SEO in 2026

Majestic.com
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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. Refocus on topical authority – with Pieter Serraris

    20 HRS AGO

    Refocus on topical authority – with Pieter Serraris

    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.”

    16 min
  2. Focus on genuine EEAT to determine what valuable content looks like – with Tom Winter

    1D AGO

    Focus on genuine EEAT to determine what valuable content looks like – with Tom Winter

    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.”

    16 min
  3. Win by being the brand that AI wants to quote - Tom Vaughton

    2D AGO

    Win by being the brand that AI wants to quote - Tom Vaughton

    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?

    15 min
  4. Make your value clear and undeniable as soon as your page is opened – with Sara Fernández Carmona

    3D AGO

    Make your value clear and undeniable as soon as your page is opened – with Sara Fernández Carmona

    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.”

    15 min
  5. Be proud of what you are putting out into the world – with Anna Bravington

    4D AGO

    Be proud of what you are putting out into the world – with Anna Bravington

    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.”

    18 min
  6. Zero in on bottom-of-funnel – with Araminta Robertson

    APR 10

    Zero in on bottom-of-funnel – with Araminta Robertson

    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.”

    17 min
  7. Share your research findings to reach more users – with Rosemary Osuoha

    APR 9

    Share your research findings to reach more users – with Rosemary Osuoha

    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.”

    16 min
  8. Focus on building topical authority in 2026 - Brandon leibowitz

    APR 8

    Focus on building topical authority in 2026 - Brandon leibowitz

    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?

    19 min
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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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