This October, BrightonSEO 2025 took place down in, you guessed it, Brighton, and I took the egregiously long journey down to see what all the fuss was about. Let me tell you, after 2 long days with the brightest minds in SEO, there was a lot to take away from it.
Since I got back, my mind has been buzzing with what I learned. So in order to siphon off some of what’s been rattling around in my head, I thought I’d bequeath the top 7 things I learned at BrightonSEO that I think every business needs to know about…
AI is a bunch of seagulls
Yes, you read that right. I was reliably informed through the medium of song that AI was created by seagulls to create pro-seagull propaganda, and I will be damned if I’m going to take such information in jest.
The song, which was an SEO-themed parody of Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn may have been a slightly left-field way to start the show, but at least it gave us all something to think about. The seagulls are coming (even though there is no such thing as a seagull. They’re called herring gulls).
It was followed up by a message from one of the show’s founders, Kelvin Newman, who jokingly said they should have changed the name of the show to BrightonAI. And he had a point, given how strong of a presence the new tech had across the conference.
Because if one thing was abundantly clear, it is that AI isn’t going anywhere. Speaking of AI…
AI is rubbish
Now hold your horses, AI-philes, I’m not here to insult your fancy new toy (although there was a fair share of criticism thrown its way across the conference), I’m simply here to pass on what I’ve learned.
Which is to say, AI is pretty rubbish. Let me give you an example.
“LLMs are forgetful journalists”.
That was a quote from James Hocking in his talk ‘Role of Schemas and LLMs in AI Search’ in which he likened the tech to that of a journalist going out and gathering information.
Hocking’s talk was tailored to optimising schemas (which we will get onto later), but he highlighted that, unlike a journalist, AI has no way to understand and interpret information based on its own experiences. It looks at a question and sees binary data. Ones and zeroes.
Hocking demonstrated this by asking Google two questions: “How do I pick the best SEO agency?” and “Who is the best SEO agency in Brighton?”
In Google’s AI overview, the answer to the former was vague, offering generic advice about looking at studies and testimonials and blah blah blah.
In the answer to the second question, AI overview said that while there is no single “best” SEO agency in Brighton, it went on to personally name and link to a handful of highly-regarded agencies in the area.
A win for those agencies, certainly. Tweak the way a question is posed, and the answer given by the likes of Google’s AI overview can vary wildly.
Hocking’s point was simple: “If your Brand doesn’t show up in the Journalist’s notebook, you won’t show up in their Story”.
But the basis of the talk carried across the conference: Artificial intelligence is not all that intelligent. It has no experience memory, and its interpretation of information is purely statistical.
And as such, it’s easy to game the system, and the race is on.
Your website is more important than ever
In a world where anyone can claim to be the best in their industry, AI can misinterpret and hallucinate information, facts can be generated out of thin air, and the zeitgeist can turn at the drop of a hat, how on earth is a business supposed to thrive?
By having a website, of course.
“But my website is seeing less traffic!” shout the people.
True. In Rachael Murdoch’s talk ‘What’s the point in a website anymore?’ she pulled up research that 26% of UK searches did not result in a click, and 97.3% of all Facebook posts don’t include a link in the post.
But here is the single best quote I heard at BrightonSEO by (I think… I saw a lot of people say a lot of good stuff, and I have a terrible memory) Jon Earnshaw:
“Traffic is a vanity measurement if it doesn’t convert”.
That one stuck with me. Traffic means nothing if the people coming to your site aren’t buying your product or service. And if they don’t need to go to your website to buy it, what does it matter, so long as you’re getting the conversions?
The role of the website has changed. No longer is it the source of commerce for your brand, but that doesn’t mean that it’s time to take it out back and whack it with a shovel. Quite the contrary.
Your website is now the centre of your brand’s identity. It remains the single most valuable source of controllable information for the brand. That word “controllable” is key, because the information you put up there is going to matter.
You are now up against an entity capable of crawling and harnessing information on a scale no human could ever match. If AI doesn’t think you’re the right answer to the question, it’s game over.
Similarly, the customer is more sceptical than ever. They are bombarded with more adverts and lies and cheap junk than ever before, and, if you’re not careful, they will make a decision in an instant that can thwart your brand forever.
This is a battle unlike anything the internet has seen, and to turn a popular phrase, the best offence is a good defence, because…
You’re dealing with two audiences now
The customer is no longer your main concern. They now share that honour with artificial intelligence.
LLMs are crawling websites at a staggering rate. Research found that the number of pages crawled per visitor sent for a traditional Google search was 18, whereas for AI-startup company Anthropic, it was 80,000.
Websites are getting battered by invisible visits, and if they aren’t tooled up with the right equipment, they can go under with nary a sale in recompense.
Add to this a human audience growing increasingly wary of dealing with time wasters, and a brand can quickly sink.
But what can be done about this? Simple. You need to make sure that your website is built for both audiences: one built on trust, and one built on structure.
You need to make sure that your website, from the on-page content and articles, to the metadata and schemas is all rich and informative, and tailored to your brand.
For the robots, you need a clean, clear schema. As we’ve already covered, AI has no personal experience to offer. It scours the web and provides the ones and zeroes that most clearly align with those requested in the prompt.
The same goes for the metadata. You need to make sure that in that nanosecond ChatGPT considers your brand, all the data lines up. If it does, great. You get a slice of the digital pie. If not, you are discarded.
For the humans, you need to prove your worth. That means a brand that, no matter where they look, your customers see quality. Your website, content, social media, customer reviews, ads, and anything else all aligns with the story you want to tell.
If you mess it up, you leave it in the hands of others to tell it for you. And they won’t be kind.
Search is changing
“AI mode [is] a paradigm shift”.
Google said that earlier this year, and they weren’t joking. AI has redefined the way we interact with search, whether it's Google’s own Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, or whatever preferred poison you pick.
That’s because, whereas with traditional search, you would ask a question or enter a keyword and scroll through the results, with AI, you treat it as though it is an entity capable of intelligent thought.
This was the crux of Jon Earnshaw’s talk ‘The age of conversation: same question, different world’ which highlighted the ways in which search has completely transformed. I’ve included the slide above, but it’s worth repeating those points:
LLM queries average 23 words. That is the length of this sentence, which would be a ridiculous length of a query when posed to a traditional search engine. But if you think about it as though you were talking to another person, it tracks.
Same with that next point. Over 70% of questions are unique. This isn’t a case of saying “Best XYZ to buy”. This is people asking a question, giving context, and, crucially, having an ongoing dialogue with AI to narrow down their search.
The average dialogue with AI lasts over 7 minutes. That’s not a quick search. That’s a conversation. And brands need to prepare for it.
“Structured content that answers not just the first question, but the second and third, is more likely to be surfaced in AI-powered overviews”.
Another bombshell from Google there, and it is key to this new way of thinking about search. Optimising for query intent and layered topic coverage is going to be the new normal.
Gone are the days of mindless keyword stuffing (although to be fair they’ve been dead a long while). Content needs to anticipate multi-turn searches.
I’ll use the example Earnshaw used in his talk:
“Best garden furniture for small patios” leads to “are any of these options weatherproof” and concludes with “what’s the average cost for a full set?”
Good content needs to know those answers from the start, so that when an LLM goes off in search of that information, it uses your site for reliable answers. And that good content is going to be extremely important, because…
LLMs prefer AI-generated content
Content writers, run for your lives!
Relax, that statement sounds scary, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Of course, LLMs prefer AI-generated content. That’s like Germans favouring content written by a native German writer. That’s because it is tailored to their distinct language nuances.
The same applies to AI content. It is created in a way that makes sense to AI, so naturally, LLMs are going to seek that out first.
The problem is, as we’ve already discussed, AI is pretty rubbish. Between the lack of experience, hallucinations, and a crazy little thing called citogenesis (I wrote a whole article on that which you can read here) the information provided in that AI-generated content isn’t all that reliable.
AI also has extreme recency bias. A report released in September 2025 found that LLMs favour recent content, with “fresh” content consistently promoted over older works of more than a few years old.
But why would that matter? Well, (while results vary) reports show somewhere in the region of 52% of online content now being AI-generated (and other scary reports suggesting this could reach 90% by the end of 2026).
That means that AI-generated content is being promoted more than older, human-written content. Wrap your head around that for a second. Content written by something that cannot interpret or evaluate the legitimacy of its work, is being recommended over content written by human experts in their field.
The need for trust is more important than ever before. But thankfully…
People trust people
Ah, people. We’ve seen the Terminator films and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and we’re quite happy with putting our faith in flesh and bone (at least for now).
Younger audiences are not interested in traditional search. In a recent survey of Gen-Z (kindly outlined in Rachael Murdoch’s talk) only 29% used Google searches and ads to learn about new brands, products, services, and experiences. 57% used YouTube, 53% used TikTok, and 44% used Instagram.
Why? Because they are getting a genuine human connection from that content.
“People like following real people. Showcasing your experts and their unique ideas is a GREAT way to drive visibility and trust for your brand”.
This quote from Lily Ray was highlighted in Jack Chambers-Ward’s talk “The future of content with zero clicks” which talked about the benefits of diversifying your content and using it to build your brand on your own terms.
And he has a point. As competition grows evermore fierce, building a community from your audience has never been more important. Placing focus on a broad range of content helps your brand fall in front of the right people who, as they grow from casual fans to part of the community, will be the ones that sing your praises.
Which is important, because when they’re not regurgitating AI-generated content, LLMs get their facts from communal sources. 40.1% of information gathered in AI overviews came from Reddit, with 26.3% from Wikipedia, and 23.5% from YouTube.
What does that mean? Quality, relevancy, authority, and accuracy: the four pillars content should be built upon. Tamara Novitović summed it up beautifully:
“Be the answer. Be Cited. Be Trusted”.
Strong brands are the entities that Google understands. If a user won’t click on your site, make them remember you.
So what can you do about all this?
There are a lot of things I could talk about here, but I don’t want this article to be twice the length of War and Peace. So, I’m going to break it down into things I personally feel you need to consider:
Value needs to be your modus operandi - make sure your content is the best it can be, no matter what form that takes. Content should add value to the world, not simply regurgitate what already exists. Don’t be afraid to pump some life into old content to make it rank higher in AI search. Be the source of knowledge, and make sure you mention your brand along the way.
Optimise for humans, and influence the bots - win over people with scenario-based, credible, and contextual content, and focusing on surfacing reviews and testimonials. Trick the machines by reducing JavaScript-rendering dependencies, providing strong site performance, optimising your schemas and metadata, and future-proofing your product feed.
Search habits don’t change overnight - whatever shocking things you’ve heard about how AI is going to destroy the internet, the fact of the matter is that humans will bring change if and when it matters to them. SEO isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s projected to double in growth by 2029 to $200 billion (a growth rate of 16%) showing just how important it is in an AI world.
Don’t wait around for things to change - every business with a broadband connection is in the same boat. AI is changing the ecommerce landscape, and while the hype will certainly fade at some point, it’s clear we’re not going back to the days before ChatGPT. Pretending like AI is just a passing phase is a dangerous mindset that will do to many brands what the internet did to the high street. Adapt or face the consequences.
Remember that you’re not alone - that last point might sound daunting, but with the right people in your corner, it doesn’t have to be. If you want help navigating these uncertain waters, Velstar is here to help.
I’ll speak honestly here, as someone who literally travelled 600 miles to attend BrightonSEO. What I saw there was that there are a lot of businesses with no clue how to handle AI. Velstar is not one of them.
We have worked tirelessly to make sure we can offer strong, reliable, and accurate information on AI, and provide actionable steps to position your business so that it can handle the changes and challenges AI will bring.
We travel 600 miles so you don’t have to (unless you want to because Brighton is really quite nice).
So if you’re ready to get started, reach out to our team today.