Simon Vreeman, Koen Leemans, Julian Aijal, and Arnout Hellemans are at brightonSEO on 8 and 9 October 2026. The conference fills the Brighton Centre on the English south coast twice a year, and this October edition marks ten years at that venue. More than 4,500 search marketers from over 70 countries and more than 190 speakers are expected.
This page is for anyone who wants to meet the Dutch SEO community in Brighton. It lists who from the SearchConsole.nl expert profiles is going, what each of them is working on right now, two talks by speakers they know, and the practical details of the event.
Last updated: 7 October 2026.
Four of the seven experts profiled on this site are attending. Between them they cover the agentic web, SEO experimentation, publisher SEO, and analytics-driven consulting. Each profile below links to their website and social profiles, the easiest way to arrange a chat during the breaks.
Navigating the Intersection of Growth, AI, and Technical Marketing
Freelance Growth & Technical Marketing Advisor and Growth Advisor at Eidra, Simon Vreeman excels in Growth & Technical Marketing, blending CRO, SEO, Web Analytics, and AI. He builds AI tools and agent-ready websites, champions becoming a "semantic architect for the AI age," and is a community speaker at Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026.
Talk to Simon about the agentic web. His own site exposes a WebMCP search tool, an MCP server, and an llms.txt file, and he was selected as a community speaker for Google Search Central Live Deep Dive Europe 2026. Ask him how to make a site readable for AI agents, or about server-side Google Tag Manager and GA4.
Full profile and Q&A with Simon Vreeman · vreeman.com
Pioneering SEO Innovation through A/B Testing and Edge Technologies
SEO Innovation Lead at Follo Agency (formerly OrangeValley) and Lumenlab, Koen Leemans specializes in technical SEO, A/B testing, and Edge SEO. He develops tools like the "SEO A/B Test Analyzer" and the "AIO Impact Analyzer" to democratize data-driven experimentation and advocates Edge SEO for rapid, validated optimization deployment.
Talk to Koen about SEO A/B testing and Edge SEO. He presented "Accelerating results with SEO A/B Testing & Edge SEO" at brightonSEO in April 2025 and builds tools such as the SEO A/B Test Analyzer and the AIO Impact Analyzer, which measures how Google's AI Overviews affect clicks and visibility.
Full profile and Q&A with Koen Leemans · koenleemans.nl
Merging Technical Acumen with Strategic SEO Growth
Senior SEO Specialist at DPG Media , Julian Aijal merges his front-end development background with technical SEO, web performance, and publisher SEO. He drove significant organic growth at DPG Media and authored key TNW articles on Schema and Knowledge Graphs, focusing on user-centric, high-performing sites. Since 2026 he is also Website Strategist for TEDxAmsterdam and builds AI tools like PvdAI.
Talk to Julian about publisher SEO and web performance. As Senior SEO Specialist at DPG Media he works on organic growth across a portfolio of news brands, and his front-end background shows in his work on structured data, Core Web Vitals, and PvdAI, an open-source retrieval-augmented generation tool.
Full profile and Q&A with Julian Aijal · julianaijal.com
Query Satisfaction as a Business Strategy
Freelance SEO, PPC and analytics consultant at OnlineMarkethink, Arnout Hellemans champions user-first SEO, CRO, and analytics, focusing on "query satisfaction." He uses tools like Sitebulb strategically and discusses how his ADHD enhances his analytical, puzzle-solving approach to holistic optimization.
Talk to Arnout about what the SERPs tell you and what AI crawlers actually see. He arrives in Brighton straight from Search 'n Stuff in Antalya and presented "The SERPs hold more insights than you think" at SearchNorwichXL in September 2026. His 2026 advice: compare the rendered page with the raw HTML, because many AI crawlers do not render yet.
Full profile and Q&A with Arnout Hellemans · onlinemarkethink.com
None of the four attendees is on the October 2026 talk schedule themselves, but two speakers from their circle are, both on the first morning. Expect to find the Dutch group in the audience.
Thursday 8 October 2026, 11:20 · Auditorium 2, E-E-A-T session
News SEO Specialist at DPG Media, colleague of Julian Aijal at DPG Media.
Sophie optimizes search visibility for newsrooms and magazines in the Netherlands and Belgium, bridging fast-moving editorial teams, technical SEO, and reader analytics. Her talk shows how the trust signals a newsroom earns can be turned into conversion on the corporate side.
Thursday 8 October 2026, 09:30 · Syndicate 3&4, MeasureFest, Data & Measurement Efficiency session
Founder at Digital Nation, friend of Simon Vreeman and Arnout Hellemans.
Charles has worked in SEO since 1995 and runs Digital Nation, a boutique SEO and analytics agency. This is his third brightonSEO talk in a row, after "Mining the SERPs with off the shelf tools to find SEO gold" (October 2024) and "Lessons learnt from crawling 1000+ websites" (October 2025). This time he walks through the Google Search Console export to BigQuery: how to set it up, what it costs, and how to query millions of rows of search data in seconds.
The Netherlands has a recent speaking record at the conference:
Arnout Hellemans is not speaking in Brighton this time, but the trip sits between two stage appearances: Search 'n Stuff in Antalya (1 to 4 October 2026) and SEO On Stage in Athens (24 October 2026).
brightonSEO was founded by Kelvin Newman. The first edition took place on 19 February 2010 in a room above The Quadrant pub in Brighton, moved through the Sallis Benney Theatre, the Corn Exchange, and the Brighton Dome, and settled at the Brighton Centre in 2016. It went multi-track in 2013, ran online and hybrid editions in 2020 and 2021, became a multi-day conference in 2021, and added a US edition in San Diego in 2023.
The format is a series of focused 20-minute talks across parallel stages, covering SEO, AI search, content, digital PR, and paid search. MeasureFest, a dedicated analytics and measurement track, runs inside the conference and is included in the ticket. Hands-on training courses run on the day before the conference, 7 October 2026.
After October 2026 the next editions are Brighton in April 2027 and San Diego in September 2027.
| Dates | Thursday 8 and Friday 9 October 2026 (training on Wednesday 7 October) |
|---|---|
| Venue | Brighton Centre, Kings Road, Brighton BN1 2GR, United Kingdom |
| Getting there | About a 10-minute walk from Brighton railway station, roughly an hour by train from London Victoria and half an hour from Gatwick Airport |
| Tickets | Friend £580 + VAT, BFF £850 + VAT, BFF + Training £1,100 + VAT (Training + Conference at £900 + VAT is closed), Next Gen 50% off for students under 21 |
| Scale | 4,500+ attendees from 70+ countries, 190+ speakers |
| Official site | brightonseo.com/events/october-2026 |
brightonSEO takes place on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 October 2026 at the Brighton Centre, Kings Road, Brighton BN1 2GR, on the seafront in the United Kingdom. Training courses run the day before, on 7 October 2026.
Simon Vreeman, Koen Leemans, Julian Aijal, and Arnout Hellemans are attending the October 2026 edition. All four are profiled on SearchConsole.nl, with a full profile and Q&A each. They will be joined by two speakers they know: Sophie Winkels of DPG Media and Charles Meaden of Digital Nation.
None of the four is listed in the October 2026 talk schedule as of 7 October 2026, but two speakers from their circle are. Sophie Winkels, News SEO Specialist at DPG Media and a colleague of Julian Aijal, presents "Headlines to bottom lines: turning newsroom E-E-A-T into corporate conversion" on 8 October at 11:20 in Auditorium 2. Charles Meaden, founder of Digital Nation and a friend of Simon Vreeman and Arnout Hellemans, presents "Google Search Console Big Query Export - The Almost Free SEO Database Full of Gold" on 8 October at 09:30 at MeasureFest. Koen Leemans spoke at the April 2025 edition on SEO A/B testing and Edge SEO, and Jarno van Driel presented on structured data and E-E-A-T at the same edition.
brightonSEO is a search marketing conference founded by Kelvin Newman. It started on 19 February 2010 in a room above The Quadrant pub in Brighton and has been held at the Brighton Centre since 2016. The UK edition runs twice a year, in April and October, with a sister event in San Diego. The October 2026 edition expects more than 4,500 marketers from over 70 countries and more than 190 speakers.
As of October 2026, a two-day Friend ticket costs £580 plus VAT, the BFF ticket with VIP perks £850 plus VAT, and combined training and conference passes £900 or £1,100 plus VAT. Students under 21 get 50% off with the Next Gen ticket. MeasureFest, the analytics track, is included in the conference ticket.