I attended the HIVE MCR SEO event at New Century Hall in Manchester on behalf of Refinery's digital team. This marked the first ever HIVE MCR conference, which was set up to combine SEO talks with interactive panels to give insights to SEO professionals.

Key Takeaways from HIVE MCR

Technical SEO: Leveraging the Edge and Cloudflare

Jono Alderson's talk, "Going over the Edge," highlighted the possibility of using CDNs and Cloudflare to improve website performance. Alderson introduced the concept of the edge to achieve faster data transfer and improve user experience with helpful automations. Alderson suggested that "While competitors are distracted with AI and branding’’, companies should use this time to make technical SEO advantages using the edge.

Cloudflare can be used to automate the customer experience by connecting the websites to trending information and automate the customer experience. The example used to demonstrate this point was that you could connect an API to the edge using Cloudflare to do something like reorder products on a client website based on the trending items on Netflix. Although this was intended to be a random example, it becomes interesting when you consider that when some movies trend, so do certain items - Beetlejuice’s current popularity and the prevalence of Beetlejuice merch in high street stores springs to mind.

Digital PR: Relevance and Global Events

Lou Ali's talk, "How to Never be Irrelevant," stressed the importance of creating digital PR campaigns that are directly relevant to the target audience. By focusing on content that aligns with the client's business and existing audience, brands can build meaningful brand awareness. Hana Montgomery, "How The World Is Going To Affect Your Digital PR Strategy This Year," explained how global events like elections, stock market movements, and climate change can all impact PR strategy. The emphasis in this talk was on what Montgomery calls proactive scenario preparation, which is designed to avoid having to responsively react or pivot with campaigns when prior preparation could have factored this in.

Montgomery used the example that "Starmer's budget will affect all clients whether they are financial or not.’' The key takeaway was that as long as it affects consumers and humans in general, it will affect our clients and should be considered when planning PR campaigns.

Website Accessibility: Meeting the European Accessibility Act Deadline

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is set to come into effect in June 2025, requiring websites to be accessible for disabled people. Billie Geena Hyde discussed the need to embed accessibility into SEO workflows to ensure compliance.

Overall, HIVE MCR was a valuable event with actionable insights on the key areas of SEO, as well as discussions on how to effectively work with clients, stakeholders, and with new tools.

For further insights on website accessibility, digital PR, and technical SEO, feel free to contact our SEO team today.