PLAY PODCASTS
SEO in 2026

SEO in 2026

529 episodes — Page 2 of 11

S2026 Ep 511Slow down and keep your eyes on the end user – with Vince Nero

Vince Nero believes that it’s all too easy to forget about the end user in the age of AI. Vince says: “Things are changing so rapidly with AI, you should be leaning on what works for people and not the algorithms.” Will doing what works for people naturally mean that you will be successful in catering towards the newer algorithms? “That's the big question. In theory, Google’s algorithms and the tools that they have built want to provide answers for users. There are some tin-foil-hat theories that they are optimizing for ad dollars and publishers – and to an extent, they do want to keep people on the platform because it’s where they get paid. However, at the end of the day, that type of mindset is going to be very limiting, and you end up forgetting about your customers.

Mar 5, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 510Make sure you aren't losing customers unnecessarily - Alun Lucas

Alun Lucas shares that there's no point perfecting your SEO if people get to your site and there is a horrible form that causes them to abandon - use form analytics to improve the UX of your form and make sure you aren't losing customers unnecessarily. Talking points include: What are the typical differences between a well converting form and a poorly converting form? What fields are necessary? What are form analytics? How do you improve the UX of your form? Is is sometimes a good idea not to have a form? What customer data can you acquire on your website without requiring a form? What is good form design? What software do you use to design forms? Does having good forms help with SEO? How can you measure this?

Mar 4, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 509Prioritise the person beyond the screen – with Ebere Cecilia Jonathan

Ebere Cecilia Jonathan explains why she believes that user experience is much more than just the way you deliver your content on your website. Ebere says: “Focus on the user experience. This has always been my advice, but with the change in user search behaviour and the introduction of AI, it is even more important now.” Why is user experience even more important in the age of AI? “Before now, we looked at what keyword had the highest volume, because that showed what users were searching for. Then, we tried to write content for that keyword and track our ranking for that keyword. This is how SEO operated in the past, and that made sense. With AI, however, it's possible for you to rank for that keyword without getting any conversions. You're ranking on the first page, but you might not even be getting any impressions. We have AI overviews, we have ‘from sources across the web’, and every day there's a new product coming from Google.

Mar 3, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 508Integrate with UX to create content for real people – with Sanja Markovic

According to Sanja Markovic, user experience is now an essential part of modern SEO. Sanja says: “Integrate SEO and UX to build content strategies for real people.” Is it not necessary to think about algorithms or bots crawling your site? “Technical SEO is, of course, an essential aspect. However, especially nowadays, with all this noise about AI, we're forgetting that content is still king, and we still need to create content for real people and not search engines. Creating content for real people is the baseline for building your authority on the internet. If you create content that is only focussed on search engines, who is going to read it? Who is going to share it? You need to focus on understanding what users need in order to create content for real people that people will actually read, like, engage with, and share. That is the basics for building authority nowadays.”

Mar 2, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 507Make your content into assets by creating for the user – with Ashley Segura

For Ashley Segura, you should be revisiting the way you think about your content and how your content is designed to meet the needs of your users through their entire journey. Ashley says: “Stop building content for ranking purposes and start thinking about content as assets for every stage of the user journey. By doing that, you’re going to build trust, address their questions, supply helpful information, and bring the user through the entire journey, to eventually convert them.”

Feb 27, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 506Be in the right place at the right time – with Ryan Jones

For Ryan Jones, it’s not just about where your audience is likely to interact – it’s meeting them at the right place at the right time. Ryan says: “Leverage multi-channel SEO, along with customer journey matching for a two-pronged approach. First, you need to understand where your audience is, where they spend their time, what platforms they visit, where they communicate with other people, and where you can show up to generate the maximum amount of impact. The second prong is customer journey matching. You want to match where they are in their journey to the platform they're using. Some businesses might still find a lot of success with top-of-funnel content, social media posts, and generating interest on Reddit and similar platforms.

Feb 26, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 505Treat your brand as a multi-platform entity in 2026 - Bengu Sarica Dincer

Bengu Sarica Dincer shares the importance of treating your brand as a multi-platform entity in 2026. Talking points include: What does treating your brand as a multi-platform entity actually mean? How do you treat your brand as a multi-platform entity? How does this interplay across search engines, social platforms, AI assistants, and niche communities? What search engines are key in 2026? Why do they like multi-platform entities? What social platforms are you referring to and how do you take advantage of social in this context? Where do AI assistants fit in? Why are niche communities important? How does it integrate into other marketing channels? How do you incorporate this into a plan? How do you measure success?

Feb 25, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 504Learn more about the generation you’re targeting – with Izabela Janczak

Once you identify who your audience is, Izabela Janczak shares that the next step is to learn more about the generation you’re targeting and to identify where they interact. Izabela says: “Meet your target generation where they search.” How would you define a generation, in this context? “You can start with the typical generations: Generation Z, Generation X, Boomers, Millennials, etc. Obviously, we're all quite familiar with the classic generational groups by now, because we hear more about them more than we ever used to before, and each of those generations has its own habits when it comes to searching for information or products.

Feb 24, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 503Get hyper-specific about your ICP – with Casie Gillette

The way that Casie Gilette understands more about her audience is to define an Ideal Customer Profile. Casie says: “Get hyper-specific about what your ICP (ideal customer profile) actually needs. The era of generic SEO content is over. AI overviews already own those answers. They already own those broad surface-level questions, and the only way to really stand out is to understand what your customers want. Who is your target audience? What do they want? What do they struggle with? What's missing from the AI summaries? What are the insights that they can't get anywhere else? I use the term ICP because I like the idea that you have an ideal customer: This is who they are. This is what they want. This is what they're asking. When you really break it down, that's who you want to be targeting, and that's who you're writing for. Understanding that is so important.”

Feb 23, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 502Understand your users through research and query semantics – with Lazarina Stoy

Lazarina Stoy shares how to start understanding your users through research and query semantics. Lazarina says: “Learn how to incorporate and scale query semantics and user research, with the help of AI and machine learning.” What are query semantics? “Query semantics means understanding anything that relates to how users search. It's not just the words that are being typed, but also the context of where they're being typed, the device being used, the platform people choose, and why they choose it in different situations. It's also different types of user signals, like trends or the user’s search history.

Feb 20, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 501Focus on your audience to avoid getting bogged down – with Emina Demiri-Watson

Emina Demiri-Watson shares that focussing on your audience can help you avoid getting bogged down in what technology can offer. Emina says: “First of all, don't get bogged down with all of the flashy terms. We're all talking about fan-out, chunking, and cosine similarity. All of that is amazing, I love technology, but also go back to the basics of marketing and who your audience is. Those tools are brilliant as a way to help you understand your audience better, but they are not the goal in themselves. Understand the basics first.”

Feb 19, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 500In an AI-heavy world, localized and culturally aware content is essential - Silvi Nuñez

Silvi Nuñez shares that in an AI-heavy world where content feels generic, localized and culturally aware content becomes a powerful SEO strategy in 2026. Talking points include: What is localized and culturally aware content? How do you localize content as effectively as possible? How do we make content more culturally aware? How do we measure the impact of this? Why is this a powerful SEO strategy? How do we incorporate this as part of an overarching SEO strategy?

Feb 18, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 499Learn who your audience is and find out where they are – with Travis Tallent

For Travis Tallent, it all begins with discovering who your audience is before deciding on how to serve them. Travis says: “Audience-first marketing has and will always win, no matter how technology advances. It's not a new concept, but it's more critical than ever. With AI entering the space, we are seeing huge shifts with AI and agentic search. The only way to thrive is to really understand your audience and how the people you are trying to reach search and find brands.”

Feb 17, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 498Keep doing proper SEO – with Tin Đudajek

It’s easy to get dazzled by the next shiny bright thing, but Tin Đudajek is keen to highlight the importance of delivering on ‘proper SEO’. Tin says: “Don't get lost in AEO or GEO, and keep doing proper SEO.” Answer Engine Optimization focuses on answering common questions and long tail queries that can appear in AI, so isn't that good for SEO? “It's good for SEO, but what I'm aiming at is that, currently, nothing exists that proves that optimizing solely for generative AI is different from real, proper SEO. What I'm trying to say is, just keep doing SEO as you have been doing so far, and you will be featured in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and everything else. As far as I've seen, there's nothing different that you have to do in order to rank better in generative AI right now.

Feb 16, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 497Don’t throw away all of your best practices – with Greg Heilers

Greg Heilers emphasises the importance of not letting newer tactics direct your existing good SEO practices. Greg says: “Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t throw out all of your SEO best practices just because we're in the hype cycle of GEO.” How do we know which SEO practices to throw out and which ones to keep? “Right now, we're simply adding on and not throwing out. We are working with the assumption that roughly 90% of GEO best practices are rooted in SEO. We need to tweak a little bit and add in some new best practices, but most of our SOPs are still valid.”

Feb 13, 202619 min

S2026 Ep 496Avoid shiny toy syndrome – with Anthony Barone

Anthony Barone understands the importance and impact of AI, but tempers that with the essential nature of fundamental SEO principles. Anthony says: “AI/GEO/LLMEO is all the rage, but core fundamental SEO principles still apply.” What's distracting SEOs at the moment, that isn't worth spending time on? “A lot of SEOs are just jumping on the bandwagon, which I get. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Manus, and all of these are coming in, and yes, some behaviours are changing. We've got AI Mode coming in. We'll have Web Guide coming in. I get it. However, from an SEO perspective, but also from a business perspective, core SEO fundamentals still apply. You want to be able to crawl before you can sprint. With shiny toy syndrome, and everyone wanting to be the latest and greatest and wanting to jump on the trends, they're forgetting that those SEO principles still apply.

Feb 12, 202618 min

S2026 Ep 495Brand is back and it’s bigger than before - CJ Emson

CJ Emson shares that brand is back and it’s bigger than before. If your branded search footprint isn’t strong, you’re going to lose out in AIO and as we see continually seeing and hearing - traditional organic search traffic is down, zero click search is up. The remedy to this is branded search. From there you can determine if your Demand gen engine is really only a demand capture engine…and remedy how brand building in search can fuel demand gen and pipe. Talking points include: What does successful brand SEO look like in 2026? What does success look like? How does brand SEO fuel demand? How has brand SEO changed? How will it continue to change? How do you future-proof brand SEO?

Feb 11, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 494Stop chasing what’s new and start mastering what’s timeless – with Nitin Manchanda

Nitin Manchanda agrees with Simon Cox, encouraging SEOs to concentrate on timeless activities. Nitin says: “Don't get lost in buzzwords and stay focussed on the fundamentals.” What buzzwords do people get lost in? “A lot of them. People talk about AI-first indexing, zero-click optimization, voice search dominance, entity-first strategies, and much more. Now, they're also talking about AEO, GEO, and a lot of other different names. Essentially, though, it’s SEO.”

Feb 10, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 493Focus on what hasn’t changed – with Simon Cox

Simon Cox sides with Bill Hartzer, sharing that there are plenty of activities that SEOs could be doing without focussing on AI. Simon says: “The web was a revolution. Everything since has been evolution, and it's been fast-paced. The smartest strategy is to focus on what hasn't changed.” What hasn't changed? “There are a lot of things that haven't changed. What I'm really talking about are the core fundamentals of what we do. Stay still. There's a huge amount of noise going on at the moment. It's been increasing this year, and it will be more so in 2026. There is a lot going on, so it's very difficult to focus on what we should be doing.

Feb 9, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 492Follow traditional SEO best practices – with Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer is a strong advocate for traditional SEO best practices as the bedrock to your future SEO success, no matter the technology or platform.Bill says: “My number one tip has really not changed for the past few years: follow classic, traditional SEO best practices for creating content and optimizing pages and websites.With some search engines, you can get away with 150 words of content and potentially rank on a page, but when it comes to AI, it's more about structuring a page, using the right title tags, meta description tags, headings, H1/H2/H3 tags, bulleted lists, ordered lists, numbered lists, bold, italics, etc.Focus on the traditional SEO tactics, which haven't changed in the 20 years that I've been doing this.”

Feb 6, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 491Take it back to the old school – with Gordon Meagher

According to Gordon Meagher, the foundations of AI ranking success lie in traditional marketing activities. Gordon says: “It's time to put your old school digital marketing hat on, as we move forward in this new age.” What does that mean in practice? “We know that search behaviour is changing. ChatGPT, and LLMs in general, have basically given birth to a new way of searching that we never knew before. We were always 10 blue links on a page. LLMs have changed that. With how people want their answers now, I don't think you can put it back in the box. I think the biggest thing is the uncertainty around where Google search itself is going. Will Google search even be a thing once AI Mode comes in and the adoption rates increase for LLMs and these types of answers? I think it's going to go back to how we used to market years ago. For me, once Google released AI Mode, it was the end of SEO – and I don't say that lightly. They also broke an unwritten rule with publishers, which was always: we create the content, we live by your rules, you send us traffic. That paradigm has now shifted.

Feb 5, 202618 min

S2026 Ep 490Prioritise video-led, verifiable content in 2026 - Daphne Monro

Daphne Monro shares the importance of prioritising video-led, verifiable content in 2026. Talking points include: What do you mean by video-led content? Why publish video-led content? Why priorise video-led content? What video content works best? What do you mean by verifiable content? How do you verify content? How do you measure success?

Feb 4, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 489Succeed in AI SEO with SEO fundamentals – with Olga Zarr

Olga Zarr says that AI SEO success isn’t achieved by focussing on what AI is doing. Instead, good, traditional SEO can deliver in an AI-driven era. Olga says: “AI SEO still runs on SEO. Although SEO has practically turned into AI SEO, and no one thinks about SEO without thinking about AI these days, AI SEO is still based on good SEO.” Does existing best practice SEO assist with AI SEO? “Yes, generally speaking. I have analysed exactly what you can do to dominate in AI SEO and rank in AI chatbots. All of the things you should do map directly to the things you need to do in SEO in order to rank, be indexed, and be crawled. I was able to map it around four main areas, which you always have to take care of in SEO: technical SEO, content strategy/creation/structure, user experience, and authority. All of them ideally map out to AI SEO, to ranking in chatbots, and all of that.”

Feb 3, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 488The VISIBLE Framework for LLM and AIO Visibility - Nikki Halliwell

Nikki Halliwell shares the VISIBLE Framework to improve LLM and AIO Visibility. Talking points include: What led to the creation of the framework What are the principles of the framework What is the framework? How can SEOs use it?

Feb 2, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 487Customise AI to automate your processes – with Victoria Olsina

Victoria Olsina shares that AI can and should be used to automate your processes, ensuring that key tasks are delivered as efficiently as possible.Victoria says: “Define an SEO process and then automate it with custom GPTs or no-code tools like Make.com.”How do you determine the processes to focus on?“Every person who does SEO and has done on-page optimization or an SEO audit 50, 100, or 500 times has found ways to approach this problem.We have checklists, we have protocols, and we have templates for these tasks. Once you have the process, the checklist, and the protocol, it's very easy to give those instructions to AI in the form of custom GPTs or automations.If you define those steps manually, it's very easy to then have AI assist you, or automate the process.”

Jan 30, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 486Turn AI from a problem to a partner – with Giulia Panozzo

For Giulia Panozzo, SEOs don’t have to compete with AI – rather, AI should be an effective working partner. Giulia says: “Turn AI into your partner, not your problem.”How do you do that?“The industry as a whole has been panicking a little, ever since the AI revolution started taking over. There's been quite a lot of conversation about AI taking over our jobs and replacing us.I don't think we're there yet. I don't know if we'll ever get there either, because I think we have some aces up our sleeves. The way that you turn AI into your partner is by knowing exactly where to use it versus where not to use it.”

Jan 29, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 485How to have fun with content formats in 2026 - Carla Dobson Elliott

Carla Dobson Elliott shares how to have fun with content formats in 2026. Talking points include: - How to write different content formats - How to produce various content formats - Why and how we should profile audiences by curiosity and not demographic - What to include in content - How to measure the success of content

Jan 28, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 484Learn, test, and increase productivity with AI – with Rana Abu Quba Chamsi

With all of your competitors using AI in some form, how do you stand out from the crowd? For Rana Abu Quba Chamsi, increasing productivity is key.Rana says: “Increase productivity using AI – not only in SEO, but beyond.”How do you decide what you should and shouldn’t use AI for?“You should look at AI like it’s a real assistant. AI should handle preparing the data, summarising the data, and finding all the information that you need.However, for the creative part, like brainstorming, you can rely on AI a little bit, but it shouldn’t handle all of your creative tasks. Also, for the overall view of everything, the strategy should, of course, stay human-centric.The main focus of AI in SEO is not to give everything away. If you create a piece of content with AI, don’t just copy and paste it and publish it right away. You should read it. You should add your touch to it and add the brand voice.”

Jan 27, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 483Learn how to learn – with Sante Achille

With the advancement of AI, it’s essential to stay up-to-date with new developments – and for that, Sante Achille believes that it’s essential to revisit learning to learn.Sante says: “Learn how to learn, and use AI to enhance your ability to learn.”Has the way that we learn how to learn changed in the era of AI?“Not yet, but it is going to. The winners are going to be the people who can master the art of learning.If you go back and look at the education system and how we have been educated, it's all been a sort of sausage-making machine. Meat goes in one end, it goes through the grinder, it comes out the other end, and we're a sausage.It’s like factories in the Victorian era, and we are still very much in that era, from an educational point of view, because there is a curriculum and it's very well defined. AI has broken that. The internet disrupted it, but AI is the final blow to a system of predefining what we learn. Now, we have somebody there 24 hours a day who can answer just about any question that we throw at them.This PA is there, and it can be a blessing or a curse. At the moment, a lot of people have embraced the path of least resistance by hogging all kinds of information, harvesting it, and using it without too much thought.There are a lot of people saying, ‘I don't know how to do this. I'm going to ask AI, and AI is going to tell me how to do it.’ That's not what we need. The people who are going to be successful are the ones who say, ‘I need to reach an objective. I need to define something. I need to do something. What do I need to know? What is the threshold that I need to reach so that I can tell AI what to do and get the most out of it?’”

Jan 26, 202618 min

S2026 Ep 482Optimize your AI shadow – with Rose Tero

Just because you’ve tidied up the content on your website to cater for the needs of AI, that doesn’t mean that your job is done!Rose says: “Your website casts an AI shadow: a distilled version of your content that AI search systems present to users. It's often this shadow, not your site, that people now meet first.It might look like a two-sentence summary, a list of bullet points, or an AI-curated comparison. It could be on ChatGPT, Perplexity, SGE, or any of the other LLMs or chatbots. Increasingly, though, this is a user's first engagement with your brand, before they ever reach your pages. Sometimes it's the only interaction they have with your brand.This matters because it changes the unit of competition. For years, SEOs have thought in terms of positions and ranks, but in an AI-driven world, the real battleground is representation. How is your brand represented when an AI introduces you to the user? Is it accurate? Is it authoritative? Or (and this is happening more and more), are you simply fueling the answer while a competitor gets the credit?SEO is evolving from being about rankings to being about representation signals. It's not enough to publish content and hope it ranks. You need to actively manage how your content is summarised, how your expertise is attributed, and how your brand shows up in that new AI shadow layer.”

Jan 23, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 481Tidy up your online presence for the eyes of AI – with Dani Leitner

In the past, it didn’t matter so much if old, less relevant content existed on your website and elsewhere. Dani Leitner shares that this isn’t the case anymore.Dani says: “My tip is a really easy one: Clean up your online presence because AI sees everything.”

Jan 22, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 480Translating SEO into a language of tangible business impact - Kristina Bergwall

Kristina Bergwall discusses the importance of translating SEO into a language of tangible business impact in the future AI search landscape, and using that narrative to align all teams such as social, PR, and brand to work together, is what's going to make you win at SEO in 2026. Talking points include: How do you identify the areas of SEO that are likely to result in tangible business impact? What are examples of areas of SEO that don’t tend to deliver tangible business impact? How do you ensure that you don’t shut off SEO activities that take longer to have an impact? How does the future AI search landscape change for different businesses? How do you align different marketing teams to work more effectively together in this changing landscape?

Jan 21, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 479Re-order your content for search dominance – with Damien Robert

Damien Robert explains the need to move beyond traditional web content, achieved by making content modular, leading with irrefutable evidence. In addition, he recommends managing all assets from a single source of truth to please both humans and AI consumption.Damien says: “Re-order your content to future-proof your search dominance.”

Jan 20, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 478Identify searches that need grounding to focus your AI strategy – with Mark Williams-Cook

Mark Williams-Cook explains that you also need to consider the type of search that you’re attempting to optimize for, and the way that AI engines deal with different types of searches.Mark says: “Everyone should be determining whether their AI searches need grounding or not.”

Jan 19, 202618 min

S2026 Ep 477Master AI visibility by understanding the Algorithmic Trinity – with Jason Barnard

Jason Barnard shares that you can’t look at LLMs alone as the standalone way to determine whether or not your AI optimization has been a success.Jason says: “I'm going to explain how any marketer can optimize for AI-assistive engines.People call it generative engine optimization; I call it AI-assistive engine optimization. Whichever name you use, the principle to SEO in the AI era is very simple, and it's called the Algorithmic Trinity.”

Jan 16, 202619 min

S2026 Ep 476Navigate the probabilistic world of AI search – with Garrett Sussman

Garrett Sussman shares that, even though there is great opportunity in being included in AI search results, results aren’t guaranteed.Garrett says: “Treat AI search as probabilistic, not predictable.Build content strategies rooted in deep audience understanding, because what shows up in search results depends on who's searching and how they search.”

Jan 15, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 475How to track metrics that actually matter in 2026 - Katie New

Katie New shares the importance of tracking metrics that actually matter to you in 2026 (not just the default ones that you're used to asking for!) Talking points include: What are the default metrics? How do you determine the metrics that matter to you? How do you know that these are the best metrics to track? How do you know the best way to go about tracking them? How often should you review your metrics? How do you persuade stakeholders to change metrics?

Jan 14, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 474Don’t be a passive subject of AI's opinion; become an active engineer – with Nik Ranger

Nik Ranger shares that you shouldn’t necessarily conclude that ranking on Google means ranking well on AI search engines.Nik says: “Stop thinking just about ranking on Google and start focussing on a new discipline: AI visibility engineering. This is where you can systematically probe AI models to measure brand associations, quantify perception, and then use those insights to engineer on-page, off-site, and then use those insights to engineer on-page, off-site, and strategic actions that influence how these machines understand and represent your clients.”

Jan 13, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 473Make your content interpretable, not just crawlable – with Chris Green

When we consider the fact that AI agents are starting to visit our sites, with a view to making purchase decisions or recommendations, and other AI engines are regurgitating our content, we have to ensure that they understand the essence of what we provide. Chris says: “Technical success for SEO in 2026 requires us to understand the interpretability of content rather than just the crawlability.”

Jan 12, 202618 min

S2026 Ep 472Keep track of how AI user agents are accessing and navigating your website – with Itamar Blauer

When we start preparing for the consumption of our goods and services by AI, we should also be preparing for AI user agents to navigate our sites.Itamar says: “In the age of AI platforms and LLMs, it's important to really understand how these different platforms, and more specifically user agents, are accessing and navigating your website.”

Jan 9, 202616 min

S2026 Ep 471Create your own knowledge graphs to improve your online presence – with Olesia Korobka

Part of the data layer that you provide for AI should include well-structured knowledge graphs, shares Olesia Korobka.Olesia says: “Prepare small knowledge graphs and use them for your SEO efforts – and also to optimize your content for LLMs and AI output.”What do you mean by small knowledge graphs, and how do AI search engines use knowledge graphs?“We know that Google uses knowledge graphs for their AI overviews and for some answers in AI Mode because knowledge graphs are facts. They are entities that provide factual information, so Google does use them intensively.Also, search within knowledge graphs is much faster than any other search, and the information you get is much easier to use for generating anything that you want.We used to talk about databases previously, and a knowledge graph is a fancy name for a relational database. That's about it. When you build them, it helps you to get much fewer inaccuracies, get more original information, and ensure that the information is factually correct.By small knowledge graphs, I mean that you focus only on what you are doing for your own business or for yourself. You can optimize your own name, your company's name, or the products or services that you want people to find in search.”

Jan 8, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 470Use your server logs to perform an indexation audit at scale - with Jérôme Salomon

Jérôme Salomon shares that you can use your server logs to perform an indexation audit at scale thanks to the 130 days rule, bypassing the URL inspector tool API limits for large websites.Talking points include:What is an indexation audit?Why would you want to conduct one?What is an indexation audit at scale?What is the 130 days rule?How do you use your server logs for this?What are the url inspector tool API limits for large websites?How often should you conduct one?How does this feed into a strategy?What measurable success do you get by doing this?

Jan 7, 202614 min

S2026 Ep 469Develop an interconnected data layer to show up and be understood by AI – with Martha van Berkel

Martha van Berkel follows on from Pam’s tip by highlighting that it’s key to manage the information that you’re providing to AI.Martha says: “SEO is now about managing your data layer for AI.”What is your data layer for AI?“We really have to think about the data we're putting into the machine.Most people still think of schema markup as just trying to get visibility, but it's way more than that. By doing semantic schema markup, you're building a knowledge graph, which can be a contextual thing that allows machines to understand.SEOs need to think beyond doing it for search visibility and start seeing it as the input we can use to control brand and understanding for large language models.”

Jan 6, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 468Prepare for a world where AI is your primary audience – with Pam Aungst Cronin

How are you preparing for AI? Pam Aungst Cronin starts off not by exploring how to use AI in your day-to-day activities, but how to position what you do, with AI as your primary audience.Pam says: “Start preparing for an AI-first future, where the AIs are your primary target audience, not humans.”

Jan 5, 202619 min

S2026 Ep 467Strengthen your brand – with Ramona Joita

Ramona Joita recommends that strong branding in 2026 is key – and shares why research is an integral part of this. Ramona says: “Strong branding, not just keywords, will drive organic visibility in the AI-powered SEO landscape in 2026.2025 has been the busiest year ever. I have been in this business for 15 years now, and I have faced all the changes that Google has put us through. We had the mobile-first index, where we had to adjust our websites to fit the mobile version. We had RankBrain, where Google started focussing on how people react to our content and not only to the keywords that we were publishing or the backlinks pointing to our websites.However, this has been the busiest year by far, and we are still in an early stage of understanding how this is changing the game.2026 will be an even more challenging year. If there is one thing that I believe will work, it will be to start building a brand. You cannot go wrong with that; Google loves brands, and LLMs will love brands too.”

Jan 2, 202615 min

S2026 Ep 466Go beyond backlinks to gain authority in the new algorithm – with Joseph Kahn

Joseph Kahn expands on Christian’s tip to emphasise that building authority in 2026 is multi-faceted.Joseph says: “Look beyond the blue links and build for AI.”Are we just talking about blue links in Google?“We're talking about blue links everywhere. Most people think, ‘Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks.’ The old world of SEO was just about using backlinks to build authority, and that isn't the way to build authority anymore.Links still matter, but it's very specialised. I can beat just about anybody in the service business, and in a lot of different places in SEO, without using a single backlink strategy.”

Jan 1, 202617 min

S2026 Ep 465How to SEO for LLMs - with Roman Leliukh

Roman Leliukh discusses how to SEO for LLMs.Key talking points include:Which LLMs should you optimize for?Chat GPT / AI Overviews / GeminiWhy are certain LLMs best?How do you optimize for them?How do you measure success?

Dec 31, 202519 min

S2026 Ep 464Build brand associations – with Christian Rigg

Christian Rigg follows on from Otuto Umeji’s tip to share that, if you can form a brand association in someone’s mind, it makes many aspects of SEO a lot easier.Christian says: “2026 is all about brand associations: in people's minds, in search engines, and in LLMs.Optimizing for brand associations means building deep and meaningful connections between your brand and the topics, products, features, outcomes – all of the things that matter to people and machines.”

Dec 30, 202514 min

S2026 Ep 463Rank in the mind, not on the SERP – with Otuto Umeji

Otuto Umeji shares that one of the key elements to building a successful brand in 2026, from an SEO perspective, is to be the go-to, remembered brand for a particular keyword phrase.Otuto says: “Use brand positioning to move from SERP rankings to mind rankings.”What are mind rankings?“Recently, we have seen that SEO is shifting, and AI search is now summarising results. Because of this, it's no longer enough to just chase rankings. The brands that will win are brands that strongly position themselves in people’s minds, to the point where they search for them by name, regardless of where they are on the SERP rankings.For example, if I say ‘best soda’, the brand that automatically comes to mind is Coca-Cola. If I say ‘energy drink’, the brand that comes to mind is Red Bull. If I say ‘SEO audits’ and ‘keyword research’, Ahrefs and Semrush are what come to mind. If we talk about ‘link building analysis’, Majestic comes to mind. That is what brand positioning is: when your brand is the best at delivering a particular value that your customers truly care about.When they care about this, they will remember you, and they will automatically search for you by name. In 2026, what will win is when you are not just found; you are remembered.This might not sound like SEO, but it’s something that we can introduce to SEO to make your SEO processes better. You are focussing on optimizing your brand so that people search for you automatically.”

Dec 29, 202515 min

S2026 Ep 462In an AI search-first world, brands should move beyond "links for links’ sake" - with Charlie Clark

Charlie Clark shares that as we move towards an AI search-first world, brands should move beyond "links for links’ sake" and focus on semantically relevant brand mentions that align with key topics and entities, helping AI engines better understand, associate, and prioritise them in results.Talking points include:What’s an example of links for links’ sake?How do we focus on semantically relevant brand mentions?How do we measure the success of semantically relevant brand mentions?How do we ensure that semantically relevant brand mentions align with key topics and entities?Why does this help AI?How do we measure success?

Dec 24, 202517 min