SEO in 2026

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.”

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.”

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...

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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?

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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?