Global experts share major trends shaping search and the web

World digerati take centre stage at Brighton

Imagine you're a very busy CEO or senior digital manager (and if things are hectic, you'll know that's no joke)... Here's a quick 'helicopter' view of the sessions for you from BrightonSEO September 2017.

That key thought to have 'front-of-mind' is, as ever, there's no quick fix these days that will miraculously propel any digital venture to overnight success. Time and money are usually key essentials - and not forgetting resources, e.g. People, computing power and related tools.

It takes time to prepare the ground for great projects (e.g. SEO fundamentals), sow and plant on decent soil (e.g. write content + social media posts), nurture each element (e.g. content marketing + paid media) to reap a rich harvest (the millionaire lifestyle + live forever on the Maldives).

BrightonSEO founder Kelvin Newman met up with Smart Insights at the conference. He described the current state of digital he and his team can often encounter: “There haven’t been that many surprises in the past 10 years, despite the hysteria we hear around the pace of change in the space. The reality is that for lots of businesses, rather than worrying about big, disruptive shifts, they should really make sure they’re getting the basics right.

Brexit at BrightonSEO

So, let's look for the top trends at BrightonSEO this time. Firstly, there was the Brexit theme lightly on display, promoting Brighton as a Great British place to have great creatives work with you.

And then, if you want to know how to spot popular trends, the first place to check is the event schedule. Here's how I carved up the stalls set out by the Rough Agenda organising team:

Important to all those wanting to be successful at search were most of the key topics in the auditoria - these five probably make a best overview:

• Advanced keyword research
• Technical SEO
• Ranking factors
• Onsite
• Linkbuilding

Why these? Without decent keyword research, you'll be on a backfoot and subsequently lose customers, donors, influencers etc. Then, if you get technical, onsite and link elements wrong, 1. no-one will find you, and 2. no-one will read, watch or listen to you.

Diving into the smaller rooms, several important digital disciplines and areas got my pique:

• Business strategy, e.g. agile marketing.
• Customers - I had to tease 'the Customer' out of the agenda but they were there, oh yes - in the social and chatbot sections for instance.
• Reputation / Online PR - how's yours, your company / organisation?
• Content strategy + marketing - what is done here will likely make or break a business or organisation, indisputably.
• Measurement / analytics - you can't manage to improve without first measuring - period.
• Paid media / affiliates - a crucial area for many... Google, Facebook, Bing, LinkedIn, agencies like Criteo and many other players trying to earn more than a lion's share of your budget(s).
• AMP - be early to market, if you're not too late already, and you could reap better success than the laggards.

Listen to the www experts

• AMP: For 'mobile first', see Cindy Krum (slides), Emily Grossman (slides) and Aleyda Solis (slides) - think better UX and mobile load time. Or just create sites that are served up fast (Jon Henshaw).
• Voice search: Saeley Junior Johnson on the near-future, Speak Easy – Rise of voice search.
• Keyword research: Stacey MacNaught... tactical, practical keyword research (and voice search again).
• Future of Marketing? Implement agile marketing with the right staff by Olga Andrienko
• New to SEO? Check out, Ammon Johns.

Peter Nikolow on QUIC from Google (Slides) due to land on computers imminently: "And will smash everything gone before it."

Dominic Woodman on the importance and practice of advanced site architecture: "Match up intents to templates and pages."

Dawn Anderson is, not least, a server code genius making sense of Google Page Rank and patents as well as knowing how to sort out the "random crap" that's ended up on our websites and servers after years of 'generational cruft'.

And finally, a glimpse into a space-age future: how the digerati will create 3D Star Wars-type holograms maybe... Jess Stiles on emerging platforms.