Podcast
SEO in 2026
Hosted by Majestic.com · EN
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
110episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Embrace scepticism and think more critically – with Petra Kis-Herczegh
Jun 2500:16:33Tap to summarizePetra Kis-Herczegh encourages you to be more critical in your thinking – and not to initially accept everything at face value.Petra says: “Embrace healthy scepticism.In a time where the SEO industry is drowning in new AI metrics, from AIO attribution to vector index presence, we need to understand that we don't have robust, standardised methods to validate these just yet.When tools show you things like AI visibility, you should be asking: What's the sample size behind this? What's that number or percentage based on? How are these metrics defined? Is the tool actually using LLM training data, or are they reverse-engineering the attribution models?Embracing healthy scepticism and using critical thinking isn't a new thing. It's not a new process; we’ve had to use it before, but this situation makes it crucial. Previously, when featured snippets appeared, we had to completely rethink how we evaluated our existing Google Search Console data, because it now meant something different because of the change, and it was in a new context. We’ve had to ask these questions, and not just chase new metrics, but evaluate the data that we are basing decisions on.Part of the problem now is that people are trying to look at these shiny new metrics as something that they can base decisions on, when they actually might change in a month or two. Everyone's still collecting data, looking at that attribution model, and trying to learn how these LLMs understand your websites, do vector embeddings, understand context, and serve answers – and the models change all the time as well, so that plays a part.Before you bet your credibility on a shiny new dashboard, you need to ask yourself: What would you actually do differently with this data? Do you have any other way to validate this from something that you already trust and know to be proven?If you can't answer those questions, you are just chasing the hype instead of thinking critically.”
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What Data Sources Should You Be Feeding LLMs? With Andrew Melnychuk Oseen
Jun 2400:16:25Tap to summarizeAndrew Melnychuk Oseen shares that for effective SEO in 2026 you should be aware of what data sources you're feeding LLMs. Discussion points include: What data sources should you be hooking up to LLMs? What are your go-to LLMs at the moment and why? What are the common mistakes that tend to be made in doing this? What end result are you looking for? Is there any data type that you shouldn’t be getting LLMs to analyse, where human SEOs should be doing the analysis by themselves? You say that AI isn't going to replace human judgement - what does this mean in practice?
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Be flexible and prepare to adapt – with Manu Madeddu
Jun 2300:16:08Tap to summarizeManu Madeddu highlights that the ever-changing world of SEO means that flexibility and being able to continually adapt will be integral parts of future success.Manu says: “Be flexible and be ready to face the unknown.Essentially, be prepared to adapt to all the new and broader challenges we have as marketers, and also flexible enough and ready to absorb knowledge, data, and information about things you might not know, but need to explore.”How do you incorporate flexibility into an SEO strategy?“Long story short, try to anticipate trends. Be flexible by being able to detect trends and adjust your strategy on the go. Don't be stiff and only stick to what was planned 6 or 12 months before, because trends can change swiftly nowadays.Also, you might find that users are changing their behaviour. They may be using a feature or a platform now, but then switch because of recent changes and technological advancements. That’s the kind of flexibility you need in terms of technology and strategy.You also need to be able to discuss and have a more holistic approach. Don't just focus on what you do as a marketer. SEOs tend to work in their silo and just focus on Excel spreadsheets and optimizations. Now, you need to be flexible. Discuss with other teams and other channels to find the best way to achieve the business targets – not only for your channel but overall.”
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Surround yourself with the right people – with Sarah McDowell
Jun 2200:15:54Tap to summarizeSarah McDowell shares that surrounding yourself with the right people is a key part of maintaining personal growth.Sarah says: “Community and your inner circle are not only essential for your well-being, but they are also so important for your career progression as well.”Why is community relevant to SEO?“When it comes to SEO and career progression, as in any industry, looking after your own well-being and looking after yourself is so important. It prevents things like burnout, imposter syndrome, not feeling confident enough to push yourself forward, and not having confidence in your own skills.One of the reasons why Tazmin and I started the SEO Mindset Podcast is that there are lots of great podcasts out there that tell you how to do SEO, but there was a gap for a podcast talking about career progression, personal growth, and mental health for those who work in SEO.Those softer skills are really important. They're at the core of all of that lovely growth.”
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Invest in your skillset to advance your career – with Helen Pollitt
Jun 1900:16:32Tap to summarizeOur final chapter begins with Helen Pollitt taking a look at the skills you need to personally build, to remain as relevant as possible in the SEO workforce for many years to come.Helen says: “Keep your SEO career on track.When it comes to your skillset, you need to stop thinking of ‘SEO versus GEO’. Instead, you need to understand how to apply your organic discoverability skills to each and every channel that you may need to – and how you can use AI to enhance those skills.”How much of your SEO time should you focus on developing those skills?“SEO is a career that is constantly changing, and not just in the sense that what works in SEO is changing. The tools and educational platforms that are available are changing as well.As a result of that, we really need to be investing a lot in our own careers and in our skill sets. I like to spend at least a little bit of time every day dipping into articles, watching webinars, or just making sure that there's no breaking news within the SEO industry that I'm missing.Treat it like an investment. Make sure that you are spending a significant portion of your time investing in those skills and keeping current with what's going on, without succumbing to the hype and fear-mongering that also seems to go around the space at the moment.”
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Be both discoverable and recognisable – with Ray Saddiq
Jun 1800:16:23Tap to summarizeRay Saddiq shares that you need to be both recognisable and discoverable in 2026. Ray says: “If you want to seriously influence your consumer moving forward, brand alone is not going to cut it.We got into this mindset that brand was going to be key to driving SEO success, and it plays a huge part, but if you want to grow and stay top-of-mind, you need to drive demand and be discoverable. It's not just an awareness thing anymore. You need a combination of both. It's not enough to be known; you need to be found as well.That means building brand and category salience. You've got to own your category in search so that, moving forward – with LLMs, AI search, and social search – you are the brand that has salience to the category that you want to be known for. You’re the one most closely related to that category.This can’t just happen across Google. This needs to be across every searchable platform, because that's where intent starts now.”
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Most sites have high search visibility but zero AI citations - with Nickolass Jensen
Jun 1700:24:37Tap to summarizeNickolass Jensen shares that most sites have high search visibility but zero AI citations, and the gap is diagnosable, measurable, and fixable with a structured three-layer audit. Talking points include... The three-layer diagnostic: Why sites fail AI visibility at the human layer (UX/trust), the search layer (authority/structure), or the AI layer (machine-readable proof) - and why fixing the wrong layer first wastes months. AI crawler visibility: Server log analysis reveals real-time and historical crawl patterns from GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot - most site owners have no idea which AI bots visit them, how often, or what they fetch. The gap between what AI crawlers index and what gets cited is where the work happens. GEO in 2026 is still mostly theoretical. The only practical path forward is tools that enforce structured execution. Rankings remain infrastructure, but the real competitive moat is whether an LLM cites you when a buyer asks. Read the full transcript of Nickolass's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2026/additional-insights/nickolass-jensen
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Don’t trust the data – with Dixon Jones
Jun 1600:15:01Tap to summarizeWhen you’re analysing data, you shouldn’t necessarily treat it at face value, shares Dixon Jones.Dixon says: “You need to think about what you are trying to measure.Buyer behaviour is changing dramatically with the advent of AI. Users are going to be sending out their little AI bots to ask questions on your website instead of going there themselves.If you're trying to buy a vacuum cleaner, you might ask, ‘What's the best vacuum cleaner for pet hair?’ Of course, Shark, Dyson, and Hoover all want to be in that list of recommendations, but it's the AI that's going to do the investigating.Potentially, an AI is going to go and find these brands, have a look at those brands, compare the information about pet hair, and then come back and provide an answer to the user that says, ‘X brand is slightly better than Y brand for this particular type of pet hair.’ At that point, the user doesn't need to click on any of the websites, but they will still buy a Shark, a Dyson, an Electrolux, or whatever it may be. They'll have made their decision.All of the metrics that we've been using for the last 20 years have measured the visitors that come to the website. That's been a key performance metric: has your visitor come from search, from pay-per-click, from direct, affiliate, etc.? That's been the mentality, but that doesn't really work in an AI-driven world.Firstly, that’s because AI is doing the search for you. Secondly, the AI doesn't typically trigger a visit on most web analytics systems. Most web analytics systems are JavaScript-based: the web page loads, it triggers a JavaScript call, and that will record the visitor. However, LLMs are really lazy when it comes to crawling the site. They just want the text. If the text doesn't appear, they can't be bothered to call the JavaScript.Often, it won't even come up as a click in your systems, so you're going to have to change the way you measure success.”
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Track more than basic keywords – with Andy Mollison
Jun 1500:17:26Tap to summarizeSomething else that’s arguably changed a great deal in the past few years is keyword research. Andy Mollison advises on tracking more than basic keywords.Andy says: “In a world of generative AI, keyword tracking as we know it is no longer good enough.”Why is keyword tracking no longer good enough?“The way we track performance in SEO has historically been through organic sessions, organic revenue, organic lead generation, and that kind of thing. Obviously, that is still very relevant, but it's also been about keyword position tracking as well – tracking your individual single keywords, or long tail keywords, or whatever it is you're tracking.To an extent, that's still fine. However, you can’t ignore what’s going on. If you're not tracking outside of that, you're not tracking your performance as a whole. With AI overviews, AI Mode, and ChatGPT, people are searching in so many different ways now. Tracking keywords is not everything anymore.”
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Target AI search visibility with new metrics – with Marta Szmidt
Jun 1200:14:41Tap to summarizeFollowing on from the previous ‘Testing’ chapter, Marta Szmidt begins chapter 19 with an introduction to newer metrics that you should be considering.Marta says: “You need to add new metrics for measuring SEO success and face the reality that search has changed.It's no longer the same traditional search engines we used to know, and you need to adapt to the reality. You need to combine classic traditional SEO metrics with new ones that target AI search visibility.”Which metrics aren't as relevant anymore, compared to the metrics that you have to focus on in 2026?“There has been a big shift in metrics. Clicks, organic traffic, and click-through rate have all been hit by what is happening with the shift in search behaviour, so they have become less relevant. They're not going to give you the picture in the same way they used to.We are seeing a big rise in zero-click search results. People find the answer very quickly now with AI tools, and even if you appear in an AI overview, that doesn't mean that the user will click on to your site. This shift means that we’re seeing a drop in clicks and organic traffic.In the same way, the rankings are not going to show us the whole picture because, according to some data, 36% of people in the US will be using AI for search by 2028. We need to adapt to it. That doesn't mean that the normal traditional search and engagement metrics are going to disappear, but we need to adapt and find the metrics that are relevant for us now, with AI search in the picture.”
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