Brighton SEO April 2025 - Key takeaways from our favourite talks
Members of our team were lucky enough to attend the April 2025 Brighton SEO conference, one of the most exciting events in the digital marketing calendar.
Surrounded by industry experts, inspiring talks, and plenty of actionable insights, we came away with fresh ideas and key takeaways we’re excited to put into practice.
Below we have compiled some notes on what we took away from our favourite talks that we attended during the conference.
Brighton SEO Recap
Mindset-Based Targeting – Achieving 5x More with 5x Less Content - Sarah Pokorná.
Sarah Pokorná’s talk on how to adapt SEO content in accordance with consumer psychographics was a great insight into modern SEO copywriting.
Sarah explained what consumer psychographics is based on Carol Dweck’s theory of consumers having either a ‘fixed mindset or a ‘growth mindset’.
Fixed mindset consumers are people who seek quick results and respond to authority, status and performance focused messaging. This audience prefer content that is structured and easy to follow. They respond to content that highlights expertise, clear outcomes and validating language. This could content such as ‘the benefits of x product’ or comparison content such as ‘product x vs product y’.
Growth Mindset consumers value learning and personal development. They engage with content that related to process, experimenting and community. They respond well to content such as tutorials, self- experiences, progress blogs and reflective exercises.
Sarah stressed the importance of knowing your audience by analysing their behavioural cues such as survey responses, language used in social media as well as customer interactions. By aligning marketing strategies with consumer mindsets, brands can create more resonant content, leading to increased engagement.
Sarah’s talk reinforced something we strongly believe at Search Seven: that understanding users, not just keywords is the foundation of an effective SEO strategy.
Our goal is always to improve outcomes for real users first, because as this talk showed, what helps users ultimately helps performance.
Using Content Clusters for Human-centric Conversions – Carl Poxon
Carl Poxon’s talk introduced the concept of content clusters- what they are, their benefits, common obstacles and results of effective implementation of content clusters.
Content clusters are centred around ‘pillar content’ which is a main page that is supported by several other topic specific subpages. They require lots of research and strategy but offer long lasting SEO benefits.
Carl explained that often content is just dumped into a blog without structure, resulting in websites having poor navigation, slow load times, and missing content, all of which negatively impact SEO and user experience.
He explained that creating effective content clusters starts with keyword and search intent research, using personas (not just demographics) to understand your audience. From there ensure to incorporate FAQs, emotional hooks, and specific pain point content.
Creating this web of information based around a pillar page will improve UX, reduce user frustration and improve the perceived value of your site. It enables users to find the information they require faster and ultimately will help grow revenue.
Content clusters are an important part of our SEO services at Search Seven, tailoring content to match with user intent in order to drive meaningful engagement.
These takeaways from Carl’s talk have already made their way into our internal strategy sessions, where the team is reviewing content frameworks with fresh eyes.
Does google AI Think Your Content is Helpful - Eoin O’Neill
The increasing involvement of AI in SEO, particularly the introduction of LLM (Large Language Model) and AI snippets at the top of search results makes SEO’s feel like they have less control over appearing on the search engine results page (SERPs). However, Eoin O’Neill explained that the key principles behind SEO success remain the same.
Eoin explained how Google, for a long-time, has utilised machine learning (A form of AI that focuses on enabling systems to learn from data) and at its core, AI is just another form of machine learning.
Even though SERPs pages continue to evolve, Google still prioritises content that is helpful, trustworthy, and centred around the user. Core principles like EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) remain key SEO factors in determining how content ranks in search results.
Eoin added to this by suggesting that metrics such as the Gemini API can help mimic how a LLM algorithm is interpreting your content and can be used to understand user intent and prioritise content accordingly.
With AI dominating so many industry conversations, Eoin’s perspective offered a reassuring reminder that Google’s fundamentals: trustworthiness, relevance, and user-centricity haven’t changed.
Accelerating Results with SEO A/B Testing & Edge SEO – Koen Leemans
Koen Leemans’ talk focused on how to predict the impact of optimisations on SEO performance through A/B testing. By isolating the effects of changes, SEO experts can better sell ideas to developers and clients, demonstrating what could work in practice. Koen explained that a wide range of optimisations can be validated through A/B testing, including meta tag updates, content changes, site speed improvements, and rendering styles.
Koen explained that every test offers a lesson, helping you understand what drives traffic and importantly, what could potentially harm a website’s performance. He introduced tools such as Lumenlab’s SEO A/B Page Splitter and SEO A/B Test Analyser, which help set up tests, identify control and variant pages, and analyse results using causal impact methods. To ensure accurate findings, a minimum of 100 days of historical data prior to the test is required, along with data from the duration of the test itself.
Control groups are crucial, helping to distinguish between changes caused by your optimisations versus external factors such as algorithm updates or seasonality. Koen also introduced the concept of deploying high priority SEO changes through Edge SEO (A serverless application that allows modifications at the server response level without altering the website’s core code). This approach offers a flexible, powerful way to implement SEO improvements faster.
Don’t be Blinded by the Lighthouse: Shift Focus to Core Web Vitals and RUM – Joshua Clare-Flagg
Joshua Clare-Flagg’s talk addressed the digital industry’s obsession with Google Lighthouse scores, despite the fact that Lighthouse itself is not a ranking factor whereas Core Web Vitals (CWV) are directly part of Google's Page Experience ranking system.
Josh explained that core Web Vitals are based on real user data collected from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), while Lighthouse scores come from simulated "lab data" tests.
Not every site has CrUX data, as to collect this data users must be on Chrome (not iOS), logged into a Google account, have usage statistic reporting enabled, and the site must have sufficient traffic (at least 1,000 users per 28 days).
Josh also demonstrated that even when Lighthouse scores appear optimised, the real-world performance may differ significantly. In his tests, slow pages with good Lighthouse scores still saw lower clicks and impressions compared to faster pages. He also pointed out that less than 50% of websites achieving a 100/100 Lighthouse score actually pass Core Web Vitals, showing that Lighthouse scores can be misleading.
Trying to optimise solely for a perfect Lighthouse score can lead to bad decisions, as some recommendations may not make practical sense. Instead, Josh recommended using RUM (Real User Metrics) data. Real-user data helps identify and fix issues early, before they become Core Web Vital problems, providing a more accurate understanding of how users truly experience your website.
This message really resonated with the team at Search Seven, where there's a strong emphasis on using real-world performance data to guide technical SEO decisions. The reminder to prioritise Core Web Vitals over vanity scores like Lighthouse aligns with how Search Seven approaches long-term site health and user experience.
That's a Wrap!
April’s Brighton SEO conference was not on was not only a day of learning from these fantastic talks but also a great opportunity to connect with other individuals and organisations who are passionate about SEO and all things digital marketing.
Gavin Willis, Search Seven’s founder and CEO wrote on LinkedIn saying:
A big appreciation goes out to all the organisers and speakers at this year’s Brighton SEO conference. Our team have come away with new ideas, concepts and learnings that we are excited to implement in our SEO work moving forwards.
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