This September, the Two Trees crew packed up our best swag to attend the HeroConf/Brighton SEO conference. Like any good agency, we sat down for a postmortem to discuss the key takeaways. With well over a hundred talks this only scratches the surface but there were a few stand out themes that inspired us.
Let’s get this out of the way: our own Mike Wisby’s talk was awesome. Fewer leads but more revenue is the reminder we need to optimize for sales, not form fills. None of this matters if it doesn’t bring revenue to the client. This tracks when it comes to Michael Cooney’s talk, “Get to Revenue.” Stop having meetings just to review a dashboard. Talk about outcomes, not vanity metrics.
Of course, AI was ever-present. There are so….many…..tools. Kirk Williams’, “Survival of the Strategic” talk reminds us to keep in mind that AI is not a solution; it is a TOOL, and strategy must be human-led. From Sam Torres’, “A Practical Guide to JavaScript SEO,” we learned how LLMs prefer HTML to JavaScript, and because she keeps no gates, you can find the deck here.
Speaking of changes, Cindy Krum’s, “Video SEO to Help Fast-Track AIO Rankings” highlights YouTube’s prominence in AI overviews in 2026 and how scripting your YouTube videos can have a massive impact on SEO.
And since we are talking about video, we were reminded that TikTok isn’t just for late-night doom scrolling anymore, or even just e-commerce. Nate Burke discussed B2B paid campaigns, and Christiana Barre focused on discovery through TikTok search.
So apparently marketing likes moving pictures. (And/or diversified content formats).
Audience personas seemed to take center stage on the SEO side. From Chris Long's talk, “What We Learned From Analyzing 28K+ ChatGPT & Gemini Fan-Out Queries,” we saw what query fan-outs gemini and chat gpt are pulling (and how they have changed). This shows how an AI system may expand a buyer’s question into related searches.
Andy Crestodina drove this audience-first point home in his keynote talk, “Winning AI recommendations… because visibility isn’t enough.” It seems so obvious, but maybe mentions and citations aren’t the goal in LLM tracking. Maybe it’s whether or not your brand is being recommended.
But can we use this advice? Oh, you betcha. I discovered that a key piece of my client’s on-page service calendar was only rendering in JavaScript and I had it built in HTML.
Amber, our Director of client success, came home and went to work adjusting her reporting so that it directly ties ad spend to revenue in a way our clients can see AND understand.
And in the same vein, CJ, our paid ads specialist, pivoted toward conversion value reporting instead of basic conversions, giving clients a much clearer picture of true ROAS.
From the booth to the lecture hall, we all agreed that Hero Conf/Brighton SEO was well worth the journey. Despite the fact that my coworkers tried to ditch me on the airplane (you know what you did) I am looking forward to next year.