SEO in 2026

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 cor...

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...

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...

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 fo...

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 eff...

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 up...

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 - wha...

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...

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? Wh...

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 S...

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 impo...

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 pro...

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...

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 t...

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 s...

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, PR...

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...

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 to...

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?...

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...

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 strategy How to use GA4 to lead your hollistic strategy How 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? Wh...