SEO in 2026

Majestic.com
  • 2.0 (2)
  • MARKETING

SEO is continuing to change at an alarming pace. And yet, in some sense, the principles of good SEO remain the same. Hello, and welcome to SEO in 2026 – a significant repository of current thinking from many of the world’s leading SEOs. We're pleased to be able to welcome you to the fifth book and fifth series in this podcast, now well and truly an annual tradition, brought to you by Majestic. “How people search has seen a bigger shift in the last 12 months than the last 12 years, and this makes SEOin2026 a must-read for anyone working in the industry. Majestic has brought together 117 of the SEO industry's brightest minds to share their insights into what matters, and what doesn't, to continue to drive growth with organic search during a period of massive uncertainty, and the book should be seen as a valuable reference point to keep your strategy on the right track.” JAMES BROCKBANK Managing Director and Founder, Digitaloft “I highly recommend that every SEO professional set aside a couple of days for SEOin2026. You'll thank me for helping you plan your year effectively. I'm extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside some of the world's leading SEO champions.” NITIN MANCHANDA Founder & Chief SEO Consultant, Botpresso “This collection of wisdom from many of the best minds in SEO today is a great line in the sand of where we as an industry are, what problems we face, and how we tackle them. Anyone in SEO or marketing should be dipping into this on a regular basis.” SIMON COX Technical SEO Consultant, Cox and Co. Creative “This series continues to be the industry’s leading source of the most timely advice a marketer could ever want. The most forward-thinking SEO experts in the world come together once a year to create this invaluable collection of new knowledge that should never be passed up on!” PAM AUNGST CRONIN President and Founder, Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth Search and Analytics “2025 has been a sprint for the SEO industry, with AI reshaping how we understand visibility, relevance, and authority. SEOin2026 is not just another trends book; it’s a roadmap for what’s actually coming. I loved being part of it and seeing how experts around the world approach the same challenges from different angles.” RAMONA JOITA SEO Consultant and Founder “David is good at drawing out the substance of a conversation. He will explore the topic and challenge assumptions, steer the conversation into an unexpected direction, and build on your ideas – making you think a bit deeper and sharper. Our recent conversation flew by as always, and as always – I’ve come out energised about the topic with more to think about.” SUKHJINDER SINGH Freelance SEO Consultant

  1. Avoid client-side routing and rendering – with Simone De Palma

    2 DAYS AGO

    Avoid client-side routing and rendering – with Simone De Palma

    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.

    19 min
  2. Put your best foot forward with consistent data – with Kaspar Szymanski

    3 DAYS AGO

    Put your best foot forward with consistent data – with Kaspar Szymanski

    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.”

    17 min
  3. SEO is not dying, but bad SEO is - Krešimir Ćorluka

    4 DAYS AGO

    SEO is not dying, but bad SEO is - Krešimir Ćorluka

    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.

    18 min
  4. Show AI crawlers what you want them to see – with Arnout Hellemans

    5 DAYS AGO

    Show AI crawlers what you want them to see – with Arnout Hellemans

    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.”

    15 min
  5. Strengthen your foundations with technical SEO and user experience – with Iva Jovanovic

    6 DAYS AGO

    Strengthen your foundations with technical SEO and user experience – with Iva Jovanovic

    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.”

    19 min
  6. Don’t accept a janky website – with Jono Alderson

    1 MAY

    Don’t accept a janky website – with Jono Alderson

    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.”

    17 min
  7. Bring together your traditional, digital, and brand PR – with Charlotte Crowther

    30 APR

    Bring together your traditional, digital, and brand PR – with Charlotte Crowther

    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.”

    15 min
  8. How To Create a SERP Monopoly with Off-Page SEO - Jeremy Moser

    29 APR

    How To Create a SERP Monopoly with Off-Page SEO - Jeremy Moser

    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...

    19 min
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Ratings & Reviews

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About

SEO is continuing to change at an alarming pace. And yet, in some sense, the principles of good SEO remain the same. Hello, and welcome to SEO in 2026 – a significant repository of current thinking from many of the world’s leading SEOs. We're pleased to be able to welcome you to the fifth book and fifth series in this podcast, now well and truly an annual tradition, brought to you by Majestic. “How people search has seen a bigger shift in the last 12 months than the last 12 years, and this makes SEOin2026 a must-read for anyone working in the industry. Majestic has brought together 117 of the SEO industry's brightest minds to share their insights into what matters, and what doesn't, to continue to drive growth with organic search during a period of massive uncertainty, and the book should be seen as a valuable reference point to keep your strategy on the right track.” JAMES BROCKBANK Managing Director and Founder, Digitaloft “I highly recommend that every SEO professional set aside a couple of days for SEOin2026. You'll thank me for helping you plan your year effectively. I'm extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside some of the world's leading SEO champions.” NITIN MANCHANDA Founder & Chief SEO Consultant, Botpresso “This collection of wisdom from many of the best minds in SEO today is a great line in the sand of where we as an industry are, what problems we face, and how we tackle them. Anyone in SEO or marketing should be dipping into this on a regular basis.” SIMON COX Technical SEO Consultant, Cox and Co. Creative “This series continues to be the industry’s leading source of the most timely advice a marketer could ever want. The most forward-thinking SEO experts in the world come together once a year to create this invaluable collection of new knowledge that should never be passed up on!” PAM AUNGST CRONIN President and Founder, Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth Search and Analytics “2025 has been a sprint for the SEO industry, with AI reshaping how we understand visibility, relevance, and authority. SEOin2026 is not just another trends book; it’s a roadmap for what’s actually coming. I loved being part of it and seeing how experts around the world approach the same challenges from different angles.” RAMONA JOITA SEO Consultant and Founder “David is good at drawing out the substance of a conversation. He will explore the topic and challenge assumptions, steer the conversation into an unexpected direction, and build on your ideas – making you think a bit deeper and sharper. Our recent conversation flew by as always, and as always – I’ve come out energised about the topic with more to think about.” SUKHJINDER SINGH Freelance SEO Consultant

Information

  • Creator
    Majestic.com
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    500
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Majestic.com
  • Show Website
    SEO in 2026

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