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 24, 2025 • 17min
In an AI search-first world, brands should move beyond "links for links’ sake" - with Charlie Clark
Charlie Clark shares that as we move towards an AI search-first world, brands should move beyond "links for links’ sake" and focus on semantically relevant brand mentions that align with key topics and entities, helping AI engines better understand, associate, and prioritise them in results.Talking points include:What’s an example of links for links’ sake?How do we focus on semantically relevant brand mentions?How do we measure the success of semantically relevant brand mentions?How do we ensure that semantically relevant brand mentions align with key topics and entities?Why does this help AI?How do we measure success?
Dec 23, 2025 • 18min
Aim for recognition over rankings – with Sukhjinder Singh
Following on from Aleyda’s advice to optimize for citation-worthiness, Sukhjinder Singh shares that brand recognition is key.Sukhjinder says: “Say goodbye to rankings and hello to recognition. It's time to appear everywhere.”Why is it time to say goodbye to rankings?“It's not a complete goodbye, but it’s changing your mindset. We're still comfortable with tracking ranking positions as one of our main metrics, and it should be one of our metrics, but we need to become more comfortable with appearing in different ways and broadening our idea of what it means to be discoverable.We should be focussing on things like brand mentions, entity strength, visual content, and all the different ways that you're surfaced in the SERPs and the more conversational interactions across platforms.It's broadening that idea and getting out of the comfort zone of tracking the top 10 ranking positions. Even now, that has been made more difficult with Google's change to pagination and how tools are picking up information from beyond position 10.It’s not a complete goodbye, but it’s time to open your mind to other ways of tracking brand recognition instead.”
Dec 22, 2025 • 18min
Become worthy of citations – with Aleyda Solis
Aleyda Solis, an international SEO consultant and founder, discusses optimizing for citation-worthiness in this insightful discussion. She defines the importance of establishing authority and aligning SEO efforts with a brand's unique selling proposition. Aleyda emphasizes the balance between covering broad topics and focusing on business-relevant angles. She also encourages leveraging internal experts for content creation and cautions against shallow, off-brand content that may suffer from Google updates. Lastly, she highlights the role of AI in enhancing, rather than replacing, human expertise.
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, a Technical SEO specialist, dives into the essentials of crawling and indexing management for 2026. He emphasizes the need for effective strategies to ensure both traditional and LLM crawlers can discover your content without blockers. Key topics include the differences between crawling and indexing for various types of crawlers, how to surface valuable content, and the importance of integrating crawl monitoring into your workflow. McLoughlin also shares tips on optimizing internal linking and prioritizing high-value pages for maximum visibility.
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.
