SEO in 2026

Carlos Manuel Sánchez Donate shares that sitemaps are often treated as an afterthought, but they're a direct line of communication with both search engines and LLMs about what matters on your site. Splitting and customizing them by content type can unlock better crawl visibility and sharper Search Console auditing. Talking points: - Why do you think sitemaps are so underrated in SEO today? - How exactly do sitemaps help LLMs understand a site better than llms.txt? - What's your process for splitting content into separate sitemaps? - Any real example where sitemap segmentation improved indexing or visibility? - How do segmented sitemaps make Search Console auditing easier? - What's a common sitemap mistake you see sites making? Read the full transcript of Carlos's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2026/additional-insights/carlos-sanchez-donate

Jenna Hannon suggests that you forget keywords. AEO is about going deep: build public documentation on your site that answers every specific question a prospect might ask at each stage of the buying journey. Key talking points: What sort of public documentation are you referring to? How do you know the specific questions that your prospects might ask? How do you prioritise the questions to answer? How do you know the volume and type of content required to answer a question? How do you know how the questions map to the different stages of the buyer journey? How do you go about mapping the answers? Read the full transcript of Jenna's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2026/additional-insights/jenna-hannon Watch the original SEOin2026 series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOr75FiG9ta37FH130S-qu3H9N0h7Ly0I Watch more SEOin2026: Additional Insights: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOr75FiG9ta3j5bYmsVBggEsBxwhGSX41

Juliette van Rooyen shares that we need to make sure categories and labels are clearly understood by AI & Search engines by adding a machine-readable layer that maps them to the entities and taxonomies the web already knows & trusts.

Talking points include:

What is a translation layer beneath your site?

Why is it important to make sure your categories and labels are clearly understood by AI & Search engines?

What does a "translation layer" mean, in practical terms?

Why is this "translation layer" important enough to spend resources on?

What data sources should you be mapping to?

Does this apply just to eCommerce websites?

Irwin Hau shares that SEO gets the click, but trust gets the conversion.

Talking points include:

What do you mean by trust gets the conversion?

Why do most websites fail despite strong SEO?

What do you mean by the psychology behind trust and user behavior?

How is AI changing search but not human decision-making?

What are the subtle credibility mistakes hurting conversions?

What are some small website changes that can dramatically improve results?

Jean-Marc Courtiade talks about the importance of going back to roots analysis thanks to consent-free analytics tools.

Talking points include:

What is a consent-free analytics tool?

When is consent required?

What data can we obtain on a consent-free basis?

What countries is this relevant to? How do you blend all the data together to produce a complete picture?

Is there still a place for asking for consent for certain data or is it not worth it?

Astley Cervania talks about the importance of making sure that content quality is high across every page on your website. Talking points include:

- The importance of maintaining your website and not just always prioritizing building out new content - Search engines don't evaluate pages in isolation

– algorithm updates expose quality inconsistencies across your entire domain, so strong blog content alone won't compensate for neglected landing pages or thin programmatic content elsewhere on the site

- Every page needs to earn its place, meaning addressing real search intent, writing that resonates, having a genuine POV, and a clear connection to a business outcome (e.g., user signups)

- The practical takeaway: before focusing on building out lots of new content, look at what you already have. Prune what adds no value, revamp what's gone stale, and make sure every page on your site would pass your own quality bar.

Sara Warneryd shares the importance of shifting from Google clicks to multi-platform discovery. Talking points include:

*Understanding Search as Discovery: Why user journeys are shifting from a single Google search to multi-platform exploration, and what this means for your brand.

* Creating content for the platforms, not the click: How to format your knowledge so it delivers full value directly on Reddit, TikTok, or YouTube, keeping users engaged where they are.

* Mapping High-Impact Sources: How to identify and prioritize the influential channels where your audience actually seeks advice

Daisy Shevlin shares that you're a marketer first and an SEO second. Talking points include: What does being a marketer first really mean? Some SEOs' downfall is when it comes to relating how the work we do generates money for the business How do we do this? - AI search requires a more holistic approach to making your brand visible than ever before What does this holistic approach look like? How do we measure success? - You need to partner with stakeholders both within and outside the marketing organisation to be successful What partnerships are key and why?

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.