Brighton SEO is one of the most popular and respected search conferences in the world. As well as the headline SEO talks, the event also sees experts discuss PPC, PR, social, UX and more.
Here are some important things I learnt at my first BrightonSEO:
- 14.6 million people have a disability in the UK yet 97% of homepages have accessibility errors.
Digital accessibility is about making your website easy for everyone to use. Here are a few tips on how you can improve the accessibility of your website.
- Build your website with screen readers in mind. These are tools that help people who have difficulty seeing use a website without barriers.
- Use skip links on websites to avoid annoyance. Skip links allow keyboard only users to navigate links on your website, reach main content and complete forms.
- Use both HTML and ARIA document landmarks to signify where key content is on page.
- Check that your content is easily readable by making sure there is enough contrast between background colours and fonts, and that your font size is large enough.
Find out how accessible your site is quickly and easily using Wave.
There are lots of ways to improve the accessibility of your site, many other ways to improve accessibility on your website, contact us today for more information.
- Brainstorming doesn’t have to be scary
In larger groups, not everyone will be confident enough to suggest their ideas without feeling judged. However, a great way to overcome this is to start the session by writing bad ideas on a board.
This serves a dual purpose. With really awful ideas already written down, any additional ideas will be an improvement. It will also help further clarify the aim of the brainstorm session and what you are looking to achieve.
- 40% GenZ are using social platforms such as Instagram or TikTok to search for products/services
Does the rise of social search mean that Google’s dominance is under threat?
Not quite, but the success of TikTok and Instagram Reels have had a big impact on the way users access information about products and services. The platforms have algorithm which drive personalised content based on what the user is most likely to engage with.
For example, if you searched ‘best places to eat in Norwich’ you would likely see other content around food and things to do in Norwich in your feed.
The power of short videos should not be underestimated!
- You Don’t always have to rely on Paid Ads to be high up on the SERP
There are multiple ways for your brand to be in pole position without paid ads.
- Related searches
- Refined searches
- ‘People also ask’
- Structured Snippets
These are just some examples of how your content can feature higher on the SERP without paying for the click. Each can help address a user’s search intent. It can take some time to rank organically in these areas, so paid is a brilliant way to bridge the initial gap while you’re working on optimising your content behind the scenes.
We can help with both paid and organic optimisation, including competitor gap analysis. Get in touch to find out more.
- Improve speed on your website
Speed is a really important ranking factor, and can also be the difference from a slow and frustrating experience with your brand online or a seamless one. Three small changes can make a big difference to your websites load times:
- Remove out of date imagery and content
- Compress and minify all the content you can
- Use optimised video storage rather than hosting video in your CMS
These three ways might sound like common sense to most people, but they could easily be forgotten for more technical approaches when looking to improve site speed.
Sometimes the easy solutions are the best solutions.
Speeding up your site is important both to avoid user frustration and to help you rank better – so it’s certainly worth looking into.
