Put simply, WordPress is the most popular way to create a website or blog. It’s estimated that WordPress hosts about 43% of all the websites on the Internet.
BrightonSEO kicked off on a sunny Friday in April, and it did not disappoint. With over 5,000 attendees pouring into the Brighton Centre, this biannual conference has come a long way since its humble beginnings above a pub in 2010. What started as a casual meetup, founded by Kelvin Newman, has grown into one of the world’s most respected search marketing events – drawing digital marketers, SEO specialists, content creators and tech minds from over 100 countries.
I was there as a content writer at Ink Digital, eager to pick up techniques I could use not just for our agency’s own strategy, but to genuinely add value to our clients’ SEO performance. I went in hoping for some fresh insight. I left with a notepad full of proven tactics, impressive stats, and AI techniques I’m already trialling.
Here are the four biggest content writing takeaways from Brighton SEO 2025 – and how I’m putting them to use.
Victoria Roscow’s talk on programmatic SEO was like watching months of work collapse into a single morning. Her strategy: automate landing page creation to publish 100 pages in just three hours. Compare that to the average 14 hours it can take to create just one optimised page manually, and you can see why the room was so invested.
She broke it down simply. Start with keyword research, something that normally takes 36 hours, and streamline the process using filters, modifiers, and AI support. The goal is to build a full list of variations that can be turned into templated content. Using AI tools like Gemini (as Google is biased to its own models), she showed how deep research functions can be prompted to deliver accurate, relevant, and useful copy.
A key takeaway for me was about being specific with your prompts. Feed AI negatives (what not to do), and offer detailed structure. Don’t shy away from automation. One stat she shared has stuck with and surprised me: unedited AI content, when well-structured, often outperforms humanised versions in terms of speed to traffic.
She also gave us free tools to streamline publishing. Typemat lets you upload SEO pages without needing a dev team or complex HTML skills. It all comes down to building a strong content structure and letting automation take care of the rinse-and-repeat process.
Next up was Ivan Slobodin, who didn’t just talk about AI; he offered a proper framework for using it safely and strategically at scale. With 51% of marketers now using AI to optimise content, he revealed that a massive 43% still don’t understand how to extract value from it, and 39% are unsure how to avoid AI hallucinations or factual inaccuracy.
Ivan’s approach boiled down to having the right toolkit and a clear plan. That includes defining personas (e.g., “pretend you’re a B2B content strategist”), using delimiters to break up text within prompts, and giving your AI models “north star” examples to align tone of voice. He also broke down the best models for different tasks – from Claude 3.7 Sonnet to GPT-4 Mini, Gemini, and Meta’s LLaMA.
But his standout idea was building an AI agent team: assign one AI model to keyword research, another to content writing, and a third to fact-checking. This specialist model approach helps reduce errors and lets you maintain quality as you scale, as each model works to fact check and correct the others.
One of the most useful rules he shared was “Garbage in, garbage out” – meaning that bad data, images or prompts will only produce more bad content. So don’t rush the prep phase. Clean data, structured briefs, and well-trained models are key. I’ve already aimed to start using his persona-based prompting for blog outlines at Ink, and the improvement in structure and focus is instantly noticeable.
If there’s one thing Marco Giordano hammered home in his content auditing session, it’s this: traffic is only half the story. As someone writing for B2B SEO clients, I found his approach to auditing with Google BigQuery and segmenting content types a game-changer.
He talked us through how to audit content using traffic metrics, like the percentage of anonymised queries, zero-click pages, and the top 10% of pages by clicks. His framework helps you spot content that’s declining, underperforming or ripe for repurposing.
But what really resonated was the need for a content inventory – a system to keep track of every article on your site, and update it every 4–6 months. Why? Because even “evergreen” content decays. If you’re not auditing regularly, you’re likely haemorrhaging traffic without even realising.
He also introduced a clever “bypass tactic”: instead of targeting hyper-competitive terms head-on, build content clusters around tangential but related queries your bigger competitors aren’t looking at. It’s a subtle but powerful way to win clicks without being outgunned.
It’s easy as a content writer to focus only on creation, but Giordano reminded me that management is just as important. I’m now planning on using these metrics to guide updates and strategy shifts.
If you’re producing a lot of content but struggling to get it seen, Rana Abu Quba Chamsi’s session on cross-platform content strategy was a goldmine. Her talk focused on how to repurpose a single idea into multiple unique expressions, without duplicating content.
Repurposing boosts freshness, expands your keyword footprint, and improves internal linking opportunities. Rana shared specific tips for tailoring content by platform:
She also warned against trying to be everywhere at once. Focus on a few high-impact platforms and tailor each output. If people see the same thing across every channel, you’ll create user fatigue, not trust.
This talk made me realise we’ve been sitting on a goldmine of blog content at Ink that could be transformed into short-form video, slide decks, and infographics. Rana’s strategic, structured approach gave me the tools to do just that.
BrightonSEO 2025 was a masterclass in how the content industry is growing. From automating high-volume SEO content with Victoria Roscow, to Ivan Slobodin’s AI strategies, Marco Giordano’s auditing techniques, and Rana Abu Quba Chamsi’s cross-platform insights, I left feeling genuinely inspired.
I’ve already started plans on applying what I learned for content at Ink Digital, and I know our clients are going to benefit. The tools are there, the processes are clear, and the future of content creation feels more exciting (and efficient) than ever.
It was a fantastic day, and I’m truly grateful to have experienced it. BrightonSEO 2025 reminded me that in an industry that’s constantly changing, staying curious and upskilling is essential.
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