SEO in 2026

In a world where the value of SEO can often be overlooked by decision-makers, it’s essential for SEOs to be able to articulate the value of their activities. This is where we begin, with Lucia Dello from Dello Insights.Lucia says: “Prove the value of your e-commerce SEO.”How do you prove the value of it?“In this world, where acquisition remains a challenge and marketing budgets are tight, we want to demonstrate that SEO is bringing in the people you want. Retailers are looking well beyond the campaign level. They want to understand their whole sales portfolio and how it's growing over time. Therefore, you want measures that don't stop at the level of the activity, engagement or a sales total."

David Bain and Jonathan Moore discuss the importance of leveraging planning strategy, data analysis and what-if scenarios to navigate ambiguity.Talking points include:What data analysis are you referring to when planning a strategy?Where are the best sources of data?What are some examples of what-if scenarios that you are referring to?Link profile may not be what you want it to be?Content may not be what you hoped it would be?How does this help to navigate ambiguity and the unknown?What type of ambiguity are you trying to avoid?Why is it important to do this?How does this measurable impact your SEO success?How often should you be planning SEO strategy?What else should be incorporated in an SEO strategy?

David Bain and Sabine Ljunggren discuss why you need to add social media to your search strategy.Talking points include:Why do you need to add social media to your search strategy?What does this mean in practice?What social media are we talking about?What content works best on different social media sites?Why does this fit as part of a search strategy?How do you measure success on social?How do you measure success as part of an integrated search strategy?How will this continue to evolve in the future?

Desmond Boateng joins David Bain to discuss the importance of building a brand with your own story over link building.Talking points include:Why is building a brand with your own story so important?How do you craft your story?Where should you publish your story?How does your brand story interweave with the rest of your content marketing efforts?What measurable impact does this have on your SEO success?How often should you hone your story?Is this more effective than link building?Read the full transcript of Desmond's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/desmond-boateng

Ahmed Bhula and David Bain discuss balanced/consistent link building and creating content consistently within limits. Before you know it, you'll be competing against the larger companies and every Google update will benefit your rankings.Talking points include:What does Balanced/consistent link building look like?What links are good links in 2024?How many should you be building a month?What are the limits you talk about?What does constant content creation look like?What content is best?Why does this help compete with larger companies?How do Google updates benefit rankings?Read the full transcript of Ahmed's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/ahmed-bhula

Kyle Rushton McGregor and David Bain discuss how to utilise the customisation options in GA4 to your advantage.Talking points include:What are the customisation options?How should SEOs be customising them?Why should SEOs be using them?Should SEOs get assistance from a GA4 professional?What data is available?How should SEOs be using this data?What other software do you like to connect to GA4?Are the customisation options likely to change again in the near future?Read the full transcript of Kyle's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/kyle-rushton-mcgregor

PPC and Paid Media expert Sophie Fell joins David Bain to discuss how SEOs can test potential opportunities using PPC and why close collaboration between SEO and PPC can lead to data-driven insights and better-optimized landing pages, which in turn can improve conversions.Discussion points include:Why should SEOs be testing opportunities using PPC?How should they define the opportunities to test?What does the testing process look like?What software should they be using?How do they select a winner?What do they do once a winner is selected?What's your opinion of SEO and PPC ranking for the same term - should PPC be turned off?Read the full transcript of Sophie's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/sophie-fell

David and Dani discuss the importance of focusing on building a strong, recognizable brand around a specific topic, so people automatically think of you, ensuring that regardless of changes in algorithms, your brand remains a go-to source. Discussion topics include:How do you build a strong, recognizable brand around a specific topic?How can you ensure that people remember your brand after reading your content?What content do you prefer to publish?Where do you publish your content?How do you measure the SEO value of this?How do you view AI content?Read the full transcript of Dani's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/dani-leitner

In this episode, Tom Winter and David Bain discuss why you should team up with AI by using the "Cyborg Method" to deliver content.Discussion points include:How do you team up with AI?What AI do you recommend working with?How do you deliver content that is more valuable than you could before?How do you know it is more valuable than previous content?What are the risks to doing this?When you talk about doing this at scale - what scale level are you talking about?Is it possible to compete without using AI?How do you think your strategy will continue to evolve over the coming few months?

In this episode, Michał Suski and David Bain discuss why, if you have a strong, authoritative domain, you should publish as much as you can.Discussion points include:How do you know if you have a strong, authoritative domain? What metrics do you use?How do you make your domain more authoritative?What do you mean by ‘publish as much as you can’?What form of content works best?How do you measure the success of your content publishing?How has your content publishing strategy changed over the years?How is AI affecting your publishing process?

In this episode, Luca Tagliaferro and David Bain discuss "Zero-Lead Marketing".Discussion topics include:What is Zero-Lead marketing?What standalone insights and information are you referring to?Why is there no need to convert?What are the benefits to this?How does this impact SEO strategy?How does it work with other channels?

We're in 2024 and log files analysis is still an underrated source of SEO knowledge.David and Julien discuss:What is log file analysis?How do you get access to your log files?Where are log files stored and are everyone’s log files a similar structure?What software do you use to analyse your log files?What do you look for when analysing your log files?Do you combine your log file analysis with other data for better insights?How should log file analysis impact your SEO strategy?

Look at SEO holistically, from an entity building perspective. Onpage, but largely offpage also. Ensuring those foundational layer links & signals are in place. To focus on this, rather than obsessing and spending thousands on guest posts. David and Adam discuss:What is holistic SEO?What are the key elements to building a successful online entity?Gaps in entity - software to analyseWhat aspects of onpage do you focus on?What areas of offpage SEO do you start with?What are the best types of links to be getting nowadays?By having a holistic approach, do you also try to work with other marketing channels?Do you not like guest posting?

Focus on User Intent and build content, authority and a website experience that matches that and helps them to get towards their goals. David and Amanda discuss:How do you focus on user intent?How do you prefer to categorise user intent?How do you define a user’s goals?How do you build content, authority and a website experience that matches user intent?How do you build authority by delivering the right user intent?How do you alter a website experience to match a user intent?How is user intent changing?How do you determine the likely user intent?

To save time, increase efficiency, and minimise errors, utilise automation for auditing your websites.David and Jonathon discuss:What automation is key?What software do you use?How much time do you save?Why do you minimise errors and what errors do you tend to minimise?How often should you audit your websites?What are the primary issues that you are looking for when you are auditing?How is the automation of auditing likely to change over the coming year?

SEO is constantly evolving, but one thing remains constant: Google's goal is to provide the best results for users. While the signals (CTR, time on page, etc.) may change, Google's focus on quality does not. By creating the best content, you'll succeed regardless of changing rules.David and Ana discuss:How do you optimize for Google to provide the best results to users?How does Google measure quality?How do you create the best content?What type of content works best nowadays?How do you know that you’ve created the best content?What do you track to ensure that you’re consistently measuring the best content?How do you build content creation into an SEO strategy?Hoow do you measure success?

David and Azahara discuss the importance of using AI to gain deeper insights into user intent and refine your keyword strategy.Talking points include:How do you use AI to gain deeper insights into user intent?How do you ensure that you’re targeting the right users?How does this lead on to refining your keyword strategy?How do you make sure that keywords aren’t missed?What do you mean by a cohesive approach?What AI tools do you use?How do you continue to refine your approach?What are the advantages of this versus a more traditional approach?What are your thoughts on how your approach will continue to evolve in the future?

David and Andy discuss why you shouldn't let your technical SEO slip after the Helpful Content Update.Talking points include:Google launched the Helpful Content Update in mid-2022. What was that about, and has anything changed since then?How has the helpful content changed SEO?Why do you say that you shouldn't let your technical SEO slip after the Helpful Content Update?What are the key aspects of technical SEO that yo9u shouldn’t let slip?Is this the same for every industry?How do you track technical SEO success?

David and Carlos discuss why it's crucial to diversify your content strategy in the age of AI.Talking points include:How would you summarise the way that AI is transforming content marketing?Why diversify your content strategy with video?Why did you mention TikTok first?What does a good TikTok SEO strategy look like?Why does this fit into the customer journey?What other video platforms do you recommend?How do you measure the impact of a video SEO strategy?How do you think that this will continue to evolve over the coming year?

David and Kalin discuss the importance of accepting that you don't always know what is going on.Talking points include:What do you mean by that?What precisely do you have to accept you don't know what is going on?Why does this matter?How does this impact the way that you actively do SEO?How does this impact the software that you work with?How does this impact your strategy?How does this impact the way that you manage a team?To turn your tip around, what should you know that is going on?

David and Tamara discuss the importance of ensuring that your link-building strategies align with user needs rather than algorithms.Talking points include:How do you align your link-building strategies with user needs?What kind of user needs are you referring to?You talk about evading spam risks during core updates - what spam risks are you talking about and can you give me an example of a core update that has made it more likely for a site to be flagged as a spammer?Should you just target your link building strategies at driving traffic now?What mistakes do you tend to see with link building strategies?What link building strategies tend to work best now?What metrics track user-focused link-building success for SEO?How is link building changing in the world of AI?

David and Rejoice discuss why you should expand your content ideation and keyword research beyond Google.Talking points include:What do you mean by Social Media SEO?How do people begin their searches on social media?How do you track this?How can you determine the most appropriate content ideas to be targeting?How do you optimise for social media?Where does this fit into the customer journey?Do you find that people use Google search as well, further down the buyer journey?Can you determine keyword volumes?How can you forecast likely results based on what you intend to target?

David and Naomi discuss the importance of using your internal data to find exactly what your customers want.Talking points include:What internal data should you be utilising?What are examples of wishes that you’ve discovered that customers are looking for?What sort of experience are you talking about when you’re saying that this is what you should use to address this?What systems and tools do you use to make this procedure more effective?What measurable impact does this have on SEO?Competitors - how do you know that their content is hitting it out of the park?

David and Lucia discuss the importance of breaking the built-in failure cycle and running campaigns that delight your client.Talking points include:What is the built-in failure cycle?What causes it?What can you do to stop it and change it?What are examples of campaigns that delight a client?How do you make this more likely to happen in the future?How do you replicate this or automate this?

David and Dan discuss why Time to Result - is key when planning page content.Talking points include:What do you specifically mean by TTR - it sounds like Largest Contentful Paint!What are the key ways to ensure that the user’s key initial focus is on the content that is likely to satisfy their query?What are some of the mistakes that websites make to distract users from what they’re looking for?How can SEOs help to avoid this?How can you measure the impact of this from an SEO perspective?How does this impact best practice for mobile design?How will user satisfaction continue to impact SEO success in the future?

David and Alex discuss the importance of not letting AI take over your content strategy.Talking points include:What is a good use of AI?How do you know if you’re using AI too much?How do you measure the impact of creative, helpful and unique storytelling?Why will this always shine through?Why won’t AI ever take over creative, helpful and unique storytelling??How do you use AI tools most effectively?

David and Josh discuss the impact of updating your information on Wikipedia/Wikidata.Talking points include:What is Wikidata for the uninitiated?How does Wikipedia and Wikidata impact search results?How does the new AI world use Wikipedia and Wikidata?What information do you need to update to take advantage of this?Should you update your Wikipedia listing by yourself?How often should you update or refresh your listings?How do you think AI will continue to evolve to make use of Wikipedia and Wikidata?Are there any other Wiki sites that SEOs should be aware of?

David and Sarah discuss how change and challenges are inevitable in SEO, and what to do about this.Talking points include:How often is it changing?How often do rankings change?What trends do we need to look for?Should we bother with chasing algorithms?What is Google changing about the SERP?What do we do when Google takes something away?AI – challenge, people worried about taking jobs - what are the solutions?What do SEOs need to get familiar with when it comes to AI?

David and Adriana discuss how 2024 will be the marketing era of “do more with less” and the way to do that with SEO is have air tight people operations.Talking points include:Why “do more with less”?Is this because of AI?In-house or agency side?What are the pros and cons?Can you get as much done?What is the ultimate team size?

David and Luis discuss elevating the value of SEO by developing internal capabilities - agency vs in-house.Talking points include:Is in-house best?What should be done in-house vs agency-side?How do you identify what is best for you , benefits or downsides .What is more efficient?Importance of teams feeling familiar across organizations - is automation diluting learning opportunities for new SEOs?

Dave Cousin believes that SEOs like to think Paid Search is easy, they get all the data they need in black and white; so why then don't we SEOs use paid search's data to make things a bit easier for us? Discussion points include:Why should SEOs be working more closely with paid search?How can paid search make the SEO’s life easier?What can SEOs learn from paid?What can paid learn from SEOs?Why is this particularly relevant for 2024?

David and Sara discuss the importance of staying ahead in International SEO: embrace and keep track of market-relevant events.Talking points include:How do you ensure that you’re aware of every event?I can understand how an event can impact traffic and impressions, but how can an event impact rankings?Understanding user behaviour and intent - why is this particularly unique for international SEO?Spike in impressions but not followed by clicks - why was this and what can you do about it?Leveraging seasonal trends and opportunities - how do you plan?

David and Claire discuss why businesses should get clued up on how to manage and influence their Local Knowledge Panel.Talking points include:What is Google’s New Merchant Experience?Why has Google done this?What do you have to do to sign-up?What is the upside?Is there any downside?How do you influence your Local Knowledge Panel BEYOND the functionality provided in the NMX?Why is this important?How do you measure the impact of this?

David and Greg discuss the importance of optimising your use of Google Business Profile.Talking points include:What are the key changes in Google Business Profile over the past year?How has the verification process changed?Google will restrict content or access if there's a violation of their policies - what are these policies?There are Clearer standards on who can own and manage business profiles - why is this and what are the changes?What are the new guidelines on user contributions?Businesses should have only one profile to avoid discrepancies on Google Maps and Search - what happens if you have 2 profiles?Specific instructions for appointment-based businesses and those with varying operational hours - what are these?What are the current best practices for content posting?What are the current best practices for getting found?Will a business without a physical address ever have an opportunity with Google Business Profile?

David and Si discuss the importance of using generative AI to supercharge your productivity and business outcomes.Talking points include:Why?What software and systems are you referring to?How do you set them up?How do you integrate this with the rest of your business and your clients?Are there any downsides?

Chris Alderman shares that in 2024 you should focus on outcomes rather than outputs, and that best practices are great but they need to lead to your site being found easier.Discussion points include:What do you mean in practice by focusing on outcomes rather than outputs?What sort of outcomes do you like to focus on?How does this alter your SEO strategy?How does this alter your SEO activities on a day-to-day basis?You say that focusing on outcomes can make it easier to find a site - what do you mean by that?How does focusing on outcomes rather than outputs impact the way that SEOs should work with other marketing functions?

David and Aleyda discuss the importance of leveraging AI to support you and accelerate your SEO workflows beyond content generation.Aleyda says: “Start leveraging AI for the day-to-day SEO tasks within your workflow in a smart way – in a way where you take care of the quality, but you use it to accelerate the tasks that you need to do.”What SEO workflows can be enhanced with AI?“There are now tools that use AI, like the Horseman SEO crawler, which integrates with the OpenAI API to provide you with suggestions and recommendations for the issues it finds when crawling your website. If it identifies that you have title or description issues, because they’re empty, duplicated, or too long, it will give you suggestions to make them shorter or populate them with descriptive information. You can develop your SEO recommendations much faster by using these tools to support you."

SEO and Data Consultant Lazarina Stoy offers up a new way of thinking about the way that you do your job, that is designed to give you more time and freedom to focus on what matters most now.Lazarina says: “Incorporate programmatic approaches. I’m specifically referring to rule-based automation for SEO best practices and AI-driven automation for process enhancements.""Mainly, this means taking some time to better understand different programmatic approaches and learning how to incorporate them in a responsible way – both for the brand voice of the company you’re working for and content quality. However, you’re not doing that just to put out content. You’re doing it to satisfy search intent and be helpful to users."

David and Katie discuss the importance of thinking better, and rushing less.Talking points include:- We can use AI to get stuff done faster- For everything?- What should we use AI for? - We shouldn't rush the thinking part- What thinking part?- AI can't do that; it doesn't know your audience, not truly.- AI can’t do thinking?- Understand your client's business first, plan your research, PRIORITISE and then figure out how to use AI to accelerate that plan and get results faster.

Carmen Dominguez shares with David Bain that in 2024 you should look after your CTR as the most precious KPI for your organic strategy.Talking points include:Why is your CTR so important?Why is click through rate a KPI?How do you keep track of your CTR - what software do you use?How do you identify the terms that you need to optimise for?How do you influence your CTR?What other KPIs do you track?

David and Adrijana discuss if you want to progress with your SEO career, you should stop overworking.Talking points include:How much work is overworking?What if overworking is your company culture?What if you’re your own boss?Is it not OK to overwork at the start of your career?If you’re an SEO manager, how do you ensure that you don’t overwork your team?How do you detect if you’re doing too much?When does overworking lead to burnout?How do you recover from burnout?

David and Irina discuss the importance of learning analytics To better understand user behaviour.Talking points include:What aspects of analytics do SEOs have to master?What do we need to know about GA4?— GA4 offers a lot of options on how we can analyse content consumption and user funnels. How do you analyse content consumptions and how do we measure where this fits into the bigger picture?What is a user funnel inside GA4 and how does this add value?Do you prefer using another tool like Looker to analyse your data?Do you add data from other ounces such as Search Console?Is there a decent alternative to GA4?Will the way in which data collection and analytics continue to evolve?

David and Becky discuss the importance of tracking the metrics that matter, i.e. the actions most aligned to your customer’s needs.Talking points include:What are the metrics that matter?What are the metrics that don’t matter?Is focusing on ROI and focusing on the metrics that matter the same thing?How do you know what you should be measuring?How can we better understand the customer journey?How do we know what the customer’s desired action is at each stage of the funnel?How do we get buy-in from our client to focus on the right metrics?How does this help to direct the future strategy?

David and Gemma discuss the importance of knowing the importance of proper analytics, after all the changes with GA4.Talking points include:What does GA4 mean for SEOs?What specifically are the needs of SEOs in terms of data?Is it too late to change now?How to use GA4 to lead your SEO strategyHow to use GA4 to lead your hollistic strategyHow to train internally about GA4

Araminta Robertson shares with David Bain the importance of targeting low volume, high ROI keywords in 2024.Key discussion points include:Why focus on keywords that have under 50 searches per month?What’s your perspective on targeting zero-volume keywords?How do you know if keywords are likely to be high ROI?How do you go about interviewing your salespeople or conducting customer research?What do you mean by targeting them with in-depth content?What tools do you use to assist you with this process?

David and Olesia discuss why you should build a database for your brand, company, product, service, offering & yourself.Talking points include:What is this database for?Is this for search engines?How does it help you understand your:- own marketing positioning,- Voice- customers better.Is this what users want instead of the SERP?

David and Pedro discuss the importance of learning to work with large volumes of data and assess scale.Talking points include:AI will gradually empower content creators to produce at scale, and SEOs to analyse large volumes of data - how?It's important to know what can be automated - what can, what can’t?It's time to move past algorithm-chasing and correlations - for every industry?Does every SEO have do learn to work with large volumes of data and assess scale?

David and Marco discuss how to use SEO Data to improve processes and prevent future damage.Marco says: “Use SEO data to improve processes and prevent future damage."What SEO data are we talking about here?“Mostly Search Console data, analytics, and crawl data from a crawler like Screaming Frog. If possible, you should be integrating non-SEO data as well.Non-SEO data is any data that is not purely SEO: customer data, sales data, etc. It could be content information, like the author of a given article, which can still provide a lot of value for SEO.”

David and Kaspar discuss why Google algorithms are all about signal input.Talking points include:What is signal input?How can SEOs control signal input?Google seems to issue more and more penalties all the time. Should SEOs be worried?Does Bing Search matter?Does any other search engine matter?Once the latest hype fades, what does really count in SEO?What is hype and what is something that matters - and how do you tell the difference?Performance or Backlinks - what's more important?

Lau Miguez shares with David Bain that in 2024 you should stop focusing on links and link numbers and instead, focus on strategy.Discussion points include:Why shouldn’t you focus on links and link numbers?What do you mean by focus on strategy?What does your strategy look like?How does the strategy that you recommend result in more, better quality links?What links are more effective nowadays?How do you measure the impact of your activities?