SEO in 2026

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

Andrew Optimisey shares about he importance of controlling all of your domains.Talking points include:What does controlling all of your domains mean in practice?Who should be responsible for your domains?When should you buy a new domain and when should you build a new project on an existing domain?When should you change a domain for an existing project?When should you let a domain name expire?What do you do from an SEO perspective when you decide to let a domain name expire?What do you do if you have let an old domain expire, and you realise that this was a mistake. Is there any way to go back?What can you do if a spammer or scammer gets hold of your domain?What do you think of the newer domains - Is .com always best?When selecting a new domain, is brand or domain more important?Read the full transcript of Andrew's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/andrew-cock-starkey

Helen Pollitt shares the importance of understanding the cost as well as value of organic traffic.Talking points include:What is the difference between the cost and value of organic traffic?Why do we need to know the cost?How do we calculate the value?What do you mean by organic traffic in all forms?How do you prefer to calculate ROI?How does this lead into defining an SEO strategy?How often should this work be done?How is it changing due to AI and new technology?Read the full transcript of Helen's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/helen-pollitt

Andy Frobisher shares that it’s time to get serious about the internet and energy consumption.Talking points include:What companies are trying to go net zero?Does this have a positive business case?What does this mean for the overall size of pages on websites?What are the best ways to reduce the page speed of a web page in 2025?What does this mean for algorithms moving forward?What does this mean for SEO planning?How can Core Web vitals help us with this?How do we forecast a revenue increase or cost reduction as a result of reducing page speed?Read the full transcript of Andy's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/andy-frobisher

Bastian Grimm shares that inventory management is now more important then ever.Talking points include:What do you mean by Inventory management?How do you know which content to focus on?What do Google do when they can’t keep up with crawling and indexing the web?Should you get rid of some content?What content should you get rid of?What’s an example of poor quality content, produced by AI?What is state-of-the-art AI that SEOs should be using?What parts of your SEO and content production should you be using AI for?How else can AI help with your SEO performance?Read the full transcript of Bastian's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/bastian-grimm

Kaspar Szymanski shares that SEO in 2025 is all about signal input.Talking points include:What do you mean by SEO signals?Are Google and Bing looking for the same thing in terms of SEO signals?So the same signals apply to LLMs as well?How do you ensure that SEO signals are consistent?Why do regular, annual SEO audits help with SEO signals?What are the key things to be looking for in an SEO audit?Is using server log data important as part of this?What are you looking for in server log data?What software do you use to assist you with this?

Tin Dudajek shares the growing importance of schema markup.Talking points include:How would you summarise the current state of Schema?Why is it continuing to gain importance in 2025?What is schema used for in modern SEO? (data management)Why is Schema so important for AI?What content needs to be optimized for Schema for AI?Where is AI using these schema enhanced pages?What tools do you use to assist with this?How do you measure success?

Keith Goode shares that SEO Product Management is the natural progression of Technical SEO.Talking points include:What is SEO product management?What does the day-to-day life of an SEO product specialist look like?Why is SEO Product Management the natural progression of Technical SEO?Why does SEO Product Management help you go from just building audit lists to implementing changes?Should every SEO be considering this?What skillsets are developed?

Cathryn Stormont shares the importance of keeping track of the performance of core web vitals and overall site user experience.Talking points include:Why are your core web vitals so important to UX?How can you improve your core web vital scores?Are these metrics likely to change or be added to over the next couple of years?Are there any other key metrics that are important for UX?

Montserrat Cano advises the importance of getting to know your audience by undertaking market and competitor research to help overcome risks.Talking points include:How do you undertake market and competitor research to help overcome risks?Why does this work both in primary and global markets?Why does it help to overcome bias?You also talk about Avoiding Logical Fallacies in SEO & Broad Marketing - what do you mean by that?How does this process help you to maximise your budget?Why does this help you Avoid alienating potential customers?What data should you be gathering?Where should you get data from?How often should you be doing this?

Maria Scheibengraf shares that in your international SEO efforts, translation and SEO shouldn't be separate tasks performed by separate professionals.Discussion points include:Why does translation and SEO need to be the same task?What happens if these tasks aren’t tackled together?Surely technical SEO and content creation are quite different tasks?What aspects of SEO do people who are translation specialists commonly miss out on?What aspects of getting translations right do SEO specialists generally get wrong?How do you ensure that translations are correct for the local region?What tools does an SEO need to do both of these tasks effectively together?How do you determine if a translation has been effective?Do localised translations need to be optimised differently for local search engines?Is AI not impacting the need for localised translations?

Joseph Kahn explains why adapting to the Local SEO Evolution is key.Talking points include:What changes in local search algorithms are you referring to?How is ‘features with AI’ affecting local SEO?How do you optimize for "near me" searches ?What do you mean by optimizing for location-based queries using AI?How do you leverage user-generated content for local SEO using AI?

Sean Barber shares why tracking LLM traffic matters.Talking points include:Why does tracking LLM traffic matter?How do you go about doing this?What LLMs are driving the most traffic at the moment?How should an SEO optimize for LLMs?What are some specific steps that SEOs should take to optimize for LLMs?Why is this important compared with other SEO activities?How is the LLM space evolving?What does this mean for the future of SEO?

Edward Ziubrzynski explains why global EEAT needs to be a local strategy.Talking points include:What do you mean by EEAT being a local strategy?How could an EEAT strategy vary in different locations?What local considerations do brands generally need to be aware of?How do you strategically roll this out if you’re a big company?How does this improve your SEO?How do you measure the success of this?

Myriam Jessier and David Bain talk about the importance of tackling local marketing and SEO with cognitive insights.Discussion points include:What do you mean by cognitive insights?How can cognitive insights help with local marketing?How can familiarity help to build your brand?What’s an example of hyper-localised content?How do you deliver hyper-localised content?What are the benefits of delivering hyper-localised content?

Maximise your global reach by treating each international market as unique and creating tailored campaigns that resonate with local audiences.Lau Miguez and David Bain discuss:What do you mean by treating each international market uniquely?You say Transcreate, Don’t Translate - what does that mean?What other content creation tips do you have when trying to appeal to a local market?Why do you have to understand the local Media Landscape?How do you use the local media?How do you get to know the local audience?You advise on appreciating local Cultures and Subcultures - what does that mean in practice and how does this help to create a more impactful campaign?

In this episode, Sinead shares that you should find ways to look beyond what SEO tools show you, and that you sometimes you have to go manual to stand out.Discussion points include:What are examples of not getting enough information from tools?When Media databases don't show you the most relevant contacts, how do you get the most relevant contacts?You say that Google doesn't always show you all the relevant stories from a straight search - why is this important and what should you do about it?Backlink tools can't always show you the full range of backlinks in a domain - why does this matter and how do you dig deeper?How much value does this human digging deeper provide?How do you measure the impact of it?Can AI not assist with this?

In a world where over 65% of searches end without a click, No-Click SEO is reshaping how businesses approach search visibility.David and Rose discuss:Why is no-click SEO a thing?Why are traditional click-through rates (CTR) are no longer the best success metric?How are Google’s AI-driven search features (SGE, featured snippets, and People Also Ask) keeping users on Google, and what does this mean for SEO?What actionable strategies can you offer that mean that users search for a brand directly? (AI-generated snippets, leveraging structured data)How do you continue to future-proof your SEO?

In this episode, David and Alexandra discuss the importance of approaching link building differently in the age of AI-summarized results.Topics discussed include:Why is link building different now?How do we focus on acquiring links now?How do we measure success?