SEO 2026: What the Experts Are Saying You Need to Do Now
One of the bibles of the SEO industry, Search Engine Journal, published their thorough breakdown of SEO 2026 Trends. This post is my commentary and a summary for your convenience, plus a link to the full article.
Commentary
If 2025 was the year AI turned SEO upside down, 2026 is the year we have to actually adapt or fall behind. Google AI Overviews now appear in nearly half of all searches — and 58% of searches end without a single click. Position #1 organic CTR has dropped from 27% to as low as 11% on AI-triggered queries. The entire game has changed.
This isn't a "wait and see" moment. The experts are clear: brand authority, AI visibility, and diversified traffic are now table stakes. Here's what the top SEO minds say you need to build your 2026 plan around. Our team is shifting in this direction to serve our clients.
Are you showing up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — not just traditional search results? Are you optimizing for citation inside AI answers, not just rankings? Are you building a brand people search for by name?
Diversify Away from Google-Only Traffic
Organic clicks from Google keep declining as zero-click searches dominate. You need to be discoverable beyond Google — on Bing, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, TikTok, and Reddit. And don't underestimate direct audience relationships through email and community platforms.
- Build presence on alternative search and social platforms.
- Invest in email newsletters and communities (Discord, Slack) as a traffic safety net.
Shift to Brand-First SEO
Chasing keywords alone won't cut it anymore. The brands winning in 2026 are the ones people search for by name — and the ones AI engines default to when answering questions in your space.
- Build brand authority so your name becomes the answer, not just a result.
- Foster community loyalty through consistent, engaging content.
Optimize for AI Visibility (GEO — Generative Engine Optimization)
This is the biggest new discipline of 2026. Getting cited inside AI Overviews and LLM answers is now as important as ranking on page one. Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks than those that aren't.
- Write with clear structure, original perspective, and real-world examples.
- Proprietary data and clear opinions are what AI platforms choose to cite.
Repurpose and Distribute Content Everywhere
Your blog post shouldn't live only on your website. The brands getting traction in 2026 are pushing content across social, email, podcasts, and video — then driving that audience back to their site with offers and lead magnets.
- Repurpose every post across at least two other channels.
- Focus on resonance — content that connects deeply performs everywhere.
Leverage AI Tools to Work Smarter
AI isn't just changing how people search — it's changing how we do SEO. The teams winning right now are using AI to automate the time-consuming stuff so they can focus on strategy and relationships.
- Automate keyword research, technical audits, and content optimization.
- Explore AI agents for internal linking, content ideation, and data structuring.
Double Down on EEAT
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust have never mattered more. Anonymous content is losing visibility fast. Google and AI platforms alike are rewarding content where a real, credentialed human is clearly behind the words.
- Put author bios and credentials on every post.
- Original research and lived experience are your competitive edge over AI-generated content.
Make Your Content Machine-Readable
If AI systems can't cleanly parse and summarize your content, you won't make it into the candidate set for AI answers. Technical structure is now a visibility issue, not just an SEO housekeeping task.
- Implement schema markup and structured data.
- Shift from keyword-based to entity-driven optimization.
Keep Technical SEO Tight
The fundamentals still matter. Fast load times, clean HTML, and strong crawlability are the foundation everything else is built on. Don't let AI strategy distract you from getting the basics right.
- Monitor INP (Interaction to Next Paint) as a key performance metric.
- Stay current on Google's evolving technical benchmarks.
Monitor AI Bots and New Platforms
New search platforms are sending new bots to your site. Knowing who's crawling you — and testing your visibility on ChatGPT Search and Perplexity — gives you a real picture of where you stand in 2026's search landscape.
- Track log files for LLM and AI search engine bots.
- Regularly test your visibility on AI-driven platforms, not just Google.
Popular Stories Right Now
- What's trending in digital marketing?
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Read the full Search Engine Journal SEO Trends 2026 article →
Would you like help implementing any of these steps, or need more details on a specific area?
AI and Human Interaction Across Industries
The Power of AI Across Industries
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming many industries and aspects of our daily lives. The impact spans healthcare to finance, marketing, education, and entertainment. AI has made remarkable progress in recent years. Can you believe AI has defeated human champions at complex games like Chess and driving a car? It has even contributed to diagnosing diseases, and creating art. However, despite these advances, we think human interaction remains necessary for many critical tasks that AI cannot fully replace. Some examples of needed human interaction are listed in this article, staring with, Healthcare.
Healthcare
Human interaction is crucial in several domains where AI is currently being applied. For example, in healthcare, AI-powered systems can analyze medical images and help diagnose diseases with remarkable accuracy. However, a human doctor’s experience, intuition, and ability to communicate with patients and understand their unique circumstances and concerns are essential for providing effective treatment and care. If you have ever been in the middle of a triage gone bad, you know what this means. Humans work with humans to serve humans in healthcare. Careful collaboration across colleagues, systems and hospitals remains crucial to success. AI brings efficiencies but we don’t think it will replace the value of human relationship and collaboration in health care environments.
Finance
In finance, AI can help automate tasks such as fraud detection, investment portfolio management, and risk analysis. But when it comes to making investment decisions or advising clients, human experts still play a crucial role in providing personalized and holistic advice that takes into account the client’s goals, preferences, and risk tolerance. Financial advisors are fact, nuance and trend experts. AI won’t function at that level of intuitive wisdom, not now, maybe not ever.
Education
In education, AI-powered systems can provide personalized learning experiences and adaptive assessments, but human teachers are essential for guiding students, inspiring their curiosity, and fostering critical thinking skills. Human interaction is also crucial for teaching social and emotional skills, such as empathy, communication, and collaboration. All of which are critical for success in the workplace and in life.
Making Good Decisions, No Matter the Industry
Another critical domain where human interaction is necessary is in ethical decision-making. AI systems are only as good as the data they are trained on, and biased or incomplete data can lead to biased or inaccurate predictions or decisions. Human oversight is essential to ensure that AI is used ethically and responsibly, taking into account the potential impact on individuals and society as a whole.
Finally, human interaction is necessary to ensure that AI is designed and developed in a way that aligns with human values and goals. AI systems should be transparent, explainable, and accountable. And they should not be used to perpetuate discrimination or harm. Human experts and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds and perspectives must be involved in the design, development, and deployment of AI systems to ensure that they serve the public interest. And avoid marginalizing or discriminating against differences.
Marketing
So how does AI play out in the marketing and advertising industry? There are many tools rapidly being designed and adjusted to meet the needs of marketers. Developing and managing the distribution of graphics, copy, infographics and data tables is a detailed and expensive endeavor. The onset of Social Media makes large volume demands on content managers. Tools like Jasper and ChatGPT show us that marketing and advertising messaging can be generated by AI. And the result is delivered rapidly and rich with ideas. AI tools and the content product they produce, need adjusting to the brand of the client and the addition of nuances that make copy interesting to read. Copy that no one engages with is not strong copy. AI can analyze the success of marketing efforts, but the nuances of new creative tests will still need a human touch. AI can suggest based on data but humans will oversee the test and make decisions as well regarding the success of the ad. In the world of digital media, it still takes a phone call or personal text to build a relationship. These parts of the customer selling cycle will not be replaced by AI.
Summary and a Question
AI is making remarkable progress and has the potential to transform many aspects of our lives. Yet, human interaction remains necessary for many critical tasks. Human experts are bringing unique skills, perspectives, and values that AI cannot fully replicate. Humans, you and I, are essential for providing personalized and ethical solutions that serve the public interest. As AI continues to advance, it is essential to ensure that it is designed and developed in a way that maximizes its benefits while minimizing its risks, and that human interaction remains at the center of this process. In marketing, a world requiring solid ethics and dollar management requires the human eye, moral character and intuition to run smoothly. Will AI replace those elements?
Finally, are you curious about the power of AI? We are too. Reach out today to have a discussion or engage us for consulting to implement AI tools throughout your organization. We want to walk you through these changes one step at a time. In the spirit of full disclosure, we used AI to help us write this article. It required a lot of editing and tweaking to provide flow and simpler language. We are open to feedback on this article. Please let us know your thoughts.
Consulting Services
The changes in the digital marketing industry this last year have had a significant impact on businesses. From Facebook/Instagram to Apple to Google, the way in which data is collected, tracked, and used for targeted ads has changed significantly. This shift has created a need for organizations to audit their strategies, redefine their technology and staffing requirements, and diversify their marketing portfolio.
At Beyond Brand Collective, we are here to help you navigate these changes and ensure that your business is positioned for success in 2023. We offer comprehensive services, such as a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats evaluation of you and your competitors, as well as the implementation of new tagging and tracking rules for Google Analytics. We can also assist with redesigning websites to comply with new standards and improving ad quality and targeting strategies.
Our team of experts is here to help you make sense of the changes in the digital marketing industry and to ensure that you are taking advantage of all the opportunities available to you. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you stay ahead of the game.
| Area of Industry Impacted | Was | Now | Impact | BBC response |
| Strategy Audit | Not offered | Strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats evaluation of you and your competitors. | This will create a smart strategy and grow your business in 2023. | Services offered |
| Facebook/Instagram | Unlimited data tracking | 8 events only, requires configuration and management | Technology/Staffing requirements have changed | Adding Services – FB advertising, Event Set up and tracking |
| Keyword and authentic content oriented | Is not speed oriented, requires 1.8 and 2.0 second loading, reorganization and detailed optimization of sites, rebuilding most often | Technology – site updates required | Adding Services – Redesigning web sites to comply with new standards | |
| Apple | Was not hugely involved in what FB tracked and used for targeted ads | Is inviting Apple device users to opt out of data collection on every major update of the iOS | Technology/Staff/Quality of ad targeting, how we target, ad results, requires diversification of marketing portfolio | Improving ad quality, targeting strategy |
| Google Analytics | Tagging has been done the same for many years | New Tag required for tracking, rules process has changed for tracking events | Technology | Adding Services |
| Google 4 | Google is discontinuing their current version of analytics | new version upgrade required | Technology/Training | Adding Service |
Artificial Intelligence Content – The Future of SEO
Are you thinking that AI is going to replace SEO optimizing and authoring of content for web sites, ads and more? Think again. The research shows that AI content may or may not be fully approved for use by the major search engines. Think #Google. And it’s keyword optimization skills are yet to be determined. Here are some thoughts to consider when using AI to generate web site content.
AI is likely to have a significant impact on website copy development in the future. AI-powered tools can help generate high-quality and engaging content quickly and efficiently. This make it easier for companies to produce large amounts of content for their websites. This technology could also help with SEO by optimizing the content for search engines.
However, it’s important to note that Google’s algorithm is designed to evaluate the quality and relevance of website content. It’s likely that the algorithm will be able to distinguish between content generated by AI and content written by humans. Therefore, it’s possible that Google may not give as much weight to AI-generated content in its search rankings.
Additionally, Google’s policies for webmaster guidelines prohibit the use of Automated Queries to retrieve search results or to submit search results to end users. And it is also prohibited to use automated means to generate content. In other words, you can’t manipulate or scrape Google services. So it’s important to follow the guidelines when creating website content and be transparent about any AI-generated content on your website.
Overall, while AI has the potential to revolutionize website copy development, it’s important for companies to use these tools responsibly and in compliance with Google and other search engine guidelines.
Is web site content all Greek to you? We can help and we love to write content for sites, email and social media. Hit us up today!
What’s trending in digital marketing?
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Video, Video, Video
Social Media
Super Clean SEO
Creating Content for Your Clients
- Understand your client’s needs: Before you begin creating content, it’s important to understand what your client is looking for. This may involve conducting research, asking questions, and gathering information about their target audience, goals, and preferences. Identify your client’s target audiences. What are their interests and passions and how can you create content that inspires and draws them to your company and community?
- Develop a content strategy: A content strategy is a plan for how you will create, publish, and promote your content. It should include the types of content you will produce, the frequency of publication, and the platforms you will use to distribute it. A blog is only one venue for content. Consider also email newsletters, social media posts and ebooks!
- Create high-quality content: The content you create should be informative, engaging, and well-written. It should also be relevant and useful to your client’s target audience. Test topics and monitor their popularity with Google Analytics.
- Edit and proofread: Make sure to proofread your content for spelling and grammar errors. It’s also a good idea to have someone else review your work to catch any mistakes you may have missed.
- Promote your content: Once your content is published, it’s important to promote it to reach as many people as possible. This may involve sharing it on social media, emailing it to your client’s subscribers, or leveraging other marketing channels.