SEO in 2022: Recent Episodes
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We asked SIXTY-SIX! of the world's leading SEOs to share their number one actionable tip for 2022. Check out our SEO in 2022 guide to learn from the best in the business, helping you stay one-step ahead of your competitors as we head into a new year... You would have thought that if we asked SIXTY-SIX SEOs the same question (What is your number 1 SEO tip for 2022?) then we would receive lots of similar answers. Not at all. The industry is now so rich and varied that most contributors came up with an entirely different answer. Even where the topics were similar, the perspectives were very different. The advice in this book ranges from doubling-down on evergreen strategies to finding new and better ways to identify opportunities, how the SERP is changing, next generation tech, and so much more.
The tips tips naturally break down in to 12 different chapters, and that those chapters fell into 4 main sections – EVALUATE, PLAN, DELIVER, and CANI.
SECTION 1: EVALUATE The first section, EVALUATE, contains the first 3 chapters – ‘Modern SEO’, ‘Strong Foundations’, and ‘Prioritise’. These tips are focusing on the ongoing, key elements of SEO that you can’t ignore, year after year. Included are tips on focusing in the areas where you are likely to have the biggest impact, how to build a technically sound website in 2022, and how to determine your ongoing strategy - partly based upon thorough competitor analysis.
SECTION 2: PLAN After the evaluation phase, Section 2 looks at how to PLAN your SEO activities for 2022, under the chapters: ‘Site Structure’, ‘Keyword Research’ and ‘User Behaviour’. Here we include tips on how to use Schema to educate Google about the uniqueness and specificity of your content, why mapping keywords to personas and user journeys is essential, and how search engines are moving towards gaining a better understanding of user intent. SECTION 3: DELIVER Next up is the DELIVER section, including the chapters ‘Content Creation’, ‘Links’ and ‘Keep an Eye on the SERP’. Shared in this section is the fact that your job as an SEO is to help searchers get the answer that they’re looking for. Also included are tips around how to build high-quality, original content assets, and why the SERP isn’t just the place that sends you traffic – it can also be a wonderful source of competitive intelligence. SECTION 4: CANI Finishing us up is section 4: CANI - CONSTANT and NEVER-ENDING IMPROVEMENT. An SEO’s work is never done – and if you ever think it is, that’s probably a sign that your competitors are about to surpass you. In this section of ‘SEO in 2022’, we look at topics such as why you need to be using Google Search Console on a daily basis, how machine learning could improve an SEO’s life, and why training the next generation of SEOs is so important.
There’s a lot to explore – some of it will already be top-of-mind. Other elements will be waiting for you to discover.
Join SIXTY-SIX of the world's leading SEOs to discover SEO in 2022.
Brett Farmiloe discusses why journalist request platforms are so important for SEO with David Bain. Talking points include: What is Help a Reporter Out? You’re founder of Featured.com - what does that offer? How do these platforms actually work? Who uses them? What can you actually gain from using these platforms? What are some Best practices for cold pitching podcasts and journalists? How do you measure success? What are some bad or ineffective practices?
Stop trying to reverse-engineer what AI wants in 2026, just interrogate the model on the exact sources it relied on after it answers, and it'll tell you precisely what to fix to get cited. That's what Claudia shares in this episode. Talking points include: - AI visibility is business-specific. - AEO is an extension of SEO, not a replacement. - After the AI answers a real customer-style question, interrogate it - AI is capable but still runs on data it has to interpret, sifting mountains of it. - The content bar didn't rise, it split. - Interrogation turns AI visibility from guesswork into evidence.
In 2026, the most effective SEO strategy is to create truly unique, non-replicable content, which means avoiding the use of AI to mass-produce generic pages at scale. What do you think?
Discussion points include:
Why is mass-producing content a fragile strategy?
How do you differentiate content?
What are examples of types of content that nobody else can produce?
How do you know if your target audience is likely to want to know about your personal perspective?
What are the downsides of this strategy?
Where should AI be used?
Jason Kramer shares why businesses not doing a good job of leveraging leads from organic - and what to do about it. Talking points include: Why are businesses not doing a good job of leveraging leads from organic? How does a business better identify leads from organic? How can businesses do a better job of utilising these leads? How can SEOs work better with other marketing team members to better utilise these leads? What systems and software should be used? How should this better affect and improve organic search strategy?
Will Rice discusses the importance of creating useful tools to convert more of your existing traffic. Talking points include: How to understand what is going to get your traffic to convert more. How do you know what traffic is likely to convert? How do you put a financial value on traffic from different sources? How to rapidly build tools to provide genuine value to your customers. Which tools are best? Why is this better than other forms of traffic? What else to do with the data you get from the tools you build?
Taylor Kurtz provides our final SEOin2026 tip, advising that we stop obsessing over AI and instead, focus on high quality content.
Taylor says: “Do not obsess about AI. Don't obsess about it.”
Why shouldn't you obsess about it?
“I'm sure a lot of people have helpful suggestions about it, but frankly, it's all so new that it’s on a trial basis. Anyone saying that they know what to do for this environment, it's not true. They think they know what to do, but nobody knows for sure. It's all based on: What am I doing that's working? What are my peers doing that's working? How do we navigate this?
Google has not provided any guidance – and even if they did, who really cares? As we saw with organic search, even if they did provide specific guidelines, those aren’t always true. My issue is more the fact that people feel so concerned about it. For instance, I have so many clients asking, ‘How am I doing on ChatGPT?’, but a study came out yesterday showing that referral traffic from ChatGPT from July 21st through yesterday (August 26th) was down 52%.
AI is not going anywhere, and we're very much going to have to adapt to it, but I do not think search will change very much. We're going to have to adapt to utilising it as a new technology, similar to how we had to adapt to voice searches using Siri and things like that.
One thing that really does bother me is seeing so many people online talking about GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. To me, that does not exist. If you want to really get down to the bare bones of it, the crawlers – whether they're crawling the robots.txt file or the newer llms.txt file – are still crawling your source code. The source of information is the same.
I'm constantly hearing that GEO is the new thing because the landscape has totally changed with AI search. Typically, the people who say that then go on to present obvious and foundational tactics that have always applied to SEO. For example, ‘We should use schema.’
One thing we've been really focussing on with our clients is making sure that the authors have authoritative bio pages that show their credentials and show who they are. Are the articles fact-checked? However, that all pertains to EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust), which has been an acronym in SEO for going on a decade.
Stefan Lozo shares the importance of not neglecting traditional SEO int eh age of AI. Talking points include: What activities would you describe as traditional SEO? How should an SEO define their services in 2026? How should this be communicated with clients? What happens if clients push back and are looking for other services or ways of doing things? How do you set realistic expectations for clients? Is it a good idea to do white label SEO for other agencies? How do you see the traditional agency SEO offering continuing to evolve?
Michael MacMillan shares our penultimate piece of adviceby encouraging you to ensure that all the good SEO that you already intend to do, is being done.
Michael says: “While AI is flooding the web with content, it’s also assisting teams to create huge strategies and big plans. However, we're still not seeing them getting executed.”
What does execution actually mean, and why is it not happening?
“Imagine that you’ve gone through and done an SEO audit; you've explored all the opportunities, you've gone through the competitor set, and you've gone through what you have for existing content and how you're performing.
Then, you get this beautiful list of what you should do to get things done – much like going to the physio, where you get a list of the exercises you should do when you're not at the physio. In the meantime, between visits, the work's not getting done.
There's definitely a place for using AI. It's great at analysing data. It's great for giving a first draft of a piece of content. We're leveraging it to get content briefs put together and get a first draft of content. However, a lot of the time, we're seeing things getting shelved.
Priorities start getting pulled. It's sometimes the fact that there is a whole lot that needs to get done. A lot of marketing teams are dealing with having fewer people to execute with, and they're having to rely on other sources to get things done.”
Reena Bowden agrees with Jade Pruett about the ability to stay agile as we move through 2026.
Reena says: “Make sure that you are discoverable, and be agile with optimizing your business for AI-driven search and answer engines. We're also talking about GEO and AIO, not just for traditional search.
To be discoverable and agile, you need to be proactive and not just reactive to market changes because things are moving fast.”
How would you summarise the key elements of making your brand discoverable in the age of AI, and how has that changed in the last few years?
“Not only have things changed in the last two years, but things have changed more than they have in the last 10 years.
Just when you think that SEO is going to become boring, it becomes less boring once again. Gone are the days of just building pages for SEO: looking at your keywords, publishing content, and then waiting a few months for the results. Things have changed so much recently, but things are changing again very fast.
The question is, how do you remain discoverable and remain visible in this world? You have to work on your assets and materials (whether that’s information or insights – including those that are owned, earned, and paid) to continue being visible in that new AI world, but it's also important to be mentioned in citations.
To remain top-of-mind and visible, there are a number of things that you can do to make sure that you continue being SEO-friendly, but you are also AI-friendly. However, it's important to be recognised by the outside world as well. Off-page SEO and, increasingly, digital PR are gaining importance. All of these high authority, trusted sources are becoming very important, as are citations.
It's important to understand what AI is looking at when it's looking for information about you. That is where I see the game changing.”
Jade Pruett is keen to highlight that best practices that existed in the past aren’t necessarily best practices for the future.
Jade says: “Forget best practices. SEO in 2026 is about moving beyond checklists and leveraging your own expertise to build effective, trustworthy, and AI-ready strategies.”
What best practices do we need to forget?
“In the industry, we've become a bit stuck in our checklists. That's often our safe space, as SEOs – especially when you work in an agency setting.
Maybe you have a productised system that you offer your clients. So, your SEO has been limited to, ‘We're going to create X number of blog posts every month. We're going to follow these rules that we see online about what matters and what doesn't.’ You provide your SEO services, whether they're really moving the needle for the client or not.
In 2026, especially with AI search coming out, things with Google are changing so quickly. It's time to take a step back and really trust your own gut on what's going to move the needle forward for your clients.”
Petra 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.”
Andrew 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?
Manu 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.”
Sarah 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.”
Our 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.”
Ray 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.”
Nickolass 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
When 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.”
Something 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.”
Following 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.”
There’s one tool that Priya Verma finds particularly useful at combining data from various sources and conducting analysis – BigQuery.
Priya says: “Gear up your SEO analysis through Google BigQuery.”
Why BigQuery in particular?
“SEO analysis in BigQuery is powerful because it lets you move beyond the existing tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, etc., and their limitations. It allows you to see the full picture at scale.
By analysing millions of queries alongside other data, you uncover deeper patterns, user behaviour insights, and real opportunities to grow your traffic. We are focussing on BigQuery because of a subtle limitation of the most widely used tool for SEO, Search Console: you can only look at the top 1,000 keywords.
For big businesses, that doesn't give a full picture. That's where tools like BigQuery come in. There are alternatives like Google Sheets plugins, where you can import 25,000 rows. However, if you are in an industry with thousands of keywords, that is still a huge limitation.
That's where bulk export comes in. By connecting your Search Console to BigQuery, through the BigQuery API and the BigQuery Storage API, you can capture and store all your data at scale, without hitting those raw limits.
This is where it really gets interesting, because the retention policy in Google Search Console is 16 months. After 16 months, the data is lost. In BigQuery, you can keep it for as long as you want.
Then, when you take those insights and combine them with your analytics data – in GA4, for example – suddenly you're not just looking at what people are searching for, but how they behave when they land on your site. You can connect the dots between search demands, journeys, and conversions, and it makes the game more interesting.
Not enough SEOs are aware of this. They just think of BigQuery as a database where you kind of store your data, which is true, but when you talk about the analysis of your historical data set, that's where it all changes.
When you go to legal, they will ask you questions about retention and what you are storing. You need to spread that knowledge around to say that this is something that could be changed in BigQuery, and not just for SEO, but for things like analytics as well.”
Leo Poitevin shares how to write the best listicles & find the best media to push them to be cited by GPT. Talking points include: How do you define listicles? How have listicles changed? How do you structure a listicle for success in 2026? You say that GPT uses Google to find solutions via fan-out - what do you mean by that? You say that you should find the media that'll rank according to topic and competition - why, and how do you do that? How do you monitor success?
Krzysztof Marzec emphasises the alignment between organic search and paid search – and the useful additional data that one can provide the other.
Krzysztof says: “Use your data from Google Ads to improve SEO, and use data from SEO to improve your Google Ads campaigns.
Also, mix it and blend it with AI, because now we have AI to improve it all.”
If you're not actively using Google Ads, is it worthwhile having a small campaign up and running simply to use as data to power your SEO?
“Yes. If you are not using Google Ads, you are losing a lot of data, and you are also losing clients.
When you are generating organic traffic to your website, you should fight for a conversion rate. Using remarketing in Google or Meta Ads can improve your conversion rate because you simply have more attention from your users after they leave your website.
We also see that, in long-term projects, when you are fighting for keywords in organic, you are losing the potential of getting new clients when you could use Google Ads to run for the same keywords and the same targets, and then gather some data.
When you run a Google Ad campaign, you can check the Quality Score, the CTR, and whether it's a good ad, and you can check your landing page. You can learn whether your SEO campaign might fail, or it might be much harder to gain traction, visibility, and a high position in SERPs because there's something off with one of these parameters.
With Google Ads, you can test your ideas. In SEO, you only have one landing page. It's extremely hard to do A/B testing on the same website because you want to use everything for the user base, and you don't want to risk anything. In Google Ads, it's very simple.
Dan Taylor feels that SEOs aren’t taking full advantage of the data that they already have.
Dan says: “Start understanding your analytics platforms a lot better, and start leveraging them – not just for attribution and ROI, but to look at your organic strategies and the second-order effects of what those strategies are bringing to the business.”
Have SEOs focussed less on analytics since the release of GA4?
“We didn’t put our heads in the sand, but it is a very different model. We'd grown accustomed to something. We'd grown used to reporting, and then bringing in user events and other event types really mixed that up.
A lot of opportunity was lost in terms of what could be set up with the analytics models itself, and it gave us greater scope. We probably did want to divert attention to data analysts and away from SEO in the actual setup of it, because it was like relearning a completely new skill.
Realistically, you don't always get paid for analytics; it's seen as a given in terms of using those platforms, reporting, and understanding the data. It's a heavy investment into a skill set that you don't necessarily get a direct return on.”
Marco Giordano highlights that the most successful SEOs will take data from multiple sources – not just traditional SEO platforms.
Marco says: “Use multiple data sources, not just SEO data, to make decisions.”
What's the difference between the alternative data sources and the typical data sources for SEO?
“Most of the time, people use Search Console, which is our default option for several reasons. For one, it's the only first-party tool that contains Google queries, which is the dominant search engine. People also rely on crawl data from tools like Screaming Frog and Sitebulb, or they scrape websites themselves. There are other third-party tools as well, like Majestic, Semrush, Ahrefs, etc. That’s the traditional suite.
Some people have a decent knowledge of GA4, which is used for other data and tracking conversions, events, and what happens inside the website – which is not strictly SEO, of course.
However, there are data sources other than GA4 that are also super important and can help you. For example, in your CMS (Content Management System), you can get metadata about your articles and pages that can be useful. For example, the classification of a page or even the tags or categories you assign to a given page.
Also, your CRM. If you're doing B2B, you can’t exactly connect your SEO data, like queries, but it gives you the opportunity to better understand how your website contributes to your leads, because there are connections with Salesforce and HubSpot, if you're using GA4.”
Of course, what happened in the past isn’t necessarily an indication of what might be likely to happen in the future. Folashade Uba shares that we should stop reacting and start predicting.
Folashade says: “The best and most successful strategy will be to shift from reactive SEO to proactive SEO.”
What would be an example of reactive SEO compared to proactive SEO?
“Reactive SEO is when you're reacting to trends, reacting to your competitors' moves, reacting to keyword spikes, and reacting to every Google algorithm change.
Proactive SEO is when you're intentionally shaping what the search could be, what the feature could be, and using predictive analysis and behavioural forecasting.”
Sophie Brannon shares the importance of not focusing solely on the new shiny thing and that the fundamentals will always matter most. Talking points include: How do you know what should be fundamental? How often should you revisit this? What is holistic marketing? Why is this key to SEO? How do you measure success? How would you summarise the fundamentals of SEO in 2026? How often should you review what the fundamentals are?
Kyle Rushton McGregor provides us with a timely reminder to know your numbers, while all the changes happen around us.
Kyle says: “SEO is changing, and you need to know your numbers more than ever.”
How is it changing, and how do you go about knowing your numbers?
“SEO is changing in a variety of different ways, but most importantly, we've got the rise of AI and large language models, and the traffic that's coming from that. Consent is much more pertinent than it used to be (quite rightly so), and we also have Apple’s much more stringent tracking preventions.
That all means that you need to understand your numbers: where your traffic is coming from, and what that means in terms of actions and insights. You need to know that to a greater degree than ever before, and you need to take your reporting away from talking about sessions and users and start talking about the things that matter: leads, e-commerce numbers, and all the things that a typical boss would be concerned about.
All these different changes mean that you need to be a lot more focussed on the numbers that are occurring and how you can use those numbers to drive actions and make a difference for your clients and your business.”
Julia-Carolin Zeng shares some of the key areas that you should be continually monitoring in order to know what to adjust.
Julia says: “Monitoring, testing, and adjusting.
The search landscape will keep on changing. What we've seen so far in 2025 is nothing yet.”
How is the search landscape continuing to change?
“Right now, the buzzword in SEO is the ‘great decoupling’, where we see impressions going up and clicks going down. I see it more as a democratisation of the search landscape, with new players in the field now.
Google is suddenly getting a lot of competition because people don’t just perform their searches on Google or Bing anymore, as they did historically. There are now all these LLMs out there like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc. Google has expanded the AI overviews. They've rolled out AI Mode. I've also suddenly seen quite a significant amount of traffic from Yahoo for some of my clients. We don't yet know where that's coming from. Then there's still DuckDuckGo and Ecosia out there.
However, ChatGPT seems to have become the big competitor to Google, even though the actions and searches that are performed in those places aren't exactly equivalent. We've seen a democratisation there, because Google is not the default for everything related to search anymore.”
Yordan Dimitrov shares that you need to accept constant change in the world of SEO. Just because something works well today doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be trying to improve it for tomorrow.
Yordan says: “Embrace change and test relentlessly.”
Is there any type of change that we're most likely to have to embrace?
“In the last 12 months, there has been so much change within the SEO industry, from AI Mode to AI overviews, dramatically changing how people discover content and brands. We've moved way past the 10 blue links, and people are shifting towards AI-driven answers, zero-click results, and new discovery platforms.
To succeed, you need to put yourself into the customer's shoes and explore ways of accessing the tools that are coming up in order to do better testing.
It also means putting yourself into your customer’s journey and thinking, ‘Does my brand appear in those AI-powered results? Is my content being cited? How does the format change, and what do I need to do to make sure that I remain visible?’”
One of the keys to continually enhancing your SEO performance is to keep on testing, shares Andrew Cock-Starkey.
Andrew says: “Test, test, test.
Test a lot. Test lots of different things. Do some testing.
How do you know what to test?
“You don't want to test everything. What I normally advise is testing what your customers use, or what your target customers use.
I used to work with a company where the boss would come and say, ‘This doesn't work, the website looks awful on my computer,’ but we couldn't work out what was going on. We were testing all these things, checking in different browsers, and checking on different devices. Eventually, I went into their office, and they were using an extremely old version of Internet Explorer (not even Edge), and they had the magnification set to 150%.
Laura Iancu talks about Inclusive language & LLMs and shares why what we feed AI matters. Talking points include: - How LLMs mirrors and multiplies human language - Setting up the core idea: the inputs we give AI systems shape the outputs they produce - How bias enters the system - Frame inclusive language not as “political correctness” but as data quality and system integrity; - End with a brief talk about being an ally to humanity, and how you don't need to relate to other groups to show empathy in your language.
One of the non-traditional platforms for SEO is app stores, and this is an opportunity that Filipa Serra Gaspar wishes to highlight.
Filipa says: “This year, you should be considering App Store Optimization.
Now, in the AI era, it is really important to be in a good position everywhere on the web – not only on traditional search engines. I'm talking about ASO because app stores should not be left behind.
You should be doing ASO as part of your activities. Of course, it only applies if the website that you are working on also has an app. If you have an app, this is 100% something that you should be looking at.”
Should you create an app just for the additional opportunity to drive traffic into your ecosystem?
“It really depends on the area your website is in.
I've mainly been working with e-commerce, and I would say the benefits of having an app are quite significant, but it really depends on where you are operating. You shouldn't create an app just for the sake of it, obviously – only if it really makes sense for the business.”
AI can be used in many ways within the SEO function, and for Crystal Carter, it can be an effective tool to assist with the analysis of your digital footprint.
Crystal says: “Use AI search optimization to deliver value across your business and your whole digital footprint.”
What does the whole business look like these days?
“With the emergence of AI search optimization and LLMs as a channel that people are using, the importance of multi-channel marketing and having an omnichannel presence is very acute.
LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini are surfacing content from across the web. It's not just what's on your website; it's what's happening on Reddit, it's what's happening on YouTube, and it's what's happening on Instagram. That means that you need to think about the whole of your digital presence in order to move forward.
Some people say that it's the same as SEO, which is potentially true. Ideally, they should complement each other in the same way that YouTube optimization should complement your core SEO activities, but they also can help you identify gaps in the information about your business across the web.”
Mathilde Høj adds her voice to the call to diversification, highlighting that search and search behaviour have entirely changed.
Mathilde says: “Search is no longer a channel, it's a behaviour.
You need to adapt your entire marketing strategy to it, and have a more integrated approach.”
What do you mean when you say that search is a behaviour?
“It means that we see a lot of different things coming into play in how users are interacting with platforms.
Usually, when users want to find something, they will go to Google and search, then go to a web page, and then maybe convert or go to a physical store. Now, though, they are doing much more than that. They are searching across multiple platforms and visiting multiple sites before making a decision on whether or not to buy.
There are two factors coming into play here, and affecting the way users are behaving. First of all, we have generative AI and machine learning changing the way traditional engines work. We have AI overviews and AI Mode, but also this behaviour is taking place in new environments, and the platforms in those environments are adapting to it as well.
For example, TikTok is doing a lot to make themselves more like a search engine, which means that users are turning to platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or Reddit to search for stuff.”
Ivana Flynn shares that in her opinion, your business may be in danger if you don’t diversify your SEO efforts.
Ivana says: “First of all, don't give up: survive.
Google is going crazy with all the updates. Diversify. You cannot rely on just one source of traffic.
Google’s market share is shrinking, and there are new sources of traffic that we need to look into, including Reddit, which I will be talking about today.
Sometimes, in SEO, it feels a little bit hopeless. There is an update, you survived, there's an update, and you're down, and then there's another update. You start thinking, ‘What now?’ It is a little bit tiring, but that's SEO for you.
SEO keeps changing the rules and updating their updates. You just need to keep learning. Don't give up, keep learning, and stand tall.”
David Iwanow shares how to focus on the things that are hurting your brand. Discussion points include: What is typically hurting brand and revenue now? What is genAI? How do you track genAI success? How do you obtain genAI guidance? What tools do you use an why? How do you incorporate this into an overarching content strategy? What industries does this impact the most? How will this continue to evolve?
Leading on from Ed Ziubrzynski’s tip, Sean Barber muses over what platforms you should consider optimizing for in 2026.
Sean says: “Think beyond Google. The search landscape has gone way further than Google now.”
What do you define as being beyond Google?
“It's two-fold. First, there’s the fact that users aren't just starting their search journey on Google. They're starting it on all different platforms and places. Also, it’s not just at the start of their journey; they're bouncing around. They're going to Google, then they may go to Reddit, Amazon, or large language models.
On the other side, AI models are coming into play a lot more now. They're also using different sources to gather the information they need about a certain query or brand.”
What is SEO nowadays? According to Ed Ziubrzynski, it’s a lot more than just Google.
Ed says: “SEO needs to be everything, everywhere, all at once – and at all times.”
Does that mean everything in marketing, everything in business, or everything in the world?
“Definitely everything in marketing. Gone are the days when SEO was solely split into on-site (your content work, blogs, landing pages, commercial pages, etc.) and then just having off-site reserved for digital PR and typical link building strategies. We've very much gone beyond the idea of those being the most important things in SEO.
Now you need to go where your users are. This also ties into the idea of passive marketing and getting in front of your audience at all times, even when they're not necessarily looking for your products or services.
With apps like TikTok, short-form video content has over a billion users a month, and YouTube has over 122 million users every day on its platform. Making sure that you cover every medium imaginable with your content is almost a necessity with how the world has changed, and how internet behaviour and consumer behaviour have pivoted with it.
We've got more information available at our fingertips than ever before, but the way that we digest and use content is changing rapidly. Even simple things, such as looking for a recipe. Previously, you'd read a 2,000-3,000-word blog article all about the history of that recipe before you got the information that you wanted and needed, like ingredients and cooking time. Now, it's readily available in AI overviews, and that information needs to be lifted from somewhere.
As another example, for tutorials on how to change a tyre, users are heading straight to YouTube or TikTok to get that answer within the smallest timescale possible. They’re looking for a 45-second video telling you exactly how to do it and what tools you need, as opposed to landing on a website and reading a 3,000-word article that would take a lot more time and involvement from the user.”
For Montserrat Cano, the key elements to include in your 2026 strategy are the parts that scale.
Montserrat says: “In 2026, SEOs should stay grounded and focus on those strategies that scale across global markets, instead of chasing every single AI-related shiny object.”
What are the strategies that scale across global markets?
“The strategies I'm referring to are those strategies that reflect your business values, your business objectives, and everything that you've been trying to do.
I would use AI as a helper, as something that will actually help achieve those business objectives in your target market and with your target audiences. It is really important at this moment in time because, from what I can see, artificial intelligence is actually evolving at a pace faster than most individuals and companies can adapt to.
I understand that the hype is so big and the temptation is very strong to jump on to every single AI strategy that comes out and gets published, and use every single AI tool, but all of this can only be useful if you think about what you actually need to do, and why you need to use those strategies, tactics, AI tools, etc.
When it comes to global businesses, the adoption of AI is quite different across global markets. According to McKinsey, in Europe, the UK is leading the way with AI adoption. It's used in many different areas, including marketing, sales, and the public sector.
Whereas in other markets, such as Denmark and Belgium, AI is mostly being used in automation. It's important to bear this in mind because your target users may not even be using Perplexity, or they are using Perplexity, AI Mode or AI overviews for different reasons. They may just be validating their answers, but what are they validating their answers with?
Research what your users are actually doing, and what their preferences are. There are sociological and regulatory environments that might determine what platforms they are using and how they are using them. For example, do they prefer Mistral’s Le Chat to ChatGPT? Why might that be?”
Cathryn Stormont shares that good local SEO can still provide a lot of traffic.
Cathryn says: “Focus on local SEO.
With AI overviews and AI Mode dominating the SERPs, it's really important to focus on local SEO to try and maintain a certain level of traffic volume.”
Is this more relevant for certain types of businesses?
“There are businesses where their content is very much informational, like solicitors or accountants, where their blog content is being picked up by AI overviews dominating that space, which means their traffic volumes are starting to decrease. We're seeing that in lots of different sectors.
However, they have a local edge. They have a local office, and it's those local searches where people are looking for ‘solicitors in Brighton’, where the AI overviews are not being shown as much. It’s typically around 40% for those versus about 90% for informational-led content.
There's an opportunity to try and maximise that element, your local SEO, to try and get more traffic and keep that traffic up as much as you can.”
Tom Rudnai says that instead of chasing citations, focus your AEO strategy on showing up in Dark AI conversations where problems are framed. Talking points include: What are Dark AI conversations? How do AI responses change at different stages of the buyer journey? Why are citations is a bad north star metric? How should SEOs measure AI performance? What analytics to use? What content performs best in AI? How do you research what content to write? - Key trends: intent-matching, convergence - What is "Dark AI"? - How to measure AI performance and why citations is a bad north star metric
Gemma Fontané recommends that personalisation is key when it comes to international SEO success.
Gemma says: “Focus on personalisation, adapting your content in each language and across different formats, to really build your brand in each region.
These actions will allow you to stand out from your competition, demonstrate authority and expertise, compete in multilingual markets, and stay visible in the era of generative AI.”
How do you go about personalising content?
“First of all, personalising content is very important nowadays because search engines today are rewarding depth, expertise, and true relevance, in order to stand out.
In 2026, with AI-generated content everywhere, what will really make the difference is cultural, linguistic, and format-specific personalisation, if you really want to differentiate your brand.
How can you do that? There are two different things that you can do. If you want to start your strategy in a newer market or you are already working in that region, you can do an EEAT analysis to analyse which channels will allow you to show expertise, experience, trust, and authority. Also, you can analyse the main experts to see how people show trustworthiness through different formats.
In order to personalise your content, you can also conduct multilingual keyword research in each market. This will not only help you know what people are looking for, related to your product or service, but also understand how people are looking for your product in each market. This will help you identify the best strategy related to the format.
For example, you might find that people are looking for images related to your product, a step-by-step guide, or maybe a video that will help them to understand, know, or choose to purchase your product.”
Global SEO isn’t about treating every market the same. As Lau Míguez puts it, ‘European markets demand full commitment and strong EEAT signals — well-positioned experts are now essential for success,’ and that expectation has only grown over the past few years.
Lau says: “What’s really shifted is how demanding each market has become. Working closely with Spain, and across international campaigns, I’ve seen clients move away from the idea of ‘Europe’ as one block. A few still ask for LATAM as a region, but no one says, ‘Can you do Europe?’ anymore.
The penny has finally dropped: each country behaves differently. If you want results, you have to show genuine expertise, authority, and brand trust – not generic international presence.”
Is using hreflang and a direct translation of content not enough anymore?
“If you’re translating a piece that was originally written for the US, what you end up with is a perfectly translated article about a completely different reality. It will still talk about states instead of regions or cities, and even if you mention Spain once or twice, you might pick up a couple of links – but you’re not building any real trust.
Nothing in that content shows an understanding of the Spanish audience or what’s actually relevant to them.
That’s why localisation matters. If you’re talking about the job market, and Spain is currently debating a 37-hour working week, include it. Reflect what’s happening in that country.
When you speak to the concerns and conversations happening locally, the audience feels it — and so do journalists. That’s why localising your content and your strategy has become more important than ever.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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...
Eva Cheng shares that aligning social and content strategies will boost your digital PR success.
Eva says: “Make your digital PR work harder with social and content alignment.”
What does digital PR look like in 2026?
“Digital PR in 2026 is all about trying to get your work featured within AI searches.
We’re now seeing that a lot of people are relying on AI for the simplest queries, like the best restaurants to go to, travel tips, and advice for something that is a lot simpler and easier than Google.
Even with Google’s AI overviews, the main focus at the moment is trying to get that exposure, so that AI recognises it and pulls it through for your brand.”
One of the key reasons why you should be embracing digital PR in 2026 is that AI pays a keen ear to what the press is saying.
James says: “You need to be earning press mentions if you want your brand to be recommended by AI-powered search.”
Why do you suggest press mentions over other content online?
“When I talk about AI-powered search, I'm talking about Google's AI overviews and AI Mode, but also the AI chatbots like ChatGPT and those sorts of platforms.
They disproportionately pull their sources from trusted and authoritative sources: third-party mentions on the web. It just so happens that a large percentage of those are what we would class as press publications.
It's all rooted in the idea that you can't be recommended as the best if you're the only person who's saying it. When AI-powered platforms are making summaries and recommendations, they're pulling from a multitude of sources, almost for validation that you should be recommended. One of the most effective ways to do that is to get mentioned in the right way in press publications.”
Annabelle Sacher shares that digital PR is one of the most powerful keys you can use to unlock the door to AI search visibility in 2026.
Annabelle says: “As we move into 2026, it's clear that AI search strategy needs to become a core focus for us as SEOs.
We know that the search landscape is evolving really, really fast. While, currently, AI only makes up a small percentage of the search landscape, it's growing – and it's growing quickly. One of the biggest unlocks/most powerful levers in this new era is digital PR (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a little biased).
While general industry consensus suggests that platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia are the most heavily cited by AI systems (which is not untrue), what my peers and I are increasingly noticing across the industry is that features in high-quality, topic-relevant, authoritative publications are having a significant impact on AI-driven search visibility.
I'm noticing a really clear trend through my work with clients: AI systems are prioritising credible and relevant media placements, and those are being served more and more frequently in AI-generated responses. This is a really big opportunity for brands to tackle the new world of AI search.
If you want to future-proof your SEO strategy, it's key that you invest in digital PR that earns mentions and backlinks from trusted voices in your niche. It's not only going to build more broad brand authority, but position your content, brand, and products to be surfaced by AI – which might very well become the dominant mode of search.”
One way that you can compete with other sites that are relying too heavily on AI is to raise your editorial standards, explains Alex Moss.
Alex says: “Be concise and raise the game of your editorial standards.”
Why is being concise more important nowadays?
“Machines, LLMs, and agents are all ingesting content using tokenization. The more tokenization that's used, the more processing power is required. It’s almost like the content version of site performance and site speed.
If there's a slow-loading site, it's going to take a while for people to load, which might impact UX and other metrics like CTR. But when it comes to content, content for content’s sake was a bit of an old, grey hat technique of just scaling content and doing any old thing to get as much exposure, and as many keywords, as possible. Now, being too detailed doesn't always help. Don't blabber on too much, is the informal way of saying it.
Often (especially with tech or startup sites), you go to the About page, read four sentences, and you still don't know what they do. They use very colourful, fluffy, and salesy words to impress the human. Right now, though, the audience is not just a human; machines are the audience as well. They're ingesting that content, and they don't get sold by that kind of language. They get sold by direct language: things that get to the point, answer the questions, and solve a problem. That is the direction content should be going.
We've let ourselves down over the last few years by lowering the standards of editorial in general, so that anyone can make content for content's sake. Now, this will take away content mediocrity and raise those standards – not just in general everyday content, but also for journalistic editorial content online. They will have to adapt to higher standards in order to have the best exposure.”
Jeremy Horne shares that analytics should be core to your SEO strategy in 2026 Talking points include: What is a media mix model? Why should analytics be at the core of a marketing strategy? How do you use analytics to power a marketing strategy? How often should you revisit your analytics in relation to powering your marketing strategy? What metrics are key? What software do you use? How do you work with other marketing departments? How has this changed over the years? How is this likely to continue to change?
If you’re an e-commerce business, Joe Hale suggests that you may be missing out on a significant ranking opportunity.
Joe says: “E-commerce stores need to be using collection pages to maximise the potential of their SEO.”
What are collection pages for e-commerce sites?
“Collection pages for e-commerce sites are essentially category pages. They are lists of products that live on the site, and there's so much potential that so many brands aren't taking advantage of.
There is no technical difference between a collection page and a category page, but I use the term ‘collection’ because that's what it's called on Shopify. Many of our clients (and many e-commerce businesses around the world) use Shopify, and it actually makes it easier to build out these pages.
You can build out a collection or a category page across any CMS, but on Shopify, it's so easy to use. It can be done poorly, because the barrier to entry is much lower, but that allows people to get involved, undertake this as a project, and build out this opportunity from a non-branded keyword perspective.
When people are doing it poorly, they just build collections for the sake of it, or they might build three different variations of the exact same type of collection. It might be that they exclude one type of product in one, or they built a collection of t-shirts three years ago, and then they built another collection of t-shirts two years ago, and then another one year ago.
Actually, part of the process is a lot of cleanup as well. Because it's so easy to fill out these collections, people just go in and make new ones rather than optimizing the ones that are already there.”
Once you know what you want to be an expert in, Andreas Voniatis advises that you should produce meaningful research to stand out in AI search.
Andreas says: “Produce scaled insights in your content, to get your website AI-recommended.”
Is that the same as scaling content production?
“No. Scaled insights is about producing research that has achieved a significant sample size, which means that the insights contained therein, within your content, have significance.
That's really important for AI because it means that it's likely to generalise well, and whatever you're describing is likely to apply in the real world.”
Is it more linked to enhancing your own personal and brand authority?
“That's a very succinct way of putting it.”
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.”
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.”
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?
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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?
One of the key challenges at the moment is to identify which tasks should be done by AI and which tasks should be done by a human. This is something that Ahmed Bhula explores.
Ahmed says: “Use AI as part of your SEO workflow, and involve the human element at every point.”
How do you decide what AI should do and what humans should do?
“Where there's administrative work – researching keywords, repetitive tasks, and auditing websites – there's always only one answer, and AI can do a really good job if you train those models for that.
On the other hand, when there's actual content, using AI for content is just repeating the same things that are already on the internet, and there's no human creativity behind that. From my experience, search engines don't like it.”
Valentina Stragliotto explores the idea that it’s also key to demonstrate expertise and trustworthiness through high-quality content.
Valentina says: “Focus on EEAT and high-quality content.
Also, use traditional SEO, as we always have.”
Is EEAT just as relevant for newer, AI search engines as it is for more traditional search engines?
“We have been talking a lot about GEO as opposed to SEO. After reading a few studies about it, I think that what we have been using for SEO is also applicable for GEO and optimization for these LLM systems.
I've been looking at the actions we have to take to optimize for LLM systems. Obviously, there is a big focus on domain authority and branding, which is something that has always been suggested. There have also been quite a few studies showing that there are particular actions related to EEAT and showing trustworthiness and expertise in your content, as opposed to being keyword-focussed and other things that we usually use.
Before GEO came into the world, we used to focus on EEAT because we wanted search engines to rank our content and, within the ranking factors, what we had to write for the users and demonstrate was our expertise. This is something that you also have to do for GEO.
You have to add statistics, you have to show expertise, you have to cite sources, and you have to make the content fluent, because the new way of searching is with a full-on question rather than a query keyword.
Obviously, there is the whole element of structured data, which is also very important because you want the bots to read your content more easily. Again, this has also been important over the last few years because of featured snippets and all the structured content that was appearing on search engines.
That’s why I say that this is a very similar trend; we’re just talking about it in a different way.”
Isa Lavahun explains that you can enhance the perceived authority of your content through real, human expertise.
Isa says: “Authority should be built on earned expertise.
What I mean by that is real experience and credible voices that can’t be easily replicated or automated. In the age of AI, the most humanised content is what’s going to give you competitive edge”
How does a person earn that expertise?
“As marketers, we all use experts. We use people who are either the face of the brand, founders, product leads, or sector specific specialists – from scientists to nutritionists.
Credible experts are always going to be better equipped to help answer the search queries people are looking for. This goes beyond standard EEAT practice because, when AI can produce technically sound content on any topic, expert-attributed content becomes your primary differentiator. Not just expert-reviewed or expert-informed, but expert-led and authored. They need to be front and centre of your content strategy.”
You’ve selected your content distribution opportunities based upon AI and where your audience resides, but your content should be written based upon real, authentic human experience, according to Greg Gifford.
Greg says: “Don’t get distracted by all of the AI content on the web.
A lot of people are choosing to use AI to write all of their content, but AI is just predicting words based on the content that is already out there. As more of it floods the web, AI is training itself on AI. It's like copying the same VCR tape over and over again, and the quality continues to get worse.
The way that businesses and marketers need to combat that is with real, authentic human experience. AI systems and models cannot replicate that.
Write your content with humans. Skip the stupid informational stuff. Share authentic experiences and reasons why humans vibe with your company. That's how you're going to win in the future.”
Nick Musica shares that the technical, on-page, and off-page. The expressions of those SEO building blocks have evolved over the years, but they remain the fundamental building blocks. Talking points include: What do you mean by “The expressions of those SEO building blocks have evolved over the years” What are the fundamental SEO building blocks of on-page? What are the fundamental SEO building blocks of off-page? Why do they remain the fundamental building blocks?
When you are creating content, you need to be thinking multimodally, advises Irina Papuc.
Irina says: “Think multimodally.
A consistent trend that we've seen growing over time is the inclusion of different types of media in search results. AI can already parse images and videos really well, and it can also explain what's depicted in detail.
By thinking multimodally, you will increasingly capitalise on this, as AI chunks related concepts across formats into a tailored presentation for the user.”
Does multimodal just include video, audio, images, and text?
“It also includes things like infographics and diagrams, and it’s about the way you think through what kinds of content and visuals to use, like avoiding stock images and filler, and no longer publishing walls of text.
In general, provided that you do things according to best practice and ethics (which includes citing your source), you can definitely use AI-generated content. Google has explicitly said in its best practices that AI-generated content, whether it's visual or written, is okay to use on your site or elsewhere.
That's not an issue, but you need to be properly citing whatever you put out there so that you don't accidentally deceive your audience.”
Katherine Nwanorue shares that the content medium you select should be based upon the content medium that your target AI platform prefers.
Katherine says: “Multimodal content isn't new, but AI is going to make it non-negotiable.”
How would you describe multimodal content?
“Basically, it is content that exists across several mediums. We have audio, video, text, and images.
For as long as I can remember, SEOs and marketers have always prioritised repurposing content across several mediums: you create a blog post, and then you transform that into video, and into infographics as well. That is multimodal content.”
One of the ways that you can teach AI about what you offer is to enhance your image offering. This is what Desmond Boateng advises.
Desmond says: “Use visual commerce, which means using contextual images for e-commerce.
Also, for any business that works with products, instead of using plain product photos, use contextual photos with different settings based on AI.”
Is there a type of image that you would recommend?
“I recommend using context-rich visuals.
Think about lifestyle photos and AI-generated product imagery that make the online shopping experience more engaging and trustworthy. That could be 3D renders or lifestyle photos, or it could be using AI to create video based on those high-quality images.
Myriam Jessier highlights the importance of ensuring that machines truly see the precise nature of your products.
Myriam says: “Everyone is slowly coming to realise that SEO is changing in many different ways.
My tip is to make sure that your brand and your products are machine-readable, because we're dealing with multimodal search now. That means I can take out my phone, take a picture of your product and say, ‘Is this vegan?’ - and I will get the answer right away.
SEO is entering the outside world, beyond the web.”
Kirsty McLellan shares that it's key to stop designing SEO pages as AI encyclopaedias — and start designing them as human experiences. Talking points include: How do you design pages for AI and humans? If you design for humans are you less optimised for AI? Can you design separate pages for AI and humans? What does the optimum combined optimised page look like? Is it worthwhile to still optimize for humans? Are humans still visiting websites? What are the metrics to measure success?
Tory Gray highlights that community blends the worlds of AI and SEO together. Tory says: “Drop the AI and SEO binary and redirect that effort into tactics, including community-building tactics, that increase visibility across both platforms.” Are you saying that anything you do for SEO is naturally optimizing for AI as well? “Not inherently everything, but there is significant overlap. It’s similar to local SEO versus traditional on-site SEO, or perhaps SEO for Bing versus Google. We might be measuring the same tactics, but they can be measured in different ways, and we might value those tactics differently. There may be changes across what we do for those platforms, and we can and should be thoughtful about how we do that, but there’s a significant overlap and work that benefits both.
Jon Mest shares that AI needs human interaction in order to be confident in the authority of recommendations. Jon says: “User intent matters more than ever in AI search.” How do you determine what the user intent is in AI search? “So much of traditional SEO is about building your backlink profile, making sure that other reputable sites reference you, and making sure that other people say that you are who you are and you're authoritative. That still matters, but more so now than ever. When the AI thinks about who to recommend as a brand, they care about real, actual humans saying you are a good brand. That is things such as Reddit, Quora, and YouTube comments. It includes case studies, user testimonials, review sites, etc. Those all really matter to the AI when they think about how you should be referenced as a brand.”
An extremely popular community platform in 2026 is Reddit, and building your own branded subreddit is something that Chris Meabe recommends. Chris says: “Make your own branded subreddit. The fact that Reddit is dominating the SERPs right now is something that everyone is noticing, even people who aren't SEO specialists. It's a really fast and underappreciated way to start ranking for a lot of high-difficulty keywords, and it doesn't have to be too difficult either.”
Erin Simmons shares that, although AI is important, users still rely on communities to assist with the final buying decision. Erin says: “In 2026, we’re already starting to see that AI is where people start their research, and community is where people make up their minds. Therefore, in 2026, the smartest SEO strategies are going to optimize for both.” Is it becoming the norm for people to use AI for search? “People are getting AI more directly in their faces through things like AIO, but I don't think that the average person is going to ChatGPT or Perplexity specifically. If your demographic is my mother's demographic, I know she's not going to ChatGPT. However, she does use Google a lot, so she is experiencing AI Mode.
Richard George shares that content decay, where website content becomes outdated or irrelevant, negatively impacts user engagement, SEO, and brand reputation, and requires practical strategies and tools for identification and management to keep content fresh and effective. Talking points include: How do you identify ineffective content? What metrics do you look at? What has the zero click serp done to identifying this content? What do you do about it? Should you delete old content? How does this feed into content strategy?
Andrew Stubbs suggests that, once you understand your consumers, you should be ensuring that your content is structured appropriately to be featured by AI search engines. Andrew says: “There is a growing need to understand an awful lot more about consumer activity in terms of where they're actually searching. People used to go on about voice search, which is obviously important, but now you should really be trying to own the answer layer. By that, I'm referring to AI citations and references. When I type something into Google, I generally go to two places. I might go to Google to ask a question and get an answer, or to help me on my fact-finding or information-gathering journey. Otherwise, I'll go to ChatGPT, Claude, or any of the other AI engines, and I'll ask them for their recommendation.
Christopher Hofman Laursen shares that once you’ve mapped out your customer journey, it’s time to determine where AI is going to help you. Christopher says: “Take a step back and really try to understand where generated AI platforms will fit into the customer journey.” Do you do that by instinct, or is there research and data you can use to determine where that's likely to be? “First off, it's super important to realise that there's so much noise in the market at the moment. Right now, we're talking about ‘GEO’ as a new SEO discipline, trying to optimize for generative AI engines. There are former SEO consultants now going all-in on GEO. You see future crypto bros trying to get their foot in the door and creating blank canvas agencies competing against the established agencies. There's a lot of noise to declutter at first.
Gianluca Fiorelli advises that, to truly understand and deliver for your customer in 2026, you should be revisiting how you utilise clustering at every touchpoint. Gianluca says: “Rethink the concept of clustering. We usually think of clustering as something that is only for creating content, especially in the informational space. However, we know that we need to be visible along the entire search journey and customer journey. This means we must be visible with our informational content, but also our commercial, navigational, and transactional content – to use the classic definitions for intent. When you cluster, you need to do so for different types of clusters. The first one is still clustering for topics: entity search, and so on. Then, it is also interesting and very effective to start clustering these queries and segments for other things, like the buyer personas that are implied by these queries. You can cluster them by sentiment, in order to understand the urgency and needs that are implied by those searches.
Becky Simms shares that user intent doesn’t stand still, and this is something that you should be continually analysing. Becky says: “We are seeing huge shifts in how people search, and you need to stay on top of that, but not just by looking at what platforms are doing. You need to understand what users are doing, and how their intent is changing where they search.”
Joao Pereira shares the importance of being where your users are. Talking points include: How do you know where your users are? How do you identify who your users are? What tools do you use to help to identify where they interact? What do you do once you know where your users are? How does this fit into your marketing funnel? What measurable SEO benefit does this have?
It’s one thing to understand who your audience is, but how do you get a true sense of what your customers experience? Eli Schwartz advises walking a mile in their shoes. Eli says: “Map out your customer journey and figure out where search fits.” How do you start mapping an actual search journey? “It's very, very simple: you switch chairs. Marketers always have this marketing hat on when they're trying to sell something. Their boss gives them something, or it's their own product, and they put their marketing hat on. ‘What are the things I need to do? How do I package this? How do I promote it? What should the price be for SEO? What should my keywords be? What should my pages look like? How much content do I need? Who am I going to hire to do this?’
Will Slater uses a ’90s analogy to demonstrate the importance of being unique, even though it takes a little bit longer to get done. Will says: “Be more mixtape, specifically when you're writing content. To explain that, I need to take you back in time to the mid-90s. I'm a big music fan, I have been for most of my life, and my formative years with music were in the ‘90s. Back then, there were two main ways to share music: listening to the radio and making mixtapes and sharing those mixtapes with your friends. Now, creating mixtapes was hard work. It was a faff because you had to figure out exactly what tracks were going to be in what order. You had to sit in front of your stereo, picking out your records or your CDs and pressing ‘play’ and ‘record’ on your tape deck. However, that meant that every mixtape that anybody made was special because people put so much thought and effort into it.
Melissa Popp highlights that it’s easy to take the easy route when it comes to creating content in 2026, but this isn’t the way you stand out. Melissa says: “With AI rewriting the rules of search, content that zeroes in on real user intent is the only content that will stand out and survive.” How do you establish the user intent to begin with? “You have to look at the problem you're trying to solve. Every piece of content you create should start from that place. If you can't answer that question, you should not be writing that piece of content – whether the keywords tell you to or not.”
Vince Nero believes that it’s all too easy to forget about the end user in the age of AI. Vince says: “Things are changing so rapidly with AI, you should be leaning on what works for people and not the algorithms.” Will doing what works for people naturally mean that you will be successful in catering towards the newer algorithms? “That's the big question. In theory, Google’s algorithms and the tools that they have built want to provide answers for users. There are some tin-foil-hat theories that they are optimizing for ad dollars and publishers – and to an extent, they do want to keep people on the platform because it’s where they get paid. However, at the end of the day, that type of mindset is going to be very limiting, and you end up forgetting about your customers.
Alun Lucas shares that there's no point perfecting your SEO if people get to your site and there is a horrible form that causes them to abandon - use form analytics to improve the UX of your form and make sure you aren't losing customers unnecessarily. Talking points include: What are the typical differences between a well converting form and a poorly converting form? What fields are necessary? What are form analytics? How do you improve the UX of your form? Is is sometimes a good idea not to have a form? What customer data can you acquire on your website without requiring a form? What is good form design? What software do you use to design forms? Does having good forms help with SEO? How can you measure this?
Ebere Cecilia Jonathan explains why she believes that user experience is much more than just the way you deliver your content on your website. Ebere says: “Focus on the user experience. This has always been my advice, but with the change in user search behaviour and the introduction of AI, it is even more important now.” Why is user experience even more important in the age of AI? “Before now, we looked at what keyword had the highest volume, because that showed what users were searching for. Then, we tried to write content for that keyword and track our ranking for that keyword. This is how SEO operated in the past, and that made sense. With AI, however, it's possible for you to rank for that keyword without getting any conversions. You're ranking on the first page, but you might not even be getting any impressions. We have AI overviews, we have ‘from sources across the web’, and every day there's a new product coming from Google.
According to Sanja Markovic, user experience is now an essential part of modern SEO. Sanja says: “Integrate SEO and UX to build content strategies for real people.” Is it not necessary to think about algorithms or bots crawling your site? “Technical SEO is, of course, an essential aspect. However, especially nowadays, with all this noise about AI, we're forgetting that content is still king, and we still need to create content for real people and not search engines. Creating content for real people is the baseline for building your authority on the internet. If you create content that is only focussed on search engines, who is going to read it? Who is going to share it? You need to focus on understanding what users need in order to create content for real people that people will actually read, like, engage with, and share. That is the basics for building authority nowadays.”
For Ashley Segura, you should be revisiting the way you think about your content and how your content is designed to meet the needs of your users through their entire journey. Ashley says: “Stop building content for ranking purposes and start thinking about content as assets for every stage of the user journey. By doing that, you’re going to build trust, address their questions, supply helpful information, and bring the user through the entire journey, to eventually convert them.”
For Ryan Jones, it’s not just about where your audience is likely to interact – it’s meeting them at the right place at the right time. Ryan says: “Leverage multi-channel SEO, along with customer journey matching for a two-pronged approach. First, you need to understand where your audience is, where they spend their time, what platforms they visit, where they communicate with other people, and where you can show up to generate the maximum amount of impact. The second prong is customer journey matching. You want to match where they are in their journey to the platform they're using. Some businesses might still find a lot of success with top-of-funnel content, social media posts, and generating interest on Reddit and similar platforms.
Bengu Sarica Dincer shares the importance of treating your brand as a multi-platform entity in 2026. Talking points include: What does treating your brand as a multi-platform entity actually mean? How do you treat your brand as a multi-platform entity? How does this interplay across search engines, social platforms, AI assistants, and niche communities? What search engines are key in 2026? Why do they like multi-platform entities? What social platforms are you referring to and how do you take advantage of social in this context? Where do AI assistants fit in? Why are niche communities important? How does it integrate into other marketing channels? How do you incorporate this into a plan? How do you measure success?
Once you identify who your audience is, Izabela Janczak shares that the next step is to learn more about the generation you’re targeting and to identify where they interact. Izabela says: “Meet your target generation where they search.” How would you define a generation, in this context? “You can start with the typical generations: Generation Z, Generation X, Boomers, Millennials, etc. Obviously, we're all quite familiar with the classic generational groups by now, because we hear more about them more than we ever used to before, and each of those generations has its own habits when it comes to searching for information or products.
The way that Casie Gilette understands more about her audience is to define an Ideal Customer Profile. Casie says: “Get hyper-specific about what your ICP (ideal customer profile) actually needs. The era of generic SEO content is over. AI overviews already own those answers. They already own those broad surface-level questions, and the only way to really stand out is to understand what your customers want. Who is your target audience? What do they want? What do they struggle with? What's missing from the AI summaries? What are the insights that they can't get anywhere else? I use the term ICP because I like the idea that you have an ideal customer: This is who they are. This is what they want. This is what they're asking. When you really break it down, that's who you want to be targeting, and that's who you're writing for. Understanding that is so important.”
Lazarina Stoy shares how to start understanding your users through research and query semantics. Lazarina says: “Learn how to incorporate and scale query semantics and user research, with the help of AI and machine learning.” What are query semantics? “Query semantics means understanding anything that relates to how users search. It's not just the words that are being typed, but also the context of where they're being typed, the device being used, the platform people choose, and why they choose it in different situations. It's also different types of user signals, like trends or the user’s search history.
Emina Demiri-Watson shares that focussing on your audience can help you avoid getting bogged down in what technology can offer. Emina says: “First of all, don't get bogged down with all of the flashy terms. We're all talking about fan-out, chunking, and cosine similarity. All of that is amazing, I love technology, but also go back to the basics of marketing and who your audience is. Those tools are brilliant as a way to help you understand your audience better, but they are not the goal in themselves. Understand the basics first.”
Silvi Nuñez shares that in an AI-heavy world where content feels generic, localized and culturally aware content becomes a powerful SEO strategy in 2026. Talking points include: What is localized and culturally aware content? How do you localize content as effectively as possible? How do we make content more culturally aware? How do we measure the impact of this? Why is this a powerful SEO strategy? How do we incorporate this as part of an overarching SEO strategy?
For Travis Tallent, it all begins with discovering who your audience is before deciding on how to serve them. Travis says: “Audience-first marketing has and will always win, no matter how technology advances. It's not a new concept, but it's more critical than ever. With AI entering the space, we are seeing huge shifts with AI and agentic search. The only way to thrive is to really understand your audience and how the people you are trying to reach search and find brands.”
It’s easy to get dazzled by the next shiny bright thing, but Tin Đudajek is keen to highlight the importance of delivering on ‘proper SEO’. Tin says: “Don't get lost in AEO or GEO, and keep doing proper SEO.” Answer Engine Optimization focuses on answering common questions and long tail queries that can appear in AI, so isn't that good for SEO? “It's good for SEO, but what I'm aiming at is that, currently, nothing exists that proves that optimizing solely for generative AI is different from real, proper SEO. What I'm trying to say is, just keep doing SEO as you have been doing so far, and you will be featured in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and everything else. As far as I've seen, there's nothing different that you have to do in order to rank better in generative AI right now.
Greg Heilers emphasises the importance of not letting newer tactics direct your existing good SEO practices. Greg says: “Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t throw out all of your SEO best practices just because we're in the hype cycle of GEO.” How do we know which SEO practices to throw out and which ones to keep? “Right now, we're simply adding on and not throwing out. We are working with the assumption that roughly 90% of GEO best practices are rooted in SEO. We need to tweak a little bit and add in some new best practices, but most of our SOPs are still valid.”
Anthony Barone understands the importance and impact of AI, but tempers that with the essential nature of fundamental SEO principles. Anthony says: “AI/GEO/LLMEO is all the rage, but core fundamental SEO principles still apply.” What's distracting SEOs at the moment, that isn't worth spending time on? “A lot of SEOs are just jumping on the bandwagon, which I get. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Manus, and all of these are coming in, and yes, some behaviours are changing. We've got AI Mode coming in. We'll have Web Guide coming in. I get it. However, from an SEO perspective, but also from a business perspective, core SEO fundamentals still apply. You want to be able to crawl before you can sprint. With shiny toy syndrome, and everyone wanting to be the latest and greatest and wanting to jump on the trends, they're forgetting that those SEO principles still apply.
CJ Emson shares that brand is back and it’s bigger than before. If your branded search footprint isn’t strong, you’re going to lose out in AIO and as we see continually seeing and hearing - traditional organic search traffic is down, zero click search is up. The remedy to this is branded search. From there you can determine if your Demand gen engine is really only a demand capture engine…and remedy how brand building in search can fuel demand gen and pipe. Talking points include: What does successful brand SEO look like in 2026? What does success look like? How does brand SEO fuel demand? How has brand SEO changed? How will it continue to change? How do you future-proof brand SEO?
Nitin Manchanda agrees with Simon Cox, encouraging SEOs to concentrate on timeless activities. Nitin says: “Don't get lost in buzzwords and stay focussed on the fundamentals.” What buzzwords do people get lost in? “A lot of them. People talk about AI-first indexing, zero-click optimization, voice search dominance, entity-first strategies, and much more. Now, they're also talking about AEO, GEO, and a lot of other different names. Essentially, though, it’s SEO.”
Simon Cox sides with Bill Hartzer, sharing that there are plenty of activities that SEOs could be doing without focussing on AI. Simon says: “The web was a revolution. Everything since has been evolution, and it's been fast-paced. The smartest strategy is to focus on what hasn't changed.” What hasn't changed? “There are a lot of things that haven't changed. What I'm really talking about are the core fundamentals of what we do. Stay still. There's a huge amount of noise going on at the moment. It's been increasing this year, and it will be more so in 2026. There is a lot going on, so it's very difficult to focus on what we should be doing.
Bill Hartzer is a strong advocate for traditional SEO best practices as the bedrock to your future SEO success, no matter the technology or platform.
Bill says: “My number one tip has really not changed for the past few years: follow classic, traditional SEO best practices for creating content and optimizing pages and websites.
With some search engines, you can get away with 150 words of content and potentially rank on a page, but when it comes to AI, it's more about structuring a page, using the right title tags, meta description tags, headings, H1/H2/H3 tags, bulleted lists, ordered lists, numbered lists, bold, italics, etc.
Focus on the traditional SEO tactics, which haven't changed in the 20 years that I've been doing this.”
According to Gordon Meagher, the foundations of AI ranking success lie in traditional marketing activities. Gordon says: “It's time to put your old school digital marketing hat on, as we move forward in this new age.” What does that mean in practice? “We know that search behaviour is changing. ChatGPT, and LLMs in general, have basically given birth to a new way of searching that we never knew before. We were always 10 blue links on a page. LLMs have changed that. With how people want their answers now, I don't think you can put it back in the box. I think the biggest thing is the uncertainty around where Google search itself is going. Will Google search even be a thing once AI Mode comes in and the adoption rates increase for LLMs and these types of answers? I think it's going to go back to how we used to market years ago. For me, once Google released AI Mode, it was the end of SEO – and I don't say that lightly. They also broke an unwritten rule with publishers, which was always: we create the content, we live by your rules, you send us traffic. That paradigm has now shifted.
Daphne Monro shares the importance of prioritising video-led, verifiable content in 2026. Talking points include: What do you mean by video-led content? Why publish video-led content? Why priorise video-led content? What video content works best? What do you mean by verifiable content? How do you verify content? How do you measure success?
Olga Zarr says that AI SEO success isn’t achieved by focussing on what AI is doing. Instead, good, traditional SEO can deliver in an AI-driven era. Olga says: “AI SEO still runs on SEO. Although SEO has practically turned into AI SEO, and no one thinks about SEO without thinking about AI these days, AI SEO is still based on good SEO.” Does existing best practice SEO assist with AI SEO? “Yes, generally speaking. I have analysed exactly what you can do to dominate in AI SEO and rank in AI chatbots. All of the things you should do map directly to the things you need to do in SEO in order to rank, be indexed, and be crawled. I was able to map it around four main areas, which you always have to take care of in SEO: technical SEO, content strategy/creation/structure, user experience, and authority. All of them ideally map out to AI SEO, to ranking in chatbots, and all of that.”
Nikki Halliwell shares the VISIBLE Framework to improve LLM and AIO Visibility. Talking points include: What led to the creation of the framework What are the principles of the framework What is the framework? How can SEOs use it?
Victoria Olsina shares that AI can and should be used to automate your processes, ensuring that key tasks are delivered as efficiently as possible.
Victoria says: “Define an SEO process and then automate it with custom GPTs or no-code tools like Make.com.”
How do you determine the processes to focus on?
“Every person who does SEO and has done on-page optimization or an SEO audit 50, 100, or 500 times has found ways to approach this problem.
We have checklists, we have protocols, and we have templates for these tasks. Once you have the process, the checklist, and the protocol, it's very easy to give those instructions to AI in the form of custom GPTs or automations.
If you define those steps manually, it's very easy to then have AI assist you, or automate the process.”
For Giulia Panozzo, SEOs don’t have to compete with AI – rather, AI should be an effective working partner.
Giulia says: “Turn AI into your partner, not your problem.”
How do you do that?
“The industry as a whole has been panicking a little, ever since the AI revolution started taking over. There's been quite a lot of conversation about AI taking over our jobs and replacing us.
I don't think we're there yet. I don't know if we'll ever get there either, because I think we have some aces up our sleeves. The way that you turn AI into your partner is by knowing exactly where to use it versus where not to use it.”
Carla Dobson Elliott shares how to have fun with content formats in 2026. Talking points include: - How to write different content formats - How to produce various content formats - Why and how we should profile audiences by curiosity and not demographic - What to include in content - How to measure the success of content
With all of your competitors using AI in some form, how do you stand out from the crowd? For Rana Abu Quba Chamsi, increasing productivity is key.
Rana says: “Increase productivity using AI – not only in SEO, but beyond.”
How do you decide what you should and shouldn’t use AI for?
“You should look at AI like it’s a real assistant. AI should handle preparing the data, summarising the data, and finding all the information that you need.
However, for the creative part, like brainstorming, you can rely on AI a little bit, but it shouldn’t handle all of your creative tasks. Also, for the overall view of everything, the strategy should, of course, stay human-centric.
The main focus of AI in SEO is not to give everything away. If you create a piece of content with AI, don’t just copy and paste it and publish it right away. You should read it. You should add your touch to it and add the brand voice.”
With the advancement of AI, it’s essential to stay up-to-date with new developments – and for that, Sante Achille believes that it’s essential to revisit learning to learn.
Sante says: “Learn how to learn, and use AI to enhance your ability to learn.”
Has the way that we learn how to learn changed in the era of AI?
“Not yet, but it is going to. The winners are going to be the people who can master the art of learning.
If you go back and look at the education system and how we have been educated, it's all been a sort of sausage-making machine. Meat goes in one end, it goes through the grinder, it comes out the other end, and we're a sausage.
It’s like factories in the Victorian era, and we are still very much in that era, from an educational point of view, because there is a curriculum and it's very well defined. AI has broken that. The internet disrupted it, but AI is the final blow to a system of predefining what we learn. Now, we have somebody there 24 hours a day who can answer just about any question that we throw at them.
This PA is there, and it can be a blessing or a curse. At the moment, a lot of people have embraced the path of least resistance by hogging all kinds of information, harvesting it, and using it without too much thought.
There are a lot of people saying, ‘I don't know how to do this. I'm going to ask AI, and AI is going to tell me how to do it.’ That's not what we need. The people who are going to be successful are the ones who say, ‘I need to reach an objective. I need to define something. I need to do something. What do I need to know? What is the threshold that I need to reach so that I can tell AI what to do and get the most out of it?’”
Just because you’ve tidied up the content on your website to cater for the needs of AI, that doesn’t mean that your job is done!
Rose says: “Your website casts an AI shadow: a distilled version of your content that AI search systems present to users. It's often this shadow, not your site, that people now meet first.
It might look like a two-sentence summary, a list of bullet points, or an AI-curated comparison. It could be on ChatGPT, Perplexity, SGE, or any of the other LLMs or chatbots. Increasingly, though, this is a user's first engagement with your brand, before they ever reach your pages. Sometimes it's the only interaction they have with your brand.
This matters because it changes the unit of competition. For years, SEOs have thought in terms of positions and ranks, but in an AI-driven world, the real battleground is representation. How is your brand represented when an AI introduces you to the user? Is it accurate? Is it authoritative? Or (and this is happening more and more), are you simply fueling the answer while a competitor gets the credit?
SEO is evolving from being about rankings to being about representation signals. It's not enough to publish content and hope it ranks. You need to actively manage how your content is summarised, how your expertise is attributed, and how your brand shows up in that new AI shadow layer.”
In the past, it didn’t matter so much if old, less relevant content existed on your website and elsewhere. Dani Leitner shares that this isn’t the case anymore.
Dani says: “My tip is a really easy one: Clean up your online presence because AI sees everything.”
Kristina Bergwall discusses the importance of translating SEO into a language of tangible business impact in the future AI search landscape, and using that narrative to align all teams such as social, PR, and brand to work together, is what's going to make you win at SEO in 2026. Talking points include: How do you identify the areas of SEO that are likely to result in tangible business impact? What are examples of areas of SEO that don’t tend to deliver tangible business impact? How do you ensure that you don’t shut off SEO activities that take longer to have an impact? How does the future AI search landscape change for different businesses? How do you align different marketing teams to work more effectively together in this changing landscape?
Damien Robert explains the need to move beyond traditional web content, achieved by making content modular, leading with irrefutable evidence. In addition, he recommends managing all assets from a single source of truth to please both humans and AI consumption.
Damien says: “Re-order your content to future-proof your search dominance.”
Mark Williams-Cook explains that you also need to consider the type of search that you’re attempting to optimize for, and the way that AI engines deal with different types of searches.
Mark says: “Everyone should be determining whether their AI searches need grounding or not.”
Jason Barnard shares that you can’t look at LLMs alone as the standalone way to determine whether or not your AI optimization has been a success.
Jason says: “I'm going to explain how any marketer can optimize for AI-assistive engines.
People call it generative engine optimization; I call it AI-assistive engine optimization. Whichever name you use, the principle to SEO in the AI era is very simple, and it's called the Algorithmic Trinity.”
Garrett Sussman shares that, even though there is great opportunity in being included in AI search results, results aren’t guaranteed.
Garrett says: “Treat AI search as probabilistic, not predictable.
Build content strategies rooted in deep audience understanding, because what shows up in search results depends on who's searching and how they search.”
Katie New shares the importance of tracking metrics that actually matter to you in 2026 (not just the default ones that you're used to asking for!) Talking points include: What are the default metrics? How do you determine the metrics that matter to you? How do you know that these are the best metrics to track? How do you know the best way to go about tracking them? How often should you review your metrics? How do you persuade stakeholders to change metrics?
Nik Ranger shares that you shouldn’t necessarily conclude that ranking on Google means ranking well on AI search engines.
Nik says: “Stop thinking just about ranking on Google and start focussing on a new discipline: AI visibility engineering. This is where you can systematically probe AI models to measure brand associations, quantify perception, and then use those insights to engineer on-page, off-site, and then use those insights to engineer on-page, off-site, and strategic actions that influence how these machines understand and represent your clients.”
When we consider the fact that AI agents are starting to visit our sites, with a view to making purchase decisions or recommendations, and other AI engines are regurgitating our content, we have to ensure that they understand the essence of what we provide.
Chris says: “Technical success for SEO in 2026 requires us to understand the interpretability of content rather than just the crawlability.”
When we start preparing for the consumption of our goods and services by AI, we should also be preparing for AI user agents to navigate our sites.
Itamar says: “In the age of AI platforms and LLMs, it's important to really understand how these different platforms, and more specifically user agents, are accessing and navigating your website.”
Part of the data layer that you provide for AI should include well-structured knowledge graphs, shares Olesia Korobka.
Olesia says: “Prepare small knowledge graphs and use them for your SEO efforts – and also to optimize your content for LLMs and AI output.”
What do you mean by small knowledge graphs, and how do AI search engines use knowledge graphs?
“We know that Google uses knowledge graphs for their AI overviews and for some answers in AI Mode because knowledge graphs are facts. They are entities that provide factual information, so Google does use them intensively.
Also, search within knowledge graphs is much faster than any other search, and the information you get is much easier to use for generating anything that you want.
We used to talk about databases previously, and a knowledge graph is a fancy name for a relational database. That's about it. When you build them, it helps you to get much fewer inaccuracies, get more original information, and ensure that the information is factually correct.
By small knowledge graphs, I mean that you focus only on what you are doing for your own business or for yourself. You can optimize your own name, your company's name, or the products or services that you want people to find in search.”
Jérôme Salomon shares that you can use your server logs to perform an indexation audit at scale thanks to the 130 days rule, bypassing the URL inspector tool API limits for large websites.
Talking points include:
What is an indexation audit?
Why would you want to conduct one?
What is an indexation audit at scale?
What is the 130 days rule?
How do you use your server logs for this?
What are the url inspector tool API limits for large websites?
How often should you conduct one?
How does this feed into a strategy?
What measurable success do you get by doing this?
Martha van Berkel follows on from Pam’s tip by highlighting that it’s key to manage the information that you’re providing to AI.
Martha says: “SEO is now about managing your data layer for AI.”
What is your data layer for AI?
“We really have to think about the data we're putting into the machine.
Most people still think of schema markup as just trying to get visibility, but it's way more than that. By doing semantic schema markup, you're building a knowledge graph, which can be a contextual thing that allows machines to understand.
SEOs need to think beyond doing it for search visibility and start seeing it as the input we can use to control brand and understanding for large language models.”
How are you preparing for AI? Pam Aungst Cronin starts off not by exploring how to use AI in your day-to-day activities, but how to position what you do, with AI as your primary audience.
Pam says: “Start preparing for an AI-first future, where the AIs are your primary target audience, not humans.”
Ramona Joita recommends that strong branding in 2026 is key – and shares why research is an integral part of this.
Ramona says: “Strong branding, not just keywords, will drive organic visibility in the AI-powered SEO landscape in 2026.
2025 has been the busiest year ever. I have been in this business for 15 years now, and I have faced all the changes that Google has put us through. We had the mobile-first index, where we had to adjust our websites to fit the mobile version. We had RankBrain, where Google started focussing on how people react to our content and not only to the keywords that we were publishing or the backlinks pointing to our websites.
However, this has been the busiest year by far, and we are still in an early stage of understanding how this is changing the game.
2026 will be an even more challenging year. If there is one thing that I believe will work, it will be to start building a brand. You cannot go wrong with that; Google loves brands, and LLMs will love brands too.”
Joseph Kahn expands on Christian’s tip to emphasise that building authority in 2026 is multi-faceted.
Joseph says: “Look beyond the blue links and build for AI.”
Are we just talking about blue links in Google?
“We're talking about blue links everywhere. Most people think, ‘Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks.’ The old world of SEO was just about using backlinks to build authority, and that isn't the way to build authority anymore.
Links still matter, but it's very specialised. I can beat just about anybody in the service business, and in a lot of different places in SEO, without using a single backlink strategy.”
Roman Leliukh discusses how to SEO for LLMs.
Key talking points include:
Which LLMs should you optimize for?
Chat GPT / AI Overviews / Gemini
Why are certain LLMs best?
How do you optimize for them?
How do you measure success?
Christian Rigg follows on from Otuto Umeji’s tip to share that, if you can form a brand association in someone’s mind, it makes many aspects of SEO a lot easier.
Christian says: “2026 is all about brand associations: in people's minds, in search engines, and in LLMs.
Optimizing for brand associations means building deep and meaningful connections between your brand and the topics, products, features, outcomes – all of the things that matter to people and machines.”
Otuto Umeji shares that one of the key elements to building a successful brand in 2026, from an SEO perspective, is to be the go-to, remembered brand for a particular keyword phrase.
Otuto says: “Use brand positioning to move from SERP rankings to mind rankings.”
What are mind rankings?
“Recently, we have seen that SEO is shifting, and AI search is now summarising results. Because of this, it's no longer enough to just chase rankings. The brands that will win are brands that strongly position themselves in people’s minds, to the point where they search for them by name, regardless of where they are on the SERP rankings.
For example, if I say ‘best soda’, the brand that automatically comes to mind is Coca-Cola. If I say ‘energy drink’, the brand that comes to mind is Red Bull. If I say ‘SEO audits’ and ‘keyword research’, Ahrefs and Semrush are what come to mind. If we talk about ‘link building analysis’, Majestic comes to mind. That is what brand positioning is: when your brand is the best at delivering a particular value that your customers truly care about.
When they care about this, they will remember you, and they will automatically search for you by name. In 2026, what will win is when you are not just found; you are remembered.
This might not sound like SEO, but it’s something that we can introduce to SEO to make your SEO processes better. You are focussing on optimizing your brand so that people search for you automatically.”
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?
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.”
We all know that one of the most effective forms of SEO is to create a resource that garners natural links. A big part of brand SEO is to build a brand that people want to talk about.
Aleyda says: “Optimize for citation-worthiness.
This is easier said than done. It's about establishing yourself as an authority in your field, but in order to do that, you have to make it very clear what your unique selling proposition is and create and optimize your assets and web presence accordingly – both within your own website and externally as well.
We have heard so much regarding how LLMs are getting citations from social media, and all of these features are giving visibility to Reddit, YouTube, etc., so we need to put some content out there. However, a lot of those conversations aren’t thinking about the alignment with your product, your brand, your USP, and what actually matters business-wise.
Time and time again, we have seen how Google updates have negatively affected the rankings and the traffic of topics that are too shallow, too broad, and are not aligned with the subject matter expertise and uniqueness of the brand. We have also seen a lot of comments saying, ‘Because of the Crocodile Effect, it's no longer worth targeting broader informational queries,’ which I also think is too simplistic an approach.
The truth lies in the middle. What actually matters is the angles, topics, or specific areas that you can cover as a brand. The topics that make sense business-wise won't be fulfilled by generic concepts, and will incentivise the potential customer to learn more about your brand.
It's still worth targeting, not only because it will maximise the chances of a click, but even if it doesn't end up generating a click, it will be worth it just to be visible, because that will help the user make their decision later on in the process.”
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.”
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.”
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?
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.”
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.”
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.
In addition to SEOs facing their own traffic challenges, many also
find themselves tasked with guiding their business leaders through the
massive change driven by AI agents.
Ben says: “Guide your C-suite into the great agentic unknown, because if you
don'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.
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?
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.
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.
Sharon Gwati-Mudzudzu shares the importance of combining SEO tactics with data insights to personalise the user journey to drive smarter decisions.
Talking points include:
Why do we need to Combine SEO tactics with data insights?
How do you Combine SEO tactics with data insights?
How does this help to personalise the user journey?
What are examples of how a user journey can be personalised?
How does this deliver measurable SEO success?
How does this help to drive smarter decisions?
How should this be implemented on an ongoing basis - how does this fit into a strategy?
Jean Dejsuvan shares that you shouldn't be panicking because SEO isn't dead (again)!
Talking points include:
Why do people think that SEO is dead?
Is SEO changing significantly?
What does this mean for new SEOs entering the industry?
What are the foundations?
How does an SEO ensure that their skills stay relevant?
Where do you learn the latest SEO techniques?
SEO in moving fast - what should we do ?
Jonathon Roberts shares the importance of building bespoke web apps that automate SEO workflows - like site audits, schema generation and for in-house reporting - by integrating search-engine APIs and real-time dashboards to drastically speed up your optimisation process.
Talking points include:
What are bespoke web apps that automate SEO workflows?
Why can’t we rely on standardised SEO platforms?
What are we looking to achieve by doing this?
What tasks should we be looking to run through these workflows?
How do we build them?
Where do we get the data from?
How much work do we need to put in to keep everything running smoothly and best-in-class?
Why can’t we rely on standardised SEO platforms?
Why is building your own tools better?
What types of businesses should be doing this?
Ulduz Ismayilova shares that with AI disrupting top-funnel visibility, SEO strategies must evolve to capture bottom-funnel, conversion-ready traffic.
Talking points include:
How is AI disrupting top-funnel visibility?
Why is it so key to focus on capturing bottom-funnel, conversion-ready traffic?
How do you identify bottom of funnel, conversion-ready traffic?
What happens to top and middle of funnel?
What does this look like as a strategy?
How will this continue to evolve?
Katie Thompson shares the importance of getting expertise straight from the source - EEAT is still important and the most valuable content will come from those who have interviewed real-life, human experts.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by get expertise straight from the source?
Why is EEAT still important?
How does the importance of EEAT manifest itself?
You say that the most valuable content will come from those who have interviewed real-life, human experts. What does this mean in practice?
How do you put together an expert-driven content marketing strategy?
What do you have to include in your content to maximise the opportunity?
Ryan White shares that mastering the basics now has never been important, but those basics have changed, where understanding data is now a key soft skill.
Talking points include:
What are the SEO basics now?
Why have they changed?
Why is understanding data now a key soft skill?
What does this mean?
How does this impact SEO on an ongoing basis?
How does this impact the way that SEO works with other marketing channels?
How does this impact SEO strategy?
Callum Lockwood shares that optimising for Google Organic product grids is more important than ever.
Talking points include:
What are Google Organic product grids?
What is “top tier product schema?”
How do you implement it?
How do you measure its success?
What are typical blockers to visibility?
How do you fix them?
Hannah Fox shares the importance of being strategic with your keyword research.
Talking points include:
What is strategic keyword research?
How do you know what is not suitable for the blue links?
Where else are you optimizing for?
How do you know which keywords are right for different platforms?
Is keyword volume still important?
Has the way that you incorporate keywords into content changed?
In this episode Charlie Marchant says that AI search is on the rise.
Talking points include:
What specifically is on the rise in terms of search engine popularity?
Is AI search popular among specific verticals or consumer groups?
How do we know if our target market is using AI search?
How do we optimise for AI search?
How do we measure the success of AI search?
What does this mean for the user funnel?
What does AI search mean for the future of SEO?
Pieter Serraris discusses with David Bain how logfile analysis is an SEO and GEO goldmine that is too often left untouched.
Talking points include:
-
Logfile usecases
-
Crawl budget
-
AI bots
-
Visibility in ChatGPT
-
Clarifying the dark funnel
-
Topics popular for ChatGPT
-
What does this mean for strategy
-
Beyond SEO
Priya Verma shares the importance of making analytics ready for your SEO to be able to track data effectively.
Talking points include:
How do you make analytics ready for your SEO?
Why does this let you track data more effectively?
What software do you use?
What data should be used in GA4?
Metrics and dimensions
How do you use this data elsewhere?
What impact does this have?
Christian Rigg shares why there's never been a better time to bridge any gaps between SEO and brand marketing.
Talking points include:
What are some typical gaps between SEO and brand marketing in a strategy?
How do you prioritise what needs to be done?
Who should be responsible for this?
How does an SEO work more closely with brand?
How can these essential instruments, as you call them, work together in perfect harmony?
How do you measure the impact of this?
John Iwuozor shares the importance of starting to build your brand authority and direct audience relationships now.
Talking points include:
Why is brand authority so important?
Why are direct audience relationships so important?
Why does brand recognition get you cited in AI answers?
Why does this keep you top-of-mind when traffic from search declines?
Why does this drive sustainable revenue growth?
How do you measure the impact of this?
Konrad Szymaniak shares the importance of using conversational SEO and query data clustering via machine learning.
Talking points include:
What is Conversational SEO & Query Data Clustering?
Why is machine learning key?
What do we want to achieve from this?
What software do you use?
What type of businesses should be doing this?
How is this changing due to AI?
Ninsiima Rukandema shares the importance of combining SEO and CRO and growing collaboration between these functions.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by combining SEO and CRO?
What can SEO do for CRO and what can CRO do for SEO?
What does this mean in practice?
How do you measure the impact of doing this?
How do you sell the value of this to stakeholders?
Tom Rawle shares the importance of creating content that AI can't create. Build relevant, informative, unique, authentic content for on-page and off-page SEO that can't be replicated.
Talking points include:
What kind of content can humans create that AI can’t?
How do you create unique content?
How do you create authentic content?
What do you mean by creating off-page SEO that can’t be replicated?
Will this strategy continue to work in the next couple of years?
Will Slater shares that it's essential to learn to write better content instead of relying on AI.
Talking points include:
Why shouldn’t AI be relied upon to write content?
What content needs to be written by humans?
What does good human-written content look like structurally and why is that different to AI?
How do you compete with the volume that AI can produce?
Will AI content not continue to get better?
What role is good for AI?
What does a good human / AI content workflow look like?
What AI tools do you use at the moment?
What will be the role of human produced content in the future?
James Hocking shares that all Generative AI tools rely on traditional search results to answer questions, and most (Google excluded) rely on Bing for web search.
Discussion points include:
Why do AI tools rely on Bing?
What do we been to rank on Bing?
What specifically do we need to do differently to rank in AI results?
What information does Copilot, Chatgpt, and Perplexity take from Bing?
How is this different from Google?
Is this situation likely to remain the same for a while?
What else are AI engines looking for?
In this episode Erin Simmons shares that in 2025, your best SEO edge is joining communities — they give you the real language of your audience for better content and earn you trust that fuels brand visibility across search and AI.
Discussion points include:
Why are communities so important?
How do you know the right communities you should be interacting on?
What’s a good way to interact and what’s a bad way to interact?
Should you be trying to drive traffic back from communities?
How do you measure the SEO success of interacting in communities?
How does interacting on communities positively affect other online success?
How are online communities evolving and what do we need to do to stay on top of things?
Is AI impacting online communities?
In this episode Simone de Palma shares 3 key tips...
1) Think like a Marketer and expand your SEO strategy across LLMs to chase visibility over clicks.
2) Act like an Analyst and explore opportunities with the Google Merchant Centre.
3) Use your technical skills to double down on structured data implementation
Greg Heilers shares that it's hard to imagine a future in which building a brand is a negative ROI activity.
Talking points include:
Why is building a brand so important for SEO in 2025?
Why is this likely to be just as important in the future?
In relation to SEO, what do you have to do to build a successful online brand?
What are the specific SEO activities that contribute to brand success?
How do you measure the impact of brand on SEO?
How do you measure the ROI of these activities?
How do you incorporate brand SEO into a marketing strategy?
Kerstin Reichert discusses the importance of the Yin and Yang of SEO - being human in an AI-driven world.
Talking points include:
How do you stay human in an AI-driven world?
What do you mean by an AI-driven world?
You recommend using AI to quickly scale - what does that look like?
How do you use AI to enhance processes?
How do you use AI to produce better insights?
How do you use AI to remain competitive?
How do you continue to show your human side, authenticity and expertise - and what good does this do?
Bruce Clay shares that SEO will be more important in the future: AI is an influencer, PR is vital, and conversion rate optimization going to be more integrated into the SEO effort.
Discussion points include:
Is SEO more important than it used to be?
What do you mean when you say that AI is an influencer?
When you say that PR is vital, how does PR fit into the SEO world and what aspects of PR are key for SEO?
What does conversion rate optimization have to do with SEO?
How do you measure the impact of conversion rate optimization on SEO?
How do you plan an SEO strategy with so many considerations in mind?
What will SEO look like in a year's time?
Gagan Ghotra shares that expertise combined with opinions of people is what matter.
Discussion points include:
How do you demonstrate expertise in content?
Why are opinions of people important?
How do you incorporate opinions in content?
How do you measure the success of this strategy in search engines?
How should this be incorporated into a content strategy?
How do you measure the success of this strategy?
How is AI impacting this strategy?
Vince Nero advises focusing on relevancy in 2025, meaning less outreach, fewer links, and less Content.
Discussion points include:
Why is less more?
What do you mean by focusing on relevancy?
Why less outreach?
Why fewer links?
Why less content?
What does this mean for strategy?
How do you track success?
How do you persuade senior managers that less is more?
Jon Mest shares that there are proven ways to smartly rank better in the AI models.
Talking points include:
What does ranking better in AI models actually mean in practice?
What measurable impact does this have?
How do you measure leads from AI models?
Is ChatGPT the best source of leads?
How do you SEO for AI models?
How is the space continuing to evolve?
Read the full transcript of Jon's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/jon-mest
Petra Kis-Herczegh shares how you can learn anything through identifying your transferable skills.
Talking points include:
Why should you just keep on learning, no matter what you’re learning?
How do you know what you are learning will be useful in the future?
How do you know what to focus on?
What skills tend to be transferable?
How do you identify transferable skills?
How do you stay motivated to keep on learning?
How does mindset come into this?
How do we continually adapt our approach to learning over time?
How does this help us find another job?
What if we’re recruiting? Should we be looking for continuous learning as an important skillset in someone that we’re interviewing?
Read the full transcript of Petra's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/petra-kis-herczegh
Adelina Bordea shares that small changes can make a big impact.
Talking points include:
What are the small changes you are talking about?
How do you know which small changes will have the biggest impact?
How do you know what changes to make?
How do you measure the impact these changes have?
How do you work with other internal teams to get these changes done?
What if it's likely to take a long time to get some basic changes done?
You say it is important to have a roadmap - what do you mean by this and what does a roadmap look like?
Read the full transcript of Adelina's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/adelina-bordea
Giulia Panozzo shares about the importance of investing in expanding your skillset.
Talking points include:
What is changing in SEO?
What additional skills need to be learned?
What soft skills need to be learned?
What adjacent topics need to be learned?
Where are some of the best places to learn?
How often should you learn?
How should you share what you learn in your own organisation?
How can you be sure that you are using your time effectively and learning the right things?
Read the full transcript of Giulia's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/giulia-panozzo
Emina Demiri-Watson shares that SEO is much more than it has ever been.
Discussion points include:
What are the key new trends of SEO to stay on top of?
-
Search has developed (strong performance of UGC platforms such as Reddit, AIO roll-out, development of Perspectives, recent core updates and emphasis on brand in search, TikTok as a search engine…).
-
User journey is not linear - finally it's dawning on companies!
-
Attribution is not really possible - particularly in the age of privacy!
-
One touch point is certainly not enough (no longer true even in ecommerce)
How does an SEO stay on top of things without stretching themselves too thinly?
Read the full transcript of Emina's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/emina-demiri-watson
Tevfik Mert Azizoglu shares how to go beyond Google and optimize different search channels.
Discussion points include:
What is search everywhere optimization?
Witch platforms are key?
How to select the platforms that are key for your business
How to use AI to optimize strategy
Read the full transcript of Tevfik's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/tevfik-mert-azizoglu
Sukhjinder Singh shares the importance of working smarter to stay relevant.
Talking points include:
How do you stay relevant?
How do you cope with what seems to be an ever-increasing rate of change?
How do you deal with overwhelm?
How do you work smarter and stay ahead?
How do you stay on top of the latest technologies?
How do you incorporate AI into your workflow?
How will you continue to do this over the next couple of years?
Read the full transcript of Sukhjinder's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/sukhjinder-singh
Krzysztof Marzec shares the importance of using data and knowledge from Google Ads and Analytics for better SEO!
Talking points include:
How does Quality Score helps to make better SEO?
How should paid ads and SEO teams work more closely together?
How does data from Google Ads campaigns improves content plan?
What data is available?
How can an SEO access all the data?
What’s an example of how this has changed a content strategy?
How often should this be done?
What reports in GA4 will influence SEO campaign most?
What is the easiest way to analyze this information? Use third party platforms?
Read the full transcript of Krzysztof's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/krzysztof-marzec
Debbie Chew shares the importance of tapping into your first-party data.
Talking points include:
What are the most common forms of first party data?
What tends to be the most useful first party data for SEO?
How should SEOs work with other teams to find better first party data?
How do we better understand our audience with first party data?
How do we analyse first party data?
What do you do if you don’t have much first party data to work with?
How do you create new first party data?
What kinds of questions should you be asking in surveys to create really useful new first party data?
What are some creative ways to use first party data?
What are some examples of using first party data in content?
Should you share first party data with AI?
Read the full transcript of Debbie's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/debbie-chew
Marco Giordano shares that SEOs need to get more familiar with analytics.
Talking points include:
What analytics knowledge do SEOs need to know about?
Do you primarily use GA4?
How much analytics knowledge is enough?
How should SEOs be using analytics packages on an ongoing basis?
How should analytics inform SEO strategy?
Should SEOs be learning coding?
Does this apply to non-technical SEOs?
Read the full transcript of Marco's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/marco-giordano
Nik Ranger shares why brand representation and interpretability matter in the era of LLMs.
Talking points include:
Why does AI rank matter?
How do you measure visibility on LLMs?
What is the impact of this on visibility?
What are typical gaps in the model’s understanding and what does a brand do to deal with this?
How to maximise brand representation
How does this impact purchasing decisions?
What’s the difference between a brand and an entity?
Read the full transcript of Nik's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/nik-ranger
Sanja Markovic shares that a site migration is like moving house.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by a site migration?
How do you prepare for a site migration?
How much time do you need to prepare?
What teams should be involved?
When is a site migration considered to be successful?
What are the most common reasons why site migrations fail
How to avoid making mistakes in a site migration?
Read the full transcript of Sanja's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/sanja-markovic
Nikki Halliwell shares the importance of using a migration briefing document before you start working on a migration.
Talking points include:
What are the key elements in a migration briefing document?
Who do you work with?
How do you sell the need for this?
Where do you gather information from?
What issues are likely to be solved by creating a migration briefing document?
Read the full transcript of Nikki's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/nikki-halliwell
Emma Russell shares 5 SEO tasks when migrating your site in 2025.
Emma's key points are:
-
Understand if it’s an opportunity for growth
-
Benchmarking what you have now
-
List all of your requirements
-
Make friends with dev
-
Test test test
Read the full transcript of Emma's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/emma-russell
Andrew Optimisey shares about he importance of controlling all of your domains.
Talking points include:
What does controlling all of your domains mean in practice?
Who should be responsible for your domains?
When should you buy a new domain and when should you build a new project on an existing domain?
When should you change a domain for an existing project?
When should you let a domain name expire?
What do you do from an SEO perspective when you decide to let a domain name expire?
What do you do if you have let an old domain expire, and you realise that this was a mistake. Is there any way to go back?
What can you do if a spammer or scammer gets hold of your domain?
What do you think of the newer domains - Is .com always best?
When selecting a new domain, is brand or domain more important?
Read the full transcript of Andrew's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/andrew-cock-starkey
Helen Pollitt shares the importance of understanding the cost as well as value of organic traffic.
Talking points include:
What is the difference between the cost and value of organic traffic?
Why do we need to know the cost?
How do we calculate the value?
What do you mean by organic traffic in all forms?
How do you prefer to calculate ROI?
How does this lead into defining an SEO strategy?
How often should this work be done?
How is it changing due to AI and new technology?
Read the full transcript of Helen's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/helen-pollitt
Andy Frobisher shares that it’s time to get serious about the internet and energy consumption.
Talking points include:
What companies are trying to go net zero?
Does this have a positive business case?
What does this mean for the overall size of pages on websites?
What are the best ways to reduce the page speed of a web page in 2025?
What does this mean for algorithms moving forward?
What does this mean for SEO planning?
How can Core Web vitals help us with this?
How do we forecast a revenue increase or cost reduction as a result of reducing page speed?
Read the full transcript of Andy's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/andy-frobisher
Bastian Grimm shares that inventory management is now more important then ever.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by Inventory management?
How do you know which content to focus on?
What do Google do when they can’t keep up with crawling and indexing the web?
Should you get rid of some content?
What content should you get rid of?
What’s an example of poor quality content, produced by AI?
What is state-of-the-art AI that SEOs should be using?
What parts of your SEO and content production should you be using AI for?
How else can AI help with your SEO performance?
Read the full transcript of Bastian's interview at: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/bastian-grimm
Kaspar Szymanski shares that SEO in 2025 is all about signal input.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by SEO signals?
Are Google and Bing looking for the same thing in terms of SEO signals?
So the same signals apply to LLMs as well?
How do you ensure that SEO signals are consistent?
Why do regular, annual SEO audits help with SEO signals?
What are the key things to be looking for in an SEO audit?
Is using server log data important as part of this?
What are you looking for in server log data?
What software do you use to assist you with this?
Tin Dudajek shares the growing importance of schema markup.
Talking points include:
How would you summarise the current state of Schema?
Why is it continuing to gain importance in 2025?
What is schema used for in modern SEO? (data management)
Why is Schema so important for AI?
What content needs to be optimized for Schema for AI?
Where is AI using these schema enhanced pages?
What tools do you use to assist with this?
How do you measure success?
Keith Goode shares that SEO Product Management is the natural progression of Technical SEO.
Talking points include:
What is SEO product management?
What does the day-to-day life of an SEO product specialist look like?
Why is SEO Product Management the natural progression of Technical SEO?
Why does SEO Product Management help you go from just building audit lists to implementing changes?
Should every SEO be considering this?
What skillsets are developed?
Cathryn Stormont shares the importance of keeping track of the performance of core web vitals and overall site user experience.
Talking points include:
Why are your core web vitals so important to UX?
How can you improve your core web vital scores?
Are these metrics likely to change or be added to over the next couple of years?
Are there any other key metrics that are important for UX?
Montserrat Cano advises the importance of getting to know your audience by undertaking market and competitor research to help overcome risks.
Talking points include:
How do you undertake market and competitor research to help overcome risks?
Why does this work both in primary and global markets?
Why does it help to overcome bias?
You also talk about Avoiding Logical Fallacies in SEO & Broad Marketing - what do you mean by that?
How does this process help you to maximise your budget?
Why does this help you Avoid alienating potential customers?
What data should you be gathering?
Where should you get data from?
How often should you be doing this?
Maria Scheibengraf shares that in your international SEO efforts, translation and SEO shouldn't be separate tasks performed by separate professionals.
Discussion points include:
Why does translation and SEO need to be the same task?
What happens if these tasks aren’t tackled together?
Surely technical SEO and content creation are quite different tasks?
What aspects of SEO do people who are translation specialists commonly miss out on?
What aspects of getting translations right do SEO specialists generally get wrong?
How do you ensure that translations are correct for the local region?
What tools does an SEO need to do both of these tasks effectively together?
How do you determine if a translation has been effective?
Do localised translations need to be optimised differently for local search engines?
Is AI not impacting the need for localised translations?
Joseph Kahn explains why adapting to the Local SEO Evolution is key.
Talking points include:
What changes in local search algorithms are you referring to?
How is ‘features with AI’ affecting local SEO?
How do you optimize for "near me" searches ?
What do you mean by optimizing for location-based queries using AI?
How do you leverage user-generated content for local SEO using AI?
Sean Barber shares why tracking LLM traffic matters.
Talking points include:
Why does tracking LLM traffic matter?
How do you go about doing this?
What LLMs are driving the most traffic at the moment?
How should an SEO optimize for LLMs?
What are some specific steps that SEOs should take to optimize for LLMs?
Why is this important compared with other SEO activities?
How is the LLM space evolving?
What does this mean for the future of SEO?
Edward Ziubrzynski explains why global EEAT needs to be a local strategy.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by EEAT being a local strategy?
How could an EEAT strategy vary in different locations?
What local considerations do brands generally need to be aware of?
How do you strategically roll this out if you’re a big company?
How does this improve your SEO?
How do you measure the success of this?
Myriam Jessier and David Bain talk about the importance of tackling local marketing and SEO with cognitive insights.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean by cognitive insights?
How can cognitive insights help with local marketing?
How can familiarity help to build your brand?
What’s an example of hyper-localised content?
How do you deliver hyper-localised content?
What are the benefits of delivering hyper-localised content?
Maximise your global reach by treating each international market as unique and creating tailored campaigns that resonate with local audiences.
Lau Miguez and David Bain discuss:
What do you mean by treating each international market uniquely?
You say Transcreate, Don’t Translate - what does that mean?
What other content creation tips do you have when trying to appeal to a local market?
Why do you have to understand the local Media Landscape?
How do you use the local media?
How do you get to know the local audience?
You advise on appreciating local Cultures and Subcultures - what does that mean in practice and how does this help to create a more impactful campaign?
In this episode, Sinead shares that you should find ways to look beyond what SEO tools show you, and that you sometimes you have to go manual to stand out.
Discussion points include:
What are examples of not getting enough information from tools?
When Media databases don't show you the most relevant contacts, how do you get the most relevant contacts?
You say that Google doesn't always show you all the relevant stories from a straight search - why is this important and what should you do about it?
Backlink tools can't always show you the full range of backlinks in a domain - why does this matter and how do you dig deeper?
How much value does this human digging deeper provide?
How do you measure the impact of it?
Can AI not assist with this?
In a world where over 65% of searches end without a click, No-Click SEO is reshaping how businesses approach search visibility.
David and Rose discuss:
Why is no-click SEO a thing?
Why are traditional click-through rates (CTR) are no longer the best success metric?
How are Google’s AI-driven search features (SGE, featured snippets, and People Also Ask) keeping users on Google, and what does this mean for SEO?
What actionable strategies can you offer that mean that users search for a brand directly? (AI-generated snippets, leveraging structured data)
How do you continue to future-proof your SEO?
In this episode, David and Alexandra discuss the importance of approaching link building differently in the age of AI-summarized results.
Topics discussed include:
Why is link building different now?
How do we focus on acquiring links now?
How do we measure success?
With Google reducing the payoff from SEO by introducing AIOs, building authority is becoming ever more important. But how do you use data to design highly effective digital PR campaigns?
In this episode, David's questions to Andreas include:
-
You suggest Benchmarking link volumes, quality and velocities to see where you are vs competitors - what does this mean and why do you suggest this?
-
You say that SEOs are chasing link sources, and that they should chase the target destinations instead. What does this mean?
You also recommend using Internal search pages as an insight by product - why?
- You suggest using indexes to find where you're under indexing on your content. What’s the value in doing this?
Sally Raymer talks about how you should go about tackling changes from algorithm updates.
Discussion points include:
How do you keep track of Algorithm Updates?
How do you decide what are the key algorithm updates to act on?
How soon do you act?
Changes in intent / competition / volatility
How do you analyze changes in user intent?
How do you determine whether your brand can continue to compete in these spaces?
How do you find new opportunities?
What are some examples of bad practices that get punished now?
How do you regain momentum after suffering from an algorithm update?
How do you predict the sustainability of new found opportunities?
Filipa Serra Gaspar talks about the importance of refreshing old content.
Discussion points include:
How do you select the content that needs to be refreshed?
What metrics are you looking at when deciding on the content that needs to be refreshed?
How do you know when to refresh the content, when to delete the content and when to leave it alone?
How do you refresh the content?
How do you know the part of content to refresh?
Do you remove some of the old content or just add new content?
What tools do you use?
How do you know what to add to the content?
Can you outsource this process?
What are you looking to happen when you refresh content?
How do you measure the impact of this?
Vivek Shankar shares why AI is here to stay and what to do about it.
Talking points include:
Why is AI here to stay?
What does that mean for content marketers?
What do you mean by implementing AI successfully?
You talk about models - are these best models to use for different industries?
What is the wrong way to implement AI?
How do you ensure quality in content?
How do you measure results?
What AI software do you use?
How do you integrate this into your content strategy?
Olga Zarr shares why you need to nail on-page SEO before doing anything else.
Talking points include:
Why are aspects of on-page SEO often neglected?
What aspects of on-page SEO are key for 2025?
How do you know which aspects of on-page SEO to prioritize?
Can you achieve much success just by focusing on on-page?
Are you saying that off-page isn’t as important?
How do you know when your on-page SEO activities are done?
Do you use tools to measure this?
How is on-page SEO changing?
How do you keep a track on how SEO changes?
How can you measure the success of your on-page SEO activities?
Monty Mathur shares about the importance of focusing on SEO fundamentals and first principles rather than chasing trends.
Discussion points include:
You talk about Applying SEO First Principles - what does that actually mean?
How do you ensure that your strategies are aligned to SEO First Principles?
What does high authority actually mean?
What are the core UX metrics and why?
You don’t recommend chasing SEO tactic trends - why is that?
How is SEO evolving and what do we need to be careful about?
Greg Gifford shares about the importance of not getting distracted by AI tools and algo updates.
Talking points include:
What are the basics?
Why are the basics still the most important part of what an SEO does?
How long will the basics remain relevant for?
Has anything changed about the basics recently?
What does getting distracted by AI tools and algorithm updates look like?
What’s an example of bad use of AI?
Shouldn’t we keep track of algorithm updates and update our tactics accordingly?
Is there a good use of AI?
You’re known as a local SEO expert - does this advice apply to all kinds of SEO as well as local SEO?
How do you incorporate focusing on the basics as part of an SEO strategy?
Itamar Blauer shares the importance of not neglecting the SEO fundamentals that move the needle for a website.
Talking points include:
What impact do the fundamentals have?
How do you track and measure, how do you stay on top of the fundamentals?
What percentage of your time should be spent on the fundamentals rather than newer tactics or strategies?
You talk about so many shiny new things happening in SEO - how do you know which shiny new thing to pay attention to?
How do you tell a client that you want to focus on the fundamentals, when all they’re interested in is AI?
Joe Hale shares why e-commerce sites are leaving revenue off the table.
Talking points include:
Why does this leave revenue on the table for e-commerce sites?
What is the difference between a collection and a category page?
What impact does creating & utilising collection/category pages have?
How do you measure this impact?
How do you optimise your use of these pages?
How do you know which categories to focus on first?
What process do you go through to promote these pages?
Is this advice suitable for all types of e-commerce sites?
Olesia Korobka shares that it is important to ensure the SEO fundamentals are done before we proceed anywhere further.
Discussion points include:
What are the basics and fundamentals that you talk about?
What are the common technical issues you’re seeing on websites nowadays?
Can you share some tips on how best to structure a website for 2025?
Why do you start with your goals and expectations from the user?
What are a few examples of good goals for a website?
How do you set the funnel that you’d like users to follow towards your goal?
How do you decide on the users that you want to visit your website?
How do you format your content for the SERP?
What do you do if you have content that isn’t bringing in the right type of user?
Gus Pelogia shares how to use LLMs to build simple SEO tools without coding.
Talking points include:
What types of simple SEO tools are you talking about building?
Why should SEOs build these sorts of SEO tools by themselves?
How can you do this using Screaming Frog?
What is vector embedding and why is it important?
What is cosine similarity?
How do you use Screaming Frog and OpenAI to extract embeddings?
You then use LLMs to create a Python Script - why is a python script important?
What’s the end result that you’re trying to achieve?
What are some other simple SEO tools that SEOs could build using LLMs?
In this episode, Ben Howe shares the importance of not being put off by the horror-stories; leverage AI for at-scale SEO output. But do it SMARTLY.
Victoria Olsina shares the importance of building your own prompt libraries for your clients.
During the conversation we focusing on the following steps:
Data Collection: Gather extensive data from the client, including previous content, style guides, and brand guidelines.
Training the Model: Use this data to train a GPT, ensuring it understands the client's voice, preferences, and industry specifics.
Customization: Fine-tune the model to handle specific content types like blog posts, social media updates, and product descriptions.
Integration: Integrate the GPT with tools like content management systems and collaboration platforms for seamless use.
Continuous Improvement: Regularly update the model with new data and feedback to keep it current and effective.
Danielle Neah Amponsah shares why digital PR isn’t just for links - it’s a powerful tool to build your brand.
Talking points include:
How do you run a successful digital PR campaign in 2025?
How does digital PR integrate with other marketing channels?
Is digital PR part of SEO?
How do digital PR and SEO work more effectively together?
How do you measure the impact of a digital PR campaign?
How do you incorporate digital PR into an overarching marketing strategy?
How is digital PR changing?
Kevin Indig shares that the key to success in SEO for 2025 is automation.
Discussion points include:
1/ mining insights from forums, SERP Features, and top-ranking content
2/ creating massive amounts of baseline drafts for editorial content
3/ enhancing aggregator content programmatically
Erik Wikander shares that it is essential that you understand how AI will impact search behaviour and content creation.
Topics discussed include:
How will AI impact search behaviour?
How will AI impact content creation?
How do you create unique AI content that performs well in search?
How do you use AI for the entire SEO and content marketing process?
What are the downsides to this?
How do you compete if everyone is doing the same thing?
Ian Helms believes that AI doesn’t need to improve—SEOs and marketers need to get better at using it.
Talking points include:
How do you maximise the potential of AI?
What are the key limitations of AI?
Are these limitations likely to stay?
How do SEOs work smarter with their use of AI?
What tools should they be using?
How should they incorporate AI into their workflow?
What happens if you don’t use AI? Will you get left behind?
Are there certain SEO tasks that will never use AI for?
Bill Hartzer shares that you can use AI tools to help you do your job more efficiently.
Talking points include:
What AI tools are you referring to?
How do you use them as efficiently as possible?
How do you link everything up together?
How do you ensure that AI is doing a good job?
How do you know what to ask AI to do, and what to do yourself?
What other tasks are you planning on testing AI on?
Zack Kadish believes that in the age of AI, content marketers must prioritize human-centered, customer-first content.
Talking points include:
How would you summarise the AI-driven and evolving SERP landscape at the moment?
Why is it important to prioritize human-centered, customer-first content?
Why does this make it more likely that SEO will be a success in an AI-driven and evolving SERP landscape?
What does creating authentic, authoritative content that addresses real user needs look like in 2025?
Why does this strengthen trust, enhance user experience, and build brand credibility?
How do you measure the impact of this?
How do you continue to stay on top of the evolving SERP landscape and how do you know when to adapt your SEO strategy accordingly?
Ashley Segura and David Bain discuss the age-old debate: Quantity vs Quality.
Talking points include:
-
How to produce content at scale
-
What tools do you recommend?
-
What type of content works best?
-
How should content be produced?
-
Do you favour in-house or agency?
-
What data should be utilised?
Tamara Novitović shares the importance of predicting user needs with AI & secure backlinks that drive rankings and engagement.
Talking points include:
How do we Predict user needs with AI?
How does this help to secure backlinks that drive both rankings and engagement?
How important a ranking factor is user intent and how should we optimise for it?
What about engagement - how important a ranking factor is that?
How can AI be used to predict user search trends and behavioural patterns? (competitor analysis, algorithm impact, etc).
Can we provide AI with user data to help it better understand their needs?
What metrics do we use to track user behaviour?
Can we use AI to build a backlink strategy that attracts credible links?
Manuel Madeddu shares the importance of not being used by AI.
Discussion points include:
What are the challenges with AI?
What’s best practice?
What is a holistic approach?
How do you work on efficiencies?
What are your thoughts on search engines using AI?
Taylor Kurtz discusses the importance of utilizing AI as an ally, rather than viewing it as a threat.
Discussion points include:
Why might AI be a threat?
How do you turn it into an ally?
How do you use AI for different agency tasks?
-
client communication
-
report analysis
-
content creation
-
much more?
What sectors are you finding to be particularly suitable for the use of AI?
What about hallucinations?
Any other sectors that you are working with?
James Brockbank shares the importance of thinking about E-E-A-T as your brand’s online reputation.
Talking points include:
How can E-E-A-T your brand’s online reputation?
What aspects of E-E-A-T are key to doing this?
How do you align link building, content and brand signals?
What aspects of link building, content and brand signals do you focus on most and why?
Can you do this in an automated way?
How does this link together in an overarching strategy?
Chris Meabe shares the importance of including expert perspectives in your content.
Discussion points include:
How do you become an expert source?
What measurable impact does it have?
What statistics are Google using to quantify the level of expertise?
How do you demonstrate your level of expertise?
How do you enhance your level of expertise?
How do you become the reliable source?
Jack Chambers Ward shares that authenticity is the difference maker for content in 2025.
Discussion points include Jack's 5 tips for creating authentic content:
-
Curate your content like you’re a magazine editor
-
Let your brand values drive the content, before the brief, before the keywords.
-
Stay consistent with your message and branding across channels
-
Leverage positive and negative elements in your marketing
-
Cut once, measure twice
Dani Leitner shares the importance of concentrating on one topic at a time to gain topical authority and improve rankings.
Talking points include:
Why is Google focusing more on topical authority?
What difference does this make to the quality of content it serves?
What does this do for a small brand’s ability to compete?
Why can small brands compete more effectively?
How do you build topical authority?
How do you know the right audience questions to answer?
How do you know where you should be engaging with your audience?
Iva Jovanovic shares the importance of focusing on delivering meaningful content to users (and don't dismiss EEAT signals) .
Talking points include:
What is meaningful content?
How important is EEAT in content in 2025?
You say that “Quality content will now more than ever be the main thing for all search engines” - how do you define quality content?
By all search engines - are you mainly referring to Google?
How do you think that the content creation process should be handled in 2025?
How should brands decide on what content to create?
How should a brand incorporate EEAT into their content?
What are some mistakes that companies are making with their content creation process?
In this episode, Ryan Jones shares the importance of focusing on building brand search volume.
Discussion points include:
Why is building brand search volume important?
How do you measure increases in brand search volume?
How do you know which marketing activity increased the brand search volume?
Can SEOs claim credit for increasing brand search volume?
What are the key SEO activities that can increase brand search volume?
What are the key non-SEO ways to increase brand search volume?
Should you try to increase brand search volume on non-traditional search engines and discovery engines?
What is the future of building brand search volume?
Gemma Fontané shares that Experience (within the E-E-A-T family) is the key element within the AI era.
Discussion points include:
-
How experience will be a differential element for websites
-
Concrete tips to leverage experience through Google (&other platforms)
-
Why is experience so important?
-
How does Google measure experience?
-
How do you demonstrate experience?
-
How will the importance of experience continue to evolve?
Jono Alderson shares that we should stop writing articles. He says "Stop assuming that 'producing content' is a core, valuable, or necessary component of modern SEO. Burn your content marketing playbook, and critically assess the role of content in a world where Google can synthesize answers to increasingly large numbers of (types of) queries."
Discussion points include:
Why do we need to burn our content marketing playbook?
How do we critically assess the role of content in a world where Google can synthesize answers to increasingly large numbers of queries?
What does this do - how do we adapt our strategy?
What does a content marketing playbook look like in 2025?
What content strategies won’t make it?
Is AI going to make content marketing doomed?
Can we use AI in a way that augments our content, without fear of being gazumped?
How does this affect the setting of an SEO strategy?
Laura Iancu discusses the intersection between UX and SEO with David Bain.
Talking points include:
Do you need to be a UX designer to deliver a user-friendly website architecture?
What are some simple steps to take in order to deliver a search engine-friendly website?
How do you like to stay on top of the latest UX trends and techniques?
How do you ensure that UX and SEO works together effectively in a large organisation?
What do you look for as a user to ensure that your website is mobile friendly?
You say that UXR is your friend - what do you mean by that?
You advise that an SEO should practise by constantly auditing competitor websites - what does this look like?
You say that the accessibility tab in Google Lighthouse + a screen reader can be your best friends - why is this?
Andy Mollison shares the importance of using AI to help do the dirty work (the boring bits), but don't forget to be human first. He shares that using scripts and tools can automate processes that would normally take hours.
Discussion points include:
You say “Don’t forget to be human-first.” What does that mean in practice? What elements need to be done by a human?
What processes should you be automating?
How do you use AI to create meta descriptions?
How do you use AI for redirect mapping?
You also suggest uploading your tone of voice to AI chat to check content for brand alignment - how does this work?
How do you create tone of voice / brand guidelines ?
What AI software do you prefer to use at the moment and why?
What are the downsides to using AI?
How do you ensure that you don’t end up creating generic content that Google won’t like?
How will the use of AI continue to evolve in 2025?
In this episode, Nikolas Monti-Potsolakis shares that SEO will be more about people, building relationships and getting to show empathy. Being in someone’s shoes. Understanding. And ultimately caring for their clients' business. For the person. Not just the numbers. Going above and beyond their needs and egos.
Discussion points include:
How can you measure the ROI of people?
What good does building relationships and showing empathy do for SEO?
How do you care for a client’s business and what good does that do?
How do you get to understand and care for a client’s business?
You say, don’t just focus on the numbers - what numbers should you focus on?
How do you build the areas around the numbers into a strategy?
How do you justify the value of relationships to your boss?
How will this approach continue to evolve in the future?
Amit Raj discusses the importance of relevance and depth when it comes to content and link building with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What is relevance? Available vs retainable market / KD score
Links - context - what content attracts best links? Most relevant links - content pitching publications
What do you mean by depth?
What does this mean when it comes to content?
What does this mean when it comes to link building?
How do you measure relevance and depth?
Where does this fit into an overall SEO strategy?
Desmond Boateng shares the importance of not forgetting the human touch, hosted by David Bain.
Discussion points include:
How do you know when to use the human touch and when to rely on AI and automation?
When does the use of AI go too far?
You say that Google is smart enough to recognize your AI content - surely if you’re subtle with your use of AI content then this won’t be obvious to Google?
How do you go about demonstrating the human touch?
How does incorporating the human touch make a positive difference to Google?
Are there other search engines that you focus on too, or primarily Google?
In this episode, Julia Carolin-Zeng discusses the return to human written content, how the flood of AI content has caused a decrease in quality
and seeing a return to content written by humans with a human voice.
Talking points include:
How do you measure this decrease in quality?
Is AI not getting better and better?
How can human writers possibly compete with the speed of AI?
What does “with a human voice mean”?
What aspects of human writing can compete with AI?
Are search engines not ambivalent nowadays if something has been written by AI - is it not just all about user experience?
What is your process for creating an article?
Arnout Hellemans shares that SEO in 2025 is a lot about task completion and query satisfaction. This means that UX and CRO will start to play an even bigger part in the ordering of documents.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean that SEO in 2025 is a lot about task completion and query satisfaction?
How do you optimize for task completion and query satisfaction?
What role will UX and CRO play in SEO
What metrics will Google look at specifically?
What are some examples of UX and CRO improvements that a site can make?
How do you measure the impact of the improvements for UX and CRO that you make?
How does UX and CRO impact the overall content strategy?
How should an SEO with in-house UX and CRO teams?
Where does brand fit in?
Jade Pruett shares the importance of focusing on creating original, expert-driven content with real stories and insights - and that Google rewards value over keyword stuffing.
Discussion points include:
What does the best original content look like at the moment?
What do you mean by expert-driven content?
Can you use internal and external experts?
What kind of real stories and insights do Google prefer?
What is your preferred way of producing this type of content?
Should we try to produce vide, audio and written content at the same time?
How do you structure your content for maximum impact? (Visual content and coding)
Do you advise creating social posts from this content?
How does expert-driven content fit into a marketing strategy?
In this episode, Fabio Embalo shares that in 2025, SEO strategies will prioritise user experience, leverage AI-driven content and branding synergy, and emphasise mobile-first indexing, as search engines evolve to deeply understand user intent and content relevance.
Discussion points include:
How do we use AI and Machine Learning to analyse search trends?
And what about content strategies - how do we use AI and Machine Learning to refine that?
Can we use it to better understand user intent?
How is search changing through the more prominent use of visual and voice search?
And how is mobile use evolving and how is that impacting SEO?
How do you optimise for user experience?
Is quality always better than quantity?
Where does branding fit into this?
According to Heike Knip's conversation with David Bain, accessibility will be a ranking factor in 2025.
Topics discussed include:
Why will Accessibility be a ranking factor?
How important will it be?
What does Accessibility seem more important now than it used to be?
How will it impact rankings?
What legislation is going to enforce this?
What will SEOs and UX professionals have to do to comply with the law?
How will they know that their accessibility has improved?
What software can they use to monitor their site accessibility performance?
What software can they use to find new accessibility issues?
Read the full transcript of Heike's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/heike-knip
Sara Fernández Carmona shares the importance of optimizing for both search engines and users. Hosted by David Bain.
Discussion points include:
How would you define accessibility?
In 2025, the European Union will enforce the European Accessibility Act - how would you summarise that and what does that mean for SEOs?
What are the areas that providing good accessibility offers beyond visual impairments?
-Cognitive disabilities: clear and straightforward content benefits those with cognitive challenges.
-Auditory disabilities: transcripts and captions make audio content accessible.
-Motor disabilities: ensuring keyboard navigability helps users who cannot use a mouse.
-Temporary disabilities and situational impairments: accessibility also addresses temporary disabilities and situational impairments: for example, a person with a broken arm might find it difficult to use a mouse but can navigate via keyboard, and a parent holding a baby might need to use voice commands instead of touch gestures.
And does inclusive language form part of this?
What are the business benefits?
What are some practical steps to get started with better accessibility today?
Billie Geena Hyde shares that Accessibility is sexy again (with the changes to the European Accessibility Act). Hosted by David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What changes have we seen to the European Accessibility Act?
How does this affect SEOs?
What are examples of the real data and facts around accessibility?
How do we measure the value of improving accessibility?
What are some big opportunities for SEOs?
Can we use AI to assist with this?
How does this fit into a digital strategy?
Yordan Dimitrov shares the importance of adapting to AI search trends with strong brand authority.
Discussion points include:
What AI search trends are you referring to?
How do you adapt to AI search trends with strong brand authority?
What does strong brand authority look like?
How do you measure strong brand authority in the age of AI?
How will AI search trends continue to evolve?
How will this impact the need to continue to adapt as a brand?
What are the key elements to creating a successful brand in 2025?
Martina Zrzavá Libřická shares that Customer Experience is the Alpha and Omega of SEO in 2025 - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What does Customer Experience becoming the Alpha and Omega of SEO actually mean in practice?
Why is customer experience so important to SEO?
What data should SEOs be looking for to find out more about their users?
Which other in-house teams should you involve to make this a success?
What information are you looking to find out from customers?
What should you do with this information?
How should this data impact their SEO strategy?
How do SEOs know if this work has been a success?
Can you measure the success from revenue or more traditional SEO metrics?
How will customer experience continue to evolve in 2025?
Damien Robert discusses the importance of embracing Search Experience Optimisation with Search Marketing & Web Accessibility - hosted by David Bain
Talking points:
Why is Search Marketing and Web Accessibility linked?
How would you define web inclusivity - and is this different from web accessibility?
How do you create an experience that’s welcome to everyone?
How do you ensure that your site is universally engaging?
How is paid search’s role changing?
What are some key aspects of web accessibility that big brands often get wrong?
How do you measure the impacts of good web accessibility?
How do you measure the financial value of proving better web accessibility?
Pedro Dias shares show SEO should work in a world where AI has a bigger role - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
When you talk about AI having a bigger role, what do you mean exactly?
How do we work in this kind of world?
What does this mean for the content that we publish?
How do we design and structure websites in order to retain value and protect unique valuable knowledge?
Are there any downsides to this?
Should we not just let our content be consumed by AI? Is that not inevitable? Will we not at least have a bit more brand exposure by doing that?
Alan Silvestri shares why in 2025, "SEO PR" is essential - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
-
Introduction to "SEO PR" and its importance.
-
Guidelines - domain authority, traffic
-
Key components: link quality evaluation, content strategy, outreach principles.
-
Creating link-worthy content that serves both PR and SEO goals.
-
Proactive link acquisition techniques in PR campaigns.
-
Optimizing for high-value link placements and relevant anchor text.
Simon Cox reveals why it's important to remove the complexities of SEO and get back to basics in 2025, in a discussion with David Bain.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by saying that no-one is going to be able to keep up with AI in 2025?
Should SEOs not try to use AI?
What do you mean by saying that you should remove the complexities of SEO?
What are the basics that everyone should get back to?
How do you ensure that you are focusing on the right basics?
How do you justify not focusing on AI to business leaders who might expect SEOs to have an AI strategy?
What does this mean for the future of SEO?
Read the full transcript of Simon's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/simon-cox
Jess Joyce shares why it's essential that you're answering prospects' questions and pain points - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
How do you know who your prospects are?
How do you know what their needs and pain points are?
How do you know you’re answering the right questions?
What data do you use?
Can you use all this data together?
What tools do you use?
What does that look like from a content perspective?
What does success look like?
Why take this approach over something else?
Araminta Robertson shares why you need to Interview a salesperson on your team to get keyword ideas for your SEO success - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
Why salespeople and not other people in your organisation?
Should you interview all salespeople?
What topics should you focus on?
What questions should you be asking them?
How should you structure the interviews?
What should you do with the content?
How often should you do this?
After this, should you interview other people in the company?
Kavi Kardos shares how SEOs and content marketers are responsible for fighting back against a flood of generic, AI-generated, and manipulative content. Hoisted by David Bain.
Discussion points include:
How can SEOs fight back against AI-generated content?
How do we decide on the right long-tail questions we should be answering?
What platforms should we be trying to appear on?
Should we be happy to target zero search volume keywords?
When you talk about Building community through less traditional platforms - what platforms are you referring to?
What do you mean by partnering with customer teams to build websites that users actually want?
Are you concerned about AI’s ability to compete in the areas that you’re recommending in the future?
Joshua Squires shares why omnichannel marketing will be essential for SEO success in 2025 - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
Omnichannel marketing (for SEO performance) turns the typical SEO approach on its head by influencing audience behavior to achieve results in the SERPs.
Google's leak plus what was revealed in the antitrust suit have made it clear that user interaction is one of the most powerful signals.
To influence behavior, users need to see and hear a message multiple times over a long period of time and they need to see social proof that what they are being asked to do is going to in some way benefit them.
SEOs can add wind to the sails of other channels by providing essential research, audience and competitor insights, and technical know-how. Getting people to search won't matter if the landing page isn't findable on search.
To further add value, the output of omnichannel marketing will naturally build up a brand's entity in search-- which also has value in terms of being visible in AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT.
Gianluca Fiorelli discusses how to prepare for Agentic Search, with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What is agentic search?
What is an example of it?
Why is it so important?
How does it work?
What do SEOs need to do to prepare for it?
How do you measure success?
How do you pitch the value of this internally?
Read the full transcript of Gianluca's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/gianluca-fiorelli
Nitin Manchanda shares why Search Experience Optimisation is the (real) definition of SEO with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean by "Search Experience" and how is it different from the "Search Engine" optimization?
What about organic experience? (Discoverability on other platforms) ODO - Organic Discovery Optimization
Why is optimising for user intent, behaviour and expectations important in the new landscape of SEO?
Everyone is talking about AI. Do you see any implications of recent AI developments on Search Experience?
How can we use AI-powered tools and techniques to optimise for the overall search experience?
What are the most essential ingredients to ensure Search Experience Optimisation?
In this episode, Navin Israni shares why SEOs must speak the language of business - hosted by David Bain.
Discussion points include:
Why SEOs must speak the language of business?
What does speaking the language of business actually mean?
What does this mean for conversations with clients, tasks and reporting?
What kinds of activities are a good use of an SEO’s time in 2025?
What kind of reports do clients want?
Should SEOs give up on impressions. clicks, and rankings in 2025?
How else is the SEO role evolving?
What are the key skills that all SEOs need to embrace in 2025?
Is this skillset different for SMEs versus larger organisations?
Dre de Vera shares how to transform from an employee to a successful SEO consultant - with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What is personal branding SEO?
How do you build Your Personal Brand with Video?
How do you measure the value of this?
Why is building your Connections and Networking important?
What is an example of effective networking?
How do you attract clients from your network?
Are there other ways of measuring the value of building a network?
Should every SEO network?
Would you like to talk about any Success Stories in relation to this?
What have you learned along the way?
If you were talking to Dre from 5 years ago, would you tell him to do anything differently?
In this episode, Isa Lavahun shares show Social media giants like TikTok are blurring the standard SEO lines - hosted by David Bain.
Talking points include:
What does this mean for SEO strategy?
How does social search intent impact SEO?
How differently do users search on social media?
How do you determine the type of content that you should be creating?
Can you create the same content for your website and social media?
What does this mean for user journeys?
How do you measure the value of convoluted user journeys?
Rosemary Osuoha discusses how to communicate about your technical SEO audit developers with David Bain.
Talking points include:
What are the key aspects of a technical SEO audit to communicate with developers?
How should this communication occur?
Over what timeframe should this communication occur?
How has what is necessary to communicate changed over time?
What are the aspects of a technical SEO audit that aren’t necessary to communicate with developers?
Read the full transcript of Rosemary's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/rosemary-osuoha
In this episode, Mathilde Høj shares how social search is more important than ever - with David Bain.
Talking points include:
Why are users fleeing Google and turning to TikTok?
What are the types of searches on TikTok?
How do you Incorporate TikTok into your search strategy?
How do you catch all user touchpoints?
What do you optimise for in TikTok?
How do you combine this strategy with YouTube and your website?
How will AIO impact social search?
Navah Hopkins shares the importance of focusing on non-login forums to secure placements with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What are the benefits to seeking placements on non-login forums?
What placement / content type are you referring to?
Does the size of the forum matter?
How do you select the forum that is optimal for your business?
When you talk about getting data for paid and organic creative, what data are you referring to?
Why does this bypass the need to rank organically?
How do you identify if a forum has the right audience?
What kind of feedback are you looking for on forums?
Are there any other benefits to doing this?
Should you still try to rank your organic content on Google too?
To help you understand where to focus your attention with so many different platforms at the table, Ashley Liddell from Deviation encourages you to trust the democratic process.
Ashley says: “Audiences are diversifying the platforms that they’re leveraging for search and the search landscape is democratising.
As that happens, SEOs need to be democratising their content strategies to go across these platforms and leverage this search universe that’s emerging.”
Tory Gray from The Gray Dot Company also believes it’s time to stretch your legs and take a walk through the alternative platforms that are eating away at Google’s market share.
Tory says: “Get out of the SEO silo and spend more time on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and Pinterest.
Understand how users are behaving there and use that data to inform your search strategy in terms of your content. What are users really loving and engaging with? Speak to that in your content and in your campaigns.
In this episode, Irina Papuc shares the importance of optimising your brand and your website as entities with David Bain.
Discussion points include:
What are entities?
Why are entities a key aspect of SEO in 2025?
What are some specific steps that an SEO can take to do a better job of incorporating entity SEO into their 2025 strategy?
How do entities integrate with the bigger SEO picture or the bigger marketing picture?
How do you measure entity SEO success?
There’s a whole world outside the Google bubble and, to get out there, SEO Specialist Katherine Nwanorue wants you to expand your horizons beyond what’s on the page.
Katherine says: “Look beyond on-page optimizations and traditional KPIs.”
Why is this important?
“Lately, the search engine results page has been crazy, which is likely in an attempt to tackle AI-generated content.
Google has made so many changes to the SERP in the past year. We are seeing a boost in user-generated and crowdsourced content, and many SEOs have complained about Reddit pages outranking blog pages and TikTok and YouTube videos appearing for certain keywords.
As Izabela mentioned, the online world is too vast to be everywhere at once, so Freelance SEO Consultant Ebere Cecilia Jonathan recommends seeking out the places your users like to hang out.
Ebere says: “With the way things are going, it’s almost impossible to lay your hand on a specific tip.
Aside from the classic advice of allowing your sites to be crawlable and indexable so that your website can be found, every SEO should focus on spending as much time as possible where their targeted audience is spending the most of their time.”
Read the full transcript of Ebere's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/ebere-cecilia-jonathan
Users are venturing outside the traditional search box, so Izabela Wisniewska from Creatos Media believes it’s essential that SEOs start doing the same.
Izabela says: “Think beyond Google and start optimizing for other search engines and other platforms.
What other search engines should SEOs be optimizing for?
“We should definitely start thinking about Bing when we talk about search engines. Of course, Google is still the master, and they own the majority of search queries, but Bing is slowly climbing back. It’s getting some of Google’s percentages from the search market."
Read the full transcript of Izabela's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/izabela-wisniewska
While Pam and Mufaddal encourage you to be open to new SERP features, Alex Moss from Yoast cautions against panicking over every little change and losing sight of the woods for the trees.
Alex says: “Stop obsessing about – and experimenting too much with – how to game the way that new technology interacts with the SERPs.
I’m mostly referring to AIO (AI overviews) and the way that’s starting to take over search results pages.”
Read the full transcript of Alex's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/alex-moss
Serge Nguele shares with David Bain why you should craft your brand story with precision and impact using SEO & PPC in synergy.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by crafting Your Brand Story with Precision and Impact?
Why is this important?
How do you do this using SEO & PPC In Synergy?
What tools do you use?
What lessons can SEOs learn from PPC?
What questions should SEOs be asking paid search experts?
What data should they be sharing?
How does this impact the brand story?
Read the full transcript of Serge's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/serge-nguele
If Pam didn’t convince you, Mufaddal Sadriwala from Assembly MENA is here to put your fears to rest and get you embracing AI overviews as a friend instead of battling with them as a foe.
Mufaddal says: “Stop worrying about AI overviews.
Obviously, it’s the most discussed topic but, from my point of view, AIO is not a threat to SEOs or organic traffic. In fact, it is going to help us maintain the traffic that we’re getting.
It’s not a threat. It’s something that is going to aid us.”
Read the full transcript of Mufaddal's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/mufaddal-sadriwala
In many ways, the shifting SERP can feel like uncharted territory. Thankfully, Pam Aungst Cronin from Pam Ann Marketing is drawing up the maps for AI overviews as the new frontier.
Pam says: “Focus on optimizing for AI overviews in Google, Bing, and even OpenAI’s forthcoming search engine – as well as the 10 blue links.
You can sort of think of them as one and the same because initial studies show that getting into Google’s AI overviews often means you’re ranking in the traditional 10 blue links as well.”
Are all the websites referenced in the AI overviews going to come from the first page?
“Hopefully we’re going to see that diversify a bit. This could be an opportunity for SEOs to get more exposure for smaller businesses, if you optimize specifically for the long tail queries and answers that show up in AI overviews."
Read the full transcript of Pam's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/pam-aungst-cronin
Like Folashade, Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, believes that AI tools can help you gain a deeper understanding of the people behind the search queries.
Eli says: “Everyone’s been talking about using AI for SEO, and they’re focusing on the wrong aspect of it.
AI shouldn’t be used to create content; it should be used to understand your users and figure out who they are. You can then use AI to create some of that content, but the magic of AI is understanding the things that you wouldn’t already know about your users.”
Is there a particular AI that you’re using?
“I was using ChatGPT, then I moved over to Gemini. I tried Perplexity but it always introduces itself by repeating the prompt, and I find it really annoying."
Read the full transcript of Eli's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/eli-schwartz
Folashade Uba from Maersk has uncovered another often-overlooked but abundant source of user insight, direct from the horse’s mouth: support queries.
Folashade says: “Analysing support queries is crucial for identifying customers’ pain points, uncovering their search intent, and discovering patterns and emerging trends in 2025.
You can also use topic modelling to enhance your SEO strategies.”
What are the best support queries to analyse?
“There are a lot of different ones, obviously. You can get them from contact forms, calls, emails, etc. It all depends on the platform that you use to gather these support queries."
Read the full transcript of Folashade's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/folashade-uba
Travis Tallent shares with David Bain that knowing where your audience's demand starts makes your SEO demand capture 10X stronger.
Talking points include:
When you say 10x stronger, what do you mean by that?
How do you know where your audience's demand starts?
What tools do you use to determine this?
How do you know how to meet that demand?
How do you know that this demand will convert to web traffic?
How do you measure success?
In general, what are some most effective demand generators for different types of businesses at the moment?
Read the full transcript of Travis's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/travis-tallent
Given the importance of understanding your users, you’re probably wondering where you can learn what they want. Michael MacMillan from MacMillan Search believes sales conversations are the place to look.
Michael says: “Avoid ultra-competitive topics with limited intent by mining sales conversations for bottom-of-funnel content.”
What are examples of ultra-competitive topics?
“Project management is a big one. Right now, monday.com ranks for ‘project management’, but there’s mixed intent around that query. There are people looking to become project managers and people trying to understand what project management is, and they’ve got a strong position there."
Read the full transcript of Crystal's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/michael-macmillan
Sarah suggested you look into cognitive biases, and Garrett Sussman from iPullRank is here to help you do just that. Learn how these biases impact the way users behave to give you an edge over the competition.
Garrett says: “Understand the role of cognitive biases in SEO. Our brains play a lot of tricks on us. When people are searching for things, we can be deceived by the shortcuts that our brains take. These cognitive biases influence the type of information that we’re seeking, and SEOs need to pay attention to them.
We all bring context into our searches: how our day’s going, our jobs, what we like, our families, etc. That influences the type of information that we’re looking for. There are hundreds of cognitive biases, and they influence the way that we search, the queries we put in, the results that we see from Google, and the results that we ultimately choose."
To really get to know your users, you need to get inside their heads. Sarah Pokorná Presch from Dragon Metrics tells you how to use the psychology of your customers to your advantage.
Sarah says: “Start using psychology to stay ahead in the SERPs.
The reason why I say that is because, if you don’t have any content, you’re not going to rank. If you don’t have any user experience, you’re not going to get any conversions. If you don’t have any CRO, you’re not going to get any conversions."
Read the full transcript of Sarah's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/sarah-presch
As Jake touched on, getting to know your users is also about knowing what journeys they are on. Christopher Hofman from HofmanSEO encourages you to map out those journeys and meet them on the road.
Christopher says: “I work with B2B customers, so my focus is on them succeeding with SEO. In B2B, customer journeys are very long, with lots of touchpoints and lots of influences.
I recommend that you map out the customer journeys for your desired prospects. That way, you will really understand the importance of SEO because a lot of those touchpoints are going through organic traffic today."
Read the full transcript of Christopher's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/christopher-hofman
Ramona Joita shares with David Bain the importance of focusing on Omnichannel SEO.
Talking points include:
What is Omnichannel SEO?
What impact is AI having on this?
You mentioned that it's becoming increasingly crucial to understand that exclusively aiming for the number one ranking on Google is not sufficient - what should the additional aims be?
How do you own more of the search space?
How do you measure the impact of this?
How do you incorporate this into a strategy?
Who else should be responsible for this?
How do you keep an eye on other future trends?
Read the full transcript of Ramona's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/ramona-joita
While Becky helped you prepare for the future, Jake Gauntley from KINESSO UK is keen to make sure that the users themselves don’t get lost along the way.
Jake says: “Don’t lose sight of the people that you are actually trying to reach through SEO.
As things like AI become ever-present in our lives and working plans, you should be tapping into the human side of search. It’s going to be even more important that you’re connecting with the users who are searching for your brand or visiting your website.”
Read the full transcript of Jake's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/jake-gauntley
Becky Simms from Reflect Digital has advice on how to be ahead of the game so that you’re ready for the new ways that users interact in a world of omnipresent AI.
Becky says: “With the ramping up of AI, we need to start thinking about how behaviour is going to change.
We’re seeing a lot of search engines integrating it into how the algorithm works and the results that they’re showing, and we want to think about how behaviour will change."
Read the full transcript of Becky's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/becky-simms
Despite the expanding plethora of information available to us, it seems to be harder than ever to know what users are thinking. Mark Williams-Cook from Candour reminds you that intent is always changing.
Mark says: “You should be monitoring search intent shift. Be aware of when what users want, and what they mean when they use a search term, changes over time – and adapt accordingly.”
How do you find out what users want?
“That’s the million-dollar question. Intent shift happens in several different ways. Some are ways that people are already aware of, and others are harder to recognise because they are happening in the background."
Read the full transcript of Mark's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/mark-williams-cook
Getting a little more specific, Aleyda Solis from Orainti encourages you to turn your attention towards the long tail keywords to keep up with changing user behaviour.
Aleyda says: “Target and focus more on answering the long tail queries of your users.
We are going to see a much bigger and more important impact from those as a consequence of the AI overviews and personalised AI results that we expect to have in the not-too-distant future.
Read the full transcript of Aleyda's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/aleyda-solis
Tom Winter discusses with David Bain the importance of understanding your topical authority with AI to dominate your niche.
Talking points include:
What is topical authority?
Tell me about the Sitefocus score in latest Google score
Why is authority so important in the eyes of Google?
How do you determine what Google think your topical authority should be?
What to do if Google gets it wrong
How to change your topical authority
Read the full transcript of Tom's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/tom-winter
While he acknowledges the importance of entities, Charlie Whitworth from Whitworth SEO is here to remind you that keywords are still an integral piece of the puzzle.
Charlie says: “Keywords do still matter.”
Why do some people not believe that to be the case?
“I don’t know if it’s off the back of AI developments, but a lot of people have been talking about keywords being dead and saying that you should stop focusing on them. They quite rightly mention entities, which should absolutely be at the forefront of any high-volume SEO strategy.
Read the full transcript of Charlie's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/charlie-whitworth
Martha van Berkel from Schema App takes us deeper into the minutiae of entity SEO to look more closely at schema markup and how to build a powerful knowledge graph.
Martha says: “Start to think about entity SEO and managing your content knowledge graph.”
How would you define an entity?
“I always like to think about an entity as a thing. When you’re in a business, you can think about the most important strategic ‘things’ for the business. What makes an entity different from a keyword (or a word in general) is that it is multi-dimensional. You can describe that entity and how it relates to other things.
Read the full transcript of Martha's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/martha-van-berkel
As Jason pointed out, the value of entities goes beyond helping Google categorise your content. Ulrika Viberg from Unikorn explains how they can be the key to getting your brand noticed.
Ulrika says: “Utilise entities – not only for content creation, as we have been doing for quite some time, but also for brand optimization.
You can make your brand properly stand out in the search results by optimizing the entities around the brand.”
Read the full transcript of Ulrika's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/ulrika-viberg
To kick off our deep dive into entities, Jason Barnard from Kalicube breaks down how and why you need to optimize your entities in 2025 – from the content itself to the creator and the publisher.
Jason says: “You need to focus on Entity Optimization for EEAT, or what we at Kalicube call NEEATT.”
Entity Optimization starts with entity understanding, is that correct?
“Yes, 100%. Without entity understanding, there is no basis for EEAT. It is essential that you ensure Google understands who the creator or publishing entity behind the content you publish is. Without that understanding, EEAT means nothing.”
Read the full transcript of Jason's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/jason-barnard
Reena Bowden shares with David Bain why and how did we should create a multi-function approach to SEO.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by a multi-function approach to SEO?
How has SEO evolved throughout the organisation over the past few years?
Who’s responsible for different aspects of SEO nowadays?
What are the changes driven by?
What are the advantages to these changes?
What does this mean for tracking SEO performance?
If an organisation isn’t set up like this, how can a head of SEO start to implement these changes?
How should different SEO in-house departments be trained on the value of SEO?
How will this continue to evolve in the future?
Read the full transcript of Reena's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/reena-bowden
It wouldn’t be long before AI joined the brand party! If you want your name to show up in AI-driven results, then taking control of your brand entity is key, according to Crystal Carter from Wix.
Crystal says: “Manage your brand entity for visibility in generative search engines and tools.”
Why does generative search visibility mean that you should rethink your brand entity?
“One of the things that’s really important to consider is the way that LLMs work and the way that people are using them on a regular basis.
Over the last year, search has become very dissipated and decentralised. Rather than just using Google or Bing, people are searching across multiple search engines – including LLMs and tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini – to find their answers.
Find out more here: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/crystal-carter
Like the others in this chapter, Casie Gillette from Customers.ai believes that brand is changing the face of SEO. In her view, you don’t just need to build links anymore; you need to get your name out there.
Casie says: “Brand mentions are the new links.
Considering what we’re seeing with AI overviews, Reddit, and Quora, forums are back. Fortunately or unfortunately, it’s where you’re going to have to spend your time.
AI overviews are pulling from these various places. I can’t tell you how many searches we’re seeing Reddit pulled up for. Lily Ray recently assessed people who lost traffic and are now ranking number 2. Guess who they’re behind? Reddit.
Find out more here: https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/casie-gillette
You can put the work into your brand identity, but your customers need to recognise and believe in it too. Rana Abu Quba Chamsi from Expando.Digital explains how to gain a customer’s trust and attention.
Rana says: “Everything is changing, so build trust and focus on brand awareness for your clients.”
Why do you believe that traditional metrics are losing their importance?
“In the SEO world, we live with change, but what’s going on now is changing everything. We have witnessed a change in the ranking of websites, for example. SERPs are moving and some websites that have always been in the top positions are losing out to new websites.
Read the full transcript of Rana's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/rana-abu-quba-chamsi
Like Rejoice, Annika Haataja from Seeker Digital believes in the power of the brand, and she believes that brand should be central to everything that you do.
Annika says: “Make brand SEO a firm part of your analysis and strategy.
Consider brand almost as a superpower for websites and companies. I would count it as one of the three main pillars that can give you a huge competitive advantage.
The first pillar is topical authority, which is about content and content marketing within SEO. The second pillar is link authority, and the third pillar is definitely brand. Although brand is part of both of those other elements, there are ways that SEOs can analyse it and make it a firm part of their strategy.
Read the full transcript of Annika's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/annika-haataja
Grégory Dominé joins David Bain to discuss the importance of shifting to agile SEO.
Talking points include:
What does working in an agile way actually mean?
What are the benefits of working in an agile manner?
What are the practical steps that you can take in order to shift to Agile SEO?
Are there elements of SEO that can’t work in an agile approach?
What are examples of tasks that work really well using an agile approach?
Does an agile approach help you get things done more quickly?
How do you define what needs to be done first?
How do SEOs move from their current approach to a more agile approach?
Does working in an agile way help you work more effectively with other departments?
What are the first steps that an SEO needs to take to find out more about Agile?
Read the full transcript of Grégory's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/gregory-domine
In a world increasingly overpopulated with labels, Rejoice Ojiaku from Nelson Bostock UNLIMITED suggests brand archetypes as a way to make your identity cohesive and compelling to the customers that matter.
Rejoice says: “Start incorporating and integrating brand archetypes into your content strategy to align your content and identify buyer personas.”
What is a brand archetype?
“Brand archetypes are a set of 12 frameworks. It is a more psychological approach to developing emotional connections with your audience through your brand. A lot of brands inherit these different distinct personas that can represent a brand identity and create a narrative within your audience about what the brand is."
Read the full transcript of Rejoice's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/rejoice-ojiaku
Compliance is starting to have a more important role in many businesses, and Ash Nallawalla from CRM911 Digital is here to explain why digital governance is an area that you can’t afford to miss.
Ash says: “Digital governance is lacking in most web-enabled businesses, at least in a formal sense.
Although websites have been around for 20 years or more, their execution tends to be ad hoc, ultimately resulting in a less-than-ideal outcome for the business.
‘Digital’ is a loose term that people use when they think of computers. In the context of governance, it covers websites, social media platforms, our software if we make software, and apps for mobile phones and tablets if we make apps. The definition tends to vary a little. It usually implies the internet; it doesn’t have to, but it usually does.”
Read the full transcript of Ash's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/ash-nallawalla
Effective communication is about more than just making yourself heard, and Anthony Barone from StudioHawk UK knows how to get clients and agencies to sing from the same hymn sheet.
Anthony says: “I’m going to explain how to get optimal results from an agency and how an agency can get good results from their client.
It’s all about working together and focusing on that relationship.”
What does an optimal client-agency partnership look like in 2025?
“Traditionally, it would just be: ‘We pay you, you do work.’ Then, sometimes, the client won’t actually know what you’re doing and it just keeps on rolling and rolling."
Read the full transcript of Anthony's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/anthony-barone
Building on Adrijana’s motivational advice, Anna Bravington from Those That Dare and Oxford Innovation Space helps you speak up and have your voice heard in budget discussions.
Anna says: “Integrate SEO into the business better so that you can talk finance and get those CFOs to give you a budget.”
Is it an SEO’s fault when they don’t get the budget or a CFO’s fault?
“It’s a bit of both. There is a balance and tension between CFOs and CMOs. Apparently, 40% of CFOs don’t think that CMOs and marketing people can speak business, and marketers also don’t think that finance people understand marketing."
Read the full transcript of Anna's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/anna-bravington
David Bain and Otuto Umeji discuss what content is required for each stage of the buyer journey.
Talking points include:
How do you create content for each stage of the buyer journey?
How do you establish user intent?
How do you know what type of content to write?
How do you measure success?
Read the full transcript of Otuto's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/otuto-umeji
It’s not just the decision-makers who undervalue SEO; sometimes it’s SEOs themselves. Adrijana Vujadin from AV Mindset Coaching urges you to fight for what you’re worth.
Adrijana says: “Stop under-earning.”
Are SEOs bad at charging what they’re worth?
“Yes, because people are not respecting them enough. That is why we lack confidence. Money, and money mindset, is a specific topic that not a lot of SEOs are talking about. Whenever we mention money, there is a negative attitude around it. People say that it’s not all about the money and they will say they’re getting enough."
Read the full transcript of Adrijana's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/adrijana-vujadin
In a world where the value of SEO can often be overlooked by decision-makers, it’s essential for SEOs to be able to articulate the value of their activities. This is where we begin, with Lucia Dello from Dello Insights.
Lucia says: “Prove the value of your e-commerce SEO.”
How do you prove the value of it?
“In this world, where acquisition remains a challenge and marketing budgets are tight, we want to demonstrate that SEO is bringing in the people you want. Retailers are looking well beyond the campaign level. They want to understand their whole sales portfolio and how it's growing over time. Therefore, you want measures that don't stop at the level of the activity, engagement or a sales total."
David Bain and Jonathan Moore discuss the importance of leveraging planning strategy, data analysis and what-if scenarios to navigate ambiguity.
Talking points include:
What data analysis are you referring to when planning a strategy?
Where are the best sources of data?
What are some examples of what-if scenarios that you are referring to?
Link profile may not be what you want it to be?
Content may not be what you hoped it would be?
How does this help to navigate ambiguity and the unknown?
What type of ambiguity are you trying to avoid?
Why is it important to do this?
How does this measurable impact your SEO success?
How often should you be planning SEO strategy?
What else should be incorporated in an SEO strategy?
David Bain and Sabine Ljunggren discuss why you need to add social media to your search strategy.
Talking points include:
Why do you need to add social media to your search strategy?
What does this mean in practice?
What social media are we talking about?
What content works best on different social media sites?
Why does this fit as part of a search strategy?
How do you measure success on social?
How do you measure success as part of an integrated search strategy?
How will this continue to evolve in the future?
Desmond Boateng joins David Bain to discuss the importance of building a brand with your own story over link building.
Talking points include:
Why is building a brand with your own story so important?
How do you craft your story?
Where should you publish your story?
How does your brand story interweave with the rest of your content marketing efforts?
What measurable impact does this have on your SEO success?
How often should you hone your story?
Is this more effective than link building?
Read the full transcript of Desmond's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/desmond-boateng
Ahmed Bhula and David Bain discuss balanced/consistent link building and creating content consistently within limits. Before you know it, you'll be competing against the larger companies and every Google update will benefit your rankings.
Talking points include:
What does Balanced/consistent link building look like?
What links are good links in 2024?
How many should you be building a month?
What are the limits you talk about?
What does constant content creation look like?
What content is best?
Why does this help compete with larger companies?
How do Google updates benefit rankings?
Read the full transcript of Ahmed's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/ahmed-bhula
Kyle Rushton McGregor and David Bain discuss how to utilise the customisation options in GA4 to your advantage.
Talking points include:
What are the customisation options?
How should SEOs be customising them?
Why should SEOs be using them?
Should SEOs get assistance from a GA4 professional?
What data is available?
How should SEOs be using this data?
What other software do you like to connect to GA4?
Are the customisation options likely to change again in the near future?
Read the full transcript of Kyle's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/kyle-rushton-mcgregor
PPC and Paid Media expert Sophie Fell joins David Bain to discuss how SEOs can test potential opportunities using PPC and why close collaboration between SEO and PPC can lead to data-driven insights and better-optimized landing pages, which in turn can improve conversions.
Discussion points include:
Why should SEOs be testing opportunities using PPC?
How should they define the opportunities to test?
What does the testing process look like?
What software should they be using?
How do they select a winner?
What do they do once a winner is selected?
What's your opinion of SEO and PPC ranking for the same term - should PPC be turned off?
Read the full transcript of Sophie's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/sophie-fell
David and Dani discuss the importance of focusing on building a strong, recognizable brand around a specific topic, so people automatically think of you, ensuring that regardless of changes in algorithms, your brand remains a go-to source.
Discussion topics include:
How do you build a strong, recognizable brand around a specific topic?
How can you ensure that people remember your brand after reading your content?
What content do you prefer to publish?
Where do you publish your content?
How do you measure the SEO value of this?
How do you view AI content?
Read the full transcript of Dani's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/dani-leitner
In this episode, Tom Winter and David Bain discuss why you should team up with AI by using the "Cyborg Method" to deliver content.
Discussion points include:
How do you team up with AI?
What AI do you recommend working with?
How do you deliver content that is more valuable than you could before?
How do you know it is more valuable than previous content?
What are the risks to doing this?
When you talk about doing this at scale - what scale level are you talking about?
Is it possible to compete without using AI?
How do you think your strategy will continue to evolve over the coming few months?
In this episode, Michał Suski and David Bain discuss why, if you have a strong, authoritative domain, you should publish as much as you can.
Discussion points include:
How do you know if you have a strong, authoritative domain? What metrics do you use?
How do you make your domain more authoritative?
What do you mean by ‘publish as much as you can’?
What form of content works best?
How do you measure the success of your content publishing?
How has your content publishing strategy changed over the years?
How is AI affecting your publishing process?
In this episode, Luca Tagliaferro and David Bain discuss "Zero-Lead Marketing".
Discussion topics include:
What is Zero-Lead marketing?
What standalone insights and information are you referring to?
Why is there no need to convert?
What are the benefits to this?
How does this impact SEO strategy?
How does it work with other channels?
We're in 2024 and log files analysis is still an underrated source of SEO knowledge.
David and Julien discuss:
What is log file analysis?
How do you get access to your log files?
Where are log files stored and are everyone’s log files a similar structure?
What software do you use to analyse your log files?
What do you look for when analysing your log files?
Do you combine your log file analysis with other data for better insights?
How should log file analysis impact your SEO strategy?
Look at SEO holistically, from an entity building perspective. Onpage, but largely offpage also. Ensuring those foundational layer links & signals are in place. To focus on this, rather than obsessing and spending thousands on guest posts.
David and Adam discuss:
What is holistic SEO?
What are the key elements to building a successful online entity?
Gaps in entity - software to analyse
What aspects of onpage do you focus on?
What areas of offpage SEO do you start with?
What are the best types of links to be getting nowadays?
By having a holistic approach, do you also try to work with other marketing channels?
Do you not like guest posting?
Focus on User Intent and build content, authority and a website experience that matches that and helps them to get towards their goals.
David and Amanda discuss:
How do you focus on user intent?
How do you prefer to categorise user intent?
How do you define a user’s goals?
How do you build content, authority and a website experience that matches user intent?
How do you build authority by delivering the right user intent?
How do you alter a website experience to match a user intent?
How is user intent changing?
How do you determine the likely user intent?
To save time, increase efficiency, and minimise errors, utilise automation for auditing your websites.
David and Jonathon discuss:
What automation is key?
What software do you use?
How much time do you save?
Why do you minimise errors and what errors do you tend to minimise?
How often should you audit your websites?
What are the primary issues that you are looking for when you are auditing?
How is the automation of auditing likely to change over the coming year?
SEO is constantly evolving, but one thing remains constant: Google's goal is to provide the best results for users. While the signals (CTR, time on page, etc.) may change, Google's focus on quality does not. By creating the best content, you'll succeed regardless of changing rules.
David and Ana discuss:
How do you optimize for Google to provide the best results to users?
How does Google measure quality?
How do you create the best content?
What type of content works best nowadays?
How do you know that you’ve created the best content?
What do you track to ensure that you’re consistently measuring the best content?
How do you build content creation into an SEO strategy?
Hoow do you measure success?
David and Azahara discuss the importance of using AI to gain deeper insights into user intent and refine your keyword strategy.
Talking points include:
How do you use AI to gain deeper insights into user intent?
How do you ensure that you’re targeting the right users?
How does this lead on to refining your keyword strategy?
How do you make sure that keywords aren’t missed?
What do you mean by a cohesive approach?
What AI tools do you use?
How do you continue to refine your approach?
What are the advantages of this versus a more traditional approach?
What are your thoughts on how your approach will continue to evolve in the future?
David and Andy discuss why you shouldn't let your technical SEO slip after the Helpful Content Update.
Talking points include:
Google launched the Helpful Content Update in mid-2022. What was that about, and has anything changed since then?
How has the helpful content changed SEO?
Why do you say that you shouldn't let your technical SEO slip after the Helpful Content Update?
What are the key aspects of technical SEO that yo9u shouldn’t let slip?
Is this the same for every industry?
How do you track technical SEO success?
David and Carlos discuss why it's crucial to diversify your content strategy in the age of AI.
Talking points include:
How would you summarise the way that AI is transforming content marketing?
Why diversify your content strategy with video?
Why did you mention TikTok first?
What does a good TikTok SEO strategy look like?
Why does this fit into the customer journey?
What other video platforms do you recommend?
How do you measure the impact of a video SEO strategy?
How do you think that this will continue to evolve over the coming year?
David and Kalin discuss the importance of accepting that you don't always know what is going on.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by that?
What precisely do you have to accept you don't know what is going on?
Why does this matter?
How does this impact the way that you actively do SEO?
How does this impact the software that you work with?
How does this impact your strategy?
How does this impact the way that you manage a team?
To turn your tip around, what should you know that is going on?
David and Tamara discuss the importance of ensuring that your link-building strategies align with user needs rather than algorithms.
Talking points include:
How do you align your link-building strategies with user needs?
What kind of user needs are you referring to?
You talk about evading spam risks during core updates - what spam risks are you talking about and can you give me an example of a core update that has made it more likely for a site to be flagged as a spammer?
Should you just target your link building strategies at driving traffic now?
What mistakes do you tend to see with link building strategies?
What link building strategies tend to work best now?
What metrics track user-focused link-building success for SEO?
How is link building changing in the world of AI?
David and Rejoice discuss why you should expand your content ideation and keyword research beyond Google.
Talking points include:
What do you mean by Social Media SEO?
How do people begin their searches on social media?
How do you track this?
How can you determine the most appropriate content ideas to be targeting?
How do you optimise for social media?
Where does this fit into the customer journey?
Do you find that people use Google search as well, further down the buyer journey?
Can you determine keyword volumes?
How can you forecast likely results based on what you intend to target?
David and Naomi discuss the importance of using your internal data to find exactly what your customers want.
Talking points include:
What internal data should you be utilising?
What are examples of wishes that you’ve discovered that customers are looking for?
What sort of experience are you talking about when you’re saying that this is what you should use to address this?
What systems and tools do you use to make this procedure more effective?
What measurable impact does this have on SEO?
Competitors - how do you know that their content is hitting it out of the park?
David and Lucia discuss the importance of breaking the built-in failure cycle and running campaigns that delight your client.
Talking points include:
What is the built-in failure cycle?
What causes it?
What can you do to stop it and change it?
What are examples of campaigns that delight a client?
How do you make this more likely to happen in the future?
How do you replicate this or automate this?
David and Dan discuss why Time to Result - is key when planning page content.
Talking points include:
What do you specifically mean by TTR - it sounds like Largest Contentful Paint!
What are the key ways to ensure that the user’s key initial focus is on the content that is likely to satisfy their query?
What are some of the mistakes that websites make to distract users from what they’re looking for?
How can SEOs help to avoid this?
How can you measure the impact of this from an SEO perspective?
How does this impact best practice for mobile design?
How will user satisfaction continue to impact SEO success in the future?
David and Alex discuss the importance of not letting AI take over your content strategy.
Talking points include:
What is a good use of AI?
How do you know if you’re using AI too much?
How do you measure the impact of creative, helpful and unique storytelling?
Why will this always shine through?
Why won’t AI ever take over creative, helpful and unique storytelling??
How do you use AI tools most effectively?
David and Josh discuss the impact of updating your information on Wikipedia/Wikidata.
Talking points include:
What is Wikidata for the uninitiated?
How does Wikipedia and Wikidata impact search results?
How does the new AI world use Wikipedia and Wikidata?
What information do you need to update to take advantage of this?
Should you update your Wikipedia listing by yourself?
How often should you update or refresh your listings?
How do you think AI will continue to evolve to make use of Wikipedia and Wikidata?
Are there any other Wiki sites that SEOs should be aware of?
David and Sarah discuss how change and challenges are inevitable in SEO, and what to do about this.
Talking points include:
How often is it changing?
How often do rankings change?
What trends do we need to look for?
Should we bother with chasing algorithms?
What is Google changing about the SERP?
What do we do when Google takes something away?
AI – challenge, people worried about taking jobs - what are the solutions?
What do SEOs need to get familiar with when it comes to AI?
David and Adriana discuss how 2024 will be the marketing era of “do more with less” and the way to do that with SEO is have air tight people operations.
Talking points include:
Why “do more with less”?
Is this because of AI?
In-house or agency side?
What are the pros and cons?
Can you get as much done?
What is the ultimate team size?
David and Luis discuss elevating the value of SEO by developing internal capabilities - agency vs in-house.
Talking points include:
Is in-house best?
What should be done in-house vs agency-side?
How do you identify what is best for you , benefits or downsides .
What is more efficient?
Importance of teams feeling familiar across organizations - is automation diluting learning opportunities for new SEOs?
Dave Cousin believes that SEOs like to think Paid Search is easy, they get all the data they need in black and white; so why then don't we SEOs use paid search's data to make things a bit easier for us?
Discussion points include:
Why should SEOs be working more closely with paid search?
How can paid search make the SEO’s life easier?
What can SEOs learn from paid?
What can paid learn from SEOs?
Why is this particularly relevant for 2024?
David and Sara discuss the importance of staying ahead in International SEO: embrace and keep track of market-relevant events.
Talking points include:
How do you ensure that you’re aware of every event?
I can understand how an event can impact traffic and impressions, but how can an event impact rankings?
Understanding user behaviour and intent - why is this particularly unique for international SEO?
Spike in impressions but not followed by clicks - why was this and what can you do about it?
Leveraging seasonal trends and opportunities - how do you plan?
David and Claire discuss why businesses should get clued up on how to manage and influence their Local Knowledge Panel.
Talking points include:
What is Google’s New Merchant Experience?
Why has Google done this?
What do you have to do to sign-up?
What is the upside?
Is there any downside?
How do you influence your Local Knowledge Panel BEYOND the functionality provided in the NMX?
Why is this important?
How do you measure the impact of this?
David and Greg discuss the importance of optimising your use of Google Business Profile.
Talking points include:
What are the key changes in Google Business Profile over the past year?
How has the verification process changed?
Google will restrict content or access if there's a violation of their policies - what are these policies?
There are Clearer standards on who can own and manage business profiles - why is this and what are the changes?
What are the new guidelines on user contributions?
Businesses should have only one profile to avoid discrepancies on Google Maps and Search - what happens if you have 2 profiles?
Specific instructions for appointment-based businesses and those with varying operational hours - what are these?
What are the current best practices for content posting?
What are the current best practices for getting found?
Will a business without a physical address ever have an opportunity with Google Business Profile?
David and Si discuss the importance of using generative AI to supercharge your productivity and business outcomes.
Talking points include:
Why?
What software and systems are you referring to?
How do you set them up?
How do you integrate this with the rest of your business and your clients?
Are there any downsides?
Chris Alderman shares that in 2024 you should focus on outcomes rather than outputs, and that best practices are great but they need to lead to your site being found easier.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean in practice by focusing on outcomes rather than outputs?
What sort of outcomes do you like to focus on?
How does this alter your SEO strategy?
How does this alter your SEO activities on a day-to-day basis?
You say that focusing on outcomes can make it easier to find a site - what do you mean by that?
How does focusing on outcomes rather than outputs impact the way that SEOs should work with other marketing functions?
David and Aleyda discuss the importance of leveraging AI to support you and accelerate your SEO workflows beyond content generation.
Aleyda says: “Start leveraging AI for the day-to-day SEO tasks within your workflow in a smart way – in a way where you take care of the quality, but you use it to accelerate the tasks that you need to do.”
What SEO workflows can be enhanced with AI?
“There are now tools that use AI, like the Horseman SEO crawler, which integrates with the OpenAI API to provide you with suggestions and recommendations for the issues it finds when crawling your website. If it identifies that you have title or description issues, because they’re empty, duplicated, or too long, it will give you suggestions to make them shorter or populate them with descriptive information. You can develop your SEO recommendations much faster by using these tools to support you."
SEO and Data Consultant Lazarina Stoy offers up a new way of thinking about the way that you do your job, that is designed to give you more time and freedom to focus on what matters most now.
Lazarina says: “Incorporate programmatic approaches. I’m specifically referring to rule-based automation for SEO best practices and AI-driven automation for process enhancements."
"Mainly, this means taking some time to better understand different programmatic approaches and learning how to incorporate them in a responsible way – both for the brand voice of the company you’re working for and content quality. However, you’re not doing that just to put out content. You’re doing it to satisfy search intent and be helpful to users."
David and Katie discuss the importance of thinking better, and rushing less.
Talking points include:
-
We can use AI to get stuff done faster
-
For everything?
-
What should we use AI for?
-
We shouldn't rush the thinking part
-
What thinking part?
-
AI can't do that; it doesn't know your audience, not truly.
-
AI can’t do thinking?
-
Understand your client's business first, plan your research, PRIORITISE and then figure out how to use AI to accelerate that plan and get results faster.
Carmen Dominguez shares with David Bain that in 2024 you should look after your CTR as the most precious KPI for your organic strategy.
Talking points include:
Why is your CTR so important?
Why is click through rate a KPI?
How do you keep track of your CTR - what software do you use?
How do you identify the terms that you need to optimise for?
How do you influence your CTR?
What other KPIs do you track?
David and Adrijana discuss if you want to progress with your SEO career, you should stop overworking.
Talking points include:
How much work is overworking?
What if overworking is your company culture?
What if you’re your own boss?
Is it not OK to overwork at the start of your career?
If you’re an SEO manager, how do you ensure that you don’t overwork your team?
How do you detect if you’re doing too much?
When does overworking lead to burnout?
How do you recover from burnout?
David and Irina discuss the importance of learning analytics To better understand user behaviour.
Talking points include:
What aspects of analytics do SEOs have to master?
What do we need to know about GA4?
— GA4 offers a lot of options on how we can analyse content consumption and user funnels.
How do you analyse content consumptions and how do we measure where this fits into the bigger picture?
What is a user funnel inside GA4 and how does this add value?
Do you prefer using another tool like Looker to analyse your data?
Do you add data from other ounces such as Search Console?
Is there a decent alternative to GA4?
Will the way in which data collection and analytics continue to evolve?
David and Becky discuss the importance of tracking the metrics that matter, i.e. the actions most aligned to your customer’s needs.
Talking points include:
What are the metrics that matter?
What are the metrics that don’t matter?
Is focusing on ROI and focusing on the metrics that matter the same thing?
How do you know what you should be measuring?
How can we better understand the customer journey?
How do we know what the customer’s desired action is at each stage of the funnel?
How do we get buy-in from our client to focus on the right metrics?
How does this help to direct the future strategy?
David and Gemma discuss the importance of knowing the importance of proper analytics, after all the changes with GA4.
Talking points include:
What does GA4 mean for SEOs?
What specifically are the needs of SEOs in terms of data?
Is it too late to change now?
How to use GA4 to lead your SEO strategy
How to use GA4 to lead your hollistic strategy
How to train internally about GA4
Araminta Robertson shares with David Bain the importance of targeting low volume, high ROI keywords in 2024.
Key discussion points include:
Why focus on keywords that have under 50 searches per month?
What’s your perspective on targeting zero-volume keywords?
How do you know if keywords are likely to be high ROI?
How do you go about interviewing your salespeople or conducting customer research?
What do you mean by targeting them with in-depth content?
What tools do you use to assist you with this process?
David and Olesia discuss why you should build a database for your brand, company, product, service, offering & yourself.
Talking points include:
What is this database for?
Is this for search engines?
How does it help you understand your:
-
own marketing positioning,
-
Voice
-
customers better.
Is this what users want instead of the SERP?
David and Pedro discuss the importance of learning to work with large volumes of data and assess scale.
Talking points include:
AI will gradually empower content creators to produce at scale, and SEOs to analyse large volumes of data - how?
It's important to know what can be automated - what can, what can’t?
It's time to move past algorithm-chasing and correlations - for every industry?
Does every SEO have do learn to work with large volumes of data and assess scale?
David and Marco discuss how to use SEO Data to improve processes and prevent future damage.
Marco says: “Use SEO data to improve processes and prevent future damage."
What SEO data are we talking about here?
“Mostly Search Console data, analytics, and crawl data from a crawler like Screaming Frog. If possible, you should be integrating non-SEO data as well.
Non-SEO data is any data that is not purely SEO: customer data, sales data, etc. It could be content information, like the author of a given article, which can still provide a lot of value for SEO.”
David and Kaspar discuss why Google algorithms are all about signal input.
Talking points include:
What is signal input?
How can SEOs control signal input?
Google seems to issue more and more penalties all the time. Should SEOs be worried?
Does Bing Search matter?
Does any other search engine matter?
Once the latest hype fades, what does really count in SEO?
What is hype and what is something that matters - and how do you tell the difference?
Performance or Backlinks - what's more important?
Lau Miguez shares with David Bain that in 2024 you should stop focusing on links and link numbers and instead, focus on strategy.
Discussion points include:
Why shouldn’t you focus on links and link numbers?
What do you mean by focus on strategy?
What does your strategy look like?
How does the strategy that you recommend result in more, better quality links?
What links are more effective nowadays?
How do you measure the impact of your activities?
David and Krzysztof discuss the key elements of getting set up with your analytics.
Talking points include:
What are the key elements of getting set up with your analytics?
What is your definition of a bounce rate?
How do you merge analytics with Google Search Console data?
How do you record user sessions with Microsoft Clarity?
What metrics are you tracking on a regular basis?
What are the pros and cons with GA4?
What other options do Microsoft Clarity bring to the table?
David and Olga discuss the importance of doing SEO testing to prove the SEO concepts you preach.
Talking points include:
How do you know what to test?
How do you test?
What software do you use?
How long should tests last?
How often should you test?
What shouldn’t you test?
What don’t you test yet, but do you intend to test in the future?
David and Sally discuss the importance of striving to achieve stakeholder buy-in in an ever-evolving SERP.
Talking points include:
Why is this important?
Who are the key stakeholders?
How do you achieve stakeholder buy-in?
How do you appeal to different stakeholders?
How do you continue to work with different stakeholders?
How does this impact the role of SEO moving forward?
Why does the ever-evolving SERP landscape make this necessary?
According to Elena Dyulgerova, it;s essential that you diversify your traffic sources in 2024.
Talking points include:
Where are the best sources to diversify traffic sources from?
What are the most valuable sources of traffic?
How does Pinterest optimization work best in 2024?
Is Pinterest only for e-commerce?
How does this differ by industry?
How do you optimise for different platforms?
Ash Nallawalla from CRM911 Digital believes that SEO deserves a bit more recognition – and businesses will benefit greatly from giving SEO managers a bigger voice.
Discussion points include:
Where in a corporate structure should an SEO manager sit?
What do they need to control?
What do they need to influence?
How do they manage to climb the organisation hierarchy?
Helen Pollitt says that you need to ensure that SEO takes its rightful place as a strategic business function.
Discussion points include:
Why has SEO been traditionally been considered a marketing channel?
Why is it imperative that SEO is fully integrated into design, brand, engineering, customer services and UX teams?
How should a company change their focus from "SEO as a marketing channel" to "SEO as a strategic business lever"?
Gus shares that you can improve your impact by taking inspiration from how product managers operate.
Gus says: “Think like a product manager."
"For me, it’s about following a process of discovery, testing, and seeing whether the things that you’re doing actually have an impact or not. Let’s say you believe that you can improve indexation on a website. That’s your hypothesis. Then, you’re going to start with the discovery phase: what are the possible things you can do to solve this problem? There are many different ways that you can do this, depending on the size of your website and the resources that you have."
You can diversify your own approach and skillset, but International SEO and Digital Marketing Specialist Monsterrat Cano is a firm believer in strength in numbers. It’s foolish to work alone, she says.
Discussion points include:
Can every SEO collaborate - even in-house SEOs working by themselves?
How do you collaborate during a
-
migration process
-
recession
-
algorithm update
-
tech integration
In this episode David and Ashley discuss the importance of learning from what's currently ranking, but offer something different with your content.
Discussion points include:
How do you learn what you should be ranking for?
How do you learn what’s currently ranking?
How do you offer something different with your content?
How do you know that search engines will prefer your content?
What type of content tends to be more effective nowadays?
How often should you update your content?
If you’re looking for a new weapon to add to your arsenal, Sara Taher from Assembly Global says that video is the way to go. She believes that this is where users and search engines are turning their attention.
Sara says: “Integrate video content into your SEO strategy, be it long-form, short-form, vertical, horizontal, or square videos.”
"You want to leverage video on the SERPs themselves and also on other platforms as well – like YouTube and TikTok. You basically want to create video content that you can also post on your website. For each of those, there are values that they are going to bring to your business."
Navah Hopkins believes that SEOs need to know about Performance Max ads.
Discussion points include:
What are Performance Max ads?
What will iOS17 do for tracking and attribution of your marketing campaigns?
What creative works best? Ad or landing page perspective or both?
Why are they different?
What does adapting content to visual first placements mean?
Why are they better?
Is there any downside?
Why are they important for SEO?
How should paid and SEO work together?
Crystal Carter believes that you should be using multimedia to slice across your marketing channels.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean by slicing?
Does multimedia work for every type of content?
What stage in the customer journey does multimedia content work for?
Does multimedia replace content?
Do you mean multimedia off site?
What does the ideal content production process look like?
How is AI changing multimedia content?
Izzy Wisniewska believes that you should befriend other marketeers and go holistic in 2024.
Talking points include:
What does holistic actually mean in practice?
How do you unite as a marketing department in a large organisation?
How does a content team, PR team, video team join forces with sEO to deliver a more effective customer experience?
What other teams impact areas like:
EEAT, technical performance, user experience, speed, user intent, content quality
What does this mean for channel team members - do they need to train themselves on other channels?
How do you measure success?
Who gets credit for a customer purchase?
In this episode, David and Sukhjinder discuss the importance of knowing your audience, meet their search intent & ensure your content is “Helpful”.
Discussion points include:
Why is knowing your audience and meeting their search intent even more important in the age of SGE?
How do you know your audience?
How do you meet their intent?
How do you ensure that your content is helpful for both users and search engines?
What does having E.E.A.T.-worthy content actually mean?
How is this changing in 2024 and beyond?
Luke Carthy believes that 2024 is the year of the yearning for original, creative and well-written human content.
Discussion points include:
What can humans do that AI can’t do?
What’s the difference between well-written human content and AI content?
What should humans stop doing and hand over to AI?
How long will this be the case for?
How is TikTok a competing ecosystem to Shopify and Google?
What should SEOs do about this?
Is it an SEO’s job to optimize for every platform?
Nikki Halliwell shares that creating actionable audits that your client understands, and can be used by stakeholders at all levels and being able to follow them through and get fixes implemented by working closely with dev teams and speaking their language for faster implementation.
Discussion points include:
What is an actionable audit?
Is there any type of audit that you see SEOs doing that don’t provide much value?
What stakeholders should be using this audit?
What language should you be using in your audit reports to assist you in engaging with various stakeholders?
How do you get dev teams on board to implement fixes more quickly?
What software do you use for your audits?
How often should you do these audits?
Andor Palau shares the importance of investing in additional tools and external testing when doing a migration.
Talking points include:
What are some examples of some of the preventable errors that can occur with migrations?
What tools do you use?
How do you end up paying with missing revenue?
What different perspective or different data layers might you end up missing?
How should you plan for a migration?
Who should you involve in a planned migration?
Is there anything that you need to keep checking post-migration?
As many contributors to this project have alluded to, the long-reaching arms of AI are reaching into many aspects of digital life, which is why Emma Russell from Oxford Comma Digital says that you need to be a more discerning gatekeeper, and that you should Limit crawlability to your content.
In this episode, David and Manu discuss the importance of keeping a wide open eye and being flexible in your SEO approach.
Discussion points include:
Can you give an example of the new possibilities of integrating AI in your workflow and processes?
When you say, “make sure you have access to the right and accurate data”, what data are you referring to?
How do you work cross-channel?
How do you determine what delivers the most value to your audience?
How do you know when to pivot an SEO strategy?
Fili Wiese shares what impact site speed and Core Web Vitals has on SEO in 2024.
Discussion points include:
What impacts site speed most in 2024?
-
Server and hosting
-
File sizes and types
-
Plugins and add-ons
-
Traffic volume
-
Poor coding
How should we be using Core web Vitals to direct our site performance improvements?
Inside Search Console?
-
Loading (Largest contentful paint - how fast is fast enough? How do you improve this?)
-
Interactivity (First input delay - how fast is fast enough? How do you improve this?)
-
Visual stability (Cumulative layout shift - what issues are key?)
Tom Pool advises that you ensure technical quality throughout your entire site.
Discussion points include:
What does good technical site quality look like in 2024?
Has anything changed in terms of technical setup best practice in the past couple of years?
How does a good technical set up deliver better user experience?
How do you build a solid technical foundation if you’re not sure how large you’re going to grow?
If users are happy using your site is it worthwhile to continue to invest in further technical improvements?
How do you measure the impact of technical improvements?
Alexandra Tachalova shares that building the right links should be one of the biggest priorities for marketers.
Discussion points include:
What are the right links at the moment?
What are the wrong links at the moment?
How do you get the best links?
Why is this more important than other marketing activities?
You say that Sites that have a strong domain authority can easily reach excellent results in Google SERPs without building any links back to their individual pages - does this mean that you only have to build links to certain pages?
Can you stop building links after a while?
Will links stay important with AI results?
Eva Cheng shares why you shouldn't give up on "Hero Campaigns" in Digital PR.
Discussion points include:
What are hero campaigns?
What are the typical results you are looking to achieve from hero campaigns?
How do you create a hero campaign?
How do you manage a hero campaign?
How do hero campaigns fit into the bigger picture?
Why should SEOs consider building category page links?
At what point in your SEO strategy should you implement this?
Are there any specific Digital PR tactics that have proven more successful for category page links?
Why do you say that an SEO shouldn’t be afraid to build category page backlinks?
How do building category page backlinks fit into the bigger picture?
Rad Paluszak shares the importance of prioritizing "Value" over "Sheer SEO".
Discussion points include:
Why is working on improving the site better than obsessing about SEO?
You say that SEO-elements on a website CAN be imperfect - why?
You say that if your site is not useful or does not deliver truly unique value, it might be throttled and suffer in the long term - what do you mean by this?
Why should SEOs stop obsessing over AI developments?
Jo O'Reilly believes that you should start prioritising building smaller numbers of relevant high-quality links.
Discussion points include:
How do you define relevant high-quality links?
How do you define irrelevant spammy links?
How do you measure the value of a link?
How do you conduct outreach?
Ideally what style of links are you looking for?
Are you willing to pay for links?
Alan Silvestri advises that you leverage happy customers for ethical backlinks.
In this video we discuss the importance of leveraging happy customers for:
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Case Studies
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Testimonials
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Guest Blogging
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Webinars and Podcasts
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Affiliate Programs
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User Generated Content
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Community Forum or Groups
Rana Abu Quba Chamsi shares the importance of mastering your video SEO.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean by video SEO - optimizing video to appear on the SERP?
What type of business is video most suitable for?
What’s the ideal length and format? How do you optimize? What’s your process?
What are some other video-based platforms that you optimize for and how is that optimization process different?
What kind of intent does video traffic have and does that differ to other traffic?
How does video fit into the overall content mix?
How is AI impacting video optimization?
What is the future of video optimization?
Amit Raj shares the importance of building relationships before you link build.
Discussion points include:
How would you define a valuable link?
What do you have to give to obtain a valuable link nowadays?
How do you stand out with your outreach?
Is that link a logically relevant link between those websites?
Does it provide value?
Is your outreach relevant and genuine to the receiver?
Are you approaching sites with something that will genuinely resonate, and that their audience would benefit from?
Debbie Chew emphasises the importance of staying on top of link and mention building.
Discussion points include:
Why build mentions?
What do you mean by generative AI chatbots and search being influenced by listicles?
What do you mean by that you shouldn’t "blindly" build links to pages without regularly revisiting the SERPs?
What are the link building tactics to focus on in 2024?
Andreas Voniatis shares the importance of optimizing internal links to increase the relevance scores of target content.
Discussion points include:
What scoring system do you use to analyse the relevance scores of target content?
What are the data sources required
What are some data cleaning tips
How do you determine anchor text relevance with python functions?
How do you use statistical distributions to model the relevance and highlight under-served target content?
Katherine Nwanorue shares the importance of linking sub-categories to parent categories as part of your on-page SEO strategy.
Discussion points include:
What about linking the other way around - from the main category body content to the minor category page?
Why do this if there are links on the navigation menu?
What measurable value does this provide?
Does this make it more likely for the pages to be indexed?
Will it result in higher rankings?
Is the keyword text within the links important?
How many links per page do you recommend?
Any other internal link strategies that you recommend?
Can this be automated?
Veronika Höller shares that adopting search generative experience as your SEO strategy in 2024 is pivotal.
Discussion points include:
How is SGE changing the SERP?
What markets does this affect at the moment?
What timescale are we looking at for full international roll-out?
What industry sectors does this affect the most?
What about queries - what types of queries does this affect the most?
What does this mean for the way that we write or optimize content?
How are other search engines changing?
Does this reduce the impact of Google as an organic search discovery channel?
Do we have to turn to other content mediums like YouTube, TikTok or podcasts?
Anna Uss shares the importance of understanding the full advantage of internal link optimization.
Discussion points include:
How do you build an internal links strategy?
How important is it to have your target keyword phrase in internal links?
Where should you have your internal links?
How often does your internal links strategy need to be reviewed?
Why is having an internal links strategy so important?
Can you have measurable success thanks to an internal links strategy?
What tools do you use to help manage your internal links?
Bill Hartzer shares the importance of understanding the whole link profile of your website, not just the tier 1 links.
Discussion points include:
How deep do you go?
What impact do the 2nd and 3rd tier links have?
What tools do you use to research this?
How can you affect the 2nd and 3rd tier links?
How often should you be working on this?
How do you build a multi-tier link building strategy?
Mark Williams Cook discusses why you should use AI assistance to validate long-form content that fulfills intent.
Discussion points include:
What type of content is this for?
How do you use AI to validate long-form content that fulfils intent?
What does validation mean?
Why is this valuable?
What AI tools do you use?
How does doing this at scale provide an easy map of what needs improving?
What does ‘scale’ mean?
What does an easy map of what needs improving look like?
Natalie Arney believes that reduce, reuse, recycle applies to your website as well as the products you use.
Discussion points include:
How do you Reduce, reuse, and recycle content?
How do you review your content?
How do you determine what you already have provides value?
How do you provide more value?
How do you ensure that content stays relevant - or do you always have to review content?
What style of content are users typically enjoying at the moment?
In this episode, Santi Clarke from Duda recommends that your agency is maximizing its use of AI.
Discussion points include:
How has AI changed the way that agencies work?
How do you maximize your use of AI?
How do you know what aI you should be using?
How do you stay on top of the most appropriate AI to be using?
What are your favourite AI tools for agencies at the moment?
How do you think an agency’s use of AI will continue to evolve over the coming year?
What is the future of the agency model, thanks to AI?
Jack Chambers-Ward shares how to harness the power of informational content for e-commerce sites.
Discussion points include:
Why is informational content so important for ecommerce sites?
Can Informational content help at every stage of the customer journey?
How do How-to articles help?
What about comparison articles - are they important for E-E-A-T?
How do you deal with landing pages for seasonal products?
How do you use FAQs?
Lidia Infante shows how to level-up content, tech and links in your SEO.
Discussion points include:
- With opinionated, unique, expert-driven content
What’s an example of this?
How to you go about creating this?
Why can’t AI replicate this?
- Rich Schema markup
What Schema do you need to use?
How do you insert it and manage it?
Will AI not lead to the end of Rich Schema?
- Focusing on brand awareness
What does that mean practically for SEO?
Where do you want to see the increased brand awareness?
How do you measure the impact of improved brand awareness?
Bibi Raven says that you need to think human-first with your AI copywriting.
Discussion points include:
What does Human-first AI copywriting mean?
What do you love about AI language models?
What don’t you love about AI language models?
What do we need to do about AI copywriting?
What does authenticity mean?
Should a business define a brand voice?
How does a business know that it is investing in the right creativity?
In this episode Paige Hobart shares how important it is for your SEO to get to know your thought leaders.
Discussion points include:
Why get to know your thought leaders?
What can sales reps offer?
What can product evangelists offer?
What can the CEO offer?
What types of content is produced?
How do you measure success?
Why is search volume reactive not proactive?
In this epsiode, Arnout Hellemans explores why he believes that 2024 is the year of query satisfaction.
Discussion points include:
How are content UX, core web vitals and E-E-A-T coming together?
How do you know which queries to optimise for?
What software do you use?
How do you go about establishing how to answer the query? (i.e. content form)
How do you satisfy UX, core web vitals and E-E-A-T at the same time?
How do you optimise for Google’s SGE and other AI results?
What is your content creation process?
Maria White and David Bain discuss how we need to be moving from Influencer Marketing to Influence Search.
Discussion points include:
What does Influence Search mean?
Are you talking about using influencer to create quality and relevant content for your website?
How do you identify the influencers?
How do you persuade them to write for you?
Do you ask these influencers to talk to the press on your behalf?
What does success look like?
How do you measure the success of related social activity?
Ashley Liddell and David Bain discuss how creator-led SEO will dictate 2024 and beyond.
Discussion points include:
What will these relationships with creators look like?
Why long-term relationships?
How do you build these relationship?
How much do they cost?
What sort of content do you want them to create?
What happens when the relationships ends?
Martin Huntbach and David Bain discuss the importance of listening to what your customers say FIRST and then validating this with keyword research.
Discussion points include:
How do you listen to your customers?
Face-to-face / video recordings / surveys?
How do you validate it with keyword research?
Are there missed opportunities if your customers don’t suggest certain topics?
What tools do you use?
What search volume is good?
Is zero search volume ever still interesting?
How do you incorporate the keyword on the page and within the content?
How do you choose what content suits the keyword?
How do you try to rank for the keyword?
Fabio Embalo and David Bain discuss why ee are going to have to adapt extremely fast in 2024.
Discussion points include:
What do SEOs have to do differently?
How does this impact the way that things are currently done?
What has to be optimised to appear in SGE?
How do you drive traffic from SGE?
Should SEOs also be using AI in their own processes?
Should SEOs also be using AI to create content?
In this episode, Kerry Campion discusses why it's important to become "uncopyable" for SEO success in 2024.
Discussion points include:
How do you become "uncopyable"?
What’s an example of a strong brand messaging strategy?
How do you lean heavily into your own customer stories and what value does that provide?
How do you nurture relationships with thought leaders and what are you looking to achieve from that?
Are internal or external thought leaders key?
Are there any AI evolvements that you are nervous about from a content perspective?
Begum Kaya and David Bain discuss the importance of making sure your content attracts the right audience and helps them convert.
We have endless opportunities to find the right topics, optimize the websites accordingly, and try to reap fruits before really understanding our audience. However, we've seen many examples where it doesn't mean anything beyond some text. Begum believes we have to move towards the communicative and humane side of things and build our voice rather than covering all we can that touches our niche on the internet.
Nik Ranger and David Bain discuss what a post-SGE, AI influenced world means for SEO.
Discussion points include:
How do you leverage natural language processing techniques for information retrieval?
How do you leverage natural language processing techniques for text analysis?
Why is it more important than ever to understand the mechanisms that underpin how and why results are displayed?
What does this mean for SEO?
How does this affect an SEO strategy?
Eli Schwartz and David Bain discuss why you need to focus on the end user only and understand WHY they are searching.
Discussion points include:
Why is this important?
How do you find out why they are searching instead of what they are searching?
What tools do you use to assist you with this?
How do you alter your content to appeal to the why?
Does this apply to every type of content?
How does this interweave with other digital marketing activities?
How does this change of focus impact the bottom line measurable?
Amanda White and David Bain discuss how to be continuous and use a wide variety of SEO elements.
Discussion points include:
Surely you can’t work on everything at the same time?
How do you identify who user is?
How do you create a strategy around that?
Should you not be prioritising the most impactful SEO activities?
What are the well-trusted methods we shouldn’t be forgetting?
How do you know when you should automate or use AI?
How can SEO work more effectively with PR for greater success?
How do you know what you need to adapt and change in your processes?
In this episode, Bart Magera shares that the answers to your SEO problems lie in the SERPs.
Discussion points include:
What answers are you looking for in the SERPs?
How do you use the SERP to define opportunities?
How have the SERPs changed recently?
How do you use the SERP to form your SEO strategy?
What are your thoughts on the future of the SERP?
Read the full transcript of Bart's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/bart-magera
Ken "Magma" Marshall and David Bain discuss how rather than focusing on SEO, you should focus on HEO. "Human Engagement Optimization"
Discussion points include:
What is "Human Engagement Optimization"?
How do you focus on creating web content with the user intent and needs in mind?
Show should you use AI / ML?
How do you know what your user or customer expects?
How do you ensure that you are delivering excellent experiences?
Why will Keyword data matter less?
How do you get more sophisticated around attribution?
How do you know which keywords have made a company most profitable?
How do you measure "Human Engagement Optimization"?
Jan-Willem Bobbink and David Bain discuss understanding the limitations of AI based tools for SEO.
Discussion points include:
What are the useless exercises are happening based on LLMs that are not suitable for it?
What are the limitations of AI-based tools?
What are the elements of SEO that go hand-in-hand with AI?
What are the elements of SEO that don’t go hand-in-hand with AI?
Myriam Jessier and David Bain discuss how mid-funnel is your strategic target.
Discussion points include:
What do you mean by mid-funnel?
How do you identify Mid-funnel opportunities?
What are good goals for Mid-funnel opportunities?
Can you not work with both traditional marketing funnels and customer journey mapping?
What are the typical touchpoints where SEO is overshadowed where search is critical?
Ian Helms and David Bain discuss how to stop chasing Google rankings and focus on building a real relationship with customers.
Discussion points include:
What are SEO best practices at the moment?
How do you deliver personalized content, that is also beneficial for SEO?
How do you measure the SEO value of creating a great customer experience?
Is it possible to use AI generated content and to create a great customer experience at the same time?
On this episode Rasmus Sørensen discusses how small changes can lead to big impacts in eCommerce SEO.
Discussion points include:
What small changes?
How do you know what to change?
What big impacts does this have?
How do you measure this?
What are the biggest recent changes in eCommerce SEO?
What CMS Software do you recommend?
Read the full transcript of Rasmus's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/rasmus-sørensen
Dixon Jones and David Bain discuss how to cut through the AI noise in 2024.
Discussion points include:
How do you cut through the AI noise?
Why does this make a difference?
How long will this differentiating factor work effectively?
Does this mean that you have to have a fairly manual process to be successful?
How do you determine who your “audience of one” is, and how to talk to them?
Gerry White and David Bain discuss how the biggest challenge in 2024 will be standing out.
Discussion points include:
How do you deliver a reason to visit and engage with the site?
What if you look at the SERP and the search engine appears to be looking for a particular type of result for a query - do you still try to be different?
How do you stand out?
How do you measure the impact of trying to stand out?
Do you split-test trying to stand out?
How do you stand out in the world of a single AI result?
Will Google Perspectives help you stand out?
Can you use other marketing channels to help you stand out?
Filipa Serra Gaspar and David Bain discuss the importance of Experience, high quality, author info and transparency.
Discussion points include:
How do you demonstrate Experience?
How do you show that you offer high quality information?
How do you format your author bio?
What do you mean by showing transparency?
What are examples of credible sources?
How do you cite credible sources and what impact does this have?
Can AI produced content demonstrate EEAT?
Anthony Barone and David Bain discuss how being a topical authority is key to your entity SEO.
Discussion points include:
How do you ensure that you create a comprehensive online version of an entity?
Where do you include the information?
What do you include?
How do you hone your entity to appeal to your target user?
How do you measure the impact of creating a comprehensive online entity?
How do you differentiate yourself from ChatGPT content?
How do you know that you are delivering a real and valuable answer?
What should you use ChatGPT for?
In this episode Valentina shares that we should now consider all the organic channels and make them work in synergy to ensure success and that SEO is turning into OSO.
Topics covered:
What do you mean by OSO?
What do you mean by all the organic channels?
How do you make them work in synergy?
How do you determine what your audience wants?
What are the benefits of this?
How does this ensure success?
How do you measure success?
Read the full transcript of Valentina's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/valentina-stragliotto
Andrew Cock-Starkey and David Bain discuss how Google is getting more and more focused on authority, expertise and experience.
Discussion points include how too many people are still too scatter-gun with their approach. Andrew shares some advice on how to focus down on topic areas and really demonstrate your Expertise, Authority and Experience to search engines.
Dre de Vera and David Bain discuss how SEOs must adopt the content creator mindset for their clients and employers.
Discussion points include:
What is Google’s new Perspectives filter and how do you take advantage of that?
How do you optimise your content on other sites to take advantage of this?
How do you need to style your content?
What sorts of queries are more likely to surface the Perspectives filter?
How do you get content ideas from Reddit and Quora?
Can any business take advantage of this?
Is this for any type of content?
How do you use this to build your build your E-E-A-T?
Where do you lie on the use of AI to create content?
Ben Howe and David Bain discuss how you need to acknowledge that E-E-A-T considerations are no longer "nice to haves".
Discussion points include:
What do you have to do to demonstrate your use of EEAT principles?
Do you have to do this to every piece of content, every type of intent?
How do modifiers on long-tail targets look in practice in terms of landing pages?
Will we have to rely on optimising for the user to receive the answer on the SERP or in an AI-powered chatbot in the future?
How do SEOs segment organic audiences?
Kerstin Reichert and David Bain discuss how to build authority and collaborate to amplify your reach.
Discussion points include:
Do we reduce our authority by using AI to generate content?
How can we be more selective about content and utilise AI at the same time?
How do we use AI to be faster and better at the same time?
How do we change our SEO strategy as search engines move from multiple options to answer?
How do we stand out with our content in 2024?
How do we utilise our authoritative figures in 2024?
What style of content will work best?
How do we promote the content?
In the current climate, it's more important than ever for SEOs to communicate to the business their value - ensuring they're aligning with business goals and reporting back in ways that the c-suite/business owners can understand the value SEO brings.
In this episode, Anna shares with David:
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How do you communicate your value to the business as an SEO?
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Why do this?
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Who should you communicate with, and how should you communicate?
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How do you ensure your SEO activities align with business goals?
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How do you report back in ways that the c-suite/business owners can understand the value SEO brings?
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Should all SEOs be involved in this?
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What does this mean for how you go about building your SEO career?
Read the full transcript of Anna's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2024/additional-insights/anna-bravington
Taylor Kurtz and David Bain discuss the importance of focusing on known benchmarks and best practices in UX to improve your SEO.
Discussion points include:
What known benchmarks and best practices are you referring to?
What is Virtual Environment Optimization?
How do you measure the value of focusing on EEAT?
What are best practices in UX and how does this impact SEO? Why should this be a priority?
Kavi Kardos and David Bain discuss the importance of following Google's lead and renew focus on E-E-A-T in 2024.
Discussion points include:
Why is E-E-A-T so important in 2024?
What are the good ways of using AI?
By announcing Perspectives and emphasizing E-E-A-T in their most recent messaging, Google has indicated that they're predicting a future preference for user generated content - what user generated content are they looking for?
How do we integrate social with SEO?
How do we incorporate community voices into our own content?
Ed Ziubrzynski and David Bain discuss how you should start with EEAT, and your strategy will follow.
Discussion points include:
How do you start with EEAT?
What do you mean your your strategy will follow?
How does EEAT integrate with a holistic marketing strategy?
How often should you review your EEAT performance and future campaigns?
How do you measure EEAT success?
Anne Berlin believes that we need to accept and prepare for the fact that Schema is becoming less relevant.
Discussion points include how 2024 will be the year that structured data implementation plateaus. Anne believes that NLP has evolved to the point where most structured data is superfluous, except in a few use cases such as for publishers that have page resources prioritization/page speed or rendering issues.
David and Andy discuss why it's important not to forget your basics and that good strategy doesn't have to be complicated!
Discussion points include:
-
You say that a good strategy doesn't have to be complicated! What is a good strategy?
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You talk about complicated tricks and tools available - what shouldn’t you be doing?
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What about AI?
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How do you know what newer tips and tactics to listen to?
Austine Esezobor and David Bain discuss why branded keywords will become increasingly more important than generic keywords.
Discussion points include:
What is an entity?
Why will branded keywords become more important?
What strategy takes best advantage of branded keywords in 2024?
Do you not focus on generic keywords at all?
What is your keyword research process?
Sara Moccand-Sayegh and David Bain discuss entity building for better EEAT.
Discussion points include:
How do you build a digital entity?
What are the key elements that search engines need to know and how do you teach them?
What content do you need before you apply your Schema?
What other sites do you need to be on to cement your entity’s authority?
You say that when there is understanding, you can get a Twitter Carousel. How does this work?
Will search engines and AI not get clever enough not to need Schema?
Ulrika Viberg and David Bain discuss how the new AI landscape we all have found ourselves in flips around the technical SEO rules.
Discussion points include:
What are the rules for technical SEO in 2024?
How has AI altered this?
How do we focus better on semantics on how does this assist AI?
How do we better position our AI for AI?
How do we mark up our content better for machines?
Can we automate the marking up of our content?
Miracle Inameti-Archibong and David discuss the resurgence of BrandSEO due to the rise of SGE.
Discussion points include:
What does brand SEO actually mean?
How do you improve your brand SEO?
How do you work closely with other marketing teams to promote the brand?
What does brand SEO success look like?
How do you measure brand SEO performance?
What brand SEO opportunities does SGE offer?
Any other SGE opportunities?
Any SGE concerns?
In this episode, David and Charlie discuss why you should be combatting cannibalisation and utilising the reviews system to take advantage of Google’s updates.
Topics include:
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What are the biggest cannibalisation issues?
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How does cannibalisation impact SEO?
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How does this impact content?
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What do you mean by utilising the reviews system?
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How do reviews positively impact SEO?
Martha van Berkel and David discuss how to use connected Schema Markup to prepare your organization for AI and build your company's knowledge graph.
Discussion points include:
What does optimizing your site and using schema markup in a connected way mean?
What are your 3 tips for doing "connected" schema markup? Why does this matter?
Why this is important for what's changing in Search - (SGE, ChatGPT/Bing)?
How does this position SEO to be the hero in preparing marketing data for broader AI initiatives?
What does this mean for the future role of SEO?
Mufaddal and David discuss the Importance of how visual elements are going to be more than ever in the new world of SGE.
Discussion points include:
Why are visual elements becoming more important?
What are examples of the visual elements you mean?
How do you optimise these visual elements?
Where do they appear?
What measurable result does this deliver?
Independent Technical SEO Consultant Jono Alderson advises that you cast an impartial eye across your site, asking why Google would want to crawl, index, and rank what you’re offering.
Julia-Carolin Zeng from Charlie on the Move would like to share that the opportunity you are optimizing for is constantly evolving, thanks to the shifting SERP.
In this episode, David and Mathilde discuss why you shouldn't forget the power of TikTok when planning your SEO strategy.
Discussion points include:
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How does TikTok work as a search engine?
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How do you determine if your audience is on there?
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Do you conduct keyword research?
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How do you optimise your content?
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What is the best publishing schedule?
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Any other ways to optimise content?
In addition to using services like ChatGPT natively, you should also keep an eye out for better, AI-powered technical SEO tools launching in the near future, says Pam Aungst Cronin from Pam Ann Marketing.
SEO Consultant and Speaker Victoria Olsina says that having a single prompt library might not be enough. You need multiple prompt libraries, one for each client.
How do you ensure that AI is able to deliver in a brand-appropriate, consistent manner? You need to build a prompt library, says Garrett Sussman from iPullRank.
It’s easy to get grand visions of how much content you can create using AI. However, quality over quantity should be your aim, according to Joseph S. Kahn from Hum JAM.
David and Sinead discuss why what you get out of your prospecting tools is a reflection of what you put into them.
Discussion points include:
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What prospecting tools are you referring to?
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What should you be looking to get out of them?
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How do you put more into them?
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Outreach that you are doing is suitable for the site?
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How often should you review how you’re using prospecting tools?
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Is AI changing the way that prospecting tools are used?
As previously touched upon with Itamar, Isaline Muelhauser from Pilea.ch would like to emphasise that AI can and should be used in the content creation process.
One of the key challenges with uncovering new automation opportunities is the temptation to automate before thinking, shares Tech SEO Trainer Kristina Azarenko.
Expanding on what Jason shared in the previous tip, Itamar Blauer from StudioHawk adds that, if you want your content to appear on the AI-driven SERP, you’ll need to tweak your content strategy.
In this episode David and Giulia discuss how to know how your customers think and make decisions, to be the brand they'll always come back to.
Discussion points include:
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Why is it important to Know how your customers think?
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How do you Know how your customers think?
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How do you measure what your customers think?
-
What do you mean by “make decisions to be the brand they'll always come back to?”
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What are examples of doing this?
-
How does this impact SEO?
-
How do you measure this?
Jason Barnard from Kalicube is focussed on another side to the technological capabilities of AI. He delves into the ways that generative AI is also impacting search results, and what to do about it.
Once you have an understanding of how they work, you can start using large language models to improve your forecasting and save you time, according to Arpad Balough from Slothio.
In this episode, David and Kapwom discuss how to bulletproof your SEO efforts with E-E-A-T to supercharge organic performance.
Topics include:
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How does E-E-A-T bulletproof your SEO?
-
What is the most effective way of maximising your EEAT?
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What does a supercharged organic performance look like?
-
How do you measure success?
-
Is AI impacting EEAT?
Just as we need to get into the nuts and bolts of SEO, we also need to take the time to understand the technology that powers AI, as Bastian Grimm from PeakAce explains.
According to Annika Haataja from Seeker Digital, one of the key questions that you should be asking prior to implementing the use of AI in your workflow is “How might AI impact user behaviour?”
As Billie emphasised, you can’t expect AI to solve all of your content production woes automatically. But as Jake Gauntley from KINESSO shares, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be harnessing AI’s power.
Billie Geena from Uptake would like to add a warning though – don’t run full-speed into the unknown with AI without being aware of the potential consequences.
In this episode, David and Jade discuss how to get hands-on to grow your career in SEO.
Discussion points include:
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What do you mean by hands-on?
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What should you get hands-on with?
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How does this help to grow your career?
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How often should you be doing this?
Although the first chapter emphasised the need to retain your human touch, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room – AI is changing many aspects of SEO, fast. That’s the message that Nitin Manchanda from Botpresso would like to share with you.
According to Adelina Bordea from FreePik, another key use of your human intuition is your ability to differentiate between AI-generated content and human-generated content.
SEO Consultant Jess Joyce shares that your humanity can give you the edge in multiple SEO disciplines.
Following on from Rebecca’s emphasis on personal adaptability, Petra Kis-Herczegh from Kameleon Journal believes that your emotional intelligence might make all the difference.
There’s no doubt that 2024 will see the wind of change continuing to strike the SEO landscape. Rebecca Berbel from OnCrawl believes that adaptability will be key.
David and Heike discuss how neurodivergent thinking can supercharge your SEO.
Talking points include:
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What is Neurodivergent thinking?
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Is this from the perspective of someone who is neurodivergent or who is managing someone who is Neurodivergent?
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How should someone who is Neurodivergent grow their SEO career?
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Does an SEO team leader who is managing someone who is neurodivergent need to be aware of anything in particular?
David and Tom discuss how every algorithm update is only ever optimising toward a better user experience - and if you constantly optimise for that, you can't go far wrong.
Talking points include:
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What sort of user experience should you optimise for?
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How does that increase your organic traffic?
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How do you measure improved user experience from an organic search perspective?
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Why constantly optimise for user experience? Is it not a set it and forget it opportunity?
David and Leanne discuss why you need to educate Google about your brand and control your narrative through the entire customer journey.
Talking points include:
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How do you Educate Google about your brand?
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In which aspects of your customer journey can you control your narrative?
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How do you control your narrative?
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What measurable impact does this have?
Victoria Olsina discussed the importance of using hybrid models for AI.
Topics covered include:
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What tasks do humans do best and what tasks does AI do best?
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How do you use AI for keyword research?
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What AI do you use to cluster topics?
In this episode, David and Ivana discuss how to keep an eye on Google's updates and changing guidelines.
Discussion points include:
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How should you keep on top of it? Can you follow everything?
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How do you prepare for crazy volatility?
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How long after Google's update finishes should you panic?
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What is AI good for?
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What does this mean practically for the way you alter your SEO strategy?
Casie Gillette discusses the importance of being able to adapt, covering:
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With all of the changes currently taking place in search, we have to adapt our strategies and tactics faster than ever.
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How often should you set a strategy?
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What do we adapt?
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How do we adapt?
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What skills will remain the same?
Yvie Ansari shares how to integrate SEO into the broader marketing mix to drive better results overall, discussing:
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How do you integrate SEO into the broader marketing mix?
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How does SEO relate to other marketing activities?
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How does SEO drive results overall?
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How do you measure the impact of SEO when it is positively impacting the sales of other channels?
In this episode Sally Raymer shares how to stay true to brand in a world of AI.
Discussion points include:
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Staying true to brand in a world of AI
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Defining what your brand is
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Why is this important?
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What are the AI temptations that are bad?
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What does staying true to a brand mean?
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How do you ensure that every marketer in your organisation can articulate what your brand means?
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How do you use AI while still keeping the brand top-of-mind?
Adrijana Vujadin discusses how working on your mindset will make you a powerful SEO Professional.
Talking points include:
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What does that mean?
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How does this actually help?
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What do you need to improve?
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How do you improve it?
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How often do you need to do this?
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What impact does it have?
In this episode, David and Adam discuss how writing can help unlock SEO delivery superpowers.
Specific topics include:
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What kind of writing are you referring to?
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How do you use writing to communicate more effectively to stakeholders
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What are the specific actions you recommend?
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How does this impact strategy?
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Where does AI writing come into this?
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What SEO delivery superpowers are you referring to?
Stop creating new websites and delve into the power of domain consolidation. This is an approach that not only supercharges SEO, but also provides extensive benefits in sustainability, search generative experience readiness, data and branding. With Damien Robert.
Brendan Awe discusses how to embrace AI content, but at the same time, be smart about how you do it.
Discussion points include:
How should we embrace AI content?
What shouldn’t be AI content?
What’s your AI content production process?
What software do you use?
How do you envisage this changing over the next year?
Martin and David discuss how creating content that your customers need is more important than creating "SEO content".
Discussion points include:
- How do you define SEO content in 2023?
- Can you not do both at the same time?
- What if there is no keyword volume for the content that your customers need?
- What is your current content creation process?
- How do you measure success?
Isa and David discuss:
As Google loves a backlink profile with referring domains, focus on content that tells your story in a way that connects with untapped audiences
Talking points include:
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How do you connect with untapped audiences?
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How do you target the most appropriate untapped audience?
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Why focus on content that tells your story?
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How does this build backlinks?
In this episode, Vanda and David discuss how to prioritise carefully and solve the right SEO problems.
Specific topics include:
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How should you prioritise?
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What is your prioritisation process?
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Typically, what are the right problems to prioritise?
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How do you know that you are focusing on the right problems?
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What are the wrong problems to prioritise?
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How do you communicate what you are prioritising with your team?
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What software do you use to assist you with your prioritising?
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When do you need to review what you are prioritising?
Anna and David discuss:
How to work on developing and publishing interactive content. Interactive doesn't have to cost the earth and it has multiple benefits, from increased customer satisfaction, to the thing all SEOs want... more links!
Topics include:
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How do you define interactive content?
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How do you make interactive content?
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Why does interactive content encourage more links?
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What other SEO benefits does interactive content offer?
David and Andreas discuss how to use data science to inform your SEO, including:
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What does this mean in practice?
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Data science driven website user experience
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Data science driven competitor analysis
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On-site SEO
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Content marketing
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Link building
David and Edward discuss how an EEAT-first strategy will set your SEO campaign up for success, focusing on examples of the 4 key areas:
Experience
Expertise
Authoritativeness
Trustworthiness
David and Alan Discuss:
How to be proactive about promoting your content and acquiring backlinks, don't wait for them to come naturally (although that should always be the #1 goal). Avoid getting stuck in the "Content Graveyard".
The discussion includes:
How do you define the Content Graveyard - unindexed content?
What are the best practical ways to promote your content and acquire backlinks now?
What is an effective content promotion plan?
What are the best type of backlinks in 2023?
In this episode, David and Kelly discuss how changing how you think about on-page trust will increase your rankings and conversion rate.
Specific topics covered in this interview include:
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What do you mean by on-page trust?
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How do you build your on-page trust?
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How will this increase your rankings?
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How will this increase your conversion rate?
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How do you measure the value of your on-page trust?
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Can this help to increase your traffic or rankings?
David and Julia discuss AIO - the new process of AI-led, humanly-assisted content creation.
The conversation focuses on how to optimize for CRAFT:
C (cut the fluff - editing AI output to be better),
R (reviewing and optimizing SEO to be as human as possible),
A (adding visuals and media to tell a story with pictures),
F (fact-checking for accuracy), and
T (trust-building with personal style, story & client features)
David and Yagmur discuss:
Revisit your website’s Information Architecture strategy to support your business with technical and on-page SEO improvements and task/project prioritization in 2023
What do you mean by your website’s Information Architecture strategy?
How does this Information Architecture strategy support a business with technical and on-page SEO improvements?
How does the Information Architecture strategy help with task and project prioritization?
David and Hope discuss:
Move away from viewing your site as a collection of individual pages
Move away from chasing ranking fluctuations
Move away from forgetting your site is a wider entity.
How do you SEO your site as a whole?
How do you measure this?
Paid traffic vs Social
David and Marcus discuss:
What tools do you use and what is your process for doing this?
SERP Snippet Scraper Chrome plugin
Can you keep historical records of the previous reports and compare your current results?
What are you looking to compare?
What’s a tangible result from improving your snippet?
David and Amel discuss:
How do you optimize images for Google's AR feature?
Does this also improve accessibility?
What kind of image file is best?
How do you name image files?
Does schema help as well?
David and Julia discuss:
Do SEOs use too many tools?
Give me an example of tools that aren’t used well
How do you become better at using tools?
What tools should SEOs be using?
How do you train others to use tools more effectively?
David and Marco discuss:
What are some examples of processes that SEOs should review?
Should all SEOs be doing this or is it just the responsibility of SEO Heads and Managers to boost productivity?
How do you stay focused?
Where does AI fit into this?
David and Garrett discuss:
What content can be used producing ChatGPT?
What editing is necessary for ChatGPT content?
How is content produced by ChatGPT picked up by Google?
Are there other AI content tools that you would recommend?
What is the future of AI content?
We’re seeing less impact through digital PR campaigns which has led agencies to favour reactive PR strategies. However, if you make your campaigns work extra hard, you can achieve just as high successes. This means watertight data, strong methodologies, great copy and validating them before launch.
David and Annika discuss the importance of uniting SEO and wider brand strategy for enhanced engagement.
Discussion topics include:
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What does Uniting SEO and wider brand strategy mean?
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What does this mean in terms of SEO and brand marketing departments working together?
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How does this enhance engagement?
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How does enhanced engagement have a measurable impact on SEO?
David and Andy discuss:
What does that mean in practice?
What can you rely on AI to do?
What type of content can AI help with?
What type of content should you not use AI for?
What does the optimum process that uses AI to help with content look like?
How do you ensure that search engines think that your content was written by humans?
What tools do you recommend?
David and Gerry discuss:
Why do you describe entities as the most critical thing?
How do you target your strategy to entities?
What does enhancing with multimedia and internal linking mean in practice?
What’s an example of good automation?
David and Katherine discuss:
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Google Search Console crawl stats data report
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Hosts
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How Google is crawling your subdomains
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Robots.txt
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DNS resolution - domain provider
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Server connectivity
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HTTP Response
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File Type - HTML, javascript, images or videos
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Purpose - Discovery and refresh
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Googlebot
David and Heba discuss:
What are the key areas in accessibility?
How does accessibility impact SEO?
How does Google analyze accessibility?
How do you measure the impact for accessibility?
Sophie Gibson shares that it's become very important in 2023 to have comprehensive structured data added to pages - It's no longer an 'added bonus' but will become essential to get ahead, because of Google's Generative Search Experience and the rise of AI requiring machine readable content summaries. This will mean you will need to add further markup than competitors and use additional fields within structured data , beyond what the online generators can create.
Talking points include:
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What does comprehensive structured data mean?
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Use additional fields within structured data - which ones?
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Information to add - founders in organisation schema (Founding, organisational)
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Meet the team pages - people, job title, accreditations
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What type of content is most important to mark up?
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How do you measure success?
Chris Green believes that volume/depth of content doesn't mean you will rank well - the content has to be good and specific to the need. For SEOs working with multiple brands/clients, the challenge becomes connecting effectively with the user's needs and how to satisfy that meaningfully.
During this conversation Jonas and David discuss:
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Understand search intent
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Measure the value of user intent?
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Build topic clusters to cover a topic completely
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Add unique perspectives while still answering the query
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Create linkable assets (spam links are being devalued more, good links still pass value)
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Be a trusted source of information beyond search (social, email, etc) because that reinforces your value
Orit Mutznik has advice for SEOs looking to stand out in the job market in 2023, and suggests that you should highlight all your previous SEO wins and avoid sending generic CVs if you want to land your dream role.
Fili Wiese gives SEOs in 2023 advice on how to stand out from the crowd, improve the quality of your content, and ensure that your pages are a step above the competition.
Aleyda Solis gives SEOs in 2023 tips for creating a quality assurance framework that will prevent you from becoming part of your own SEO horror stories - including education, validation, and monitoring.
Kerstin Reichert believes SEOs in 2023 need to stop relying so heavily on tools to tell you what to aim for, roll up your sleeves, and do the manual work yourself to identify what really matters to you.
Mert Azizoğlu reminds SEOs in 2023 that the main logic of SEO has always remained the same. You still need to be aware of how the content that you create is relating to the intent of the users that are searching for it.
Helen Pollitt believes that, in 2023, SEOs need to stop striving for perfection and trying to tick every box. Instead, you should be paying attention to nuance and looking for ways to be more forward-thinking.
Nik Ranger implores SEOs in 2023 to remember the basics and stop committing cardinal sins in the areas of crawlability, rendering, indexability, ranking, and conversions.
Luis Rodriguez believes that the key for SEO in 2023 is to keep experimenting to keep up with Google’s changes - and not give up after just a few tries. If you want to keep up, you need to be willing to take some risks.
Si Shangese encourages SEOs in 2023 to get over a fear of forecasting and use a test and learn approach, utilising historic data, so that you can look to the future, confident in the knowledge of what does and doesn’t work.
Emily Potter encourages SEOs in 2023 to keep testing, but do so more often, with more efficiency, and working alongside your product teams to make the most of this information.
Omi Sido believes that every website needs unique SEO in 2023, because every website is unique. He suggests that BigQuery is currently the best way to get a holistic picture of what is happening in your space online.
Begum Kaya says that SEOs need to expand their remit in 2023 and start acting more like data scientists so that you can be ready for the data revolution.
Kaspar Szymanski encourages SEOs in 2023 to capitalise on an opportunity that is often overlooked by preserving and analysing your server logs so that you can understand more about what is actually happening on your site.
Pam Aungst Cronin believes that the future of SEO in 2023 no longer revolves around traditional SEO tactics, but rather changing how you look at your metrics. She suggests moving to Data Studio for your reporting and relying less on GA4.
Natalie Slater advises SEOs in 2023 to stop sticking their heads in the sand and migrate over to GA4 as soon as possible. Start the transition away from Universal Analytics, start gathering data, and start understanding the potential changes.
Jess Joyce encourages SEOs to make the most of all the data and metrics that are currently available in 2023 and measure whatever they can, to make continuous improvements based on what is already in place.
Adriana Stein states that because the Google algorithm is always changing, SEOs should not rely as much on those signals in 2023 but focus on establishing themselves as trustworthy sources.
Rasida Begum believes that by better understanding your data, you’ll be more successful as an SEO in 2023. Start looking at how your data can be compared and delve deeper below the surface.
Bastian Grimm informs SEOs that you can no longer be ignorant about the way AI and machine learning are impacting the online environment in 2023. You need to start understanding now if you want to stay in front of the pack.
Lazarina Stoy highlights the virtues of Google Cloud’s many different APIs as a way for SEOs in 2023 to build on your analysis and better understand the work that you are doing.
Barry Adams feels that, in 2023, SEOs need to start seriously looking at doing SEO on the edge and explains how you can take advantage of the power of the CDN.
Nick Wilsdon is a strong proponent of utilising the edge in 2023. He explains how it works, the opportunities that it presents for changing the experience and delivery of your content, and how you can utilise it to make anything that you dream of possible.
Mufaddal Sadriwala is betting on Web Stories in 2023 and encourages all SEOs to start understanding the basics of how to create them, why they are important, and where they can be visible.
Crystal Carter believes SEOs should focus more on the visual side of search and promoting the overall brand in 2023, rather than dwelling on keywords.
Eli Schwartz tells SEOs that you need to think beyond Google as the only search engine that matters in 2023 and open up your horizons by focusing on the user and not the algorithm.
Joseph Khan stresses the importance of having all of your social media and marketing channels in alignment in 2023 – before you think about getting your content out there.
Krzysztof Marzec believes SEOs in 2023 should be taking advantage of the knowledge, you can gain from Google Ads to improve your SEO efforts, and vice versa.
William Álvarez believes that SEOs in 2023 should invest in SEO as preparation for what’s ahead rather than a reactionary tool, and businesses should utilise an omnichannel approach instead of funnelling their budget into isolated paid campaigns.
Christina Ehrensberger encourages SEOs to use an internal linking API to power the logic behind the internal linking modules within your site in 2023.
Jan-Willem Bobbink believes that, in 2023, SEOs should be spending more time optimising your internal links and thinking about best practices where 95% of websites could see significant benefits.
Andor Palau encourages SEOs in 2023 to worry less about the next shiny object and focus more on accuracy: work on the details of what you do and be accurate in your processes, because there is less and less room for error as time goes on.
Debbie highlights effective link building as the key area for 2023 but also cautions against ignoring the other aspects of SEO, like content and technical SEO.
Bibi Raven warns SEOs in 2023 to not limit yourself by feeling trapped in your link building strategy and reveals some of the key opportunities that you may be missing out on by focusing on just one avenue.
Natalie Arney suggests that SEOs in 2023 should be reinforcing the three pillars of tech, content, and links, and getting those pillars working in tandem to make sure your website is as sound as possible.
Miracle Inameti-Archibong informs SEOs in 2023 that SEO is becoming more about what people say about you and not what you say about yourself.
Ulrika Viberg recommends focusing on what the user wants in 2023 and working together with traditional marketing, digital marketing, and the UX team to improve the customer experience through your SEO.
Becky Simms believes that by being more human you can have greater success as an SEO in 2023 and encourages you to consider the motivations of your users when developing your SEO strategy.
Billie Geena Hyde believes in using user-focused research to improve search quality thresholds in 2023 and make sure that what you are putting online site is fulfilling the needs of your users.
Sara Fernández Carmona tells SEOs in 2023 that they need to embrace the term ‘Search Experience Optimisation’ and understand that SEO can no longer exist without UX.
Olga Tsimaraki encourages SEOs in 2023 to worry less about the technical side of your websites and focus more on providing helpful content that is accessible and useful for your users.
Sophie Brannon believes that SEO in 2023 should be all about making the user experience as smooth and streamlined as possible, particularly in regard to visual elements and the arrival of multimodal search - which is just around the corner.
Grace Wei Hou recommends that SEOs in 2023 put the experience of your users first when putting together your SEO strategy, to please Google, encourage effective conversions, and ensure that you are achieving profitable growth.
Pedro Dias believes that your focus as an SEO in 2023 should be on enhancing the user experience and the quality of your content because these are Google’s main priorities.
Maria White promotes the value of user-centricity to SEOs in 2023 and helps you to understand how to target your strategy to please the right users in the right way.
Filipa Serra Gaspar stresses the importance of focusing on the user experience as an SEO in 2023, and keeping your audience as the central point of everything that you are doing on your site.
Kristina Azarenko believes that SEOs in 2023 should definitely make sure that their pages are indexed and visible to Google but, equally, you should avoid creating content just for SEO rather than users.
Dre De Vera highlights the importance of video for SEOs in 2023 who want to dominate page one in Google. He explains that it’s now about more than just being at the top: it’s about pixels on the page as well.
Sara Moccand-Sayegh advises SEOs in 2023 to look directly at the SERP for more information about what is actually being shown, and also ensure that you are presenting a clear and consistent personal brand identity across the web.
Navah Hopkins recommends that SEOs in 2023 need to get ready for the dynamic Search Engine Results Page and be prepared to incorporate the two worlds of paid and organic even more in the future.
Louise Heap believes that SERP optimisation is a key part of SEO in 2023, particularly considering the features and formats that have reduced the SERP click-through rates to standard organic listings.
Kevin Indig explains to SEOs in 2023 that, in the right situations, indexing facets can actually be a game-changer for an eCommerce or large aggregator site, and gives advice on how to make sure those pages are still relevant and valuable.
Suresh Kumar reveals the power and importance of metadata to SEOs in 2023, and recommends that you start getting to grips with the JSON-LD code and apply schema to your pages.
Martha van Berkel advises SEOs in 2023 to handle your structured data like a financial portfolio in five key ways: manage and maintain your structured data, prepare for volatility, test new investments, treat SEO as a team sport, and view machine learning as your ‘blockchain of schema’.
Jono Alderson stresses the importance of using structured data to market to machines so that you always have the permission you need to actually access an audience in 2023.
Jason Barnard explains that to prosper with SEO in 2023, you should treat Google like a child and make sure that you are educating that child about who you are and what you do.
Lily Ray encourages SEOs in 2023 to expand your remit into new formats and take advantage of what Google and other search engines have to offer in order to stay ahead of the curve.
Dixon Jones brings awareness to emerging opportunities in the augmented reality space for SEOs in 2023, and highlights the importance of being ready for the future in this space.
Chima Mmeje warns SEOs in 2023 that you need to be ready to beat out those who rely on AI-generated content by using AI to your advantage and looking at the bigger picture, so that you can create great holistic content that is both useful and relatable.
Eva Cheng stresses the importance of never underestimating the power of reactive PR, and explains how this type of work can make a big difference for your SEO in 2023.
Claire Carlile says that, if you’re a local business and you have access to a Google Business Profile, you should Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) tag up all of the links from your business profile.
Adelina Bordea tells SEOs in 2023 that, to keep up with the competition, you need to be generating truly powerful content - no matter what size of search you are targeting.
Nikki Halliwell tells SEOs in 2023 to look for keywords with a high number of impressions and reveals other opportunities for making sure you are providing in-depth answers to the right questions.
Greg Gifford espouses the value of your Google Business Profile and explains why, for many SEOs in 2023, that profile should be the cornerstone of everything you are doing in Local SEO – so it needs to be thoroughly optimised.
Eilish Hughes believes that you should put your best foot forward and demonstrate both excellence and honesty with your content in 2023, and you should avoid taking actions just because everyone else is doing so.
Gus Pelogia recommends that SEOs invest more time in 2023 getting the buy-in that they need by communicating with stakeholders. That will give your projects a chance to actually work out in the way that you hope.
Paige Hobart shares her frustrations with creating content for content’s sake and implores SEOs in 2023 to have a more focused idea of exactly what you are producing, why you’re producing it, and what it is supposed to be doing for you.
Andrea Paternostro has a four-step process that will help SEOs in 2023 to consolidate their content and strike a balance between freshness and intelligently reclaiming existing content.
Marco Bonomo believes that 2023 presents a fantastic opportunity for SEOs to focus on content and content strategy, specifically designed to please and delight your users.
Sara Taher informs SEOs of the ways that the industry has changed in recent years. She breaks down the three key areas that you need to focus on in 2023: content, context, and control.
Ian Helms believes that quality over quantity will matter more than ever in 2023, so you need to be hyper-focused on delivering the kind of quality that Google is actually looking for.
Kevin Gibbons gives SEOs in 2023 a series of steps on how to have a clear content strategy, making sure that your content is actually engaging your customers in the right way.
Irina Serdyukovskaya explains to SEOs in 2023 that content is still king, but you need to be more specific about the type of content you create and understand what your users are actually looking for.
Julia-Carolin Zeng encourages SEOs in 2023 to ask themselves: What is the intent behind the keywords that you are creating content for? What is the user actually trying to do when they are typing it into search?
Andrew Cock-Starkey persuades SEOs in 2023 to think more deeply about the concept of intent, and all of the different areas of SEO in which intent is so important.
Jess Maloney believes that all-around search intent will be more important than ever in 2023 and that understanding what your users actually want is the key to creating successful websites.
Nitin Manchanda believes that SEO is a demand-based growth channel, and that through this way of thinking you can open yourself up to new opportunities and better target potential users in 2023.
Mark Williams-Cook tells SEOs in 2023 that it’s important to build most of your content research around zero-volume keywords and intent proximity, rather than monthly search volume and related keywords.
Sante J Achille informs SEOs that thinking like a machine, and challenging yourself to truly understand the inner workings of today’s algorithms, can reap massive dividends in 2023.
Lidia Infante suggests that SEOs in 2023 should go headless without losing your head and understand that the world of SEO has become about much more than just the search bar.
Sarah McDowell believes SEOs should invest in the power of putting people first in 2023 so that you are creating content and optimising your site for users rather than just search engines.
Isaline Muelhauser believes your approach to translations will greatly affect your SEO results in 2023. She explains what it means to treat translations like languages and how this impacts SEOs.
Jamie Indigo acknowledges that the last couple of years has been a wild ride. The movement to digital has been dramatically accelerated by changing circumstances across the globe, and creating fact-based content will help SEOs to remain trustworthy in 2023.
Eric Enge gives advice to SEOs in 2023 on how to keep up with Google’s constant evolutions by focusing on mapping out your customer journeys so that you are constantly growing as well.
Gemma Fontané recommends that you focus on creating content for human users that demonstrates EAT in 2023, particularly for small or medium-sized businesses that are looking to make a start in new or international markets.
Jake Gauntley feels that the best way for brands to prosper in 2023 is to focus on flexing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness online – and he gives you actionable tips on how to achieve this.
Taylor Kurtz asserts that Google’s algorithm changes mean SEOs should avoid churning out content for the sake of it in 2023, and also focus on your customer experience.
Olesia Korobka tells SEOs that you should prepare for the worst but hope for the better, so that you know your website can weather the inevitable storms that will arise in 2023 and beyond.
Charlie Williams believes that by using content inventories in 2023, SEOs can better understand the content quality that you are currently delivering across your entire website.
Brenda Malone tells SEOs that third-party tag governance is going to be crucial in 2023 to maintain performance-compliant websites, and gives tips on how to select the right code.
Bill Hartzer believes that, as SEOs, we tend to get too involved in thinking about creating more content, more pages, and optimising said pages. He encourages you to start cleaning things up to make sure your current website is at its best.
Olga Zarr believes that SEOs should go the extra mile when conducting website SEO audits and creating content in 2023, and warns you not to rely on just a few tools and tactics.
Montserrat Cano believes you should audit your website regularly in 2023 as a way to be more strategic, and gives SEOs guidance on what you should be focusing on during your audits and when you should be doing them.
Rebecca Berbel informs SEOs in 2023 of the importance of regularly monitoring your website and keeping yourself up-to-date on performance so that you can develop a well-informed strategy.
Andy Drinkwater says that anybody looking to get insight into their website in 2023 should look at some of the more popular issues that arise in technical SEO, and make sure that you are addressing them.
David Iwanow warns SEOs about the volume of noise that you’re going to be competing against in 2023 and gives you tips on how to stand out and make yourself heard.
Itamar Blauer stresses the importance of sustainable SEO and looking into the future in 2023. Use common sense and long-term thinking to make the most of what you are capable of and demonstrate your particular expertise.
Cindy Krum believes that SEOs in 2023 need to be looking to optimise beyond normal blue links. The old methods of SEO have become somewhat outdated and simply trying harder and harder to get to page one is not always going to work.
Izabela Wisniewska tells SEOs in 2023 that you shouldn’t focus strictly on SEO in isolation, and instead focus on building trustworthy brands and very good websites - and shouting about it.
Myriam Jessier outlines the importance of navigating rapidly transcending market conditions with a willingness to embrace change and a desire to keep educating yourself and those you work with.
Martin MacDonald helps SEOs in 2023 to understand how Google is shifting from informational retrieval to informational suggestion, how the game is changing, and why having richer content and good media assets is a must if you want to compete on the SERP of tomorrow.
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How should you recruit SEOs? What can managers do to give SEOs more training? What impact has working from home had on recruitment? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What are the benefits of executing SEO changes on the edge? Are there any downsides? What are a few examples of serverless applications from an SEO perspective? What type of business can take advantage of this?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What is Platform-less, server-less SEO? Why is it important? How much SEO will be done on the edge in the future? What aspects of SEO will be done on the edge? What aspects of SEO won’t be done on the edge? Does every SEO need to know about this? Is it only for enterprises?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Why is JavaScript rendering important for SEOs? What does Javascript rendering do? (Javascript uses the document object model (DOM) to manipulate the DOM elements. Rendering refers to showing the output in the browser) Why is Javascript getting more important? Could using Javascript help with SEO?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: How can an SEO use machine learning in their processes now? What can be and should be automated? What technologies do you recommend to introduce machine learning in SEO processes? Should SEOs be concerned that quality may deteriorate when tasks are automated? What shouldn't be automated? What should an SEO focus on when everything that can be automated, should be automated?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Why isn’t measuring clicks enough? What is better than clicks? What about early funnel traffic that clicks then comes back? Does this mean that SEOs should be having a greater focus on bottom of funnel traffic? Should SEOs be agreeing attribution models with their clients before proceeding?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What type of business can take advantage of this? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this? What does success look like? How do you measure the value of doing this? How does this dovetail in with the rest of your SEO activities? And how does an SEO articulate the value of doing this to a general marketer?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What is Agile and how does it relate to SEO testing? Why is that a better way of working in SEO testing? Give me an example of using agile in SEO testing. Why is this better than setting an SEO testing strategy and running with it? Should Agile be used in other areas of SEO?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks Dixon in this episode include: How and where we can build up? What are good things to test? Where are the biggest wins? How much data is needed? What does Google see?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Why aren’t most SEOs testing? How do you get started with testing? What software do you recommend? How do you combine SEO and CRO tests?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What specifically should SEOs be looking for in Google Search Console? What metrics are key? Is it possible to simplify things by automatically exporting key data and sending you daily alerts or is it necessary to actually be in Google Search Console? You also recommend starting any SEO analysis from the data in Google Search Console - why’s that? What’s missing in Google Search Console and what other tools do you need to use to compliment the data found in Google Search Console?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks Andrew in this episode include: How has Google Analytics changed over the past few years? What does getting Google Analytics set up correctly mean? What are the key reports that an SEO should be zeroing in on, in Google Analytics? How can this be automated? How should an SEO use the data from Google Analytics?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Why is Image Search for ecommerce websites becoming increasingly important? Where does the traffic come from? Google Image Search? Pinterest? Elsewhere? How much traffic as a percentage of total traffic are we talking about and is this figure increasing? How do you optimize for image search? Any particular type of images? Is it important to have unique images? Does traffic from image search tend to convert just as well as traffic from elsewhere? Should you blend this organic approach with paid ads on image search?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: How do you align your Google Business Profile with SERP features? How do you build a content strategy for a SERP feature? How does this align with a user’s preferred ways to consume content? How does this help to better serve user search intent? Is this strategy important for any type of business or is it more relevant for retailers with a physical location?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What do SEOs need to know about Google My Business in 2022? What are the absolutely essential elements of Google My Business that many businesses are still missing out on? You can be a service-area business which means you don’t need a physical address anymore - is that right? What are the newer aspects of Google My Business that many SEOs aren’t aware of? What about Google My Business posts - how effective are they and how often should businesses use them? How do you optimize for the Questions and Answers section? What insights are available and how can you optimize further by using the data in your insights?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks Dixon in this episode include: What type of business can take advantage of this? What’s the difference between passage indexing and featured snippets? Might this keep users on the SERP instead of visiting a web page? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do you create semantic content using the Google SERPs? What type of business can take advantage of this? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this? What does success look like? How do you measure the value of doing this? How does this dovetail in with the rest of your SEO activities? And how does an SEO articulate the value of doing this to a general marketer?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do you ensure that Google knows who you are, what it is that you do and who your audience is? What’s the difference between Google's Knowledge Graph and a knowledge panel? How do you get a place in Google's Knowledge Graph? How do you trigger a knowledge panel? How do you measure the commercial value of getting a knowledge panel? How do you build your authority once you have your knowledge panel?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Why is brand a more important part of the user journey in 2022? How is Google’s understanding of a brand improving? How do you manage Google’s understanding of your brand? How does this drive measurable SEO success?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do you use the SERPs as an SEO tool? What information do you look for in the SERP? How do you use that information? How do you do this at scale? How reactive should you be to a changing SERP?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Does cold outreach not work anymore? What kind of assets drive the best links? How do you drive as many links as possible initially, as soon as you publish something? What kind of links are ideal links nowadays?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do you focus on businesses? Why not content? What does this mean in practice? How do you approach businesses? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What do you mean by tiered links? How do you measure the value of tiered links? How much authority can tiered links pass on? What are you looking for when you’re looking at tiered links to your competitor's websites? How do you obtain tiered links?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Semantic SEO is the process of building more meaning into the words you use in your content - how do you do that in practice? By focusing on natural language processing I presume that you mean that Google will continue to get better at understanding the true meaning behind all of your content?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Whose experience are you referring to - the writer of the reader? What value does focusing on actual experience provide? What does this mean in practice for the content? What impact does it have on the reader? How does this fit into your overall content marketing strategy?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this? What does success look like? How do you measure the value of doing this? How does this dovetail in with the rest of your SEO activities? And how does an SEO articulate the value of doing this to a general marketer?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do you discover the most important questions that you should be answering? What does answering the customers' questions efficiently actually mean in practice? Should all these answers be published on your website, and be easily accessible by search engines? How do you determine the optimum form to publish the answers to these questions for SEO? (Video / text / longform) What kind of call to action if any should you be looking to include on answer pages? How do you optimize these answers for the SERP? How does this play with social media and chatbots - should you be answering the same questions there too?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What does it mean in practice to help searchers get the answers that they’re looking for? How do you determine the questions that you should be answering? What are your thoughts on how you optimize answers to questions? You say that Google Search Central is your friend in crime - why’s that and what can you learn there? Why should an SEO look at the whole marketing funnel and not just organic sessions?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What would be some examples of things that a competitor can’t replicate? What brands are doing this really well? How does this provide SEO value? How do you determine the item of value that you should create? How do you measure success?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What are topic clusters? How do you define the topic clusters you should have? How do you make topic clusters that talk to each other?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What are topic clusters? What are the key areas of tech SEO to ensure you get right at the moment? How to implement the tip? What businesses pay attention to what you’re saying?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Are local audiences important for every business? Why are local audiences better than focusing on the generic SERP? How do you SEO for local audiences in 2022? Are you talking about Google My Business or other local SEO opportunities? What are the key local SEO opportunities in 2022?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include...
How does Google quantify the mobile user experience?
What are the core elements of Google’s Core Web Vitals? Largest Contentful Paint Cumulative Layout Shift First Input Delay
What are some things that you can do to improve your Core Web Vitals?
What happens if you already have high authority and you’re an industry leader - will Google really rank you lower than a competitor if they perceive that your UX is worse?
Are certain devices more important to optimize UX for? (if your UX is bad for old versions of iOS or Android, does that really matter?)
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: You say that Intent and UX are often spoken about, but underutilised - what do you mean by that? How does an SEO utilise intent and UX in practice? How does an SEO optimise for intent? How do you measure the value of optimising for intent? How does an SEO optimise for user experience? How do you measure the value of optimising for user experience? Where does an SEO go to find out more about optimising for intent and UX?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: How do search engines measure user experience? What aspects of user experience are most important? Does this mean that keywords aren’t important anymore? What does this mean for the sEO role moving forwards - will it become less technical and more creative?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What is intent mapping? How do you define your core pages? What type of business can take advantage of this? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this? What does success look like? How do you measure the value of doing this?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Are you advocating that an SEO completely stops thinking about keywords? On a practical basis, how does an SEO actually apply the intent-lens to everything they do? So you have a piece of content that’s targeted at top-of-funnel - how do you organically, predictably deliver a different piece of content about the same topic to a user further down the purchase funnel? How do you measure the impact of your success when you’re focusing on intent?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do search engines determine intent? Why are search engines more likely to be incorporating intent in their algorithms in 2022? What does this actually mean in practice for SEOs? How do you as an SEO use intent to drive better traffic? What if you currently receive a lot of traffic that doesn’t spend a long time on your site - will this negatively impact your rankings?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks Dixon in this episode include: What change in shopping habits has resulted in you recommending that SEOs focus on human behaviour? What sorts of human behaviors are we talking about? How do you measure and optimize for human behaviour? How do search engines detect changes in human behaviour? How is this changing the way that SEO is done?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What constitutes a good user experience in 2022? How do you determine the most important aspects of user experience to focus on? How do you measure the impact of improved user experience? What user signals are likely to impact SEO? Can you actually measure a positive SEO impact as a result of improved user experience? What kind of SEO success will follow? Will there be more of an obvious user experience ranking factor moving forwards?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Is keyword research not as effective anymore? How do you discover what the user wants by asking them in a formal survey? What does the survey look like? How many people do you need to take part? How do you know that your survey participants reflect your target market?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How is Google creating more hyper-personalized results and what does this mean for SEO? How do you map keywords to personas? How do you map keywords to user journeys?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What are keyword clusters and how do you combine keyword research and keyword clusters? How do you conduct keyword research in 2022? What do you do with your keywords when you’ve selected them? How do you structure your on-page SEO? Why is page relevancy so important and how do you measure how relevant your page is? What does the optimum internal link strategy look like in 2022?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Are keyword volume and keyword difficulty still important? How do you categorize keywords? How do you know which keywords to focus on? Where should keywords be used?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What is an example of excess fat? What is digital hoarding? How do you define that a page is useful for users? How do you define that a page is useful for Google? How does an SEO find these pages? What is a good radio of useful pages to empty yogurt containers? What causes index bloat?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Why a square photo? Does it help if it’s a unique photo? Does this affect desktop results? How near the top of your page does it have to be? Are you in favour of any particular file type? Does it have to be a certain pixel size or have a caption? Can you also use a brand logo? Can this also help with bringing in traffic from Google image search?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Should every site be using structured data? How do you use structured data to showcase your uniqueness in search? Where does Google utilise this marked up content? Where do other search engines use this marked up content? How can you use structured data to highlight the uniqueness of your content? What are some examples of content elements that should be marked up, but often aren’t marked up by SEOs? What is the easiest way to get your content marked up and to manage that content moving forwards?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: How do you use structured data strategically? How is the SERP changing at the moment? How does it build SEO resilience? Why is SEO resilience useful?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: Is Schema essential for every type of website? What are some examples of the schemas that websites are missing out on? What is the easiest way to add and manage Schema? What tangible SEO benefit does Schema give?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What does an SEO-friendly taxonomy look like nowadays? Do XML sitemaps still play an important role? How do you optimize for ready-to-buy queries? How do you make it easier for your consumers to shop and browse your site? How do you better understand how people shop and browse?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What type of business can take advantage of this? How do you calculate level of effort? How do you calculate level of impact? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Treat SEO as an investment - how long is it reasonable - 2 years? Should you focus on bottom of funnel terms? What business metrics are key? What would be typical examples of the best business metrics to focus on? What should an SEO do if the big opportunities are in early funnel searches that are difficult to tie back to the core business metrics? What happens if business owners ask you to focus on bad metrics? What are some examples of bad metrics to focus on?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What first party data are you talking about? How do you use that to form your SEO content strategy? How do you focus on deeper, more meaningful audience customized content?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What is a SuperGAP analysis? How does it work? How do you choose your competitors? How do you choose which competitor keyword rankings to include in your gap analysis? What type of business can take advantage of this? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What does benchmarking your search market mean? How do you define who your market is? How do you go about doing this? What value does this provide? How does this fit into your SEO strategy?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: How do you convince senior stakeholders to make SEO a priority? Why is SEO sometimes not a priority? How do you handle it if stakeholders are just focused on vanity metrics, like ranking for keyword phrases that don’t really matter How should SEOs talk about goals and objectives with stakeholders? What does a strategic SEO plan look like in 2022? How do you convince stakeholders in other departments about the value of SEO? How does SEO weave with other digital marketing activities?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks Dixon in this episode include: What would make a Google engineer embarrassed that your site isn’t ranking number 1 for relevant terms? What elements does an SEO need to focus on to be significantly better than the competition? How do you stay one step ahead of Google in terms of what Google wants to rank high in its search results? How do you measure the value of doing so much extra work when you could be just a little bit better than the competition to be number 1?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: How do you optimize for accessibility? What audiences are you optimizing for when you optimize for accessibility? What kind of accessibility factors are Google likely to introduce? What mistakes do website publishers make when optimizing for accessibility?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: Why is accessibility so important in 2022? What are the key areas of accessibility that an SEO needs to be aware of? Is there legislation that is leading this? Does having poor accessibility impact rankings now? How do you check if your website is accessible?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What’s an example of Rubbish in? What’s an example of Rubbish out? What’s an example of quality in? What’s an example of quality out?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What does compete on technical quality mean in practice? What things should SEOs and developers stop re-building? Things like CSS and JavaScript capabilities for the web are changing all the time - is it an SEO’s job to stay on top of that? Should every site be using AMP? Should all sites be a progressive web app? How significant a part of Google’s algorithms is Core Web Vitals?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle? Ranking and performance are stochastic variables - what does that mean? (Stochastic means nondeterministic or unpredictable. Random generally means unrecognizable, not adhering to a pattern.) What type of business can take advantage of this? What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks Dixon in this episode include: What’s an example of a “Go Big, Go Bold, Go Against SEO” SEO campaign that was a massive success? From an SEO perspective, how do you measure the success of articles for the sake of entertainment? What sort of content will drive SEO success in 2022? How do you categorise your types of content? What sort of digital PR are you seeing as effective at the moment? How do you measure the SEO value of building relationships?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What are a few specific steps that an SEO needs to do, to start putting this into action? How often should an SEO be doing this? What does success look like? How do you measure the value of doing this?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions that David asks in this episode include: What are the basics that an SEO shouldn’t forget? What Javascript are you talking about? Tracking scripts? Javascript-based sites or something else? How do you monitor Javascript? How is Javascript impacting SEO? What is Google’s relationship with Javascript now?
Check out the rest of the content from "SEO in 2022" here: http://seoin2022.com/ Questions in this episode include: What are the key SEO basics in 2022? How do you classify these basics? What are your tips for technical / On-page - H1s - titles - content on the page? What old code should you remove from your website? What technical audits do you recommend?