SEO in 2026

Will Rice discusses the importance of creating useful tools to convert more of your existing traffic. Talking points include: How to understand what is going to get your traffic to convert more. How do you know what traffic is likely to convert? How do you put a financial value on traffic from different sources? How to rapidly build tools to provide genuine value to your customers. Which tools are...

Taylor Kurtz provides our final SEOin2026 tip, advising that we stop obsessing over AI and instead, focus on high quality content. Taylor says: “Do not obsess about AI. Don't obsess about it.” Why shouldn't you obsess about it? “I'm sure a lot of people have helpful suggestions about it, but frankly, it's all so new that it’s on a trial basis. Anyone saying that they know what to do for this envir...

Stefan Lozo shares the importance of not neglecting traditional SEO int eh age of AI. Talking points include: What activities would you describe as traditional SEO? How should an SEO define their services in 2026? How should this be communicated with clients? What happens if clients push back and are looking for other services or ways of doing things? How do you set realistic expectations for clie...

Michael MacMillan shares our penultimate piece of advice by encouraging you to ensure that all the good SEO that you already intend to do, is being done. Michael says: “While AI is flooding the web with content, it’s also assisting teams to create huge strategies and big plans. However, we're still not seeing them getting executed.” What does execution actually mean, and why is it not happening? “...

Reena Bowden agrees with Jade Pruett about the ability to stay agile as we move through 2026. Reena says: “Make sure that you are discoverable, and be agile with optimizing your business for AI-driven search and answer engines. We're also talking about GEO and AIO, not just for traditional search. To be discoverable and agile, you need to be proactive and not just reactive to market changes becaus...

Jade Pruett is keen to highlight that best practices that existed in the past aren’t necessarily best practices for the future. Jade says: “Forget best practices. SEO in 2026 is about moving beyond checklists and leveraging your own expertise to build effective, trustworthy, and AI-ready strategies.” What best practices do we need to forget? “In the industry, we've become a bit stuck in our checkl...

Petra Kis-Herczegh encourages you to be more critical in your thinking – and not to initially accept everything at face value. Petra says : “Embrace healthy scepticism. In a time where the SEO industry is drowning in new AI metrics, from AIO attribution to vector index presence, we need to understand that we don't have robust, standardised methods to validate these just yet. When tools show you th...

Andrew Melnychuk Oseen shares that for effective SEO in 2026 you should be aware of what data sources you're feeding LLMs. Discussion points include: What data sources should you be hooking up to LLMs? What are your go-to LLMs at the moment and why? What are the common mistakes that tend to be made in doing this? What end result are you looking for? Is there any data type that you shouldn’t be get...

Manu Madeddu highlights that the ever-changing world of SEO means that flexibility and being able to continually adapt will be integral parts of future success. Manu says: “Be flexible and be ready to face the unknown. Essentially, be prepared to adapt to all the new and broader challenges we have as marketers, and also flexible enough and ready to absorb knowledge, data, and information about thi...

Sarah McDowell shares that surrounding yourself with the right people is a key part of maintaining personal growth. Sarah says: “Community and your inner circle are not only essential for your well-being, but they are also so important for your career progression as well.” Why is community relevant to SEO? “When it comes to SEO and career progression, as in any industry, looking after your own wel...

Our final chapter begins with Helen Pollitt taking a look at the skills you need to personally build, to remain as relevant as possible in the SEO workforce for many years to come. Helen says: “Keep your SEO career on track. When it comes to your skillset, you need to stop thinking of ‘SEO versus GEO’. Instead, you need to understand how to apply your organic discoverability skills to each and eve...

Ray Saddiq shares that you need to be both recognisable and discoverable in 2026. Ray says: “If you want to seriously influence your consumer moving forward, brand alone is not going to cut it. We got into this mindset that brand was going to be key to driving SEO success, and it plays a huge part, but if you want to grow and stay top-of-mind, you need to drive demand and be discoverable. It's not...

Nickolass Jensen shares that most sites have high search visibility but zero AI citations, and the gap is diagnosable, measurable, and fixable with a structured three-layer audit. Talking points include... The three-layer diagnostic: Why sites fail AI visibility at the human layer (UX/trust), the search layer (authority/structure), or the AI layer (machine-readable proof) - and why fixing the wron...

When you’re analysing data, you shouldn’t necessarily treat it at face value, shares Dixon Jones. Dixon says: “You need to think about what you are trying to measure. Buyer behaviour is changing dramatically with the advent of AI. Users are going to be sending out their little AI bots to ask questions on your website instead of going there themselves. If you're trying to buy a vacuum cleaner, you...

Something else that’s arguably changed a great deal in the past few years is keyword research. Andy Mollison advises on tracking more than basic keywords. Andy says: “In a world of generative AI, keyword tracking as we know it is no longer good enough.” Why is keyword tracking no longer good enough? “The way we track performance in SEO has historically been through organic sessions, organic revenu...

Following on from the previous ‘Testing’ chapter, Marta Szmidt begins chapter 19 with an introduction to newer metrics that you should be considering. Marta says: “You need to add new metrics for measuring SEO success and face the reality that search has changed. It's no longer the same traditional search engines we used to know, and you need to adapt to the reality. You need to combine classic tr...

There’s one tool that Priya Verma finds particularly useful at combining data from various sources and conducting analysis – BigQuery. Priya says: “Gear up your SEO analysis through Google BigQuery.” Why BigQuery in particular? “SEO analysis in BigQuery is powerful because it lets you move beyond the existing tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, etc., and their limitations. It allows you to s...

Leo Poitevin shares how to write the best listicles & find the best media to push them to be cited by GPT. Talking points include: How do you define listicles? How have listicles changed? How do you structure a listicle for success in 2026? You say that GPT uses Google to find solutions via fan-out - what do you mean by that? You say that you should find the media that'll rank according to top...

Krzysztof Marzec emphasises the alignment between organic search and paid search – and the useful additional data that one can provide the other. Krzysztof says: “Use your data from Google Ads to improve SEO, and use data from SEO to improve your Google Ads campaigns. Also, mix it and blend it with AI, because now we have AI to improve it all.” If you're not actively using Google Ads, is it worthw...

Dan Taylor feels that SEOs aren’t taking full advantage of the data that they already have. Dan says: “Start understanding your analytics platforms a lot better, and start leveraging them – not just for attribution and ROI, but to look at your organic strategies and the second-order effects of what those strategies are bringing to the business.” Have SEOs focussed less on analytics since the relea...

Marco Giordano highlights that the most successful SEOs will take data from multiple sources – not just traditional SEO platforms. Marco says: “Use multiple data sources, not just SEO data, to make decisions.” What's the difference between the alternative data sources and the typical data sources for SEO? “Most of the time, people use Search Console, which is our default option for several reasons...

Of course, what happened in the past isn’t necessarily an indication of what might be likely to happen in the future. Folashade Uba shares that we should stop reacting and start predicting. Folashade says: “The best and most successful strategy will be to shift from reactive SEO to proactive SEO.” What would be an example of reactive SEO compared to proactive SEO? “Reactive SEO is when you're reac...

Sophie Brannon shares the importance of not focusing solely on the new shiny thing and that the fundamentals will always matter most. Talking points include: How do you know what should be fundamental? How often should you revisit this? What is holistic marketing? Why is this key to SEO? How do you measure success? How would you summarise the fundamentals of SEO in 2026? How often should you revie...

Kyle Rushton McGregor provides us with a timely reminder to know your numbers, while all the changes happen around us. Kyle says: “SEO is changing, and you need to know your numbers more than ever.” How is it changing, and how do you go about knowing your numbers? “SEO is changing in a variety of different ways, but most importantly, we've got the rise of AI and large language models, and the traf...

Julia-Carolin Zeng shares some of the key areas that you should be continually monitoring in order to know what to adjust. Julia says: “Monitoring, testing, and adjusting. The search landscape will keep on changing. What we've seen so far in 2025 is nothing yet.” How is the search landscape continuing to change? “Right now, the buzzword in SEO is the ‘great decoupling’, where we see impressions go...