The Nottingham Digital Summit was a great event, with 30 expert speakers, 750 delegates, 48 clinics, and 1 great charity. We were lucky enough to be invited along by one of our partners, Crystal Carter from Wix.
The event was buzzing with people from the moment the doors opened, and it was a privilege to sit through so many inspirational talks and meet so many bright-eyed bushy-tailed people eager to learn.
Not surprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) was the hottest topic of the day, with every talk touching on an element of AI. The following three speakers gave some great insight into the future of digital marketing.
Barry Adams, Independent SEO Consultant – Search 2013, 2023 and 2033: the more things change…
Barry has been working in SEO since before it was called SEO and has seen it all, felt the pain, and adapted his approach over the decades to give himself the best chance of predicting the future of SEO.
In 2023, Barry tells us that search has three main verses to its tune that Google makes us dance along to.
- Knowledge Graph – the ‘map’ of all of your website relationships
- SERP features need to be based on the knowledge graph to allow your content to rank
- Machine learning and AI must be considered as manual operations will fall too far behind
Barry predicted that as machine learning and AI play a bigger part in the future of search, optimizing knowledge graphs will be critical as AI tools will primarily use relationship data to feed decisions. However, he also pointed out that AI is a black box that we can’t see into, and it’s likely that as AI learning increases, it will become impossible for us to predict how whatever is hiding in that black box is thinking.
Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications at Wix – Bing, Bang, Boom: SEO for new players in search
Crystal gave us a broader overview of the wider range of search engine tools available and how they are working with AI to power image and speech search. Google has had dedicated AI business tools in Google Cloud for years, such as its large language model, BERT, for interpreting text in search, Google Lens for image recognition (which now has 10 billion monthly searches), and featured snippets.
AI is not new to search. In the past, it has been used to understand old stored content and present that content on the surface. However, new generative models use old content to create new and unique real-time content experiences, as well as user-generated content to create completely new experiences.
Google has changed how it ranks content by adding an extra E (experience) to the E-A-T acronym (expertise, authority, trust). This places first-hand experience and user-generated content at a higher ranking when content is becoming more automated.
Cristiana Herrera, Head of Performance Marketing at Diginius – Reinventing your paid search strategy on Microsoft Advertising
Cristiana discussed how to develop a paid search strategy for Microsoft Advertising and how to take advantage of Microsoft users. Advertising on Microsoft enables businesses to reach 1 billion people who, according to user data, have a greater purchasing power and are more likely to buy online.
With Bing’s adoption of AI-powered search, they are increasing advertiser value by expanding customer reach and volume, changing the way we experience ads, and customising them to fit each customer’s context. This all results in greater ROI.
Previously, running paid search campaigns through Bing might have required a more time-consuming, in-depth understanding of the platform. However, with AI, you can set up your campaign and then only need to do small amounts of maintenance.
Overall, the Nottingham Digital Summit was a great event that provided valuable insights into the future of digital marketing. It was great to hear more about AI and how it is being used to change the way we search and interact online. This is something that we can utilise when developing client strategies in the future.
If you would like to discuss how your business can stay competitive in an increasingly digital world, contact our experts today.
