The Women in Tech SEO Fest (WTSFest) event occurred last month in London, and I had the opportunity to attend for the first time. As I am early on in my SEO and digital marketing career, I was delighted to attend an industry event that allowed me to learn from experts, network with peers and stay ahead of the curve on industry predictions.
The speakers touched on a range of topics from content frameworks to query fanout, but AI was a running theme at this year's conference, which came as no surprise. It is essential, now more than ever, to maximise the use of AI, from creating AI workflows to streamline your work and adjusting your approach to ensure your website appears in AI overviews. Here are my top takeaways from the event:
Repurpose your Content
With my role recently shifting from SEO to Content, I found the talk by Zoe Burke, Head of Brand, Content & Social at Bridebook, on crafting content with purpose to be insightful, as she emphasised the need for creating content that can be used on different platforms. She stresses the importance of creating content that reaches all audiences across your platforms and why it should be optimised for use everywhere. With search everywhere being a key focus in 2026, Zoe highlights that having an ‘evolution plan’ for your content ensures that your content can easily be adapted for email, PR, and social media.
Key Takeaway: Look at the search landscape and update your content accordingly. The limit on what you do with the content does not exist.
Focus on topics rather than static keywords
Aleyda Solis, the Founder & International SEO Consultant at Oriainti, was one of my favourite speakers, as I have been following her SEOFomo Newsletter for a while now. It was great hearing her discuss the shift from focusing on single keywords to prioritising ‘query fanout’. With AI overviews affecting search visibility, focusing on topics rather than single keywords is an effective approach at covering multiple user intents, allowing you to align with other sub-queries that users will also be looking into. I have always thought including a ‘keyword’ when optimising a page was vital, but with search behaviour changing, it seems that ‘topic clusters’ is what will help your page increase its ranking.
Key Takeaway: Prioritise query fan-out by expanding your site's authority. Target the full user journey through topic-based content rather than looking into single keywords.
Utilise AI workflows to streamline your work
Learning how to automate my work streams using AI has been very enlightening, and Chima Mmeje, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Moz, explored this in her talk. She highlights how spending the time to write detailed prompts and providing all the information the AI agent needs is what creates the output your client is after. Chima discussed how she uses AI for competitor research and sees AI as a ‘collaborative partner’, which opened my eyes to the creative ways of using AI
Key takeaway: Do not expect quick results. You need to spend time creating a detailed prompt to ensure the outcome is the quality you need.
Authenticity is key, thanks to Reddit
Communities on Reddit play a huge role in providing a source for the answers AI agents provide. Victory Umurhurhu, Marketing Coordinator at GMAC, spoke on how to build authentic content in the midst of the AI era. She states that ‘90% of consumers value authenticity when choosing brands’, showing that having real reviews, honest conversations and hearing from people rather than big corporations. However, building a community on Reddit is not that simple. Victory discusses how you should gather insights on what subreddits your users may use, and not to focus on just brand mentions. It is important to spend time understanding each community's unique conversation pattern and what they are looking for before you start using Reddit for your clients. Finally, Victory outlines the three modes of brand engagement on Reddit: Insight gathering, contextual contribution and conversation catalyst.
Key takeaway: Brands should use Reddit to build a community to gain the trust of the user.
Closing Reflections from WTSFest London 2026
From learning about AI workflows, repurposing content and understanding how to use Reddit to build trust, it was great to learn about the different conversations occurring in the industry. The industry is constantly changing, and with new AI automations being developed each day, there is always something new to learn about when targeting new users. I look forward to attending the next WTSfest and seeing how the conversation around AI changes in the future.
