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.”