Our CEO's Round Up of Brighton SEO October 2026
I’ve been coming to brightonSEO for many years. This October was the first time I walked up the steps instead of sitting in the audience.
My slot was 3:30pm on Friday 9 October in Syndicate 3&4 at the Brighton Centre, home of MeasureFest. I opened the “Strategic Advantage” session, ahead of Oliver Duffy-Lee and Ninsiima Rukandema. I also took a selfie pointing at my name on the schedule screen (just look at the post banner!).
I’m used to speaking in front of people. I’ve led quarterly meetings for years, and leadership has a way of pulling you out of your shell. A conference stage is a different thing, though, and I still felt the nerves as I walked out.
Most people don’t know this about me, but I’m naturally introverted. Speaking, and especially the conversations afterwards, runs my social battery down fast. Over the years I’ve learned to balance that introversion with the extroversion the business and the industry need from me, and to find the mix that keeps me happy too.
Travis, Sara and Elisha from the Search Theory® team came along to watch. Afterwards a small crowd stayed behind with questions, and one of them stumped me: how do you forecast SEO now that AI Overviews are in the mix? And that has led me to really think about my talk and the impact these conferences have on our industry (more on this in the MeasureFest post!)
Talks from brightonSEO October 2026 worth catching up on
One of the best things about speaking was seeing how many other talks pulled in the same direction, and thank you to everyone who got up on stage. These are the ones I’d pair with this guide, with slides linked where the speaker has shared them.
| Speaker | Talk | Slides | Why it pairs with this guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oliver Duffy-Lee, 21six | Breaking Out: How B2B Brands Escape Their Industry and Become Famous | Not shared yet | Followed me in the Strategic Advantage session. Fame builds the brand demand that feeds your demand input. |
| Ninsiima Rukandema, Hookflash | Why Experimentation Isn’t Optional in an Era of Budget Scrutiny | Not shared yet | Closed our session. Testing before big spend is a natural partner to a month-6 review. |
| Everest Nwagwu, Once For All | The “True ROI” Calculation: A Step-by-Step Financial Model for Attributing SEO Revenue | Not shared yet | My model forecasts the return before you spend, and Everest’s isolates SEO revenue from brand and paid overlap afterwards, so the two work well together. |
| Ollie Sloan, Arke Agency | From marketing metrics to board decisions: how to report performance in a way that unlocks investment | Not shared yet | How to report to decision-makers, including marginal returns and honest uncertainty. |
| James Moffat | Marketer Math and the Dashboard Delusion | Not shared yet | Why last-click and branded ROAS distort budget decisions, and what to report instead. |
| Kumar Amrendra, KaiSignals | Money In. Money Out. The Rest Is Measurement Theatre. | Not shared yet | Measurement that limits the cost of being wrong rather than proving a point, which is close to the underwriting idea in this guide. |
| Neil Barnes, Friday Media Group | Ditch the GPS for a Compass! Why Directional Data Trumps Measurement Perfection | Speaker Deck | A case for directional data when precision isn’t available. |
| Jade Faulconbridge, Attributed Marketing | Attribution Is Dead. Long Live Decision-Making | Not shared yet | Getting leaders to judge marketing on revenue outcomes such as ARR and ROI. |
| Charles Meaden, Digital Nation | Google Search Console Big Query Export: The Almost Free SEO Database Full of Gold | Speaker Deck | The cheapest way to build a demand input you can defend. |
| Tom Capper, STAT & Moz | How not to measure AI | Not shared yet | Common mistakes in tracking AI platforms, with practical fixes. |
| Simone De Palma, TUI | Advanced SEO Tracking Framework for Zero-Click and AI Search | Earlier version (Athens SEO, May 2026) | Uses Search Console, Bing and server logs to find AI-prone queries, which is the split the AI-aware model needs. |
| Becky Simms, Reflect Digital | What Zero-click Behaviour Actually Means Psychologically | Download (Reflect Digital) | When people trust an AI summary, and when they still click. |
| Niels Arts, Clonable | How to accurately forecast International SEO Traffic before going global | The same forecasting discipline, applied to new markets. | |
| Ross Simmonds, Foundation | How to Engineer Your Brand Into the Memory Layer of Every LLM | Not shared yet | Friday’s keynote, on earning the AI citations that the upside scenario depends on. |
The full MeasureFest October 2026 lineup and the brightonSEO schedule are worth a browse too.
With all these great talks behind us, what’s next for me? I’d love to speak on the main stage one day, so I’ll be pitching for brightonSEO in 2027. If there’s any topic that keeps you up at night – get in touch or connect on LinkedIn to let me know!
Brighton, the team, and recharging the social battery
Fantastic talks aside, we made a proper trip of October’s conference. Travis, Sara, Elisha and I arrived on Wednesday 7 October and headed home on Saturday 10th, so we had a few days together away from the day-to-day hustle.
We always treat ourselves to a good Airbnb with a hot tub and a cracking view, and this one ticked both boxes. The main room is open-plan, with wooden floors and a wall of bi-fold doors that fold all the way back onto a terrace right on the water. Across the water there’s a row of beach huts, and a potted palm on the terrace makes October feel like somewhere much further south.
We had beautiful weather for October, and the first morning was glorious. Travis claimed the leather armchair by the open doors, laptop on his knee, with the sun pouring in. Knowing how busy the conference would be, that slow start felt blissful.
For an introvert, that kind of base matters as much as the venue. Conference days are long and loud, and having somewhere calm to start the day, and to come back to with the team, is how I refill the tank.
We packed in plenty of fun around the conference too. Taking the team to experience brightonSEO, and to unwind together afterwards, was half the point of the trip.
I can’t wait to see what April 2027 has to bring and I hope to meet more of your SEO geeks there!
