SEO in 2026

We all know that one of the most effective forms of SEO is to create a resource that garners natural links. A big part of brand SEO is to build a brand that people want to talk about. Aleyda says: “Optimize for citation-worthiness.This is easier said than done. It's about establishing yourself as an authority in your field, but in order to do that, you have to make it very clear what your unique selling proposition is and create and optimize your assets and web presence accordingly – both within your own website and externally as well.We have heard so much regarding how LLMs are getting citations from social media, and all of these features are giving visibility to Reddit, YouTube, etc., so we need to put some content out there. However, a lot of those conversations aren’t thinking about the alignment with your product, your brand, your USP, and what actually matters business-wise.Time and time again, we have seen how Google updates have negatively affected the rankings and the traffic of topics that are too shallow, too broad, and are not aligned with the subject matter expertise and uniqueness of the brand. We have also seen a lot of comments saying, ‘Because of the Crocodile Effect, it's no longer worth targeting broader informational queries,’ which I also think is too simplistic an approach. The truth lies in the middle. What actually matters is the angles, topics, or specific areas that you can cover as a brand. The topics that make sense business-wise won't be fulfilled by generic concepts, and will incentivise the potential customer to learn more about your brand.It's still worth targeting, not only because it will maximise the chances of a click, but even if it doesn't end up generating a click, it will be worth it just to be visible, because that will help the user make their decision later on in the process.”

However, not all SEOs understand the key elements of brand marketing – and if you’re fortunate enough to have specialist brand marketers in your organisation, take advantage of that!Joshua says: “Brand marketers should be SEOs’ best friends.”Why is that?“Brand marketing reaches where SEO can't. It drives demand, and it drives search interest.SEO has always been an inbound channel, but lately, inbound is getting harder. With things like zero-click searches and AI overviews, the opportunities for getting the click are increasingly challenging, but brand search has always been very high intent and very high click-through rate, and it's also a ranking signal.Working with our friends over in the brand channel, we should be devising strategies to drive more branded search, and SEO should be doing more to help the brand teams deliver on all of their work and communicate those results.”

One element of SEO that’s more important than ever is Brand SEO. Brand SEO, according to Ashley Liddell, should be the essence of what SEO is nowadays.Ashley says: “Treat SEO as more of a brand-building activity.Look beyond the traditional KPIs of visibility and towards making your brand the preferred choice in any conversation that's relevant to you.That will make you front of mind and grow your brand awareness and brand presence.”

James McLoughlin shares that crawling and indexing management needs to be a corner stone of your SEO strategy in 2026, ensuring crawlers (both traditional search engine crawlers and LLM crawlers) can quickly and easily discover, understand and index any content you want surfaced in search engines and LLMs.Talking points include:What does crawling and indexing management mean in practice in 2026?How do you ensure that crawlers (both traditional search engine crawlers and LLM crawlers) can quickly and easily discover, understand and index any content you want surfaced?What is the difference between crawling and indexing management for traditional search engines versus LLMs?How do you determine the content you want to be surfaced?What do you do with the content you don’t want to be surfaced?How does this feed into your content marketing strategy?

With so many changes in the space, new acronyms have appeared in an attempt to describe the newer activities involved in SEO job roles. However, that’s a distraction, says Charlie Whitworth.Charlie says: “Forget the acronyms, particularly with AI search and SEO.Let's stop focusing on what it's called and focus on what we need to do.”Do acronyms not assist with articulating how SEO has changed?“I don’t think that SEO has ever been a good description of what we do. It's always been a fairly inaccurate acronym, given that we don't actually optimize search engines; we optimize websites.The term SEO has never been particularly accurate, but never more so than now. A lot of time, money, and effort have been spent debating whether or not we're still SEOs, whether SEO is dead, whether we should be called GEOs, LLMEOs, etc. It's a big waste of time.It worries me how much time we're spending talking about these acronyms and not talking about what we should be doing. Who cares what the acronym is? The key is the work.This constant obsession with SEO being dead or being called the right thing always comes back, whether it was after the death of link building or after Penguin and Panda. Obviously, the emergence of AI has exacerbated that. I don't think many other marketing industries are constantly talking about whether or not their acronym is accurate.What we need to be doing is focusing on what's going to drive growth for clients.”

Nikolas Monti-Potsolakis shares that you can take learnings from SEO changes in highly regulated industries like iGaming and apply them to other sectors.Nikolas says: “In regulated sectors, like the iGaming space, companies need to keep SEO relevant and part of their strategy.The iGaming industry is growing across all continents, and SEO shouldn't just be part of your campaign; it should be part of your infrastructure as a company.It will still remain the number one growth factor. Despite all the LLMs, AI, applications, and all these things, SEO is still relevant and should still be relevant if you want to grow your company and succeed in 2026, especially in a very regulated market like iGaming.”

It’s not only SEOs in larger organisations that now have a greater requirement to understand and relate to business leaders. This is becoming increasingly important for independent SEO consultants, too. Adrijana says: “Acquiring high-paying SEO clients requires a different approach that a lot of SEOs are not talking about.”Why does it require a different approach, and what does that approach look like?“When you want to move from full-time SEO to freelancing SEO, or get your own clients on the side, most SEOs are not thinking about the fact that it’s a completely new skill. You already have SEO experience and knowledge, but when you want to get a client, that is a business skill, which you probably haven't developed yet.

In addition to SEOs facing their own traffic challenges, many alsofind themselves tasked with guiding their business leaders through themassive change driven by AI agents.Ben says: “Guide your C-suite into the great agentic unknown, because if youdon't, then nobody else is going to.”What is the great agentic unknown?“I'm talking about the nature of AI agents using websites in the same way that human customers conventionally would. They are researching a topic on behalf of a user based on a prompt, and can go from researching all the way to getting quotes or even adding things to a shopping cart.

Martina Kölsch shares that the Panda Update in 2011 was one of the first major changes by Google that she encountered. SEO is continually evolving, yet one thing remains constant: prioritising a solid SEO foundation, a clear structure, and excellent content. Many tend to overlook these essentials whenever a new trend emerges.Discussion points include:What are the key SEO essentials that many SEOs tend to overlook?Why do SEOs overlook these fundamentals?What benefit do these fundamentals provide in 2026?How do you measure the impact of the fundamentals?When a new trend emerges, how do you know if it is worth spending your time on?How do you continue to ensure that you are focusing on the most impactful activities?

One continuing trend within SEO in 2026 is the ever-increasing degree of difficulty when it comes to driving traffic from organic search. Jack Chambers-Ward advises that this should motivate you to reevaluate your overarching content publishing model.Jack says: “Create and monetise content to survive the upcoming zero-click era of search.”Will we be in an all-encompassing zero-click non-traffic era at some point in the future?“It certainly feels like we're heading that way. With a lot of what Google has been talking about recently – particularly with AI Mode, this is the looming topic in SEO right now.

Increasingly, it seems as though SEO needs to be a complete organisational approach rather than a marketing channel, and this way of thinking is backed by Keith Goode.Keith says: “The SEO who secures buy-in isn't selling rankings, they're selling resilience.”What kind of resilience are you selling?“More specifically, it's organisational resilience.One of the challenges that you will face as an in-house SEO, and oftentimes as a consultant for companies, is getting buy-in for the things that you're recommending for sites – and this problem evolves just like our industry evolves.

Sharon Gwati-Mudzudzu shares the importance of combining SEO tactics with data insights to personalise the user journey to drive smarter decisions.Talking points include:Why do we need to Combine SEO tactics with data insights?How do you Combine SEO tactics with data insights?How does this help to personalise the user journey?What are examples of how a user journey can be personalised?How does this deliver measurable SEO success?How does this help to drive smarter decisions?How should this be implemented on an ongoing basis - how does this fit into a strategy?

Jean Dejsuvan shares that you shouldn't be panicking because SEO isn't dead (again)!Talking points include:Why do people think that SEO is dead?Is SEO changing significantly?What does this mean for new SEOs entering the industry?What are the foundations?How does an SEO ensure that their skills stay relevant?Where do you learn the latest SEO techniques?SEO in moving fast - what should we do ?

Jonathon Roberts shares the importance of building bespoke web apps that automate SEO workflows - like site audits, schema generation and for in-house reporting - by integrating search-engine APIs and real-time dashboards to drastically speed up your optimisation process.Talking points include:What are bespoke web apps that automate SEO workflows?Why can’t we rely on standardised SEO platforms?What are we looking to achieve by doing this?What tasks should we be looking to run through these workflows?How do we build them?Where do we get the data from?How much work do we need to put in to keep everything running smoothly and best-in-class?Why can’t we rely on standardised SEO platforms?Why is building your own tools better?What types of businesses should be doing this?

Ulduz Ismayilova shares that with AI disrupting top-funnel visibility, SEO strategies must evolve to capture bottom-funnel, conversion-ready traffic.Talking points include:How is AI disrupting top-funnel visibility?Why is it so key to focus on capturing bottom-funnel, conversion-ready traffic?How do you identify bottom of funnel, conversion-ready traffic?What happens to top and middle of funnel?What does this look like as a strategy?How will this continue to evolve?

Katie Thompson shares the importance of getting expertise straight from the source - EEAT is still important and the most valuable content will come from those who have interviewed real-life, human experts.Talking points include:What do you mean by get expertise straight from the source?Why is EEAT still important?How does the importance of EEAT manifest itself?You say that the most valuable content will come from those who have interviewed real-life, human experts. What does this mean in practice?How do you put together an expert-driven content marketing strategy?What do you have to include in your content to maximise the opportunity?

Ryan White shares that mastering the basics now has never been important, but those basics have changed, where understanding data is now a key soft skill.Talking points include:What are the SEO basics now?Why have they changed?Why is understanding data now a key soft skill?What does this mean?How does this impact SEO on an ongoing basis?How does this impact the way that SEO works with other marketing channels?How does this impact SEO strategy?

Callum Lockwood shares that optimising for Google Organic product grids is more important than ever.Talking points include:What are Google Organic product grids?What is “top tier product schema?”How do you implement it?How do you measure its success?What are typical blockers to visibility?How do you fix them?

Hannah Fox shares the importance of being strategic with your keyword research.Talking points include:What is strategic keyword research?How do you know what is not suitable for the blue links?Where else are you optimizing for?How do you know which keywords are right for different platforms?Is keyword volume still important?Has the way that you incorporate keywords into content changed?

In this episode Charlie Marchant says that AI search is on the rise.Talking points include:What specifically is on the rise in terms of search engine popularity?Is AI search popular among specific verticals or consumer groups?How do we know if our target market is using AI search?How do we optimise for AI search?How do we measure the success of AI search?What does this mean for the user funnel?What does AI search mean for the future of SEO?

Pieter Serraris discusses with David Bain how logfile analysis is an SEO and GEO goldmine that is too often left untouched.Talking points include: - Logfile usecases- Crawl budget- AI bots- Visibility in ChatGPT- Clarifying the dark funnel- Topics popular for ChatGPT- What does this mean for strategy- Beyond SEO

Priya Verma shares the importance of making analytics ready for your SEO to be able to track data effectively.Talking points include:How do you make analytics ready for your SEO?Why does this let you track data more effectively?What software do you use?What data should be used in GA4?Metrics and dimensionsHow do you use this data elsewhere?What impact does this have?

Christian Rigg shares why there's never been a better time to bridge any gaps between SEO and brand marketing.Talking points include:What are some typical gaps between SEO and brand marketing in a strategy?How do you prioritise what needs to be done?Who should be responsible for this?How does an SEO work more closely with brand?How can these essential instruments, as you call them, work together in perfect harmony?How do you measure the impact of this?

John Iwuozor shares the importance of starting to build your brand authority and direct audience relationships now.Talking points include:Why is brand authority so important?Why are direct audience relationships so important?Why does brand recognition get you cited in AI answers?Why does this keep you top-of-mind when traffic from search declines?Why does this drive sustainable revenue growth?How do you measure the impact of this?

Konrad Szymaniak shares the importance of using conversational SEO and query data clustering via machine learning.Talking points include:What is Conversational SEO & Query Data Clustering?Why is machine learning key? What do we want to achieve from this?What software do you use?What type of businesses should be doing this?How is this changing due to AI?

Ninsiima Rukandema shares the importance of combining SEO and CRO and growing collaboration between these functions.Talking points include:What do you mean by combining SEO and CRO?What can SEO do for CRO and what can CRO do for SEO?What does this mean in practice?How do you measure the impact of doing this?How do you sell the value of this to stakeholders?

Tom Rawle shares the importance of creating content that AI can't create. Build relevant, informative, unique, authentic content for on-page and off-page SEO that can't be replicated.Talking points include:What kind of content can humans create that AI can’t?How do you create unique content?How do you create authentic content?What do you mean by creating off-page SEO that can’t be replicated?Will this strategy continue to work in the next couple of years?

Will Slater shares that it's essential to learn to write better content instead of relying on AI.Talking points include:Why shouldn’t AI be relied upon to write content?What content needs to be written by humans?What does good human-written content look like structurally and why is that different to AI?How do you compete with the volume that AI can produce?Will AI content not continue to get better?What role is good for AI?What does a good human / AI content workflow look like?What AI tools do you use at the moment?What will be the role of human produced content in the future?

James Hocking shares that all Generative AI tools rely on traditional search results to answer questions, and most (Google excluded) rely on Bing for web search.Discussion points include:Why do AI tools rely on Bing?What do we been to rank on Bing? What specifically do we need to do differently to rank in AI results?What information does Copilot, Chatgpt, and Perplexity take from Bing?How is this different from Google?Is this situation likely to remain the same for a while?What else are AI engines looking for?

In this episode Erin Simmons shares that in 2025, your best SEO edge is joining communities — they give you the real language of your audience for better content and earn you trust that fuels brand visibility across search and AI.Discussion points include:Why are communities so important?How do you know the right communities you should be interacting on?What’s a good way to interact and what’s a bad way to interact?Should you be trying to drive traffic back from communities?How do you measure the SEO success of interacting in communities?How does interacting on communities positively affect other online success?How are online communities evolving and what do we need to do to stay on top of things?Is AI impacting online communities?

In this episode Simone de Palma shares 3 key tips...1) Think like a Marketer and expand your SEO strategy across LLMs to chase visibility over clicks.2) Act like an Analyst and explore opportunities with the Google Merchant Centre.3) Use your technical skills to double down on structured data implementation

Greg Heilers shares that it's hard to imagine a future in which building a brand is a negative ROI activity.Talking points include:Why is building a brand so important for SEO in 2025?Why is this likely to be just as important in the future?In relation to SEO, what do you have to do to build a successful online brand?What are the specific SEO activities that contribute to brand success?How do you measure the impact of brand on SEO?How do you measure the ROI of these activities?How do you incorporate brand SEO into a marketing strategy?

Kerstin Reichert discusses the importance of the Yin and Yang of SEO - being human in an AI-driven world.Talking points include:How do you stay human in an AI-driven world?What do you mean by an AI-driven world?You recommend using AI to quickly scale - what does that look like?How do you use AI to enhance processes?How do you use AI to produce better insights?How do you use AI to remain competitive?How do you continue to show your human side, authenticity and expertise - and what good does this do?

Bruce Clay shares that SEO will be more important in the future: AI is an influencer, PR is vital, and conversion rate optimization going to be more integrated into the SEO effort.Discussion points include:Is SEO more important than it used to be?What do you mean when you say that AI is an influencer?When you say that PR is vital, how does PR fit into the SEO world and what aspects of PR are key for SEO?What does conversion rate optimization have to do with SEO?How do you measure the impact of conversion rate optimization on SEO?How do you plan an SEO strategy with so many considerations in mind?What will SEO look like in a year's time?

Gagan Ghotra shares that expertise combined with opinions of people is what matter.Discussion points include:How do you demonstrate expertise in content?Why are opinions of people important?How do you incorporate opinions in content?How do you measure the success of this strategy in search engines?How should this be incorporated into a content strategy?How do you measure the success of this strategy?How is AI impacting this strategy?

Vince Nero advises focusing on relevancy in 2025, meaning less outreach, fewer links, and less Content.Discussion points include:Why is less more?What do you mean by focusing on relevancy?Why less outreach?Why fewer links?Why less content?What does this mean for strategy?How do you track success?How do you persuade senior managers that less is more?

Jon Mest shares that there are proven ways to smartly rank better in the AI models.Talking points include:What does ranking better in AI models actually mean in practice?What measurable impact does this have?How do you measure leads from AI models?Is ChatGPT the best source of leads?How do you SEO for AI models?How is the space continuing to evolve?Read the full transcript of Jon's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/jon-mest

Petra Kis-Herczegh shares how you can learn anything through identifying your transferable skills.Talking points include:Why should you just keep on learning, no matter what you’re learning?How do you know what you are learning will be useful in the future?How do you know what to focus on?What skills tend to be transferable?How do you identify transferable skills?How do you stay motivated to keep on learning?How does mindset come into this?How do we continually adapt our approach to learning over time?How does this help us find another job?What if we’re recruiting? Should we be looking for continuous learning as an important skillset in someone that we’re interviewing?Read the full transcript of Petra's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/petra-kis-herczegh

Adelina Bordea shares that small changes can make a big impact.Talking points include:What are the small changes you are talking about?How do you know which small changes will have the biggest impact?How do you know what changes to make?How do you measure the impact these changes have?How do you work with other internal teams to get these changes done?What if it's likely to take a long time to get some basic changes done?You say it is important to have a roadmap - what do you mean by this and what does a roadmap look like?Read the full transcript of Adelina's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/adelina-bordea

Giulia Panozzo shares about the importance of investing in expanding your skillset.Talking points include:What is changing in SEO?What additional skills need to be learned?What soft skills need to be learned?What adjacent topics need to be learned?Where are some of the best places to learn?How often should you learn?How should you share what you learn in your own organisation?How can you be sure that you are using your time effectively and learning the right things?Read the full transcript of Giulia's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/giulia-panozzo

Emina Demiri-Watson shares that SEO is much more than it has ever been.Discussion points include:What are the key new trends of SEO to stay on top of?- Search has developed (strong performance of UGC platforms such as Reddit, AIO roll-out, development of Perspectives, recent core updates and emphasis on brand in search, TikTok as a search engine…). - User journey is not linear - finally it's dawning on companies!- Attribution is not really possible - particularly in the age of privacy! - One touch point is certainly not enough (no longer true even in ecommerce)How does an SEO stay on top of things without stretching themselves too thinly?Read the full transcript of Emina's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/emina-demiri-watson

Tevfik Mert Azizoglu shares how to go beyond Google and optimize different search channels.Discussion points include:What is search everywhere optimization?Witch platforms are key?How to select the platforms that are key for your business How to use AI to optimize strategyRead the full transcript of Tevfik's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/tevfik-mert-azizoglu

Sukhjinder Singh shares the importance of working smarter to stay relevant.Talking points include:How do you stay relevant?How do you cope with what seems to be an ever-increasing rate of change?How do you deal with overwhelm?How do you work smarter and stay ahead?How do you stay on top of the latest technologies?How do you incorporate AI into your workflow?How will you continue to do this over the next couple of years?Read the full transcript of Sukhjinder's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/sukhjinder-singh

Krzysztof Marzec shares the importance of using data and knowledge from Google Ads and Analytics for better SEO!Talking points include:How does Quality Score helps to make better SEO?How should paid ads and SEO teams work more closely together?How does data from Google Ads campaigns improves content plan?What data is available?How can an SEO access all the data?What’s an example of how this has changed a content strategy?How often should this be done?What reports in GA4 will influence SEO campaign most?What is the easiest way to analyze this information? Use third party platforms?Read the full transcript of Krzysztof's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/krzysztof-marzec

Debbie Chew shares the importance of tapping into your first-party data.Talking points include:What are the most common forms of first party data?What tends to be the most useful first party data for SEO?How should SEOs work with other teams to find better first party data?How do we better understand our audience with first party data?How do we analyse first party data?What do you do if you don’t have much first party data to work with?How do you create new first party data?What kinds of questions should you be asking in surveys to create really useful new first party data?What are some creative ways to use first party data?What are some examples of using first party data in content?Should you share first party data with AI?Read the full transcript of Debbie's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/debbie-chew

Marco Giordano shares that SEOs need to get more familiar with analytics.Talking points include:What analytics knowledge do SEOs need to know about?Do you primarily use GA4?How much analytics knowledge is enough?How should SEOs be using analytics packages on an ongoing basis?How should analytics inform SEO strategy?Should SEOs be learning coding?Does this apply to non-technical SEOs?Read the full transcript of Marco's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/marco-giordano

Nik Ranger shares why brand representation and interpretability matter in the era of LLMs.Talking points include:Why does AI rank matter?How do you measure visibility on LLMs?What is the impact of this on visibility?What are typical gaps in the model’s understanding and what does a brand do to deal with this?How to maximise brand representationHow does this impact purchasing decisions?What’s the difference between a brand and an entity?Read the full transcript of Nik's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/nik-ranger

Sanja Markovic shares that a site migration is like moving house.Talking points include:What do you mean by a site migration?How do you prepare for a site migration?How much time do you need to prepare?What teams should be involved?When is a site migration considered to be successful?What are the most common reasons why site migrations failHow to avoid making mistakes in a site migration? Read the full transcript of Sanja's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/sanja-markovic

Nikki Halliwell shares the importance of using a migration briefing document before you start working on a migration.Talking points include:What are the key elements in a migration briefing document?Who do you work with?How do you sell the need for this?Where do you gather information from?What issues are likely to be solved by creating a migration briefing document?Read the full transcript of Nikki's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/nikki-halliwell

Emma Russell shares 5 SEO tasks when migrating your site in 2025.Emma's key points are:1. Understand if it’s an opportunity for growth2. Benchmarking what you have now3. List all of your requirements 4. Make friends with dev5. Test test testRead the full transcript of Emma's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/emma-russell