We love a good SEO conference at StrategiQ. You may have seen that we attended Brighton SEO last month to soak up some knowledge and sun by the sea, but this time our destination was much further north.
Manchester has a rich heritage of digital events and SEO conferences in particular, thanks to the vibrant and active community in the region. Post covid, events have been less frequent – so last week we were delighted to attend Hive MCR, a relative newcomer on the block.
Run by local SEO consultant Charlie Whitworth, Hive MCR is now in its second year but it already has the confidence and content of a much more established event, boasting an A-list lineup of an established cast.
Here are some of our highlights!
Kirsty Hulse – Herding Cats and Hitting Goals: How to Focus, Build Confidence, and Stay Calm in Chaos
The standout presentation came from Kirsty Hulse, who focused on maintaining focus and calm amid workplace challenges. In SEO, where multitasking and client expectations can quickly become overwhelming, her talk was like a soothing balm which I’m sure many in the room felt.
Here’s a few nuggets of wisdom:
- Disable notifications during deep work sessions
- Use 20-minute focused work intervals for single tasks
- Keep your phone in another room to minimise distractions
- Stop apologising for not responding to internal messages instantly
- Focus on progress over perfection by tracking small wins
Mike King – The End of SEO As We Know It
Mike is another well known face on the SEO circuit and provided a wealth of information on AI and the future of search.
Mike emphasised that while the growth of AI search platforms has been profound, this merely marks the beginning of organic search’s next evolutionary phase. Many have pointed to OpenAI’s remarkable growth as a potential threat to Google’s dominance. However, Mike highlighted that OpenAI simply enjoys a first-mover advantage, while Google possesses several products with over 1 billion users where they can integrate Gemini. Google’s vastly superior user data gives them a significant competitive edge.
According to Mike, the only genuine threat to Google is the current antitrust case, which could potentially result in Google being split into separate companies.
The AI discussion occupied the first half of Mike’s presentation before transitioning into the ongoing evolution we’ll witness in search. Based on current search trends, it’s evident that Google is moving toward more bespoke interfaces. Additionally, Mike suggested that search should now be considered a long-term brand channel.
As Google continues to surface more features and platforms that brands can own, Mike advocated for SEO professionals to become “relevance engineers” who optimise these platforms to deliver relevant experiences for targeted audiences. This sentiment was echoed by other speakers throughout the day, each proposing their own terminology for the optimisation approaches needed in the future.
Mike’s presentation contained too much valuable information to fully capture in this blog post, so here is the link to the deck so you can get the full picture.
Barry Adams – Managing Googlebot’s Greedy Tendencies; Optimise for Efficient Crawling and Indexing
Barry Adams, a well-known figure on the SEO speaking circuit particularly recognised for his work with news publishers, shared his deep knowledge of the technical challenges involved in crawling sites with complex structures and millions of pages in Google’s index.
Barry walked us through the fundamentals of Google’s crawling and indexing model, explaining the different levels of crawl prioritisation that Google implements for various types of pages:
- Priority crawl queue: Used to discover high-priority pages (he mentioned that the Daily Mail’s homepage is crawled every 5 seconds by Google!). The primary purpose of this aspect of Google’s crawler is to discover new content.
- Regular crawl queue: This component of Googlebot recrawls URLs that were initially discovered by the priority queue. It operates at a less frantic pace but handles most of the regular crawling workload.
Barry also shared fascinating insights about the various sources Google uses to crawl sites:
- The normal site crawl
- Inbound links
- XML feeds
- RSS feeds (which are often overlooked by many sites)
- DNS records
- Domain registration data
- User browser data (familiar to those following the Google antitrust trial)
A key takeaway from Barry’s presentation was his advocacy for site speed improvements as a means of enhancing Google’s crawl efficiency. He explained that crawling is fundamentally a time-based metric rather than a URL-level metric, so it’s logical to make finding and parsing pages as quick and easy as possible. As part of this approach, it’s crucial to consider server response time, as a quick response directly correlates with Google’s ability to crawl and cache pages effectively.
Aleyda Solis – AI Search: Where Are We & What Can We Do About It?
Aleyda Solis has been one of the most recognised and active advocates within the SEO community for as long as we can remember. Rarely is there a speaker lineup that doesn’t include her—and for good reason. She graced the Hive MCR stage with her valuable insights on working in an AI-dominated world.
Aleyda began her presentation by highlighting a recent SEO study revealing how Google’s AI Overviews have reduced clicks from search results by a significant 34%. She acknowledged that the uncertainty surrounding AI has made it increasingly challenging to achieve SEO goals and secure buy-in from stakeholders.
Despite the alarming headlines about AI, Aleyda provided some reassuring perspective: traffic from Large Language Models (LLMs) remains minimal compared to traditional organic search. According to Similarweb data, LLM traffic currently represents only 1-2% of organic search traffic. Furthermore, she noted that users who perform searches on LLMs almost always conduct the same searches using Google as well.
While AI Overviews are currently most prevalent for informational search queries, Aleyda predicted that these would increasingly appear for commercial queries too. This prediction echoed Mike King’s earlier talk as she emphasised the need for SEO professionals to diversify their optimisation approaches and evolve into “findability specialists” to adapt to this changing landscape.
Her practical insights on navigating the emerging AI search environment provided attendees with valuable strategies for staying relevant in this rapidly evolving aspect of SEO.
Other Favourites
There was so much valuable information packed into this one-day event that it would be impossible to cover everything in a single blog post.
Steven Kenwright provided particularly insightful perspectives on the current state of agencies versus brands. He highlighted the significant budgeting challenges that many brands are currently facing, which have resulted in specialist marketers being let go while generalist marketers are retained. This shifting landscape has created a greater reliance on agencies, whose budgets can be more easily adjusted—turned on or off depending on immediate needs. This flexible approach to marketing expertise is becoming increasingly common as businesses navigate uncertain economic conditions.
We also thoroughly enjoyed the technical SEO panel discussion, where common themes emerged around taking a more common-sense approach to technical auditing. The panelists emphasised the importance of identifying the few major technical levers that truly need adjustment, rather than relying on exhaustive checklists that often lead to a laundry list of items to fix. This pragmatic approach resonated with many attendees who are looking to maximise impact while working with limited resources.
The day was filled with numerous other insights and engaging discussions that have left us with plenty to think about and try out. The food was good too. Thanks again to Charlie for putting on this tremendous event and we hope you aren’t too shattered to do it again next year!
