SEO in 2026

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:

1. Curate your content like you’re a magazine editor

2. Let your brand values drive the content, before the brief, before the keywords.

3. Stay consistent with your message and branding across channels

4. Leverage positive and negative elements in your marketing

5. 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?