BrightonSEO 2015 Round-up

You might have noticed if you follow my Twitter I’ve been in Brighton a couple of times recently. A couple of weeks ago I went for pleasure, to meet O’s parents, eek! However, this week I’ve been up there for business…

It’s that time of year again.. I’m currently on the train back from four days consisting of heaps of corona, a ton of networking and not a lot of sleep. The past couple of days I’ve been in Brighton attending the largest bi-annual search conference in UK, BrightonSEO (..and a sneaky detour to London last night to see my big bro!).

I was lucky enough for my bosses to send me and a colleague on a days training on the Thursday, the day before the all day conference on the Friday. I chose to attend the Advanced Link Building and Effective Outreach Training Course hosted by Laura Crimmons from Branded3 — Laura was a speaker at BrightonSEO the last time I went (Sep 2014) and I remember her talk being particularly interesting so I was stoked to get onto the YEAH! Local SEO training she mentioned.

After another short week at work thanks to the bank holiday weekend, we set off for our trip on Wednesday lunch. One long train ride, a few beers and a half downloaded app of scrabble later, Jon and I arrived in Brighton a stonking 7 hours later!

We stayed at the Hampton’s BnB situated in-between the waters edge and the city centre. We booked our rooms via bookings.com and managed to get a good deal on two spacious double en-suite rooms, complete with mini fridge, desk and wardrobe. The location was absolutely ideal, as it was only a short walk to the venue and more importantly, a stones throw from the bars.

After checking out TripAdvisor, we dumped our stuff in our rooms before heading out for a late dinner in town. We went to this lovely little North African restaurant, Mascara. Nothing could have prepared us for the atmosphere, and the food was to die for!

We ordered Bourek Bel’ jaja (chicken and soft cheese spring rolls and green leaves), Merguez maqli (Spicy sausages with harissa, cumin, tomato and cannellini beans) and sautee red charmoula King prawns with a large serving of houllumi cous cous to share and a bottle of white wine. I’d definitely recommend hitting this place up if you’re in the area. The staff were super lovely and bought us over tea and lemonchello after our meal and were so attentive!

Despite eating our weight in food, the next day we somehow managed to eat a full English breakfast at the hotel (I don’t think I’ll ever see Jon turn down free food). We had a walk along the promenade in the sunshine before heading to Brighton Dome to grab a cuppa and find where we need to be for our training.

The training was inspiring, and definitely gave me some food for thought. It was reassuring to know other people have come across the same obstacles as me, and seeing different ways that people tackle each situation. I also got to have a catch up with an old friend and colleague in the training — always nice seeing a familiar face in these kind of things.

Overall, the day was a success. I met some lovely people from other agencies and in-house and we all went for lunch. After the training was over, the drinks were flowing and we met some people we met last year. We ended up on the pier messing around in bumper cars, riding the roller-coaster and playing air hockey before heading out for food – again!

Lots of drinks and dancing, eventually lead us to jumping in a cab, then setting an alarm for the morning to get out of the room by 8:30 for the conference, Oops! After a slightly rushed breakfast, we dashed to the conference and luckily managed to jump the queue, thanks to arriving a day early!

A cuppa tea in hand and we were off to our first session, mobile and local. One of the speakers who did the local training that Jon was in, was particular impressive! I’ll add a link to his presentation to the end of this post, along with the rest of my favourite talks.

They day was really great, and it was ace to see some old colleagues. Did I mention I even got a cheeky snap with Mark E Wright, The Apprentice winner?! As promised, find a list of my favourite talks from BrightonSEO 2015. See you all again in September!!

Best speakers of BrightonSEO 2015: