SEO in 2026

For Montserrat Cano, the key elements to include in your 2026 strategy are the parts that scale.Montserrat says: “In 2026, SEOs should stay grounded and focus on those strategies that scale across global markets, instead of chasing every single AI-related shiny object.”What are the strategies that scale across global markets?“The strategies I'm referring to are those strategies that reflect your business values, your business objectives, and everything that you've been trying to do.I would use AI as a helper, as something that will actually help achieve those business objectives in your target market and with your target audiences. It is really important at this moment in time because, from what I can see, artificial intelligence is actually evolving at a pace faster than most individuals and companies can adapt to.I understand that the hype is so big and the temptation is very strong to jump on to every single AI strategy that comes out and gets published, and use every single AI tool, but all of this can only be useful if you think about what you actually need to do, and why you need to use those strategies, tactics, AI tools, etc.When it comes to global businesses, the adoption of AI is quite different across global markets. According to McKinsey, in Europe, the UK is leading the way with AI adoption. It's used in many different areas, including marketing, sales, and the public sector.Whereas in other markets, such as Denmark and Belgium, AI is mostly being used in automation. It's important to bear this in mind because your target users may not even be using Perplexity, or they are using Perplexity, AI Mode or AI overviews for different reasons. They may just be validating their answers, but what are they validating their answers with?Research what your users are actually doing, and what their preferences are. There are sociological and regulatory environments that might determine what platforms they are using and how they are using them. For example, do they prefer Mistral’s Le Chat to ChatGPT? Why might that be?”

Cathryn Stormont shares that good local SEO can still provide a lot of traffic.Cathryn says: “Focus on local SEO.With AI overviews and AI Mode dominating the SERPs, it's really important to focus on local SEO to try and maintain a certain level of traffic volume.”Is this more relevant for certain types of businesses?“There are businesses where their content is very much informational, like solicitors or accountants, where their blog content is being picked up by AI overviews dominating that space, which means their traffic volumes are starting to decrease. We're seeing that in lots of different sectors.However, they have a local edge. They have a local office, and it's those local searches where people are looking for ‘solicitors in Brighton’, where the AI overviews are not being shown as much. It’s typically around 40% for those versus about 90% for informational-led content.There's an opportunity to try and maximise that element, your local SEO, to try and get more traffic and keep that traffic up as much as you can.”

Tom Rudnai says that instead of chasing citations, focus your AEO strategy on showing up in Dark AI conversations where problems are framed. Talking points include: What are Dark AI conversations? How do AI responses change at different stages of the buyer journey? Why are citations is a bad north star metric? How should SEOs measure AI performance? What analytics to use? What content performs best in AI? How do you research what content to write? - Key trends: intent-matching, convergence - What is "Dark AI"? - How to measure AI performance and why citations is a bad north star metric

Gemma Fontané recommends that personalisation is key when it comes to international SEO success.Gemma says: “Focus on personalisation, adapting your content in each language and across different formats, to really build your brand in each region.These actions will allow you to stand out from your competition, demonstrate authority and expertise, compete in multilingual markets, and stay visible in the era of generative AI.”How do you go about personalising content?“First of all, personalising content is very important nowadays because search engines today are rewarding depth, expertise, and true relevance, in order to stand out.In 2026, with AI-generated content everywhere, what will really make the difference is cultural, linguistic, and format-specific personalisation, if you really want to differentiate your brand.How can you do that? There are two different things that you can do. If you want to start your strategy in a newer market or you are already working in that region, you can do an EEAT analysis to analyse which channels will allow you to show expertise, experience, trust, and authority. Also, you can analyse the main experts to see how people show trustworthiness through different formats.In order to personalise your content, you can also conduct multilingual keyword research in each market. This will not only help you know what people are looking for, related to your product or service, but also understand how people are looking for your product in each market. This will help you identify the best strategy related to the format.For example, you might find that people are looking for images related to your product, a step-by-step guide, or maybe a video that will help them to understand, know, or choose to purchase your product.”

Global SEO isn’t about treating every market the same. As Lau Míguez puts it, ‘European markets demand full commitment and strong EEAT signals — well-positioned experts are now essential for success,’ and that expectation has only grown over the past few years.Lau says: “What’s really shifted is how demanding each market has become. Working closely with Spain, and across international campaigns, I’ve seen clients move away from the idea of ‘Europe’ as one block. A few still ask for LATAM as a region, but no one says, ‘Can you do Europe?’ anymore.The penny has finally dropped: each country behaves differently. If you want results, you have to show genuine expertise, authority, and brand trust – not generic international presence.”Is using hreflang and a direct translation of content not enough anymore?“If you’re translating a piece that was originally written for the US, what you end up with is a perfectly translated article about a completely different reality. It will still talk about states instead of regions or cities, and even if you mention Spain once or twice, you might pick up a couple of links – but you’re not building any real trust.Nothing in that content shows an understanding of the Spanish audience or what’s actually relevant to them.That’s why localisation matters. If you’re talking about the job market, and Spain is currently debating a 37-hour working week, include it. Reflect what’s happening in that country.When you speak to the concerns and conversations happening locally, the audience feels it — and so do journalists. That’s why localising your content and your strategy has become more important than ever.”

Simone De Palma warns that client-side routing and rendering can be problematic for rankings.Simone says: “Align with marketing goals, and make sure to challenge anything that is client-side routed or client-side rendered, especially within React web-based apps.”What do the terms client-side routed and client-side rendered mean, and what impact does that have on SEO?“To start with, I will just make sure that everyone is familiar with routing and exactly what that is. Routing essentially means how the website itself is able to create a URL path that allows users to change pages, from one page template to another.This routing element can be a bit problematic for SEO when it happens exclusively on the client side, causing the generation of a new URL path when you click a link, which only happens within the browser.To give you an example, imagine that you land on a category page with plenty of filters to refine your customer journey. You can toggle a filter on or off, or click on a link, but the URL doesn't change. That means that no server request is being produced, which in turn means that both search engines and users will not have any idea that new content has been loaded. This is client-side routing, and it may cause a few issues with crawling and indexation.Client-side rendering can be a blocker as well. While client-side routing can affect the crawling, the discovery of search engines, and indexation, client-side rendering impacts the rendering (as it says in the title).This is particularly a problem if we're talking about web apps based on React. React is basically a pre-packaged JavaScript library, which makes it quite difficult for even the most seasoned web developers to tweak it because it's pre-configured. Unfortunately for SEO, React is built on the client side by default, so it has client-side routing and rendering by default.If you're landing on that same category page with lots of filters, it will take you some time for React to gear up the page template on the first load, because during this initial load, React will execute JavaScript in the browser, causing the browser's main thread to overload. Not only will this result in a slower initial page load time, but more importantly, it will be hard for search engines like Google to render all the content from the page.

One of the ways that AI engines struggle with determining a brand’s topical relevance and authority is when they encounter inconsistent data, highlights Kaspar Szymanski.Kaspar says: “My tip is about data consistency, which is a topic that is very close to my heart.”How do you ensure data consistency in 2026?“Some people may not consider this to be the most innovative or popular concept, and it’s certainly not a buzzword making the rounds nowadays.However, data consistency differentiates the companies and brands that are really successful in competitive environments from those that try to catch onto the latest buzzword or bandwagon, promising a silver bullet in an industry where silver bullets are few and far between.Data consistency is ensured when we make sure that all the data points towards the desired landing pages that we wish to be indexed, reindexed, and ranked within Google.It's important to remind ourselves that Google is, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the dominant force in the industry. Particularly for those YMYL companies and companies that deal in retail, with Q4 coming up, it's not too late to work on that.For these companies, it is most important that their websites, their stock, and their products get crawled and re-crawled on a regular basis, so they can put their best foot forward in order to generate relevant converting traffic – more than anything else.”

Krešimir Ćorluka shares that SEO is not dying, but bad SEO most certainly is. Talking points include: What is bad SEO? What doesn’t work anymore? What fundamentals work now? Where are SEOs confused with what works now? How do you learn and stay on top of what works now? How do you futureproof your future success? A lot of the stuff the average SEO has been doing has had the wrong fundamentals. Technical SEO, backlinking and good content is more important than ever. But, most SEOs weren't doing these things right so now they're confused with what LLMs expect of us. This stuff works and jumping on every new technique is killing your SEO gains, especially like the stuff we've seen with listicles, Reddit SEO, trying to manipulate Quora etc. Do the fundamentals right and only then can we go on to experimenting.

Arnout Hellemans advises that you don’t have to provide AI crawlers with full access to all of your content.Arnout says: “People really need to look at their technical setup.With that, I mean the rendered version versus the raw HTML – especially with a lot of AI crawlers not rendering yet, and also because I've seen a lot of discrepancies in that area.”Is the rendered version typically quite different for different search engines?“As with a lot of things in SEO, it depends.Sometimes, when websites are built using JavaScript frameworks, the content is actually different in the raw HTML versus the rendered HTML.Titles might be different. There might not be schema markup, there might be different headings, etc., because those can be changed by the execution of JavaScript.That can severely impact the discoverability of your page.”

One of the ways that you can enhance your website foundation is to combine high technical SEO standards with great user experience, shares Iva Jovanovic. Iva says: “Technical SEO and user experience will remain the foundation for websites, even when optimizing for AI chatbots.”Why do AI chatbots like user experience?“To start with, crawlability has been a topic in SEO for years and years. It's now gaining even more importance because of the way that chatbots crawl websites. They crawl a bit differently.We're used to Googlebot and other search engine bots adapting to what the websites are serving, and adapting to crawling them. Chatbots are not exactly the same. A lot of studies and research confirm that many of the chatbots do not crawl JavaScript, for example. So, a lot of websites that have been using JavaScript, that Googlebot has been able to crawl, are now not going to be as accessible to chatbots. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and even Perplexity don't crawl JavaScript.Aside from that, the bots crawl websites a little more simply, and it's really important to structure your website properly for that, so that the chatbots can access your link. Also, make sure all the links are there, avoid having 404s and redirects, have a pure structure of the website, pure links, and make sure the link juice is going on.Even before, websites that used JavaScript were not rendered as much. A long time ago, using JavaScript, you could hide links and do spammy stuff. Later on, Googlebot developed a way to make sure your JavaScript is crawled properly, and Martin Splitt has talked about it many times.However, it is frustrating for developers who are used to using JavaScript in frameworks like React and Vue to create their websites, especially in SaaS businesses. Now, the way that the bots will render it is a bit different. It's going to be a bit difficult for developers and SEOs to find common ground in that.”

To commence our technical SEO discussion, Jono Alderson advises against settling for an average website.Jono says: “Stop accepting technical mediocrity.”What does mediocrity look like in the world of technical SEO?“We all know it, and we see it all the time. We have accepted that it's normal for websites to be rubbish.Whether they're the ones we work on, our clients’, or the ones we browse, things are slow, we hit 404 errors, there's a bunch of JavaScript loading so that when you click the thing, it doesn't respond quickly, stuff doesn't quite show on screen properly, the font's too small, things are ugly, it takes four minutes for something to add to the cart, and then the cart was empty all along.Somehow, we're all okay with this. It's so normal for all of these interactions to be this bad that we just get on with it – and, for the most part, Google has coped with that and made the most of the web being janky, broken, and poorly built.However, as we enter the age of AI, the rules change slightly because those systems aren't as good at unpicking that mess. They’re simply not as incentivised to. When you look at their commercial, political, and product roadmaps, and the way they interact with websites, it's a very different machine. They are much less tolerant of faults, errors, omissions, and gaps – and they won't put in the same resources that Google has to wade through that.We all feel how janky the web is, and see it all the time, and we just kind of accept it. It's nice to take a step back and say, actually, this isn't good enough. It's not how it should be.”

In the previous tip, Eva Cheng shares the value of combining social and content with digital PR. Charlotte Crowther adds to that by also incorporating traditional PR.Charlotte says: “Don't ignore digital and brand PR. They are becoming really entwined with SEO, GEO, and LLMs.Ignoring branded digital PR is going to have a large impact on your visibility, particularly as we're seeing a move towards a zero-click world.”What are the differences between traditional, digital, and brand PR? Where are they blurring, and where do they remain separate?“Back when marketing first started, we thought of marketing as an entire piece, and traditional PR fed into that.With the rise of SEO, particularly in the early 2000s, there came a brand-new side of things, which was link building. That has since morphed into what many of us now know as digital PR. However, we've been seeing a blurring of the lines.We can no longer look at traditional PR (newspapers, radio, TV) and digital PR (online content) as two separate things because a brand is living and breathing. It should be the same message everywhere a consumer sees it.It's making sure that we're working together, making content work as hard as possible for that brand – but also, really importantly, staying true to that brand, true to the brand voice, and true to the brand values so that, no matter where a consumer sees you, everything aligns.”

Jeremy Moser discusses how to create a SERP monopoly with off-page SEO. Talking points include: How to crowd SERPs with your brand and capture more mindshare at the bottom of the funnel - Why leveraging paid off-page strategies can still work - Zero click searches are less common at MOFU and BOFU searches, your goal is going narrow and deep and capturing market-share at decision making stages - Topic Taker strategy is not just for traditional blue link SEO, it currently is the most impactful AEO lever you can pull and the window won't last forever...

Eva Cheng shares that aligning social and content strategies will boost your digital PR success.Eva says: “Make your digital PR work harder with social and content alignment.”What does digital PR look like in 2026?“Digital PR in 2026 is all about trying to get your work featured within AI searches.We’re now seeing that a lot of people are relying on AI for the simplest queries, like the best restaurants to go to, travel tips, and advice for something that is a lot simpler and easier than Google.Even with Google’s AI overviews, the main focus at the moment is trying to get that exposure, so that AI recognises it and pulls it through for your brand.”

One of the key reasons why you should be embracing digital PR in 2026 is that AI pays a keen ear to what the press is saying.James says: “You need to be earning press mentions if you want your brand to be recommended by AI-powered search.”Why do you suggest press mentions over other content online?“When I talk about AI-powered search, I'm talking about Google's AI overviews and AI Mode, but also the AI chatbots like ChatGPT and those sorts of platforms.They disproportionately pull their sources from trusted and authoritative sources: third-party mentions on the web. It just so happens that a large percentage of those are what we would class as press publications.It's all rooted in the idea that you can't be recommended as the best if you're the only person who's saying it. When AI-powered platforms are making summaries and recommendations, they're pulling from a multitude of sources, almost for validation that you should be recommended. One of the most effective ways to do that is to get mentioned in the right way in press publications.”

Annabelle Sacher shares that digital PR is one of the most powerful keys you can use to unlock the door to AI search visibility in 2026.Annabelle says: “As we move into 2026, it's clear that AI search strategy needs to become a core focus for us as SEOs.We know that the search landscape is evolving really, really fast. While, currently, AI only makes up a small percentage of the search landscape, it's growing – and it's growing quickly. One of the biggest unlocks/most powerful levers in this new era is digital PR (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a little biased).While general industry consensus suggests that platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia are the most heavily cited by AI systems (which is not untrue), what my peers and I are increasingly noticing across the industry is that features in high-quality, topic-relevant, authoritative publications are having a significant impact on AI-driven search visibility.I'm noticing a really clear trend through my work with clients: AI systems are prioritising credible and relevant media placements, and those are being served more and more frequently in AI-generated responses. This is a really big opportunity for brands to tackle the new world of AI search.If you want to future-proof your SEO strategy, it's key that you invest in digital PR that earns mentions and backlinks from trusted voices in your niche. It's not only going to build more broad brand authority, but position your content, brand, and products to be surfaced by AI – which might very well become the dominant mode of search.”

One way that you can compete with other sites that are relying too heavily on AI is to raise your editorial standards, explains Alex Moss.Alex says: “Be concise and raise the game of your editorial standards.”Why is being concise more important nowadays?“Machines, LLMs, and agents are all ingesting content using tokenization. The more tokenization that's used, the more processing power is required. It’s almost like the content version of site performance and site speed.If there's a slow-loading site, it's going to take a while for people to load, which might impact UX and other metrics like CTR. But when it comes to content, content for content’s sake was a bit of an old, grey hat technique of just scaling content and doing any old thing to get as much exposure, and as many keywords, as possible. Now, being too detailed doesn't always help. Don't blabber on too much, is the informal way of saying it.Often (especially with tech or startup sites), you go to the About page, read four sentences, and you still don't know what they do. They use very colourful, fluffy, and salesy words to impress the human. Right now, though, the audience is not just a human; machines are the audience as well. They're ingesting that content, and they don't get sold by that kind of language. They get sold by direct language: things that get to the point, answer the questions, and solve a problem. That is the direction content should be going.We've let ourselves down over the last few years by lowering the standards of editorial in general, so that anyone can make content for content's sake. Now, this will take away content mediocrity and raise those standards – not just in general everyday content, but also for journalistic editorial content online. They will have to adapt to higher standards in order to have the best exposure.”

Jeremy Horne shares that analytics should be core to your SEO strategy in 2026 Talking points include: What is a media mix model? Why should analytics be at the core of a marketing strategy? How do you use analytics to power a marketing strategy? How often should you revisit your analytics in relation to powering your marketing strategy? What metrics are key? What software do you use? How do you work with other marketing departments? How has this changed over the years? How is this likely to continue to change?

If you’re an e-commerce business, Joe Hale suggests that you may be missing out on a significant ranking opportunity.Joe says: “E-commerce stores need to be using collection pages to maximise the potential of their SEO.”What are collection pages for e-commerce sites?“Collection pages for e-commerce sites are essentially category pages. They are lists of products that live on the site, and there's so much potential that so many brands aren't taking advantage of.There is no technical difference between a collection page and a category page, but I use the term ‘collection’ because that's what it's called on Shopify. Many of our clients (and many e-commerce businesses around the world) use Shopify, and it actually makes it easier to build out these pages.You can build out a collection or a category page across any CMS, but on Shopify, it's so easy to use. It can be done poorly, because the barrier to entry is much lower, but that allows people to get involved, undertake this as a project, and build out this opportunity from a non-branded keyword perspective.When people are doing it poorly, they just build collections for the sake of it, or they might build three different variations of the exact same type of collection. It might be that they exclude one type of product in one, or they built a collection of t-shirts three years ago, and then they built another collection of t-shirts two years ago, and then another one year ago.Actually, part of the process is a lot of cleanup as well. Because it's so easy to fill out these collections, people just go in and make new ones rather than optimizing the ones that are already there.”

Once you know what you want to be an expert in, Andreas Voniatis advises that you should produce meaningful research to stand out in AI search.Andreas says: “Produce scaled insights in your content, to get your website AI-recommended.”Is that the same as scaling content production?“No. Scaled insights is about producing research that has achieved a significant sample size, which means that the insights contained therein, within your content, have significance.That's really important for AI because it means that it's likely to generalise well, and whatever you're describing is likely to apply in the real world.”Is it more linked to enhancing your own personal and brand authority?“That's a very succinct way of putting it.”

One of the big content questions to ask yourself to begin with is: ‘What do you want to be known as an expert in?’ This is something that Pieter Serraris explores.Pieter says: “Don't let AI take away your focus from your bigger SEO strategy.Stay focussed on topics and topical authority.”Should AI be part of your overall SEO strategy?“With a lot of companies, everything seems to revolve around AI: getting ranked in ChatGPT, getting a spot in AI overviews, etc. That seems to be the main focus point for a lot of companies.Brands are suddenly starting to add FAQs en masse, for FAQs that aren't even relevant and are way too broad. I had a client who suddenly started ranking number one for the word ‘bread’, even though they're a B2B ingredient supplier. Adding all of these FAQs shouldn't be your main focus. You should still remember who your audience is and what your SEO strategy is, as it used to be before ChatGPT suddenly came along.A few years ago, we were seeing much more maturity in the SEO world. People were starting to think about EEAT and topical authority. If you looked at LinkedIn two years ago, these were the topics that people were talking about. Now, it's only about AI and how to rank there.Obviously, it is important, but you shouldn't want to rank in these tools just for the sake of ranking; you still have to remember what topics are important for your company and for your interaction with your audience.Take a step back. Make use of ranking in AI platforms like ChatGPT if it's a relevant interaction point for you and your audience, but not just for the sake of a vanity metric. That’s what a lot of SEOs are losing themselves in.”

As we’ve highlighted already (and will undoubtedly continue to be advised in the future), EEAT is just as important as it ever was. This is what Tom Winter believes.Tom says: “Focus on EEAT – but actual EEAT, not the fake one.”What is fake EEAT?“Right now, I see a lot of SEOs trying to figure out how to create EEAT without actually understanding what EEAT is. They are trying to find hacks (because we're SEO experts, we always wanted to find hacks) to simplify the whole thing and add fake EEAT into the articles they're writing.When I'm talking about fake EEAT, I'm talking about just adding a bio or an author to the article and then thinking that you’re done. EEAT is a little bit more than that.Google are now at a place where they understand what is valuable for the end user. There isn’t an easy way to go around it; find some kind of checklist for what we can put into an article, and make it happen. All the keyword-stuffing techniques that we used to use don’t work anymore.We need to do what Google has wanted us to do for the last 20 years and create and add value through our content.”

Tom Vaughton shares that we need to stop relying on the same tools to churn out the same results. Because in the age of AI search, it’s the human SEO perspective and strategist who creates SEO that connects, differentiates, and drives real decisions. Talking points include: What is the value of being quoted in AI? How do you become the brand that AI wants to quote? You advise that SEOs should Stop relying on the same tools to churn out the same results. What do you mean by that? You say that in the age of AI search, it’s the human SEO perspective and strategist who creates SEO that connects, differentiates, and drives real decisions. What do you mean by that? How do you know that customers are making real decisions based upon AI search results? How do you measure the success of this?

We’ve also heard many metrics that demonstrate how short a user’s attention is likely to be once they hit your web page. Sara Fernández Carmona asks whether you’re driving true, demonstrable value straight away.Sara says: “If your value proposition is not instantly clear, above the fold, your SEO efforts won't pay off.A lot of websites look good from an SEO point of view – you’re getting traffic, the rankings are there, etc. – but if people land on the site and they cannot immediately understand what makes you different, they will just leave. Then, all that SEO work doesn't translate into results.”

Not all metrics are tangible, though. Anna Bravington asks us a simple question: Are you proud of the content that you are putting out into the world?Anna says: “As AI becomes part of our workflow, ethical SEO means that you should be creating content that you're proud to put back into the world.”Does ethical SEO mean human-created content?“Not necessarily. I'm a huge believer in AI for helping us do things. It's more about human influence and putting a lens on content, so that we have oversight and can give it checks and balances. As clever as AI is, sometimes it doesn't understand nuances and the issues that it has.When you're looking at AI output, you need to remember that it picks up biases and strange ideas as it’s going along. It’s really good to have a diverse range of humans involved to understand what kind of content we need to be creating to put back into the world. I work a lot in disability forums. I've got ADHD, so I am neurodivergent, and my son's autistic. I am also classed as disabled because I have fibromyalgia. Therefore, I understand when language may be ableist or isn’t taking people with disabilities into account. That means that I can put a human lens onto my content that AI misses. It doesn't understand these nuances of humanity.”

What worked in content marketing 5 years ago isn’t as likely to work now. Araminta Robertson advises us to focus on bottom-of-funnel in 2026.Araminta says: “Now, it's more important than ever to do bottom-of-funnel content to help appear for the right topics and the right keywords in Google, but also for LLMs.”How do you describe the different stages of the funnel, and the content that is needed at each stage?“It's really important to make that distinction because people have different definitions of what each stage in the funnel is.To me, top-of-funnel content is for someone who's not aware. They are still very much at the beginning of their journey in terms of making a purchase. I work in the B2B payments and financial services sector, so I’ll use the example of an e-commerce site or merchant who wants to work with a payment provider and start accepting payments online.At this stage of the funnel, they're still doing a lot of research. How do other companies accept payments online? What different business models are available? They're almost looking for inspiration, and they may not even have a problem yet. They're at a very early stage of their journey.Middle-of-funnel, they are starting to be more aware that they have a problem. They're starting to do research on types of payment providers, what kind of payments they should be accepting, and what the flow should be. They're trying to understand exactly what the problem is, but they may not be looking for a solution just yet.Bottom-of-funnel is someone who's aware they have a problem and is actively looking for a solution. In this case, they're looking for things like ‘top payment gateways,’ ‘how to accept payments online with Stripe,’ or ‘Stripe vs PayPal’.What's key here is that it's non-branded. Often, people assume that the bottom-of-funnel is someone who already knows about your company and is trying to understand how the product works. That could be the case, but I would say that's after the buying journey, because they're already aware of your brand.We're focussed on non-branded bottom-of-funnel: someone who doesn't know that your product exists and is actively looking for a solution to their problem.”

A key way to beat the competition is to learn from other industries. Rosemary Osuoha teaches us what we can learn from healthcare brands.Rosemary says: “Healthcare brands can use AI and SEO to reach more patients using research papers.”How can you use research papers to reach more users, and why is this particularly beneficial for healthcare brands?“First of all, I'm a healthcare professional. I'm a pharmacist, and I also happen to be in SEO. I've been on both sides, from the healthcare perspective and from the SEO perspective.From my experience, research papers are always published in academic journals, and that's it. That content is not always repurposed. I used to make that mistake, but over time I realised that this can be a real content engine.Healthcare brands often invest heavily in research. There's always research work being done. There's always a new innovation or investigation. Sometimes, that research can be beneficial to patients, but they aren’t reading academic journals. Most of the time, patients will just Google their symptoms.If you are not putting that research work where your patients are, you are losing money, and patients are not getting the right information from an authoritative source.Besides healthcare brands, this is also relevant for any business that heavily invests in research work. You can take advantage of this if you do any form of research and produce data and statistics to back up the claims that you are making. Instead of leaving it in Google Scholar, you can also repurpose that into long-form content and redistribute it across different platforms like social media, YouTube, etc.It's relevant to any businesses that carry out research, not just healthcare brands.”

Brandon Leibowitz talks about the importance of focusing on building topical authority in 2026 by creating in-depth content hubs that answer your audience’s questions better than anyone else. Talking points include: What are in-depth content hubs? How do you find your audience’s questions? What metrics do you use to ensure that you are answering the right questions? How do you know what type of content to use? What platform to use? How do you know that these are the right questions? How can you ensure that you are answering these questions better than anyone else?

One of the key challenges at the moment is to identify which tasks should be done by AI and which tasks should be done by a human. This is something that Ahmed Bhula explores.Ahmed says: “Use AI as part of your SEO workflow, and involve the human element at every point.”How do you decide what AI should do and what humans should do?“Where there's administrative work – researching keywords, repetitive tasks, and auditing websites – there's always only one answer, and AI can do a really good job if you train those models for that.On the other hand, when there's actual content, using AI for content is just repeating the same things that are already on the internet, and there's no human creativity behind that. From my experience, search engines don't like it.”

Valentina Stragliotto explores the idea that it’s also key to demonstrate expertise and trustworthiness through high-quality content.Valentina says: “Focus on EEAT and high-quality content.Also, use traditional SEO, as we always have.”Is EEAT just as relevant for newer, AI search engines as it is for more traditional search engines?“We have been talking a lot about GEO as opposed to SEO. After reading a few studies about it, I think that what we have been using for SEO is also applicable for GEO and optimization for these LLM systems.I've been looking at the actions we have to take to optimize for LLM systems. Obviously, there is a big focus on domain authority and branding, which is something that has always been suggested. There have also been quite a few studies showing that there are particular actions related to EEAT and showing trustworthiness and expertise in your content, as opposed to being keyword-focussed and other things that we usually use.Before GEO came into the world, we used to focus on EEAT because we wanted search engines to rank our content and, within the ranking factors, what we had to write for the users and demonstrate was our expertise. This is something that you also have to do for GEO.You have to add statistics, you have to show expertise, you have to cite sources, and you have to make the content fluent, because the new way of searching is with a full-on question rather than a query keyword.Obviously, there is the whole element of structured data, which is also very important because you want the bots to read your content more easily. Again, this has also been important over the last few years because of featured snippets and all the structured content that was appearing on search engines.That’s why I say that this is a very similar trend; we’re just talking about it in a different way.”

Isa Lavahun explains that you can enhance the perceived authority of your content through real, human expertise.Isa says: “Authority should be built on earned expertise.What I mean by that is real experience and credible voices that can’t be easily replicated or automated. In the age of AI, the most humanised content is what’s going to give you competitive edge”How does a person earn that expertise?“As marketers, we all use experts. We use people who are either the face of the brand, founders, product leads, or sector specific specialists – from scientists to nutritionists.Credible experts are always going to be better equipped to help answer the search queries people are looking for. This goes beyond standard EEAT practice because, when AI can produce technically sound content on any topic, expert-attributed content becomes your primary differentiator. Not just expert-reviewed or expert-informed, but expert-led and authored. They need to be front and centre of your content strategy.”

You’ve selected your content distribution opportunities based upon AI and where your audience resides, but your content should be written based upon real, authentic human experience, according to Greg Gifford.Greg says: “Don’t get distracted by all of the AI content on the web.A lot of people are choosing to use AI to write all of their content, but AI is just predicting words based on the content that is already out there. As more of it floods the web, AI is training itself on AI. It's like copying the same VCR tape over and over again, and the quality continues to get worse.The way that businesses and marketers need to combat that is with real, authentic human experience. AI systems and models cannot replicate that.Write your content with humans. Skip the stupid informational stuff. Share authentic experiences and reasons why humans vibe with your company. That's how you're going to win in the future.”

Nick Musica shares that the technical, on-page, and off-page. The expressions of those SEO building blocks have evolved over the years, but they remain the fundamental building blocks. Talking points include: What do you mean by “The expressions of those SEO building blocks have evolved over the years” What are the fundamental SEO building blocks of on-page? What are the fundamental SEO building blocks of off-page? Why do they remain the fundamental building blocks?

When you are creating content, you need to be thinking multimodally, advises Irina Papuc.Irina says: “Think multimodally.A consistent trend that we've seen growing over time is the inclusion of different types of media in search results. AI can already parse images and videos really well, and it can also explain what's depicted in detail.By thinking multimodally, you will increasingly capitalise on this, as AI chunks related concepts across formats into a tailored presentation for the user.”Does multimodal just include video, audio, images, and text?“It also includes things like infographics and diagrams, and it’s about the way you think through what kinds of content and visuals to use, like avoiding stock images and filler, and no longer publishing walls of text.In general, provided that you do things according to best practice and ethics (which includes citing your source), you can definitely use AI-generated content. Google has explicitly said in its best practices that AI-generated content, whether it's visual or written, is okay to use on your site or elsewhere.That's not an issue, but you need to be properly citing whatever you put out there so that you don't accidentally deceive your audience.”

Katherine Nwanorue shares that the content medium you select should be based upon the content medium that your target AI platform prefers.Katherine says: “Multimodal content isn't new, but AI is going to make it non-negotiable.”How would you describe multimodal content?“Basically, it is content that exists across several mediums. We have audio, video, text, and images.For as long as I can remember, SEOs and marketers have always prioritised repurposing content across several mediums: you create a blog post, and then you transform that into video, and into infographics as well. That is multimodal content.”

One of the ways that you can teach AI about what you offer is to enhance your image offering. This is what Desmond Boateng advises.Desmond says: “Use visual commerce, which means using contextual images for e-commerce.Also, for any business that works with products, instead of using plain product photos, use contextual photos with different settings based on AI.”Is there a type of image that you would recommend?“I recommend using context-rich visuals.Think about lifestyle photos and AI-generated product imagery that make the online shopping experience more engaging and trustworthy. That could be 3D renders or lifestyle photos, or it could be using AI to create video based on those high-quality images.

Myriam Jessier highlights the importance of ensuring that machines truly see the precise nature of your products.Myriam says: “Everyone is slowly coming to realise that SEO is changing in many different ways.My tip is to make sure that your brand and your products are machine-readable, because we're dealing with multimodal search now. That means I can take out my phone, take a picture of your product and say, ‘Is this vegan?’ - and I will get the answer right away.SEO is entering the outside world, beyond the web.”

Kirsty McLellan shares that it's key to stop designing SEO pages as AI encyclopaedias — and start designing them as human experiences. Talking points include: How do you design pages for AI and humans? If you design for humans are you less optimised for AI? Can you design separate pages for AI and humans? What does the optimum combined optimised page look like? Is it worthwhile to still optimize for humans? Are humans still visiting websites? What are the metrics to measure success?

Tory Gray highlights that community blends the worlds of AI and SEO together. Tory says: “Drop the AI and SEO binary and redirect that effort into tactics, including community-building tactics, that increase visibility across both platforms.” Are you saying that anything you do for SEO is naturally optimizing for AI as well? “Not inherently everything, but there is significant overlap. It’s similar to local SEO versus traditional on-site SEO, or perhaps SEO for Bing versus Google. We might be measuring the same tactics, but they can be measured in different ways, and we might value those tactics differently. There may be changes across what we do for those platforms, and we can and should be thoughtful about how we do that, but there’s a significant overlap and work that benefits both.

Jon Mest shares that AI needs human interaction in order to be confident in the authority of recommendations. Jon says: “User intent matters more than ever in AI search.” How do you determine what the user intent is in AI search? “So much of traditional SEO is about building your backlink profile, making sure that other reputable sites reference you, and making sure that other people say that you are who you are and you're authoritative. That still matters, but more so now than ever. When the AI thinks about who to recommend as a brand, they care about real, actual humans saying you are a good brand. That is things such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube comments. It includes case studies, user testimonials, review sites, etc. Those all really matter to the AI when they think about how you should be referenced as a brand.”

An extremely popular community platform in 2026 is Reddit, and building your own branded subreddit is something that Chris Meabe recommends. Chris says: “Make your own branded subreddit. The fact that Reddit is dominating the SERPs right now is something that everyone is noticing, even people who aren't SEO specialists. It's a really fast and underappreciated way to start ranking for a lot of high-difficulty keywords, and it doesn't have to be too difficult either.”

Erin Simmons shares that, although AI is important, users still rely on communities to assist with the final buying decision. Erin says: “In 2026, we’re already starting to see that AI is where people start their research, and community is where people make up their minds. Therefore, in 2026, the smartest SEO strategies are going to optimize for both.” Is it becoming the norm for people to use AI for search? “People are getting AI more directly in their faces through things like AIO, but I don't think that the average person is going to ChatGPT or Perplexity specifically. If your demographic is my mother's demographic, I know she's not going to ChatGPT. However, she does use Google a lot, so she is experiencing AI Mode.

Richard George shares that content decay, where website content becomes outdated or irrelevant, negatively impacts user engagement, SEO, and brand reputation, and requires practical strategies and tools for identification and management to keep content fresh and effective. Talking points include: How do you identify ineffective content? What metrics do you look at? What has the zero click serp done to identifying this content? What do you do about it? Should you delete old content? How does this feed into content strategy?

Andrew Stubbs suggests that, once you understand your consumers, you should be ensuring that your content is structured appropriately to be featured by AI search engines. Andrew says: “There is a growing need to understand an awful lot more about consumer activity in terms of where they're actually searching. People used to go on about voice search, which is obviously important, but now you should really be trying to own the answer layer. By that, I'm referring to AI citations and references. When I type something into Google, I generally go to two places. I might go to Google to ask a question and get an answer, or to help me on my fact-finding or information-gathering journey. Otherwise, I'll go to ChatGPT, Claude, or any of the other AI engines, and I'll ask them for their recommendation.

Christopher Hofman Laursen shares that once you’ve mapped out your customer journey, it’s time to determine where AI is going to help you. Christopher says: “Take a step back and really try to understand where generated AI platforms will fit into the customer journey.” Do you do that by instinct, or is there research and data you can use to determine where that's likely to be? “First off, it's super important to realise that there's so much noise in the market at the moment. Right now, we're talking about ‘GEO’ as a new SEO discipline, trying to optimize for generative AI engines. There are former SEO consultants now going all-in on GEO. You see future crypto bros trying to get their foot in the door and creating blank canvas agencies competing against the established agencies. There's a lot of noise to declutter at first.

Gianluca Fiorelli advises that, to truly understand and deliver for your customer in 2026, you should be revisiting how you utilise clustering at every touchpoint. Gianluca says: “Rethink the concept of clustering. We usually think of clustering as something that is only for creating content, especially in the informational space. However, we know that we need to be visible along the entire search journey and customer journey. This means we must be visible with our informational content, but also our commercial, navigational, and transactional content – to use the classic definitions for intent. When you cluster, you need to do so for different types of clusters. The first one is still clustering for topics: entity search, and so on. Then, it is also interesting and very effective to start clustering these queries and segments for other things, like the buyer personas that are implied by these queries. You can cluster them by sentiment, in order to understand the urgency and needs that are implied by those searches.

Becky Simms shares that user intent doesn’t stand still, and this is something that you should be continually analysing. Becky says: “We are seeing huge shifts in how people search, and you need to stay on top of that, but not just by looking at what platforms are doing. You need to understand what users are doing, and how their intent is changing where they search.”

Joao Pereira shares the importance of being where your users are. Talking points include: How do you know where your users are? How do you identify who your users are? What tools do you use to help to identify where they interact? What do you do once you know where your users are? How does this fit into your marketing funnel? What measurable SEO benefit does this have?

It’s one thing to understand who your audience is, but how do you get a true sense of what your customers experience? Eli Schwartz advises walking a mile in their shoes. Eli says: “Map out your customer journey and figure out where search fits.” How do you start mapping an actual search journey? “It's very, very simple: you switch chairs. Marketers always have this marketing hat on when they're trying to sell something. Their boss gives them something, or it's their own product, and they put their marketing hat on. ‘What are the things I need to do? How do I package this? How do I promote it? What should the price be for SEO? What should my keywords be? What should my pages look like? How much content do I need? Who am I going to hire to do this?’

Will Slater uses a ’90s analogy to demonstrate the importance of being unique, even though it takes a little bit longer to get done. Will says: “Be more mixtape, specifically when you're writing content. To explain that, I need to take you back in time to the mid-90s. I'm a big music fan, I have been for most of my life, and my formative years with music were in the ‘90s. Back then, there were two main ways to share music: listening to the radio and making mixtapes and sharing those mixtapes with your friends. Now, creating mixtapes was hard work. It was a faff because you had to figure out exactly what tracks were going to be in what order. You had to sit in front of your stereo, picking out your records or your CDs and pressing ‘play’ and ‘record’ on your tape deck. However, that meant that every mixtape that anybody made was special because people put so much thought and effort into it.