BrightonSEO on the 10th-11th April 2025 marked my 9th year of attending, and for good reason. Europe’s largest search conference is one of the best ways to stay up to date with the latest trends and ideas from some of the best SEOs in the business, as well as a chance to meet and catch up with others in the SEO space.
The conference has over five different tracks meaning it’s not possible to see absolutely everything. Instead, here’s a run down of some of my favourite talks with links to slides and other resources.
Jan Caerels – Advanced SEO Techniques with .htaccess
In this talk, Jan walked through advanced use cases of the .htaccess file, used on the 29% of global sites powered by Apache webservers. Jan shared how the .htaccess file is a lot more powerful than many in SEO and web development believe, and can be an easier way to deploy SEO optimisations quickly.
Some of his key points included:
- How to avoid site speed slow downs when mapping 200K+ redirects by using a RewriteMap with a database file
- How to block chinese spam visitors
- How to dynamically set canonical tags, particularly useful for URLs with query parameters
- How to test .htaccess file changes in a private environment to avoid errors
Jan even shared how powerful the .htaccess file is by modifying the H1 title tag of a page, showing how this tool can even be used as a last resort if other development options are not possible.
His talk was really eye-opening about what the .htaccess file can actually do, including several great tips that were new to me.
See Jan’s slides here.
Google Tag Manager Tips from Kyle Rushton McGregor
In his talk, Kyle Rushton McGregor shared a number of helpful time saving tips for Google Tag Manager. They included:
- Setting up email notifications for any time a container is edited, providing an early warning for any issues.
- Creating a “base container” template for new GTM installations, providing consistency and saving time
- Advanced variables such as lookup tables to vary the output of tags based on the input variable (for example changing a tag based on the page path or page hostname)
I found Kyle’s talk very helpful, having got back into Google Tag Manager recently for debugging tracking issues for a couple of clients.
You can find Kyle’s slides here.
Query Counting for SEO – Daniel Foley Carter
Daniel Foley Carter is well known in the SEO community for his query counting technique, even building his SaaS product, SEO Stack, as a way to make this technique easily accessible.
Daniel walked through his process for identifying the strength of a page based on counting the number of queries a page is visible for, something that can be achieved using Search Console data, though not clearly presented. He shared how this data can be extracted manually or by using SEO Stack, as well as how the technique can be used to deliver results.
Daniel’s slides are not available at the time of writing, however a similar presentation is available on YouTube.
SEO automation, APIs and AI – Jeremy McDonald
Jeremy McDonald walked through how he and his team have built automated SEO workstreams to pull data from various APIs and reduce the amount of manual work needed to conduct repeatable SEO workflows.
He shared a detailed example of an AI driven workflow that can pull a competitor analysis report against 4 competitors in a matter of seconds, which can be accessed here.
What I really liked about Jeremy’s talk was that he focused on how AI can be used for SEO outside of content production. To me, it often feels like content production with AI gets too much attention in the SEO industry, especially considering it is something that Google has frequently spoken out against.
Having created some of my own AI scripts for automation and data analysis, Jeremy’s talk has given me some fresh ideas on where I can go next. If you’re starting out in this area, why not check out my SearchNorwich talk from last year for some tips on how to get started.
What is alt text and how do you write it? – Liam Cumber
Liam Cumber delivered possibly THE best explainer of how to do alt-text properly, walking through how to write quality, empathetic and useful alt text that considers the users needs.
What made Liam’s talk so helpful was that he included clear examples of where good alt text makes a difference to users, and how to craft text based on context. Often, people working in SEO only consider alt-text as a tool for SEO, resulting in alt-text that doesn’t serve users needs. I really liked how Liam didn’t even mention alt-text’s role in SEO – an important reminder that SEO is not what alt-text is for.
See Liam’s slides here.
Improve your SEO with Video Games and Exploits – Mark Williams-Cook
Mark delivered a great talk on how ranking in Google is a bit like the systems put in place on competitive computer games. If you’re a gamer, you’ll have heard of the “meta’, which refers to the most effective strategies, tactics or character builds that tend to be optimal for winning games. Mark explains how computer games can become boring when all players compete in the same way, leading to games changing how games are balanced periodically to keep things fun and competitive.
Mark then applies the same logic to Google, serving as a great analogy to help understand why some tactics work for a certain time, before things change. He then argues why understanding the underlying principles of SEO is so important to understanding what works in SEO and why.
See Mark’s slides here.
Keynote: The SEO Lifecycle by Lily Ray
Lily Ray rounded off the two day conference with a look back at the evolution of the SEO industry. Starting with the early days of SEO, she shared how SEO has evolved and the industry has grown more mature, from the early days in the 90s to the emergence of Google and then into maturity through the 2010s.
The talk was a good look back at how things have evolved over the years and puts the current emergence of AI in search into context. Lily reminded us that there’s been several periods when SEO has changed significantly, but in reality it just means the tactics have changed, while the industry itself has continued to grow.
It was also a great look back on some big SEO milestones that I also experienced personally. Having got into SEO in 2012, my first big challenge was the Penguin Update of that year, changing the way links would be dealt with. By 2014, I was dealing with clients who’d come to me needing support with resolving manual action penalties due to tactics that Google had clamped down on. Moving into the 2020s, we then began to deal with an algorithm that is increasingly volatile, and now, AI Overviews and emerging AI-driven search engines that are starting to challenge Google. What a ride!
Networking at BrightonSEO
BrightonSEO is also a great networking opportunity, with plenty of meet ups and fringe events alongside the official drinks receptions plus activities like the beach clean and morning runs along the seafront.