category. This means not only offering a product or service that meets the newly identified needs but also continuously refining your offerings based on consumer feedback and evolving market conditions.
Long-term Investment: Creating a category is not a quick win; it requires a long-term investment in marketing, product development, and customer engagement. Be prepared to support your category creation efforts with sufficient resources, budgets and the willingness to iterate over time. Creating a category can take anywhere from 12-18 months of sustained effort before you start to reap the benefits. Tools such as Google Trends and traditional keyword tools can help you gauge how successful your category-building campaign is going.
Learning from Failures: Not every attempt at creating a category will be successful and there will be far more failures than there will be successes. It’s important to have mechanisms in place to learn from what didn’t work and apply those lessons to future initiatives. This might mean pivoting your approach or even stepping away from the category if it proves non-viable. Creating a category isn’t just an SEO, users have to want to use your product to solve their needs and if a competitor comes along with a better product you have to be able to iterate and be agile.
Social Proof and Community Building: As your new category gains traction, gather and showcase social proof such as customer testimonials, case studies, and user-generated content. Building a community around your category can further reinforce its validity and encourage more widespread adoption.
By innovating in untapped markets and creating new categories, you can not only capture significant market share but also establish your business as a thought leader. This proactive approach to market creation can lead to substantial long-term benefits as the category grows and evolves but only if you continue to invest in your product/service.
Conclusion
BrightonSEO 2024 provided a wealth of insights that are invaluable for anyone looking to advance their SEO and digital marketing strategies. From new approaches to thriving without backlinks to harnessing the power of Google Analytics for deeper insights, this time the conference themes were all around storytelling, data and as always, thinking about the customer.
As we as digital marketers continue to drive growth for the businesses we work with, the themes of BrightonSEO remind us that innovation, strategic thinking, and a deep understanding of consumer behaviour are crucial for success. Whether you’re refining your content strategy, optimising your ads, or overhauling your tech stack, the key takeaways provide a roadmap for achieving greater visibility, engagement, and ultimately, business growth.
I’ll be back at BrightonSEO in October so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and we can catch up!
