SEO in 2026

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?

David and Krzysztof discuss the key elements of getting set up with your analytics.Talking points include:What are the key elements of getting set up with your analytics?What is your definition of a bounce rate?How do you merge analytics with Google Search Console data?How do you record user sessions with Microsoft Clarity?What metrics are you tracking on a regular basis?What are the pros and cons with GA4?What other options do Microsoft Clarity bring to the table?

David and Olga discuss the importance of doing SEO testing to prove the SEO concepts you preach.Talking points include:How do you know what to test?How do you test?What software do you use?How long should tests last?How often should you test?What shouldn’t you test?What don’t you test yet, but do you intend to test in the future?

David and Sally discuss the importance of striving to achieve stakeholder buy-in in an ever-evolving SERP.Talking points include:Why is this important?Who are the key stakeholders?How do you achieve stakeholder buy-in?How do you appeal to different stakeholders?How do you continue to work with different stakeholders?How does this impact the role of SEO moving forward?Why does the ever-evolving SERP landscape make this necessary?

According to Elena Dyulgerova, it;s essential that you diversify your traffic sources in 2024.Talking points include:Where are the best sources to diversify traffic sources from?What are the most valuable sources of traffic?How does Pinterest optimization work best in 2024?Is Pinterest only for e-commerce?How does this differ by industry?How do you optimise for different platforms?

Ash Nallawalla from CRM911 Digital believes that SEO deserves a bit more recognition – and businesses will benefit greatly from giving SEO managers a bigger voice. Discussion points include:Where in a corporate structure should an SEO manager sit?What do they need to control?What do they need to influence?How do they manage to climb the organisation hierarchy?

Helen Pollitt says that you need to ensure that SEO takes its rightful place as a strategic business function.Discussion points include:Why has SEO been traditionally been considered a marketing channel?Why is it imperative that SEO is fully integrated into design, brand, engineering, customer services and UX teams?How should a company change their focus from "SEO as a marketing channel" to "SEO as a strategic business lever"?

Gus shares that you can improve your impact by taking inspiration from how product managers operate.Gus says: “Think like a product manager.""For me, it’s about following a process of discovery, testing, and seeing whether the things that you’re doing actually have an impact or not. Let’s say you believe that you can improve indexation on a website. That’s your hypothesis. Then, you’re going to start with the discovery phase: what are the possible things you can do to solve this problem? There are many different ways that you can do this, depending on the size of your website and the resources that you have."

You can diversify your own approach and skillset, but International SEO and Digital Marketing Specialist Monsterrat Cano is a firm believer in strength in numbers. It’s foolish to work alone, she says.Discussion points include:Can every SEO collaborate - even in-house SEOs working by themselves?How do you collaborate during a- migration process- recession- algorithm update- tech integration

In this episode David and Ashley discuss the importance of learning from what's currently ranking, but offer something different with your content.Discussion points include:How do you learn what you should be ranking for?How do you learn what’s currently ranking?How do you offer something different with your content?How do you know that search engines will prefer your content?What type of content tends to be more effective nowadays?How often should you update your content?

If you’re looking for a new weapon to add to your arsenal, Sara Taher from Assembly Global says that video is the way to go. She believes that this is where users and search engines are turning their attention.Sara says: “Integrate video content into your SEO strategy, be it long-form, short-form, vertical, horizontal, or square videos.”"You want to leverage video on the SERPs themselves and also on other platforms as well – like YouTube and TikTok. You basically want to create video content that you can also post on your website. For each of those, there are values that they are going to bring to your business."

Navah Hopkins believes that SEOs need to know about Performance Max ads.Discussion points include:What are Performance Max ads?What will iOS17 do for tracking and attribution of your marketing campaigns?What creative works best? Ad or landing page perspective or both?Why are they different?What does adapting content to visual first placements mean?Why are they better?Is there any downside?Why are they important for SEO?How should paid and SEO work together?

Crystal Carter believes that you should be using multimedia to slice across your marketing channels.Discussion points include:What do you mean by slicing?Does multimedia work for every type of content?What stage in the customer journey does multimedia content work for?Does multimedia replace content?Do you mean multimedia off site?What does the ideal content production process look like?How is AI changing multimedia content?

Izzy Wisniewska believes that you should befriend other marketeers and go holistic in 2024.Talking points include:What does holistic actually mean in practice?How do you unite as a marketing department in a large organisation?How does a content team, PR team, video team join forces with sEO to deliver a more effective customer experience?What other teams impact areas like:EEAT, technical performance, user experience, speed, user intent, content qualityWhat does this mean for channel team members - do they need to train themselves on other channels?How do you measure success?Who gets credit for a customer purchase?

In this episode, David and Sukhjinder discuss the importance of knowing your audience, meet their search intent & ensure your content is “Helpful”.Discussion points include:Why is knowing your audience and meeting their search intent even more important in the age of SGE?How do you know your audience?How do you meet their intent?How do you ensure that your content is helpful for both users and search engines?What does having E.E.A.T.-worthy content actually mean?How is this changing in 2024 and beyond?

Luke Carthy believes that 2024 is the year of the yearning for original, creative and well-written human content.Discussion points include:What can humans do that AI can’t do?What’s the difference between well-written human content and AI content?What should humans stop doing and hand over to AI?How long will this be the case for?How is TikTok a competing ecosystem to Shopify and Google?What should SEOs do about this?Is it an SEO’s job to optimize for every platform?

Nikki Halliwell shares that creating actionable audits that your client understands, and can be used by stakeholders at all levels and being able to follow them through and get fixes implemented by working closely with dev teams and speaking their language for faster implementation.Discussion points include:What is an actionable audit?Is there any type of audit that you see SEOs doing that don’t provide much value?What stakeholders should be using this audit?What language should you be using in your audit reports to assist you in engaging with various stakeholders?How do you get dev teams on board to implement fixes more quickly?What software do you use for your audits?How often should you do these audits?

Andor Palau shares the importance of investing in additional tools and external testing when doing a migration.Talking points include:What are some examples of some of the preventable errors that can occur with migrations?What tools do you use?How do you end up paying with missing revenue?What different perspective or different data layers might you end up missing?How should you plan for a migration?Who should you involve in a planned migration?Is there anything that you need to keep checking post-migration?

As many contributors to this project have alluded to, the long-reaching arms of AI are reaching into many aspects of digital life, which is why Emma Russell from Oxford Comma Digital says that you need to be a more discerning gatekeeper, and that you should Limit crawlability to your content.

In this episode, David and Manu discuss the importance of keeping a wide open eye and being flexible in your SEO approach.Discussion points include:Can you give an example of the new possibilities of integrating AI in your workflow and processes?When you say, “make sure you have access to the right and accurate data”, what data are you referring to?How do you work cross-channel?How do you determine what delivers the most value to your audience?How do you know when to pivot an SEO strategy?

Fili Wiese shares what impact site speed and Core Web Vitals has on SEO in 2024.Discussion points include:What impacts site speed most in 2024?- Server and hosting- File sizes and types- Plugins and add-ons- Traffic volume- Poor codingHow should we be using Core web Vitals to direct our site performance improvements?Inside Search Console?- Loading (Largest contentful paint - how fast is fast enough? How do you improve this?)- Interactivity (First input delay - how fast is fast enough? How do you improve this?)- Visual stability (Cumulative layout shift - what issues are key?)

Tom Pool advises that you ensure technical quality throughout your entire site.Discussion points include:What does good technical site quality look like in 2024?Has anything changed in terms of technical setup best practice in the past couple of years?How does a good technical set up deliver better user experience?How do you build a solid technical foundation if you’re not sure how large you’re going to grow?If users are happy using your site is it worthwhile to continue to invest in further technical improvements?How do you measure the impact of technical improvements?

Alexandra Tachalova shares that building the right links should be one of the biggest priorities for marketers.Discussion points include:What are the right links at the moment?What are the wrong links at the moment?How do you get the best links?Why is this more important than other marketing activities?You say that Sites that have a strong domain authority can easily reach excellent results in Google SERPs without building any links back to their individual pages - does this mean that you only have to build links to certain pages?Can you stop building links after a while?Will links stay important with AI results?

Eva Cheng shares why you shouldn't give up on "Hero Campaigns" in Digital PR.Discussion points include:What are hero campaigns?What are the typical results you are looking to achieve from hero campaigns?How do you create a hero campaign?How do you manage a hero campaign?How do hero campaigns fit into the bigger picture?Why should SEOs consider building category page links?At what point in your SEO strategy should you implement this? Are there any specific Digital PR tactics that have proven more successful for category page links?Why do you say that an SEO shouldn’t be afraid to build category page backlinks?How do building category page backlinks fit into the bigger picture?

Rad Paluszak shares the importance of prioritizing "Value" over "Sheer SEO".Discussion points include:Why is working on improving the site better than obsessing about SEO?You say that SEO-elements on a website CAN be imperfect - why?You say that if your site is not useful or does not deliver truly unique value, it might be throttled and suffer in the long term - what do you mean by this?Why should SEOs stop obsessing over AI developments?

Jo O'Reilly believes that you should start prioritising building smaller numbers of relevant high-quality links.Discussion points include:How do you define relevant high-quality links?How do you define irrelevant spammy links?How do you measure the value of a link?How do you conduct outreach?Ideally what style of links are you looking for?Are you willing to pay for links?

Alan Silvestri advises that you leverage happy customers for ethical backlinks.In this video we discuss the importance of leveraging happy customers for:* Case Studies* Testimonials* Guest Blogging* Webinars and Podcasts* Affiliate Programs* User Generated Content* Community Forum or Groups

Rana Abu Quba Chamsi shares the importance of mastering your video SEO.Discussion points include:What do you mean by video SEO - optimizing video to appear on the SERP?What type of business is video most suitable for?What’s the ideal length and format? How do you optimize? What’s your process?What are some other video-based platforms that you optimize for and how is that optimization process different?What kind of intent does video traffic have and does that differ to other traffic?How does video fit into the overall content mix?How is AI impacting video optimization?What is the future of video optimization?

Amit Raj shares the importance of building relationships before you link build.Discussion points include:How would you define a valuable link?What do you have to give to obtain a valuable link nowadays?How do you stand out with your outreach?Is that link a logically relevant link between those websites?Does it provide value?Is your outreach relevant and genuine to the receiver?Are you approaching sites with something that will genuinely resonate, and that their audience would benefit from?

Debbie Chew emphasises the importance of staying on top of link and mention building.Discussion points include: Why build mentions?What do you mean by generative AI chatbots and search being influenced by listicles?What do you mean by that you shouldn’t "blindly" build links to pages without regularly revisiting the SERPs?What are the link building tactics to focus on in 2024?

Andreas Voniatis shares the importance of optimizing internal links to increase the relevance scores of target content.Discussion points include:What scoring system do you use to analyse the relevance scores of target content?What are the data sources requiredWhat are some data cleaning tipsHow do you determine anchor text relevance with python functions? How do you use statistical distributions to model the relevance and highlight under-served target content?

Katherine Nwanorue shares the importance of linking sub-categories to parent categories as part of your on-page SEO strategy.Discussion points include:What about linking the other way around - from the main category body content to the minor category page?Why do this if there are links on the navigation menu?What measurable value does this provide?Does this make it more likely for the pages to be indexed?Will it result in higher rankings?Is the keyword text within the links important?How many links per page do you recommend?Any other internal link strategies that you recommend?Can this be automated?

Veronika Höller shares that adopting search generative experience as your SEO strategy in 2024 is pivotal.Discussion points include:How is SGE changing the SERP?What markets does this affect at the moment?What timescale are we looking at for full international roll-out?What industry sectors does this affect the most?What about queries - what types of queries does this affect the most?What does this mean for the way that we write or optimize content?How are other search engines changing?Does this reduce the impact of Google as an organic search discovery channel?Do we have to turn to other content mediums like YouTube, TikTok or podcasts?