Despite the heatwave and the record breaking temperatures across Europe this past weekend, SEO on the Beach went off without a hitch. The conference took place on June 17-18, 2022 in La Manga, Spain.
SEO on the Beach conference highlights
SEO on the Beach is a unique event based on the motto “Two day of leisure to do business.” Much like other conferences, participants can attend different sessions led by international SEO experts.
However, unlike any other conference, this one takes place entirely on the beach. Participants get the chance to do “beachworking” – networking on the beach – where it’s much easier to break the ice while making sandcastles or playing tug of war. Oncrawl was an official sponsor of the event and our team had a great time. Take a look at a few of our highlights from the conference.
Dawn Anderson: Natural Semantic SEO – Surfacing walnuts in densely represented, ever increasingly, small worlds
Dawn Anderson’s presentation about Semantic SEO was a unique talk that began with a straightforward and easy to understand definition of what semantic SEO actually is: the connection and understanding of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Semantic search ultimately ties structured and unstructured data together.
During the presentation, Dawn gave a lot of useful insight including a deep dive into the four key areas of search and how they are helping understand semantic SEO. It’s definitely worth checking out the presentation to see how she ultimately ties walnuts, umbrellas and sidecars into semantic SEO. You can also watch Dawn’s full presentation.
Lily Ray: E-A-T
Lily Ray’s presentation was about Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (E-A-T) and whether it really works. The short answer: YES!
Lily provided a lot of tips on how to successfully add E-A-T elements to your site as well as several examples that do work. She pointed out that, “It is not an easy process. For example, adding E-A-T elements to your content without updating the content is not sufficient.” However, putting in the work can have great rewards.
Gary Illyes: How crawling works at internet scale
Gary Illyes’ session took an unexpected turn. Although his presentation was supposed to be about “How crawling works at internet scale”, he instead gave the audience the option to either listen to the full presentation or just do one large Q&A session.
The overwhelming majority opted for the Q&A session, which turned out to be relaxing yet interesting – right in line with the SEO on the Beach atmosphere. Over the course of the Q&A, Gary gave a lot of useful information about crawl budget, improving hreflang and international SEO. Take a look at the full Q&A session here.
Inaki Huerta – Who has taken my Google Analytics?
A hot topic in the SEO community of late is the pending shift that many will have to make from UA to GA4, so we were keen to see what Inaki Huerta had to say about it. He summed it up pretty well when he said, “GA3 is a Playmobil and GA4 is a Lego”.
Ultimately, what he boils it all down to is that they are not the same tool, so we shouldn’t try to compare them. “It’s easier to understand and use GA4 when you stop comparing it to UA”. Take a look at his full presentation (in Spanish).
That’s a wrap on SEO on the Beach 2022! Were you able to attend? What presentations stood out to you? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
Overheard at SEO on the Beach
In case you weren’t able to attend, here are a few soundbites from the participants.
“This is rather different from the networking events I’m used to attending. Everything here is so relaxed. That’s why I came here; it’s relaxing but at the same time the networking is really good quality.”
– Montserrat Cano, International SEO and Digital Marketing Consultant
“SEO on the Beach is the Spanish SEO event that combines both a spectacular environment – with the sea, the pool, the atmosphere – with a top notch level of conferences given by some great international speakers.”
“It’s hard not to have fun at SEO on the Beach! With such attentive and hands-on organizers, you have fun throughout the day as well as getting the opportunity to learn. This is an event I would highly recommend for all SEOs.”
– Nicolas Audemar, SEO Consultant Spain, France
“I really enjoyed the conference by Gary (Illyes) because everything he said had a lot of value for us as we run a platform that is dedicated to the sale of articles and sponsored posts.”
– Silvia Fernández-Medina, Advertising Manager
