It’s been a fair old while since we did a roundup post, but what a month it’s been, eh? We’ve seen the tail-end effects of the Google Core Update from August and then the Helpful Content Update came along halfway through Brighton SEO. Poor John Mueller must have been hiding in his hotel room! And what’s this? Another Core Update in October? 😱
As we step into the peak selling season for eCommerce websites, the digital marketing landscape gets busier than ever. But before it all kicks off, take five, grab a cuppa and see what exciting insights we’ve discovered over the last month.
Jon Crannage
Head of SEO
Embracing AI in SEO: How to 10x your SEO leveraging AI bots #BrightonSEO – Speaker Deck
By Aleyda Solis (@aleyda)
BrightonSEO was dominated by AI talks – TBH it was almost overload at times. Aleyda struck the right balance between framing both the dangers and opportunities presented by AI for the industry, and contained an exhaustive list of AI tools for content creation, technical SEO and more.
Katja Kline
SEO Account Exec
Let Content Bloom Brighton SEO Talk
By Hannah Brady (@hannahlrbrady)
Hannah’s talk was all about how when you have content that’s performing well, do more with it!
Include it in a newsletter, post on twitter and ask users their thoughts, outreach the content, create a marketing campaign from the content, create more related content using keyword research in the topic. The whole idea was to let your great content ‘bloom’ into different channels and uses.
Peter Bingham
Head of Design & Creative Content
Your AI Optimism is Going to Kill Someone
By Jess Peck (@jessthebp)
It’s no surprise that AI (or should that be ML?) has dominated the headlines for good and bad reasons, but many of us still don’t fully understand how it works, or why blindly assuming it is the panacea to all our problems is misguided at best. This is where Jess’s article comes in.
Like Jess, I am not an ML pessimist, and also believe it does (and will do) great things. The problem is, frankly, us. Humans. Our drive for cheaper, faster, corner cutting and budget shaving is ruining the internet, and AI is getting us there quicker than ever. Yes, there’s more than a hint of “old man yells at cloud” but read the article and see for yourselves.
Susan Giles
SEO Content Writer
Proust, ChatGPT and the case of the forgotten quote
by Elif Batuman
Not quite marketing-specific but definitely adjacent, I found the Guardian’s Long Read on (attempting to) wrangle a quote from Proust out of ChatGPT fascinating. And frustrating.
It uses a real-life example to examine exactly why we shouldn’t be relying on LM’s for fact-finding due to both accuracy and honesty. ChatGPT starts by coyly refusing to offer an exact quote in fear of breaching copyright (on a passage over 20 years out of it) before brazenly claiming to reproduce an entire passage – only to reveal a few prompts later that this too is a paraphrase.
Of course there are far more significant ethical and societal reasons to treat AI and LM’s with care for now, but this is a great snapshot of how things might go awry that is easily translatable to more serious subjects.
Wayne Barker
Principal Client Strategist
Generative AI, SEO, and what leaders should know: Google search in the future
By Gary Survis (@PracGreenMktg), Neal Behrend & Brittany Lange
I’ve been thinking about how the search landscape may and could change most of the time for the last 15 years, but when Google showed off how search might look soon back in May, I spent even more time digging. It culminated in my recent webinar and slides on time travel and predicting – and getting ready for the changes that might come with SGE.
Nobody can predict the future.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared.
It was great to read this article the day after I delivered the webinar that echoed many of my thoughts and feelings – we all need validation and the need to know we’re not the only ones thinking about it.
SGE could be the biggest seismic shift we have seen in search since Panda – or it could be like mobilegeddon (remember that?); as with most things, it’s likely to fall somewhere in between.
And those who aren’t prepared or dismiss it – or don’t think long and hard about how it might impact their clients or their business could be in trouble when organic traffic disappears, and you don’t know where to pull it back from – or fix it – or get new ways.
As the authors of this article say:
“So, what should you do today to prepare for this zero-click world? There are no definitive answers right now, so the best advice we have is to be engaged, proactive, and real.”
James Walsh
Head of Web Design
Simon Elliott illustrates the life of Hockney across decades and styles
Art by Simon Elliott (@totalartshole) Words by Yaya Azariah Clarke
Growing up in Hockney’s hometown of Saltaire, his art has been a guiding constant in my journey as an artist.
My job might be in UI design but I got here through a journey of art, graphics and illustration that started as young as I knew what paper was. I still practise graphics and illustration in my personal life, but my influences play into all my creative work.
Seeing his life’s oeuvre filtered through the marks of another illustrator, and one so obviously touched by his work – is a joy. Simon Elliot’s work effortlessly understands the tone around Hockney’s work and at times you feel like you’re in the room with him, watching as he paints nature in that free, limitless way only Hockney can.
I encourage any other creatives reading this to find new ways to look at the things that inspire you, it might just unlock new perspectives in your own work, no matter how different it is from theirs…
