SEO Vibes Cyprus by WhitePress 2024 – Our Conference Recap

As you may already know, here at Delante, we genuinely enjoy participating in various conferences, both locally and abroad. It’s an excellent opportunity to expand our knowledge, get inspired, stay updated on marketing trends, and build our network. #hittheSEOroad ?✈️

This time, we took part in SEO Vibes Cyprus (E-commerce edition), hosted by WhitePress in the beautiful city of Limassol. I was joined by our CEO Mateusz Calik and our Head of SEO Gosia Kwiecień. Here’s my take on the event.

To start, here’s a quick overview – SEO Vibes and SEO Vibes on Tour are a series of conferences hosted by WhitePress around the world. Last year, for instance, we attended SEO Vibes in Budapest, and I was really impressed with both the organization and the content. So, when the chance came up this year to head to Cyprus for the event, we didn’t think twice. The event focused on e-commerce and took place from October 23-25, 2024, at the 5* Amathus Beach Hotel in Limassol.

As the organizers put it, it was a bit of a niche, exclusive event, with only around 70 attendees, including a small group from Poland. Alongside the talks, there were live Q&As and a mastermind session.

What I really liked was that the conference didn’t just focus on SEO but took a broader, more holistic view of business. And what does Matt think?

So, what was this event like?

SEO Vibes Cyprus kicked off on Wednesday with a before party on a yacht – a perfect start to the event. It was an intimate gathering of around fifty people, giving us the chance to chat, get to know each other, relax, and of course, enjoy the views. About three hours on the water, wrapped up with a stunning sunset.

We started Thursday with some light networking over coffee and a warm welcome from the organizers (WhitePress and Linkifi), followed by the start of the presentations. I’ve got a few interesting takeaways and insights to share.

The conference opened with a presentation by SEO Specialist and Business Strategist at Go Digital Globally, Elena Andreou. It was the first session, but the topic of brand importance (both personal and corporate) was a recurring theme throughout the event. Elena emphasized that people need to trust brands, highlighting the importance of brand authority (a metric developed by Moz), which she considers a key ranking factor. And if this works for brands, what about personal branding? Here are a few interesting insights from her presentation:

-When building your personal brand, being active on social media, at conferences, etc., you naturally generate backlinks and mentions – which are strong social signals. According to Elena, mentions are actually more important than likes.

-People trust people, so building your own brand increases trust in your services.

-It’s worth paying attention to the Social Selling Index score on LinkedIn.

-Various AI solutions and Bing are connected. That’s why it’s important to ensure your information is well-presented on Bing.

-Elena also highlighted the sentiment analysis as a potential ranking factor (in her view, Google tends to favor positive content, so text with a more upbeat tone could rank better). She compared HubSpot and Search Engine Land rankings. The conclusion? HubSpot had more positive sentiment and ranked higher.

Aris is a Digital Director with over 18 years of experience working for companies in Greece and Cyprus. For me, his presentation was particularly interesting because it included many local insights. For example, did you know that in Cyprus, 60% of people prefer cash-on-delivery payments? It’s something to keep in mind if you’re thinking about doing business in that market or working with Cypriot e-commerce.

Overall, Aris emphasized the importance of thorough market research, but also of having a solid product, because a good product is essential for sales. He highlighted the 80/20 principle in e-commerce – 20% of products typically account for 80% of revenue, so those are the products you should focus on. He stressed the importance of branding, seasonality, trends, pricing strategies, and flagship products. He also shared a simple checklist for e-commerce businesses:

What’s more, Aris highlighted the importance of the post-purchase experience – taking care of it is key to encouraging repeat customers. He shared essential metrics that every e-commerce business should track and the formula for success. Then, he moved on to tips for new e-commerce ventures – what should they focus on to drive sales? He emphasized that, at the start, it’s about attracting customers, not necessarily making profits right away. So how can you achieve that? By focusing on:

-SEO / SEM

-Engaging content (not just written, but also video and images)

-Influencer marketing (especially for building local communities)

-Short message service (SMS) & email marketing (the first one is particularly popular in Cyprus)

Once a year, you should also do a review and check: revenue vs. targets, ideally breaking it down by month to analyze seasonality, which products sold the best, and ensure they’re in stock. You should also conduct a tech review (to see if anything needs improvement, what should still be implemented, and what can be scrapped), a review of your SEO and SEM strategies, and a look at your team (do you need to bring in new people?). Finally, Aris shared some tips on auditing mobile devices to improve UX – something that, surprisingly, is still often overlooked by many stores.

It was a really insightful and practical presentation, showing just how crucial some of the basics can be.

It was a really standout presentation because it focused on selling e-commerce businesses. Greg explained what to consider when selling your business, and more importantly, when the right time is to do so. He also shared a fascinating case study of a business he helped sell, which was super insightful and filled with real-life insights.

He then explained why DTC (Direct to Consumer) e-commerce is so appealing and why people want to buy into it. Key reasons include diversified traffic, strong growth potential, scalability, and plenty of room for optimization – from products to logistics, suppliers, and marketing. One tip that really stuck with me was to be open about the mistakes you’ve made when selling a business. Often, sellers avoid mentioning them, but they can actually be valuable to the buyer, showing areas for improvement and future growth.

It was another great presentation packed with useful insights, examples, and tips. Just the way we like it!

And with that, we wrapped up the first block of talks, followed by a Q&A session. Attendees could ask questions to the speakers either through Slido or live. After a quick coffee break, we returned for block 2, which included:

Laricea is the Head of Marketing at Wallis, Dorothy Perkins, and Burton, but she’s also worked with major brands like Google, Huawei, Microsoft, Entain, and Tesco. At the conference, she shared a Dorothy Perkins case study. She began by discussing how the fashion industry evolved post-pandemic – shopping habits have changed, ad spend has decreased, and retail apps have grown. These apps now see better results in terms of returning customers compared to websites.

Laricea highlighted how Dorothy Perkins achieved more app downloads through SEO than Ads. Therefore, SEO became a priority when their focus shifted to app downloads. They knew it was essential to create a seamless experience across channels and the app, making it easy to track transitions, downloads, and more. Email marketing and influencers were also major players in their strategy. Personal branding took center stage once again, with influencer campaigns aimed not only at showcasing products but also at driving app downloads. Users trusted the influencers, which led to more downloads. She also stressed the importance of deep linking and smart banners in app marketing. Personally, I also appreciated how she pointed out the challenge the fashion industry faces in competing with brands like Temu and Shein in advertising. It’s an important issue and something we should educate our clients about as well.

Next up on stage was Damian Sałkowski, CEO of Senuto. It’s always great to see so many Poles speaking at international conferences. I don’t think anyone was surprised that Damian spoke about the use of AI. ? However, he emphasized that AI isn’t just about ChatGPT (many people mistakenly equate the two). He discussed some of the downsides of ChatGPT, such as: often poor results despite seemingly good (even purchased) prompts, readability issues (texts tend to have unnatural, uniformly sized paragraphs, bullet points, lack of formatting, many repetitions), and so on. When it comes to category descriptions for e-commerce stores, one of the issues is that sometimes ChatGPT describes products that aren’t even in the category, while overlooking important details that would fit perfectly with the offering.

Damian shared two case studies: OBI (on category descriptions) and Answear (on internal linking) and how they used AI. The tools used in these projects included Make, N8n, and Dify. OBI and Answear developed their own prompt engineering method, feeding AI not only the prompt but also the content of the pages and relevant data, which is crucial when working with AI. This way, AI gets the context and a lot of information about what it needs to describe. In the case of building an internal linking structure, it can use semantic similarity to select pages that should be linked together. Damian also pointed out that it’s crucial to focus on word embeddings, as that’s the future of SEO. ;>

The final speaker of the first day was Aleks Ivanovski, Co-founder and CEO of Web Asset Builders. He also focused on AI and how it can be leveraged in e-commerce. For example, he talked about blog posts and how, after the Helpful Content Update, blogs actually hold more potential for online stores than many might think. AI can be really useful here for creating briefs and outlines – he shared a few tips on how to do this effectively. He also emphasized the importance of lead magnets for e-commerce and showed how AI can help generate these types of landing pages.

Another area where AI can make a big impact, according to Aleks, is in boosting user engagement. For example, you can use it to generate comments or even create simple tools that engage your audience. One idea he shared was a gift generator for coffee lovers (for a coffee shop – you’d take a quick quiz, and the tool would suggest the perfect gift). These kinds of tools are often shared on social media (which brings additional social signals and backlinks).

After the presentation, there was a Q&A session with the speakers from this block, followed by a delicious lunch and then onto block 3!

Louis delivered an excellent presentation, full of actionable insights, centered around a case study of a brand selling alternatives to popular perfumes. He began by outlining the challenges they faced and how their SEO strategy evolved, followed by the process of building traffic and visibility. Once they established this foundation, they moved on to conversion, discussing the sales opportunities they identified and how they leveraged them starting from analyzing potential customers’ search intent to designing the site architecture. They also looked at heatmaps, something Louis pointed out is still rarely done in e-commerce. He explained how they used this data to optimize products and how they later supported the process with other marketing channels. Louis emphasized the importance of focusing on transactional keywords since AI can handle the informational ones, as well as optimizing for Google Shopping and improving site performance. He also stressed the need for building a strong brand and keeping user engagement high. It was a great, practical presentation, and no surprise that Louis was bombarded with questions during the Q&A session afterward.

Next up on stage was Soren, who shared his insights from the Danish market. It was fascinating to see how core SEO strategies are similar globally, but there are also some interesting nuances (including cultural ones) that are important to consider, especially when working with e-commerce businesses to better target your audience. Soren presented specific case studies and offered numerous tips for Shopify stores and beyond. He emphasized how to use sorting and filters effectively, and as a fun fact, he shared that according to his tests, the more products are available in a category, the better they rank. He also shared tips on how to leverage this information.

He also offered some UX advice (like regarding Above the Fold placement), as well as more technical insights on pagination and schema. Like many other speakers at this conference, he stressed the importance of creating content for real people, instead of generating generic AI texts. Another interesting point he brought up was that in Denmark, there are legal requirements for content. Without a solid prompt, AI might miss these, which could lead to trouble. ? He wrapped up with some insights into programmatic SEO and the challenges it presents.

Afterward, we had another Q&A session and called it a day.

The second day of the conference was also packed with valuable insights and practical takeaways.

The day began with mastermind sessions – participants were divided into small groups to discuss a variety of topics, including AI, black hat SEO, affiliate marketing, and technical SEO. It was a great opportunity to collectively explore challenges and brainstorm solutions with others, who came from different countries, cultures, and professional backgrounds. This is an excellent practice, and anyone who enjoys this format will certainly gain a lot from such a session.

After lunch, we returned to the talks.

Then, we took part in another live Q&A session, but this time it was longer and more comprehensive than the previous ones. Attendees had the chance to ask just about anything, given the vast experience both James Dooley and Aleks Ivanovski bring to the table. The topics covered were wide-ranging, from the future of link building and affiliate marketing to AI in content creation, personal branding, parasite SEO, and social media. There was even a question that hit close to home: “What do conferences really offer, and how can introverts navigate networking?” ?

This was another great talk – I really agree with the idea that listening to both current and potential users has huge potential. Emanuele shared some fascinating insights from the global scene, specifically the Italian market. What stood out was that he works at a relatively young and fresh company (just two years on the market), yet they’re already partnering with some of the biggest and most luxurious brands (especially in fashion – Valentino, Versace, YSL, Dolce & Gabbana, etc.). He also shared real-life examples based on case studies, starting with the challenges they faced (something we all experience!), followed by their approach and strategies.

Like Louis, he stressed the importance of identifying keywords and opportunities that AI might miss. His advice was to really listen to your users and respond to their needs. He shared specific examples of how small tweaks to microcopy and copy directly impacted conversion rates. He also pointed out how platforms like TikTok and other similar social media have culturally influenced us as search engine users and internet consumers, highlighting how the search journey has become more complex. All of this was supported by real-life examples. Great work!

This was another great talk presenting a case study. Jake and Tom shared how they built their digital marketing agency and how it continues to grow. They talked about common mistakes brands make on social media (backed up by statistics) and, based on that, offered us plenty of practical tips. Among other things, they emphasized the importance of finding your brand’s voice and choosing the right platforms and marketing channels. They shared advice on paid social ads, like starting with a small budget and scaling up based on results, which they highly recommend. Jake and Tom also highlighted the role of influencers, user-generated content (UGC), and personal branding. They wrapped up by presenting some fascinating case studies.

In the evening, we all gathered at a restaurant in the heart of Limassol, right by the sea. It was another great opportunity for networking, sharing thoughts on the conference, and simply relaxing, laughing, and having fun. ?

Overall, SEO Vibes Cyprus 2024 was an amazing experience – beautiful weather, stunning views, and a highly insightful yet intimate conference. It was great to explore such a variety of topics and meet speakers from different countries, which allowed us to notice significant market differences. WhitePress and Linkifi did an excellent job organizing everything, even with the minor challenges they faced due to the absence of two speakers. They took care of everything, from the before and after parties to the conference itself. The venue was absolutely stunning. What can I say – I highly recommend international conferences to everyone. The combination of SEO and travel is the perfect mix for me. ? So, let’s hit the SEO Road!