Insights

Reflections from Edge of Search 2025: What We Learned

September 15, 2025

In this article:

Speaker Highlights

Here’s a summary of what each speaker/author contributed; what we learned from them, or what to watch for.

Speaker	Role / Expertise	Key Insights / What They Brought to the Table
Amanda King (Founder & Principal Consultant at FLOQ; FLOQ Academy)	Deep experience in SEO consulting and implementation; product-led strategy.	Amanda emphasised the importance of aligning SEO with how search engines currently interpret websites. Her strengths in data auditing, conversion rate optimisation, and content strategy reminded us how foundational those need to remain even as AI and tools shift. Real message: don’t lose the basics.
Dr Nici Sweaney (Founder, AI Her Way)	Thought leader in ethical AI, data strategy, global equity and accountability in AI.	Her talk underlined how rapidly AI is changing expectations, but also how many organisations are still behind in considering ethics, fairness, and responsibility. She called for not just using AI, but using it well including guardrails, transparency, and inclusive design.
Emily Amor (Head of Paid Social at Digital Darts)	Expertise in paid social, campaign innovation, client consultation.	Emily’s angle was on how paid social and organic/SEO can support each other. Also useful tactical take-aways: measuring cross-channel attribution, making creative that works for both paid and organic reach, and how agility in testing is key.
Jason Munn (E-Commerce Specialist & Group Chief Search Officer at Overdose Digital)	Strong in e-commerce SEO, from mid-market/retailer point of view.	Jason shared case studies showing how SEO in e-commerce can (and must) be tightly tied to user experience, site performance, structured data, and content that supports transaction as well as discovery. Also emphasized scaling tactics.
Georgia Tan (Co-Founder & Head of Search at Switch Key Digital)	SEO + UX + content integration; community building (Women in SEO & Digital Marketing).	Georgia highlighted that even the best SEO strategy can fall flat without strong UX and content. Also spoke about measurement & setting up feedback loops between content, UX, SEO, and development. Her community engagement work reminds us that sharing and learning beyond projects benefits everyone.
Jes Scholz (Organic Marketing Consultant, Jes Scholz Consulting)	Technical SEO, growth marketing, brand optimisation, automated content distribution, future-proof SEO.	Jes pushed on the strategic side: how do you build SEO systems that aren’t brittle — that can adapt to algorithm changes, AI tools, user behaviour shifts. Also raised ideas on scalable content automation / distribution, without compromising quality or brand voice.
Michael Ofei (Managing Editor at Backlinko, part of Semrush)	Long experience in content & SEO, editorial leadership.	He talked about content strategy: what kinds of content still win, how editorial rigor matters, and how content & SEO must be tightly integrated from planning to measurement. Also covered what makes content “sticky” in both user engagement and SEO terms.
Regan McGregor (Head of SEO at Airtasker)	Growth marketing, SEO + PPC + content strategy; experience with startups / small business.	Regan brought a perspective rooted in resource constraints and rapid iteration. How small teams can punch above their weight by focusing on leverage points: good technical foundations, prioritisation, iterating tests, and learning fast.
Vahe Arabian (Founder & Editor-in-Chief at State of Digital Publishing)	Digital publishing, media, SEO + content trends, helping publishers grow.	Vahe’s take: in publishing, SEO isn’t just traffic—it’s audience, retention, user trust. He covered trends in monetisation, content formats, and how publishers can adapt to changes in how search and discovery works (voice, AI, etc.).
Nathan Hughes (Head Coach at Ali Abdaal)	Community building, marketing, managing paid communities, growth of audience-led revenue.	He shared useful ideas about how to build and sustain engaged communities, the role of SEO / content / social in that ecosystem, and how community monetisation works in practice. Also useful discussion around balancing scale with quality when growing a community.

Key Takeaways for Our Team

Here are some of the most valuable lessons and ideas that stood out, and how they might impact what we do moving forward:

Collaboration over Silos: Across talks, the consistent theme was that SEO does not exist in isolation. Whether it’s UX, content, social, paid media, or brand, each function needs to feed from and inform the others. For our projects, this means earlier collaboration with design, content strategy, and dev.
Ethical & Responsible Use of AI is Non-Negotiable: With AI tools becoming pervasive (from content generation to optimisation suggestions), the call is for frameworks, guardrails, and more awareness of bias, transparency, and long-term sustainability. We should assess where we can bring in ethics checks into our process.
User Experience & Content Quality Still Matter More Than Ever: Speed, performance, structured content, mobile-friendly design, and content that is useful, relevant, well-edited, these are still fundamental. AI and tools help but don’t replace quality.
Scalability & Agility: Many speakers discussed how to scale processes, content, SEO efforts, or distribution, while staying flexible. Testing, iteration, automation where possible, but not at the cost of brand or user value.
Measure & Adapt: Advanced reporting, feedback loops between channels, using data not just to confirm what we want to believe but to discover what’s working (and what isn’t). Also, planning for changes: algorithm updates, AI evolution, platform shifts.
Community & Shared Learning: The side benefit of attending was reconnecting with peers, seeing what others are doing, hearing fresh perspectives. That helps surface new tools, tactics, and ideas. Sharing back within our team (and beyond) multiplies that benefit.

What We’re Excited to Try

Embedding cross-team check-ins earlier in our project cycles (especially content / UX / SEO).
Running a pilot to test more creative or experimental content formats (maybe inspired by the masters’ sessions on brand + creative + human-centric storytelling).
Reviewing our AI/automation tools with an ethics lens (bias checks, transparency, oversight).
Tightening up measurement and feedback loops so we can iterate more quickly, especially for campaigns that span multiple channels (SEO + paid + social).

Final Thoughts

Edge of Search 2025 was more than just another conference: it felt like a calling card for what modern SEO and digital marketing should be: more integrated, more responsible, more creativity, and always with the audience, context, and long term in view. We’re glad we went, and believe the insights will help sharpen how we work, what we prioritise, and how we grow.