SEO in 2026
Majestic.com
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
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
Episodes
Mentioned books
Dec 19, 2025 • 15min
Make friends with brand marketers – with Joshua Squires
However, not all SEOs understand the key elements of brand marketing – and if you’re fortunate enough to have specialist brand marketers in your organisation, take advantage of that!Joshua says: “Brand marketers should be SEOs’ best friends.”Why is that?“Brand marketing reaches where SEO can't. It drives demand, and it drives search interest.SEO has always been an inbound channel, but lately, inbound is getting harder. With things like zero-click searches and AI overviews, the opportunities for getting the click are increasingly challenging, but brand search has always been very high intent and very high click-through rate, and it's also a ranking signal.Working with our friends over in the brand channel, we should be devising strategies to drive more branded search, and SEO should be doing more to help the brand teams deliver on all of their work and communicate those results.”
Dec 18, 2025 • 19min
Make your brand front of mind in any conversation online – with Ashley Liddell
One element of SEO that’s more important than ever is Brand SEO. Brand SEO, according to Ashley Liddell, should be the essence of what SEO is nowadays.Ashley says: “Treat SEO as more of a brand-building activity.Look beyond the traditional KPIs of visibility and towards making your brand the preferred choice in any conversation that's relevant to you.That will make you front of mind and grow your brand awareness and brand presence.”
Dec 17, 2025 • 17min
Crawling and indexing management needs to be a corner stone of your SEO strategy - James McLoughlin
James McLoughlin shares that crawling and indexing management needs to be a corner stone of your SEO strategy in 2026, ensuring crawlers (both traditional search engine crawlers and LLM crawlers) can quickly and easily discover, understand and index any content you want surfaced in search engines and LLMs.Talking points include:What does crawling and indexing management mean in practice in 2026?How do you ensure that crawlers (both traditional search engine crawlers and LLM crawlers) can quickly and easily discover, understand and index any content you want surfaced?What is the difference between crawling and indexing management for traditional search engines versus LLMs?How do you determine the content you want to be surfaced?What do you do with the content you don’t want to be surfaced?How does this feed into your content marketing strategy?
Dec 16, 2025 • 16min
Stop worrying about what it’s called; worry about what you need to do – with Charlie Whitworth
With so many changes in the space, new acronyms have appeared in an attempt to describe the newer activities involved in SEO job roles. However, that’s a distraction, says Charlie Whitworth.Charlie says: “Forget the acronyms, particularly with AI search and SEO.Let's stop focusing on what it's called and focus on what we need to do.”Do acronyms not assist with articulating how SEO has changed?“I don’t think that SEO has ever been a good description of what we do. It's always been a fairly inaccurate acronym, given that we don't actually optimize search engines; we optimize websites.The term SEO has never been particularly accurate, but never more so than now. A lot of time, money, and effort have been spent debating whether or not we're still SEOs, whether SEO is dead, whether we should be called GEOs, LLMEOs, etc. It's a big waste of time.It worries me how much time we're spending talking about these acronyms and not talking about what we should be doing. Who cares what the acronym is? The key is the work.This constant obsession with SEO being dead or being called the right thing always comes back, whether it was after the death of link building or after Penguin and Panda. Obviously, the emergence of AI has exacerbated that. I don't think many other marketing industries are constantly talking about whether or not their acronym is accurate.What we need to be doing is focusing on what's going to drive growth for clients.”
Dec 15, 2025 • 17min
Utilise SEO to tackle highly regulated industries – with Nikolas Monti-Potsolakis
Nikolas Monti-Potsolakis shares that you can take learnings from SEO changes in highly regulated industries like iGaming and apply them to other sectors.Nikolas says: “In regulated sectors, like the iGaming space, companies need to keep SEO relevant and part of their strategy.The iGaming industry is growing across all continents, and SEO shouldn't just be part of your campaign; it should be part of your infrastructure as a company.It will still remain the number one growth factor. Despite all the LLMs, AI, applications, and all these things, SEO is still relevant and should still be relevant if you want to grow your company and succeed in 2026, especially in a very regulated market like iGaming.”
Dec 12, 2025 • 17min
Change your approach if you want to score high-paying clients – with Adrijana Vujadin
It’s not only SEOs in larger organisations that now have a greater requirement to understand and relate to business leaders. This is becoming increasingly important for independent SEO consultants, too. Adrijana says: “Acquiring high-paying SEO clients requires a different approach that a lot of SEOs are not talking about.”Why does it require a different approach, and what does that approach look like?“When you want to move from full-time SEO to freelancing SEO, or get your own clients on the side, most SEOs are not thinking about the fact that it’s a completely new skill. You already have SEO experience and knowledge, but when you want to get a client, that is a business skill, which you probably haven't developed yet.
Dec 11, 2025 • 16min
Guide your business into the agentic unknown – with Ben Howe
In addition to SEOs facing their own traffic challenges, many alsofind themselves tasked with guiding their business leaders through themassive change driven by AI agents.Ben says: “Guide your C-suite into the great agentic unknown, because if youdon't, then nobody else is going to.”What is the great agentic unknown?“I'm talking about the nature of AI agents using websites in the same way that human customers conventionally would. They are researching a topic on behalf of a user based on a prompt, and can go from researching all the way to getting quotes or even adding things to a shopping cart.
Dec 10, 2025 • 16min
One Thing Remains Constant in SEO - with Martina Kölsch
Martina Kölsch shares that the Panda Update in 2011 was one of the first major changes by Google that she encountered. SEO is continually evolving, yet one thing remains constant: prioritising a solid SEO foundation, a clear structure, and excellent content. Many tend to overlook these essentials whenever a new trend emerges.Discussion points include:What are the key SEO essentials that many SEOs tend to overlook?Why do SEOs overlook these fundamentals?What benefit do these fundamentals provide in 2026?How do you measure the impact of the fundamentals?When a new trend emerges, how do you know if it is worth spending your time on?How do you continue to ensure that you are focusing on the most impactful activities?
Dec 9, 2025 • 18min
Diversify your revenue streams to survive the zero-click era – with Jack Chambers-Ward
One continuing trend within SEO in 2026 is the ever-increasing degree of difficulty when it comes to driving traffic from organic search. Jack Chambers-Ward advises that this should motivate you to reevaluate your overarching content publishing model.Jack says: “Create and monetise content to survive the upcoming zero-click era of search.”Will we be in an all-encompassing zero-click non-traffic era at some point in the future?“It certainly feels like we're heading that way. With a lot of what Google has been talking about recently – particularly with AI Mode, this is the looming topic in SEO right now.
Dec 8, 2025 • 17min
Sell resilience and become the glue that holds an organisation together – with Keith Goode
Increasingly, it seems as though SEO needs to be a complete organisational approach rather than a marketing channel, and this way of thinking is backed by Keith Goode.Keith says: “The SEO who secures buy-in isn't selling rankings, they're selling resilience.”What kind of resilience are you selling?“More specifically, it's organisational resilience.One of the challenges that you will face as an in-house SEO, and oftentimes as a consultant for companies, is getting buy-in for the things that you're recommending for sites – and this problem evolves just like our industry evolves.
