IT all started in a pub six years ago with half a dozen people but now the BrightonSEO Conference is so popular a staggering 3,500 delegates attended its latest meeting.

BrightonSEO is a bi-annual and free conference which was first held at The Quadrant pub in North Street in February 2010.

Now - 12 events later - it has evolved into one of the world's most popular and well attended conferences on the subject, and was held at the Brighton Centre for the first time.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the name given to activity that attempts to improve search engine rankings.

Kelvin Newman, who founded the event, recalls the very humbling beginnings in the upstairs room of the pub throwing together presentations onto a wonky whiteboard.

He has since been voted by Econsultancy as the most influential individual in digital, and in 2013 he won the Search Personality award at the UK Search Awards.

He said: "Well, we’ve done it. We’ve gone from hosting it in a pub to having 3,500 people at the Brighton Centre for what was the stand-out conference so far, in more ways than one.

"It was a memorable moment to take a rhetorical step back on the day and take a moment to drink it all in and soak up the atmosphere.

"There’s so many people I’d like to thank – 3,500 to be exact. What continues to make it unique is that it is free to attend, and it always will be.

"It is a community and that’s something we will always pride ourselves on."

The Brighton Dome had previously hosted the event but it was moved to the Brighton Centre to cater for the huge number of visitors attending.

Despite doubling in size, it was sold out in just 13 minutes, and delegates came from across the UK and throughout Europe.

More than 1.5m BrightonSEO tweets were amassed throughout the day.

Keynote speakers included Malcolm Coles, Director of Digital Media at the Telegraph Media Group. Stacey MacNaught, Search Director at Tecmark, and Paul Curry, Editorial Developer at Buzzfeed.

There were 89 guest speakers across seven different rooms at the Brighton Centre.

The next event will be in April. 2017.

Visit www.brightonseo.com