One Month on From Croatia SEO Summit: What Changes Have We Actually Implemented?

A month ago, I headed off to Croatia SEO Summit for some ‘Sun, Sea and Serious SEO’ alongside Sam and Marcus. 

I’ve posted fairly extensively about the experience on LinkedIn, largely covering how great it was to hear from so many talented speakers and lecturers who are at the forefront of the profession. 

However, it can often be tempting to go to a conference, get fresh ideas and then park them when you return to the office and a stuffed inbox. 

This time I was determined that my notes wouldn’t sit in a drawer and I’d instead create a list of actions and experiments that would help propel our agency forward and improve the results that we achieve for our clients. 

So, what lessons did we learn and what changes have we made as an agency? Here’s a recap… 

‍Lesson One: Focus on Refreshing, Optimisation and Improvement

Ryan Robinson of RyRob.com and Rightblogger’s lecture on ‘How to Refresh Your Existing Content at Scale (for More SEO Traffic & LLM Citations)’ taught me that I’d perhaps let my attention get grabbed by ‘new and shiny things’ rather than making sure that our current output was optimised and was working as hard as possible for us. 

So, since Croatia, we’ve been focusing on producing less and optimising more. We’ve analysed every blog and insight post we’ve written as a company and asked ourselves ‘is this the best possible piece of content it could be?’

Often, we’ve agreed the answer is a resounding ‘no’. So, we’re adding more copy, including new data, expanding first-person examples, updating our opinions and even changing structures and formats. 

The biggest change we’ve made is considering video as a content format. And I’m personally trying to get over my ego and just get in front of the camera. We’ve set up a YouTube for Another Concept and we’re mapping out pages where video is actually the best format, rather than written words. Think how tos, demos and explainers. 

Lesson Two: Building a Personal Brand is Important 

I learned several lessons from Harry Clarkson-Bennett of DJB Strategies. His workshop 'How to get the most out of Google Discover’ covered loads of good stuff. However, his research showing that people increasingly trust and are more loyal to individuals rather than entities was particularly enlightening. 

Although much of what he said relates to journalists, I think the same is true for SEOs. I talk to clients about the importance of displaying their EEAT all of the time. And yet I never take the time to blog or go on LinkedIn to show off my own. 

So yes, creating non-commodity content that is well written and has been combined with true expertise and first-party data remains incredibly valuable. However, in 2026, you need to go beyond creating good content and hitting publish (which is what we’re prioritising in lesson one). You need to actively amplify it. Be proud of it, share it widely and engage the relevant community. Don’t wait for traffic to come: go and find it.

If you’re not building your own brand, pushing your work and engaging with the right people, your content won’t get found. So, I’m now getting behind the camera to do videos, writing more on LinkedIn and trying to put a face behind everything we put out. We’re proud of the results we get for our clients, so we shouldn’t be shy about shouting about them. 

Lesson Three: Listen to Others, There’s Even Value if They Agree 

In the past I’ve been slightly sceptical about conferences like Croatia SEO Summit. I thought they were places where marketers spoke to other marketers and patted themselves on the back. I’m happy to say I was completely wrong. They’re vital in propelling the industry forwards. 

Internally we’ve been pretty settled on our position on the GEO vs SEO debate. However, prior to the conference, we were a little scared to put our view out into the wild (see lessons one and two), thinking it was perhaps controversial or people would disagree. 

Thankfully, Croatia SEO Summit completely validated our view, and it was great to see that some of the industry’s leading figures agree with us. Lily Ray of Algorythmic’s keynote ‘How SEO and GEO work together - and how to do GEO without destroying your SEO’ was the perfect example of this. 

Personally, I think a lot of the tactics that are currently being used under the guide of a ‘GEO strategy’ are almost black hat SEO: scaling non-commodity content, chunking content, inauthentic brand mentions, vs content, spamming Reddit, etc. 

So although people who are taking these shortcuts might win for a while, Google will catch up (we’re arguably seeing this already), and their traffic and ChatGPT/Claude citations will also drop at the same time.  

As an agency, we think that publishing at scale without genuine expertise is a liability, not a strategy that will lead to sustainable results. Instead, you should optimise and update your existing content. As part of this, ask yourself whether that piece of content is something that’s genuinely better than ChatGPT could create, apply every single EEAT principle you know, and make sure the piece is completely unique and cannot be replicated by another brand.

Really, a lot of Lily’s talk validated what we already thought and suspected. But there’s tons of value in knowing that your view holds weight. So, we’ve stopped being shy, we’ve published a blog about our exact stance on the subject and we’re now communicating more clearly with our clients about AI Search. Plus, we’re saying everything with a lot more confidence. 

Lesson Four: Optimising for AI Search is Important, But There’s No Accepted Protocols 

Although GEO is mostly just good SEO, specifically optimising for AI search is very important. 

Good foundational SEO will get you so far, but you then need to make genuine adaptations around the edges. After all, people are using tools like ChatGPT in increasing numbers, so being visible there is more important than ever. SEO goes way beyond ‘10 blue links’ now, and getting seen across the web is vital. 

That said, when it comes to GEO, it’s important to remember that there aren’t any accepted protocols in the industry. For example, there’s no settled answer on whether AI crawlers and LLMs should read an llms.txt file, whether a schema map meaningfully changes how a model interprets a page, or even whether a given model can process structured data at all, as this varies from model to model.

So, what does work and what should we be doing? Well, implementing a logical page structure, answering questions succinctly, ensuring you have a clean and fast-loading markup, sensible internal linking, strong EEAT signals, great reviews and mentions across the web are all both good SEO and GEO. 

Schema is a particularly great example of how solid SEO can influence GEO. The honest mechanism is indirect: strong structured data helps Google understand and index your pages and feeds its Knowledge Graph, and that’s what Google’s own AI features (AI Overviews, Gemini) and any AI agent querying Google directly then draw on. 

Plus, we really liked what Gerry White of Dergal shared with us about the clear benefits of schema for SEO and how it’s a great future-facing thing to do for AI optimisation. AI companies are now under increasing pressure to be profitable, so it’s not hard to imagine a future where these data efficiencies will be leaned on by LLMs.

But what doesn’t work? Well, markdown conversions are a popular tactic but Alex Moss of Yoast argues we need to be wary of duplicating URLs. This is something we agree with wholeheartedly. After all, serving a markdown version of a page at a separate URL (e.g. /page alongside /page.md) creates duplicate content. Additionally, you're doubling your housekeeping and, there's no solid evidence yet that it moves the needle on AI visibility. John Muller of Google has been quite outspoken about this.

So, what’s our main takeaway from this? Well, we’re testing constantly. We think that agencies and businesses alike need to be on the front foot, actively checking which protocols actually become standardised rather than chasing every one that’s proposed. 

Investing in SEO is important, as its scope is now much larger than just traditional search. However, it’s important to not jump on the latest fad without critical thinking. After all, if a reckoning comes, your website could be wiped out overnight. Is it worth the risk? 

Lesson Five: Embracing AI for Automation Gives Clients the Best Value 

Let’s be honest: the efficiency gains that tools like ChatGPT and Claude provide are incredible. As a rough estimate, we think that AI has made us at least four times more efficient than we used to be across research, analysis, production and reporting. 

However, Croatia SEO Summit has shown us that we have more work to do. We’ve laid the groundwork, but we can push this further and tighten our processes even more. 

Since returning from Šibenik, we’ve put significant hours into refining our Claude workflows and skill files. Plus, we’re actively looking into ways we can integrate Claude Code. Added to this, we’ve started to use AI for benchmarking and competitor research. 

But, why are we doing this? Well, we think it gives our clients the best possible value. If we can execute the mechanical work faster, we have more time to spend on the things that actually move the needle, such as creative thinking, strategy, and coming up with genuinely original ideas.

Thanks once again to Krešimir Ćorluka and Tin Đudajek for both their excellent conference and their warm hospitality. Hope to see you both again in 2027!