SEO in 2026
Majestic.com
SEO is continuing to change at an alarming pace. And yet, in some sense, the principles of good SEO remain the same.
Hello, and welcome to SEO in 2026 – a significant repository of current thinking from many of the world’s leading SEOs.
We're pleased to be able to welcome you to the fifth book and fifth series in this podcast, now well and truly an annual tradition, brought to you by Majestic.
“How people search has seen a bigger shift in the last 12 months than the last 12 years, and this makes SEOin2026 a must-read for anyone working in the industry. Majestic has brought together 117 of the SEO industry's brightest minds to share their insights into what matters, and what doesn't, to continue to drive growth with organic search during a period of massive uncertainty, and the book should be seen as a valuable reference point to keep your strategy on the right track.”
JAMES BROCKBANK
Managing Director and Founder, Digitaloft
“I highly recommend that every SEO professional set aside a couple of days for SEOin2026. You'll thank me for helping you plan your year effectively. I'm extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside some of the world's leading SEO champions.”
NITIN MANCHANDA
Founder & Chief SEO Consultant, Botpresso
“This collection of wisdom from many of the best minds in SEO today is a great line in the sand of where we as an industry are, what problems we face, and how we tackle them. Anyone in SEO or marketing should be dipping into this on a regular basis.”
SIMON COX
Technical SEO Consultant, Cox and Co. Creative
“This series continues to be the industry’s leading source of the most timely advice a marketer could ever want. The most forward-thinking SEO experts in the world come together once a year to create this invaluable collection of new knowledge that should never be passed up on!”
PAM AUNGST CRONIN
President and Founder, Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth Search and Analytics
“2025 has been a sprint for the SEO industry, with AI reshaping how we understand visibility, relevance, and authority. SEOin2026 is not just another trends book; it’s a roadmap for what’s actually coming. I loved being part of it and seeing how experts around the world approach the same challenges from different angles.”
RAMONA JOITA
SEO Consultant and Founder
“David is good at drawing out the substance of a conversation. He will explore the topic and challenge assumptions, steer the conversation into an unexpected direction, and build on your ideas – making you think a bit deeper and sharper. Our recent conversation flew by as always, and as always – I’ve come out energised about the topic with more to think about.”
SUKHJINDER SINGH
Freelance SEO Consultant
Hello, and welcome to SEO in 2026 – a significant repository of current thinking from many of the world’s leading SEOs.
We're pleased to be able to welcome you to the fifth book and fifth series in this podcast, now well and truly an annual tradition, brought to you by Majestic.
“How people search has seen a bigger shift in the last 12 months than the last 12 years, and this makes SEOin2026 a must-read for anyone working in the industry. Majestic has brought together 117 of the SEO industry's brightest minds to share their insights into what matters, and what doesn't, to continue to drive growth with organic search during a period of massive uncertainty, and the book should be seen as a valuable reference point to keep your strategy on the right track.”
JAMES BROCKBANK
Managing Director and Founder, Digitaloft
“I highly recommend that every SEO professional set aside a couple of days for SEOin2026. You'll thank me for helping you plan your year effectively. I'm extremely grateful to have the opportunity to work alongside some of the world's leading SEO champions.”
NITIN MANCHANDA
Founder & Chief SEO Consultant, Botpresso
“This collection of wisdom from many of the best minds in SEO today is a great line in the sand of where we as an industry are, what problems we face, and how we tackle them. Anyone in SEO or marketing should be dipping into this on a regular basis.”
SIMON COX
Technical SEO Consultant, Cox and Co. Creative
“This series continues to be the industry’s leading source of the most timely advice a marketer could ever want. The most forward-thinking SEO experts in the world come together once a year to create this invaluable collection of new knowledge that should never be passed up on!”
PAM AUNGST CRONIN
President and Founder, Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth Search and Analytics
“2025 has been a sprint for the SEO industry, with AI reshaping how we understand visibility, relevance, and authority. SEOin2026 is not just another trends book; it’s a roadmap for what’s actually coming. I loved being part of it and seeing how experts around the world approach the same challenges from different angles.”
RAMONA JOITA
SEO Consultant and Founder
“David is good at drawing out the substance of a conversation. He will explore the topic and challenge assumptions, steer the conversation into an unexpected direction, and build on your ideas – making you think a bit deeper and sharper. Our recent conversation flew by as always, and as always – I’ve come out energised about the topic with more to think about.”
SUKHJINDER SINGH
Freelance SEO Consultant
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jan 27, 2026 • 16min
Learn, test, and increase productivity with AI – with Rana Abu Quba Chamsi
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.”
Jan 26, 2026 • 18min
Learn how to learn – with Sante Achille
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?’”
Jan 23, 2026 • 15min
Optimize your AI shadow – with Rose Tero
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.”
Jan 22, 2026 • 16min
Tidy up your online presence for the eyes of AI – with Dani Leitner
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.”
Jan 21, 2026 • 16min
Translating SEO into a language of tangible business impact - Kristina Bergwall
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?
Jan 20, 2026 • 16min
Re-order your content for search dominance – with Damien Robert
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.”
Jan 19, 2026 • 18min
Identify searches that need grounding to focus your AI strategy – with Mark Williams-Cook
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.”
8 snips
Jan 16, 2026 • 20min
Master AI visibility by understanding the Algorithmic Trinity – with Jason Barnard
Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of CaliCube, dives into the concept of AI-assistive engine optimization. He presents the Algorithmic Trinity, detailing how knowledge graphs, LLMs, and web search interplay to enhance SEO. Barnard emphasizes the importance of knowledge graphs in preventing misinformation and explores how brands can shape their online presence for optimal recommendations. He discusses the rising significance of chat interfaces and offers insights into measuring their impact on conversions, urging marketers to optimize their entire digital footprint.
Jan 15, 2026 • 17min
Navigate the probabilistic world of AI search – with Garrett Sussman
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.”
Jan 14, 2026 • 17min
How to track metrics that actually matter in 2026 - Katie New
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?
