SEO in 2026

In this episode, Irina Papuc shares the importance of optimising your brand and your website as entities with David Bain.

Discussion points include:

What are entities?

Why are entities a key aspect of SEO in 2025?

What are some specific steps that an SEO can take to do a better job of incorporating entity SEO into their 2025 strategy?

How do entities integrate with the bigger SEO picture or the bigger marketing picture?

How do you measure entity SEO success?

There’s a whole world outside the Google bubble and, to get out there, SEO Specialist Katherine Nwanorue wants you to expand your horizons beyond what’s on the page.

Katherine says: “Look beyond on-page optimizations and traditional KPIs.”

Why is this important?

“Lately, the search engine results page has been crazy, which is likely in an attempt to tackle AI-generated content.

Google has made so many changes to the SERP in the past year. We are seeing a boost in user-generated and crowdsourced content, and many SEOs have complained about Reddit pages outranking blog pages and TikTok and YouTube videos appearing for certain keywords.

As Izabela mentioned, the online world is too vast to be everywhere at once, so Freelance SEO Consultant Ebere Cecilia Jonathan recommends seeking out the places your users like to hang out.

Ebere says: “With the way things are going, it’s almost impossible to lay your hand on a specific tip.

Aside from the classic advice of allowing your sites to be crawlable and indexable so that your website can be found, every SEO should focus on spending as much time as possible where their targeted audience is spending the most of their time.”

Read the full transcript of Ebere's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/ebere-cecilia-jonathan

Users are venturing outside the traditional search box, so Izabela Wisniewska from Creatos Media believes it’s essential that SEOs start doing the same.

Izabela says: “Think beyond Google and start optimizing for other search engines and other platforms.

What other search engines should SEOs be optimizing for?

“We should definitely start thinking about Bing when we talk about search engines. Of course, Google is still the master, and they own the majority of search queries, but Bing is slowly climbing back. It’s getting some of Google’s percentages from the search market."

Read the full transcript of Izabela's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/izabela-wisniewska

While Pam and Mufaddal encourage you to be open to new SERP features, Alex Moss from Yoast cautions against panicking over every little change and losing sight of the woods for the trees.

Alex says: “Stop obsessing about – and experimenting too much with – how to game the way that new technology interacts with the SERPs.

I’m mostly referring to AIO (AI overviews) and the way that’s starting to take over search results pages.”

Read the full transcript of Alex's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/alex-moss

Serge Nguele shares with David Bain why you should craft your brand story with precision and impact using SEO & PPC in synergy.

Talking points include:

What do you mean by crafting Your Brand Story with Precision and Impact?

Why is this important?

How do you do this using SEO & PPC In Synergy?

What tools do you use?

What lessons can SEOs learn from PPC?

What questions should SEOs be asking paid search experts?

What data should they be sharing?

How does this impact the brand story?

Read the full transcript of Serge's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/additional-insights/serge-nguele

If Pam didn’t convince you, Mufaddal Sadriwala from Assembly MENA is here to put your fears to rest and get you embracing AI overviews as a friend instead of battling with them as a foe.

Mufaddal says: “Stop worrying about AI overviews.

Obviously, it’s the most discussed topic but, from my point of view, AIO is not a threat to SEOs or organic traffic. In fact, it is going to help us maintain the traffic that we’re getting.

It’s not a threat. It’s something that is going to aid us.”

Read the full transcript of Mufaddal's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/mufaddal-sadriwala

In many ways, the shifting SERP can feel like uncharted territory. Thankfully, Pam Aungst Cronin from Pam Ann Marketing is drawing up the maps for AI overviews as the new frontier.

Pam says: “Focus on optimizing for AI overviews in Google, Bing, and even OpenAI’s forthcoming search engine – as well as the 10 blue links.

You can sort of think of them as one and the same because initial studies show that getting into Google’s AI overviews often means you’re ranking in the traditional 10 blue links as well.”

Are all the websites referenced in the AI overviews going to come from the first page?

“Hopefully we’re going to see that diversify a bit. This could be an opportunity for SEOs to get more exposure for smaller businesses, if you optimize specifically for the long tail queries and answers that show up in AI overviews."

Read the full transcript of Pam's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/pam-aungst-cronin

Like Folashade, Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, believes that AI tools can help you gain a deeper understanding of the people behind the search queries.

Eli says: “Everyone’s been talking about using AI for SEO, and they’re focusing on the wrong aspect of it.

AI shouldn’t be used to create content; it should be used to understand your users and figure out who they are. You can then use AI to create some of that content, but the magic of AI is understanding the things that you wouldn’t already know about your users.”

Is there a particular AI that you’re using?

“I was using ChatGPT, then I moved over to Gemini. I tried Perplexity but it always introduces itself by repeating the prompt, and I find it really annoying."

Read the full transcript of Eli's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/eli-schwartz

Folashade Uba from Maersk has uncovered another often-overlooked but abundant source of user insight, direct from the horse’s mouth: support queries.

Folashade says: “Analysing support queries is crucial for identifying customers’ pain points, uncovering their search intent, and discovering patterns and emerging trends in 2025.

You can also use topic modelling to enhance your SEO strategies.”

What are the best support queries to analyse?

“There are a lot of different ones, obviously. You can get them from contact forms, calls, emails, etc. It all depends on the platform that you use to gather these support queries."

Read the full transcript of Folashade's interview at https://majestic.com/seo-in-2025/folashade-uba