Takeaways from BrightonSEO 2026

Every year, Extramile sends some of its digital marketing team to BrightonSEO to learn advances in the search world, and its accomplices – from social to PPC. This instalment of the conference was dominated by a strategic approach to digital marketing, putting an emphasis on multi-channel strategies to drive SEO success.

BrightonSEO 2026 Learnings

Log file analysis can help with content gaps 

Hollie, SEO Manager, attended one talk in order to help identify a new way the team can facilitate gap analysis with a technical B2B SEO hat on. The best of both worlds.

Log file analysis is the act of taking all the times a user or user agent has accessed the site. It’s first party data straight from your hosting provider. Filtering this data down to a user agent level and perusing the data to identify where user agents are (and aren’t) focusing their efforts on. You can then use predictive analytics to reveal where the scrapers are seeing your entity authority – more on that later. 

Say bots are scraping your informational pages but neglecting your commercial ones, it’s probably time to optimise and build new social media ones.

Technical supremacy in a content world 

James, Key Account Manager, spent time listening all about the absolute essentials of technical SEO in a world dominated by content. 

A study of 5,000 websites was at the core of this talk by Gijs de Groot, a good dataset to go off. The study looked at all the technical fundamentals from page size to Core Web Vitals and word count to JavaScript. No stone left unturned here. 

• Authoritative pages typically contained 1,070+ words
• Smaller page sizes of less than 240kb performed better
• Strong Core Web Vitals are essential – they’re a ranking factor after all
• Internal linking remains critical
• Excessive inline JavaScript should be reduced

The overall focus from all the technical talks was to push a technically efficient, well-structured website that can be parsed easily.

SEO isn’t dead, keywords are (genuinely)

Sara, SEO Account Manager, has found that SEO isn’t dead. That’s a relief, Sara! However, keywords are and businesses need to stop chasing them.

Search intent, with the rise of AI search, is changing. People are wanting hyper specific problem solving through using longer longtail keywords and using bespoke questions into LLMs like Gemini and Chat GPT. That poses a challenge and an opportunity for B2B businesses. 

It means that data from traditional SERPs is decreasing, we’ve seen clicks and CTR decrease in line with the industry. But, it means that sessions and users can be pushed down a sales funnel quicker because we can generate trust. 

Remember, multiple studies prove that users coming from AI search are way more engaged than traditional search. 

Which brings us on nicely to the final point…

Understand a user agent’s entity perception

Jim, SEO Account Manager, wanted to back Sara’s theory up so he went on a hunt for all things entity. 

It’s imperative now that domains feed the knowledge graph with the entities that it wants to have an authority on. A domain doesn’t have one entity, it has multiple. Extramile Digital’s entity isn’t just Extramile Digital. It’s B2B SEO, B2B marketing strategies, B2B social media and Extramile Digital itself (amongst others, of course). 

Rankings in 2026 goes way beyond keywords, like Sara said. It goes into clusters and offsite signals. Language is data, it’s important we use it. 

BrightonSEO April 2025 Takeaways

Tristan Veasey, SEO Account Manager:

1. Trust and authenticity matter more than ever. People want real stories, social proof, and personalised experiences.
2. Adapt to user expectations: Younger demographics use social platforms for search. If you’re not there, you’re invisible to them.
3. Combine formats: Articles + videos + answer cards = greater share of the SERP conversation. Use social and PR to drive brand awareness and build demand outside of search whether that’s through listicles, short-form video, AI overviews, forums or more.
4. LLMs Are Real Traffic Channels – Don’t ignore ChatGPT and similar tools, they’re sending high quality traffic to your site.

Georgina Sheard, Digital Marketing Apprentice:

1. By staying aware of what keywords are ranking well organically and acting quickly to alter ads to reflect this, you can target keywords that aren’t performing as well and gain traffic from all directions.
2. Conversion tracking can’t always be 100% accurate – no matter the method. However, a clear, concise strategy will support your results and KPIs moving forward. Optimise for intent so your content is much more trustworthy.
3. PPC is heading in a more creative direction where your data should complement creative decision making. Emotion rules decisions.
4. Video is proving to be key and needs to be introduced across all platforms to be favoured by Google, even in generating measurable PPC results.

Katie Smith, Key Account Manager:

1. SEO isn’t just about Google, at this point it isn’t even just about search engines as we know them. Approximately 70+% of young people are using TikTok and Instagram as their main search engines right now, so how can we ensure that we are including that in our SEO strategies. It highlights the important for attribution and how can effectively track data.
2. BrightonSEO also highlighted the importance of landing pages, how we can use simple tools such as HotJar to ensure that they are designed correctly and optimised.

Sara Whitehouse, SEO Account Manager:

1. The SEO landscape has shifted as much in the last 12 months, as it has in the previous 12 years.
2. With a 60% decrease in clicks, impressions should be a key part of reporting – whether that’s branded or non-branded.
3. We need to shift from silo work as SEOs and focus more on ‘search experience optimisation, looking at the user journey as a whole and integrating with other channels. 

Jim Keeble, SEO Account Manager:

1. Social and SEO should be married at the hip, their strategies should be bound together and compliment each other to aid growth.
2. The importance of glossaries in SEO is about to take off. Looking at common terms from your business’s products, services and wider industry can be a great way to maximise visibility.
3. SERP analysis is by far and away the most important thing to do alongside any keyword strategy.

BrightonSEO October 2024 Takeaways

Having undergone a variety of different training courses, from Advanced Technical SEO to Analytics masterclasses, Extramile is currently implementing a myriad of changed and optimisations to some processes.

Jade Bird, Social Media Manager:

75% of decision makers are between the age of 25-30. Marketing teams need to start revisiting their tone of voice to talk to their audiences in a way that resonates with them – particularly on social media.

Jenna Jones, PPC Account Manager:

Spend more time ensuring the foundations are in place on each and every campaign, no matter the marketing channel. Whether you’re setting Google conversions to UTM tracking or keyword research, the fundamentals are essential.

What’s going on behind the scenes is what makes campaigns tick so pay attention to it and review frequently.

Sara Whitehouse, SEO Account Manager:

SEO isn’t dead! Its just forever evolving and changing. SEOs need to understand that SERPs are becoming an ever changing beast. They’re likely to get busier, with people searching in different ways. Both content and technical SEO aspects need to be optimised for SERPs to keep adapting and providing users with the information they are looking for.

Jene Knight, Head of Digital:

The importance of evergreen content is increasing, rapidly. This content is typically informational and should start with the question ‘what is’. Keep this content simple, update it yearly and have a clear definition with a minimum of 1500 words.

Jim Keeble, SEO Account Manager:

Internal linking is nothing new but the importance is increasing even more. Passing page rank power through to related pages has never been more important with Google looking to reward topical authority more now.

Oh and also, don’t eat fish and chips near the seagulls.

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