If you follow any SEO people on LinkedIn, you’ll know that BrightonSEO in October 2025 was remembered almost as much for the weather as the talks. Grey skies, wind off the seafront, the kind of damp that gets through a coat. I came home cold, inspired, and mildly soggy.
This April was a completely different story. Actual sunshine. Brighton doing what Brighton occasionally does — looking genuinely beautiful. The pier, the seafront, fish and chips eaten outside without regret. It felt like a good omen for two days of concentrated learning, and it delivered.
Here’s what stood out from the sessions I attended.
Thursday Morning — Agency Owners Roundtable
The day started with a closed-room discussion for agency owners — UK and internationally. Three topics on the table: winning quality leads in a noisier AI-flooded market, hiring and leadership in the AI era, and how AI is reshaping agency models, margins, and delivery. The conversation was honest in ways that conference stages rarely allow. The businesses doing well right now are the ones who have been clearest about what they actually do and who they actually serve. That resonated.
Thursday — The Future of Search
John Redden opened this block with something I’ve been thinking about for clients ever since: PPC costs are up 18% year-on-year across more than 200 accounts he analysed, and up to 40% in B2B sectors. That’s a significant squeeze on margins, and it’s making the case for SEO — which compounds over time — much more compelling than it has been in years. He argued that brands have been chronically underfunding SEO relative to PPC, and that the AI-driven changes in search are now making that imbalance even more costly.
The session also covered AI-powered SEO operations — using intelligent agents for data collection, content generation, and technical implementation with human oversight. One case study showed a tenfold increase in SEO traffic in four months for a major retailer after converting JavaScript-rendered content to proper HTML for indexing. The principle behind it applies to almost every B2B website I audit.
Thursday — AI Tools and Workflows
Emma Moletto’s session on building a prompt library was the most immediately actionable of the conference for me. She introduced what she calls the ‘transition tax’ — the upfront investment in identifying and structuring reusable prompts — and made a compelling case that it pays back quickly. Her SCRIPT framework (Situation, Character, Request, Instructions, Proof, Template) is a genuinely practical structure for getting consistent, useful outputs from AI tools.
Amina from Vixen Digital followed with a fascinating session on audience research — using TrustPilot sentiment analysis, Reddit topic clustering, and Answer the Public to understand not just what audiences are talking about but how they feel. The results she shared were striking: a 567% increase in key events and 164% revenue increase over six months. The reminder to focus on understanding your audience before chasing new technology is one I’ll be repeating to clients.
Thursday — AI and Content Strategy
Anu Ramani’s session was a well-timed reality check on AI and content. She drew a parallel between the early adoption of computers — where initial use was limited to marginal productivity gains — and where most organisations are with AI in content marketing right now. Her MAP framework (Message, Architecture, Process) is a systematic approach to building content strategies that actually move commercial metrics rather than just producing more content faster.
The point that landed hardest: no content asset should be created without intent, without tags, or without a process for measurement and updating. Random acts of marketing — even AI-accelerated ones — don’t compound. Purposeful, structured content does.
Friday — AI and Brand Authority
This session cut through a lot of the noise around AI search with a refreshing honesty about what we still don’t know. The discussion opened by acknowledging the confusion and misinformation in the space, and the role that VC-funded AI companies play in amplifying hype. What followed was a clear-eyed look at what brand authority actually means in an AI search context.
The core argument — that authority is the ability to change user behaviour, not just accumulate backlinks — is a reframe worth sitting with. The practical implication is that brands need to move beyond operational theatre (AI for appearances) and focus on creating genuinely user-first content that demonstrates real expertise, is technically accessible to AI crawlers, and is consistent across every digital touchpoint.
Friday — Google Ads
Dez Calton’s PPC session was a useful corrective to all the AI conversation — the fundamentals still matter, and most Google Ads accounts are failing at one of the most basic. His data showed that non-visible search terms (those Google matches to but doesn’t surface in your reports) can have cost per conversion up to 80% higher than visible terms. Lars Mars followed with advanced conversion tracking — the case for profit on ad spend (POAS) over ROAS, and how server-side tracking and offline conversion imports can dramatically improve what you’re actually optimising for.
Both sessions reinforced something I come back to after every Brighton: the biggest gains in PPC are often not from new tactics, but from better measurement and cleaner data feeding into the algorithm.
Takeaways from BrightonSEO
A short list of specific things I’m changing: updates to how I measure AI search presence for clients, a rethink of content distribution strategy for export-market clients, a negative keyword audit review for every PPC account, and a prompt library structure I’ll be implementing into my own workflow immediately.
More detailed posts on each of the key topics are coming over the next few weeks. If there’s something specific you’d like me to cover first, get in touch.
