BrightonSEO talk: Elevate your SEO knowledge through experimentation and moonlighting

On 3rd October 2024, I gave a talk at BrightonSEO entitled Enhance and elevate your SEO knowledge through experimentation & moonlighting. In this talk, I spoke about how I navigated different side projects over the years that helped me experiment with my SEO skills as well as apply what I learned from those projects back into the daily work I do as an SEO.

Many people who really improve their SEO knowledge do so via experimentation and testing. It’s vital now more than ever not to just understand SEO and without “getting your hands dirty”, your knowledge may only reach a certain level – a level where someone who experimented more will overtake you and secure roles you could have won.

Experimentation is best done away from client work to ensure that nothing happens to their detriment, and moonlighting is the best way to do that! Don’t just create a site – get in the weeds, study source code, change things and study source code again to see its impact, use more diagnostic tools and perform more tests for smaller audiences.

Enhance and elevate your SEO knowledge through experimentation & moonlighting from Alex Moss

Below is a list of links to things I mentioned in the talk, including a list of all the plugins I used for my website that I demonstrated.

Useful Links

• Download WordPress
• Find a host
• Twenty Twenty Four theme – comes out of the box. Preview here or see a demo here.
• Block Editor documentation
• Block pattern gallery
• PHP documentation
• Local by WP Engine
• List of plugins I used
  • Autoptimize
  • Contact Form 7
  • Monster Insights
  • Gutenslider
  • IndexNow by Bing
  • Popup Maker
  • Site Kit by Google
  • TinyPNG
  • WebP Express
  • WP Mail SMTP
  • WP Meteor
  • Yoast SEO Premium