The four-hour train journey down to Brighton is always worth it for brightonSEO , the SEO conference ‘where search marketers go to learn to do their jobs better’.

brightonSEO is probably the coolest and most interesting work event I have been to, this year was my 3rd time attending. What I love most about the event is how friendly and approachable everyone is, whether you are new to SEO or a certified expert managing a team of SEOers, everyone is willing to share their knowledge.

Not to mention my love for Brighton and all the freebies you can collect from the conference.

After a seriously jam-packed day, I’ve decided to highlight a few of my favourite key takeaways. These are things I think you may find useful and can put into place yourself!

Instagram SEO tactics to be seen

• STOP hashtagging in comments, these hashtags are not recognised by Instagram

• USE hashtags in your bio

• CREATE a link landing page in your bio to get the most out of your bio link, such as Link Linktree

• DO add ALT tags

Lead generation on LinkedIn

• Would you agree to go on date with a passing stranger? Maybe, maybe not.. It’s a little uncomfortable to be asked out by someone you know nothing about, the same goes for selling. It’s a bit uncomfortable.

• Customers want to know the brand, product or service before buying into it.

• Before launching a campaign you should consider

  • What is the target audience mindset?

  • Is there a value exchange?

  • How many leads are deemed as ‘good’? Look for quality over quantity

  • How long is the sales cycle?

The state of online performance

• As websites grow and grow, loading speed gets longer.

• Most of Google’s ranking factors relate to loading time, so now it is more important than ever to reduce loading time

• The rise of web builders like WIX and Squarespace are not built for performance, they are heavy and often have unnecessary code

• How to improve loading speed

  • Test your website, testing multiple pages with PageSpeed Insights

  • Analyse the results

  • Act!

    • Reduce the size of web pages by optimising images, CSS files, & JS files

    • Review use of Apps, Plugins & Code blocks, can any be removed?

    • Compress images & videos with tools like Squoosh

    • Implement lazy loading, with this beginners guide

    • Consider using a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Putting it into play

Across the 12 talks I went to, there was a mixture of things I knew, as well as some stuff I didn't understand!

I’ll be optimising our website for page speed as well as looking into Entity SEO, having gone to Dixon Jones talk & buying his book. Not to mention brushing up my Lead Generation skills for LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading & I hope you found these tips useful!