Square In The Air’s Junior Account Manager Charles Orchard looks back at the recent BrightonSEO Conference and reveals his four biggest learnings from the south coast…

BrightonSEO has always been a good barometer for where the SEO industry is heading, but the rise of AI/LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude has fundamentally changed how content and brands are accessed by consumers.

The conversation has therefore moved beyond just rankings and traffic into broader visibility across both search engines and AI systems, meaning this year’s conference felt like a genuine shift.

Across the two sunny days on the south coast, four key themes stood out to me from a Digital PR perspective.

1. Original data in Digital PR is the biggest differentiator

If AI has changed anything, it’s the value of originality. When any brand or agency can now generate mass content at scale by punching commands into ChatGPT, the only real differentiator is authoritative information that doesn’t already exist.

That’s why data-led Digital PR campaigns are one of the most effective ways to drive both SEO and AI visibility. They create something genuinely new and ownable – and that’s what both journalists and search systems reward.

The strongest campaigns start with a clear hypothesis: what is happening in the world that the public suspect, but nobody has actually measured? From there, the role of effective Digital PR is to build a dataset that answers that question in a credible and newsworthy way.

This could involve combining public datasets, scraping tools and platforms, analysing internal data or using APIs to uncover new insights. After that, the real value lies in interpretation – spotting patterns and turning them into a story that resonates – for both the media and their readers.

Journalists don’t care about brand messaging; they care about stories, and the stories that land are those that are relatable, quantifiable, visual and tied to real-world impact.

For us, this reinforces the need to build a repeatable research engine. The best campaigns are part of a consistent approach and earn relevant, editorially placed links with leading media, which remains one of the strongest drivers of both rankings and AI visibility.

2. Mid-DA but relevant coverage beats raw authority and volume

One of the most commercially important takeaways for search visibility was how overvalued high Domain Authority (DA) targets have become, and the value of relevance.

Many clients still push for 50–60+ DA links as a KPI, but the reality is more nuanced. When it comes to AI visibility in particular, relevance and placement matter more than high authority and volume.

Links that are editorially placed, contextually relevant, and sit within content that genuinely aligns with the topic of your campaign consistently outperform higher-DA links that lack that same context and relevancy. Case studies with coverage on mid-tier DA but topically aligned domains – typically in the 35–50 range – was shown to move the needle significantly.

Examples of this include industry titles, niche trade publications, specialist news sites, and well-established media outlets that sit directly within a client’s sector, even if they don’t have the highest overall DA scores.

This is because AI systems do not just assess Domain Authority – they are looking at how well a source matches the query, how trustworthy it appears in context, and how clearly it contributes to an answer.

For Digital PR, this validates a more strategic approach to outreach. The focus should be on topical alignment and strong editorial relevance, rather than chasing authority or mass coverage for the sake of it.

3. Branded anchor texts and entity building = better SEO/AI visibility

If there was one standout tactical shift from a keyword perspective, it was the importance of branded anchor texts for both SEO/GEO.

Historically, SEO has leaned heavily on keyword-rich anchors. However, branded anchors are now outperforming them, not just because they look more natural, but because they reinforce a brand as an entity.

From a Digital PR perspective, the most effective media outreach now combines branded anchor links, high-authority editorial coverage, and consistent mentions across multiple platforms, including forums and community sites such as Reddit.

Importantly, not all value comes from traditional follow links, as has traditionally been believed. Nofollow links and even unlinked brand mentions are now better for AI visibility (as of October 2025), though a blend of all three is optimal.

In practical terms, this means guiding clients away from over-optimised anchor strategies and towards a more brand-led approach. Strong brands are what cut through in both search results and AI-generated answers.

4. SEO and AI visibility have bigger overlaps than we think

One of the biggest misconceptions going into the conference was that AI visibility requires a completely new playbook. In reality, the similarity with traditional SEO is much greater than commonly believed.

Search engines rank pages, while large language models (LLMs) generate answers, but both rely on the same underlying signals: authority, relevance and trust. As one speaker put it, “they drink from the same well, but drink differently”.

The difference is in how that information is surfaced – Google provides fixed rankings, while AI tools pull together answers dynamically, often taking the quickest route to what they deem the most reliable source.

For us, the takeaway is that a well-executed Digital PR strategy can drive both SEO and AI performance. If brands are building authority in the right places with the right signals, they are feeding both ecosystems at once.

To find out more about how Square In The Air’s Digital PR services can enhance your brand’s SEO and AI performance, get in touch with hello@squareintheair.com