YOMA Attend HIVE Manchester 2025

Hive Manchester 2025 is back, and we attended the second-ever HiveMCR conference on May 15th, hosted at New Century Hall in Manchester. 

With talks from some of the biggest and best names in the industry, we were blown away by the event this year. HIVE Manchester helped educate the team on some developments in the SEO space that may have gone under the radar and get a different perspective on others. 

The Talks

Whilst the event is focused on the SEO industry, it is not just exclusive to that. A great example of this is the talk from Kirsty Hulse, a confidence coach and motivational speaker. 

The 45 minute session helped combat feelings of embarrassment, and imposter syndrome within a professional environment. She discussed in depth how to not focus on the negatives that may arise, but instead appreciate them and use them to drive towards success. Here are some of the solutions for combating some of those obstacles;

1. How to focus like it’s 1999

• Turn off notifications during deep work (Slack doesn’t need your soul)
• Set a 20-minute timer and do one task
• Batch the boring stuff – emails, admin, errands. Give it a time box
• Put your phone in another room. Yes, really
• Tell your team when you’re heads down – protect your own focus. 
• Stop apologising for not replying instantly. You’re working, not waiting.

2. How to train your brain to see the good

• Start or end each day with one good thing that happened (tiny is good)
• Write 3 things you’re grateful for – even if one is just “coffee”
• Ask “what would awesome look like today?” – Positivity likes clarity.
• Activity: celebrate wins, not just tick them off. Even the weird ones.
• Track progress over perfection – build evidence that shows things are working. 

Hulse’s talk was all about staying calm in the chaos, and whilst this isn’t something that can happen overnight, the team now has all the tools in their arsenal to help develop this skill.

Mike King – The End of SEO As We Know It

Mike King is one of the longest standing names in the SEO industry. He did a great job of summarising the state of the SEO space at the moment. With AI Overviews having an increasing impact on SEO, he broke it down perfectly to ensure we don’t catastrophise the challenges we may be facing at the moment.

The key takeaways from Mikes talk are that AI overviews are becoming increasingly common in search results, especially for a wide range of queries. While traffic is declining across the board, the users who do click through are often more qualified and likely to make a conversion. 

Zero-click searches aren’t necessarily negative because they can still strengthen your brand visibility. Best practices may not always deliver impact, but understanding your users’ intent is more valuable than simply following SEO checklists. But it is proven that the younger generation tends to favour AI overviews. 

Mike shared some actionable points to help with your SEO strategy, which include; 

• Run AI over checks to see if your content is being included when you search for your keywords.
• Use tools like ZipTie and Profound to help track your performance in Google’s AI Overviews.
• Focus on content clarity and use headlines with some in-page links to help users find what they need quickly. 
• Investing in topic clustering can help you rank for more keywords and become an authority in a few key areas rather than spreading thinly across hundreds of topics. 

Technical SEO Panel

Following the talk from Mike King, there was a technical SEO panel consisting of some excellent SEO voices.

They were very clear that SEO isn’t going away & the value that it provides is still very much real. One of the most interesting points raised was following a question from the audience. Around concerns that due to the rise in AI, would companies look to take their SEO in house? Whilst the panelists did appreciate that this is a path that some companies may look to go down, it will not last forever.

SEO is so much more than writing content and leaving it on the site, however, some business leaders may only see the cost cutting benefit, so use AI to write the content for their site. There is a strong belief this will not last and the results from Organic search will dwindle.

They also clarified how AI should be used. Whilst there was some debate as to whether it should be used at all, they did agree that it can be beneficial for gaining ideas for blogs, managing redirects, and providing an outline for content. One thing that it definitely shouldn’t be used for is keyword research! 

State of Search Panel

This panel went more in depth about the state that search engines are currently in. When asked as to why AI feels much more threatening than any change we have ever experienced, they highlighted that Google is losing navigational & informational queries. It has a big impact on SEO, people are no longer interested in asking Google a question and then clicking on a website to get an answer, instead they go to ChatGPT and will get the answer right there.

They also provided some informative stats as to how AI has impacted the number of people using traditional search engines. They cited research that found that more than 2 million fewer people used Google in 2024 when compared to 2023. As a result of this, there was always going to be a drop in traffic to websites, but it does mean that when users do use a search engine they are more qualified when they do visit your website.

Aleyda Solis – AI Search

Aleyda Solis is an international SEO consultant, She focused on AI and how it is affecting the SEO industry in a way that clearly outlined all the challenges, whilst also providing useful tips as to how we can combat those challenges. 

She focused on how the impact of AI is being slightly blown out of proportion. She conceded that there is no doubt that all the advancements of AI are affecting the number of users entering websites, but went on to say that the traffic share of ChatGPT and other AI models is tiny! 

Only 1.9% of ChatGPT users are exclusive to the AI platform, which leaves a massive 98.1% overlap.

To combat this she mentioned now more than ever, it is important to strengthen your brand signals and focus on becoming a trustworthy and authoritative presence online. 

Final thoughts

No doubt that AI dominated the discussions but with valid reasons. Most of the take-aways were positive about the evolving future of SEO and how to capitalise. 

We’d like to say a big thank you to all the incredible speakers who shared their insights and expertise throughout the day. Each talk offers something unique, and it’s clear that the SEO landscape is changing faster than ever.