Key SEO Tips and Predictions for 2026 by +32 Top SEO Specialists

I had the chance to interview many of the SEO specialists who attended the Google Search Central Zurich last week and ask them about their own SEO predictions, expectations and tips for 2026. Let’s go through them:

SEO Predictions and Expectations for 2026

1. Continued Pressure on Organic Traffic (Especially for Publishers)

Several experts expect ongoing declines in traditional Google search traffic, particularly for publishers:

• Barry Schwartz expects continued negative traffic trends for publishers in Google Search.
• Judith Lewis anticipates modest Google volume loss, mainly on informational queries, but still sees Google remaining dominant.
• Seb Atkinson highlights that more of the user journey will happen offsite (LLMs, AI platforms), resulting in less direct website traffic.
• Nadia Mojahed expects Google AI Overviews and zero-click searches to dominate SERPs.

Less traffic overall—especially informational—and less reliance on clicks as the primary success metric.

2. SEO Fundamentals Still Matter (and Are Being Re-Emphasized)

A strong majority reject the idea that SEO is fundamentally changing at its core:

• Emina Demiri, Anthony Barone, and Stephan Czysch all stress returning to fundamentals: audience understanding, prioritization, and avoiding “shiny object syndrome.”
• Evgeni Yordanov explicitly states that SEO remains SEO, even with AI components layered on top.
• John Mueller reinforces that updates will continue, but nothing implies a total paradigm shift.

SEO is evolving, not being replaced. Foundational SEO work remains essential.

3. AI and LLMs Will Deeply Shape Search Interfaces and Workflows

Most experts agree AI will be more embedded in search, both algorithmically and in UX:

• Mihai Aperghis expects more AI involvement in results and interfaces, creating both risk and differentiation opportunities.
• Carolyn Shelby predicts content will increasingly be consumed through machine-mediated interfaces, not websites.
• Aleyda Solis expects Google to blend AI Overviews with structured formats like Web Guide, rather than replacing classic SERPs with AI Mode.

AI becomes a core layer of search, but not a wholesale replacement of traditional search results.

4. Measurement, Attribution, and Business Impact Become Critical

There is a clear shift away from vanity metrics:

• Dave Rohrer predicts a stronger focus on traffic that converts, not traffic volume alone.
• Julian Redlich emphasizes building solid business cases to prioritize SEO initiatives.
• Seb Atkinson flags attribution challenges as user journeys fragment across platforms.

ROI, attribution, and business outcomes will outweigh rankings and raw traffic.

5. Schema, Structured Data, and Semantics Gain Importance

Multiple experts independently highlight structured data as critical:

• Dawn Anderson expects schema to be “huge,” especially for structuring data for LLMs.
• Max Woelfle points to schema (especially shipping and ecommerce signals) as a competitive advantage.
• Nikola Minkov stresses semantics, entities, and deeper intent understanding.

Structured, machine-readable content becomes increasingly necessary for visibility.

6. Human Expertise and Creators Regain Value

Several experts push back against over-automation:

• Eli Schwartz predicts a renewed appreciation for human marketers and strategists.
• Clara Soteras expects content creators to play a larger role in content strategies.

AI is a tool—not a replacement—for human insight, creativity, and strategy.

7. Tooling Shake-Out and Industry Noise Reduction

Some experts expect consolidation and failure among tools and buzzwords:

• Dani Leitner predicts that many AI tracking tools will disappear.
• Nadia Mojahed expects traditional keyword tracking tools to lose relevance.
• Simon Vreeman provocatively claims “SEO is dead,” reframing it as GEO—but still centers on solving user problems.

The market will shed hype-driven tools, while core practices persist under new labels.

TL;DR: SEO in 2026 will see:

• Less traffic, more zero-click and offsite journeys
• Greater reliance on AI-mediated discovery
• Stronger emphasis on fundamentals, structure, and semantics
• A shift from rankings to ROI and attribution
• Renewed value of human expertise and creators
• Consolidation of tools and terminology rather than SEO’s disappearance

SEO doesn’t end: it becomes more disciplined, more business-driven, and more tightly integrated with AI-powered search experiences. Let’s go through each of them.

1. Barry Schwartz

My top expectation for the 2026 year is that more publishers will continue to see negative declines in Google search.

2. Emina Demiri

My prediction for 2026 is going back to the fundamentals and back to your audience. One thing people often forget is that, ultimately, we’re there for our customers. The more you know about your customers—their needs and their objectives—where LLMs can be really helpful in supporting this, the better your results are going to be.

So rather than chasing the shiny new thing that comes along, you need to focus on your audience and your fundamentals.

3. Anthony Barone

My prediction for SEO in 2026 is to avoid shiny toy syndrome. Focus on the SEO fundamentals. Keep an eye on AI, but depending on where you are as a business, prioritize the SEO fundamentals. Don’t get sucked into all the cool tools and end up paying a fortune. Focus on the SEO fundamentals and on what will move the needle and help achieve your business goals.

4. Seb Atkinson

My prediction for search in 2026 is attribution. A lot of the user journey is going to take place offsite, in LLMs and other AI platforms. That’s something I think brands need to think about, look for ways to adapt to, and be comfortable with potentially receiving less traffic to their sites.

5. Judith Lewis

My expectation for what’s going to happen in SEO and AI search in 2026 is that people will continue using AI search more deeply and more frequently, mainly for informational queries. I also think people will move to Amazon more often for retail queries, and that Google will lose a bit of volume, but not much at all.

I believe Google will remain the dominant player for finding things. With links in search results—or rather, in AI results—we’ll see more clicks from AI into search and AI result links, and people will actually come from those, as well as from Google. So AI will become an important channel, but never as important as Google.

6. Dani Leitner

My SEO prediction for 2026 is that half of the AI trackers will die.

7. Eli Schwartz

My SEO prediction is that in 2026, humans will become more important than AI. As companies start realizing that AI has harmed a lot of marketing, they’ll want to bring humans back in—people who understand how to sell to other humans—and the value of SEO and SEO strategists will skyrocket. I’m excited to see this happen in 2026.

I’m excited about the future of SEO, and I’m excited to see how these brilliant marketers use AI as a tool rather than a solution.

8. Clara Soteras

My SEO prediction for 2026 is that content creators will be more important than they are today, and that we will use them and incorporate them into all the content strategies we build together.

9. Mihai Aperghis

My SEO expectation for 2026 is that there will be more AI involvement in search results, both on the algorithmic side and on the UX side. This can be both a challenge and an opportunity, especially for SEO professionals. The challenge is figuring out what makes AI different from regular search results and what SEOs need to do differently to optimize for it.

It’s also an exciting challenge because, if you manage to keep up with everything, you have the opportunity to stand out compared with more generalist marketers who can’t stay on top of SEO and everything else and may be left behind.

10. Julian Redlich

My SEO prediction for 2026 is that people will need to build more business cases. There are so many new things—AI search, for example—and many people struggle to prioritize. I think the more you try to build a solid business case behind an initiative, the easier it will be to get it prioritized with development teams.

If you don’t build these cases, you’ll end up working on many things that have no real impact. By the end of the year, you might feel like you’ve done a lot of work, but ultimately there will be no meaningful impact on the business.

11. Nadia Mojahed

My SEO prediction for 2026 is that Google Overviews and zero-click searches will dominate the SERPs, and keyword tracking tools will all die.

12. Max Woelfle

My prediction, also based on what I just saw, is that schema markup—especially schema that gives users insight into how shipping will work—is going to be quite important. If you get that right, you’ll have a competitive edge over other market participants, and I think implementing it and getting the entire shipping flow right will be very important next year.

13. Nikola Minkov

When we talk about predictions, I think we should look at the past and what actually happened. In relation to SEO and AI search, I believe the most important aspect is semantics: entities and understanding what users are really searching for.

Of course, the next big challenge is how to combine data from GA4, Google Search Console, and other tools related to the world of AI and SEO.

14. John Mueller

My SEO prediction for next year is that there will be some updates in Google Search. Some of them you’ll like, and some of them you may not, but updates will happen.

15. Dawn Anderson

Schema is going to be huge—really huge—again across the board next year, and likely beyond. They’ve revealed that there will be additional uses of schema in shopping, but more importantly, schema adds structure to an otherwise unstructured mess, which is what LLMs and similar systems deal with. So start re-implementing schema as much as possible and mark up everything you can.

16. Dave Rohrer

My SEO prediction for 2026 is that people are finally going to start focusing on actual traffic. For years, many of us in SEO have wanted more traffic—or at least our clients have—but it wasn’t really traffic that converted. I think some people are now finally realizing—something they should have done 15 years ago—that traffic for the sake of traffic isn’t what they really want.

Having 10,000 people visit a blog without converting into anything isn’t really worth the time. I think this will continue, with people reviewing their content and activities and asking: what is the ROI? What are we really getting? Are we just driving traffic for the sake of traffic, or is it actually converting into something meaningful?

17. Stephan Czysch

My top SEO prediction for next year is that nothing is going to change that much. We may see some shifts in search behavior, with people moving away from classic Google search and more toward ChatGPT. But if you’re asking whether something major is changing in how we need to do SEO, I would say no—just continue the work you’re already doing.

18. Carolyn Shelby

My top trend for 2026, I think, is going to be a strong focus on structuring data and content so that LLMs and search engines can use as few tokens as possible to understand the core message. That will mean removing a lot of the “digital jazz hands” we’ve built into websites simply because they look nice or people like them, even though users may not actually experience them.

I think people will experience content less through websites themselves and more through other interfaces, where machines play a bigger role. The portal through which people consume your content won’t necessarily be your website, and we need to start adjusting to accommodate that. That’s what I think will happen in 2026.

19. Simon Vreeman

My prediction for next year is—ooh, it’s a tough one, but I’m going to say it—I think SEO is dead next year. GEO is the new SEO, but in the end, just focus on fixing the problems users have, and you’ll see increases in rankings, traffic, conversions, revenue, and margins. Happy days.

20. Evgeni Yordanov

My SEO prediction is that it’s going to remain not just an SEO marketing niche, but also in terms of the naming convention. As you know, Dan Petrovich, we’re constantly bombarding people with AIO, GEO, and whatever else. But it’s still SEO—it’s SEO with AI components and so on. We’re staying, we’re here, and we’re not going anywhere. Let’s go.

21. Aleyda Solis

We’re not going to see AI Mode as the default experience replacing traditional Google search results. Instead, what we’re going to see is a plan for the Web Guide format, in case you haven’t tested it yet.

I recommend taking a look at the experiment that’s happening right now, which Google has also expanded to be tested across more queries. I believe it provides a much better experience—one that better satisfies a wider range of user intents and needs—and it can also be blended with AI Overviews at the top whenever needed.

SEO Tips for 2026

1. Prepare for the AI-Agentic Web and Machine-First Consumption

Several experts stress that SEO must adapt to AI agents, machines, and non-human intermediaries:

• Crystal Carter advises preparing websites and businesses for the AI agentic web, including emerging agentic commerce, A2A, and payment protocols.
• Carolyn Shelby (implicitly echoed here) and Myriam Jessier highlight that machines increasingly interpret, visualize, and answer on behalf of users.
• Alex Moss emphasizes that LLMs will optimize for token efficiency, pushing structured understanding over verbose content.

Optimize not just for users, but for AI agents, machine vision, and automated decision-making systems.

2. Take Control of Structured Data, Feeds, and Schema

Control over machine-readable inputs is repeatedly highlighted as critical:

• Chris Green urges SEOs to master feeds and first-party data sent to platforms like Google and OpenAI to avoid misrepresentation.
• Alex Moss and Aleyda Solis both stress schema as a way to clarify entities, meaning, and context for LLMs.
• Corina Burri reinforces that traditional SEO signals still feed AI systems.

Schema, feeds, and structured data are no longer optional—they are the primary interface with AI search systems.

3. Invest in Proprietary, Defensible Data Assets

A forward-looking but explicit recommendation:

• Jonathan Jones advises investing heavily in proprietary data that LLMs can use today but may need to license tomorrow.

Own data that cannot be easily replicated to retain long-term leverage in AI-driven search ecosystems.

4. Strengthen Technical Foundations: Indexation, Internal Linking, Crawl Control

Multiple experts reaffirm core technical SEO priorities:

• Anke Probst stresses indexation control as spam increases across the web.
• Gabi Troxler highlights internal linking as a frequently neglected but high-impact lever.
• Corina Burri reiterates that “doing SEO well” still underpins AI visibility.

Solid technical SEO remains foundational, even as surfaces and interfaces change.

5. Measure What Matters: Attribution, Clickstream, and Business Impact

Measurement and analysis evolve as journeys fragment:

• Dan Taylor urges SEOs to confront GA4 and attribution data to understand organic search’s real business value.
• Myriam Jessier recommends using clickstream data to compare ideal prompts with real user behavior.

SEO success must be demonstrated through attribution, contribution, and business impact—not just rankings or sessions.

6. Optimize for Audience Understanding Across the Full Day and Funnel

Audience-centric optimization remains a unifying theme:

• Jonathan Moore encourages mapping audience media consumption across the entire day to guide content and optimization.
• Aleyda Solis stresses that every SEO action should reinforce brand recognition, topical expertise, and product relevance.

Deep audience understanding should drive where, how, and why content is created and optimized.

7. Manage Brand Risk, Hallucinations, and AI Visibility Proactively

New responsibilities are emerging for SEOs:

• Myriam Jessier highlights the need to manage hallucinations, brand drift, and AI training access as part of SEO.
• Chris Green similarly frames feeds and data control as brand protection mechanisms.

Brand governance in AI outputs is now part of SEO’s remit.

8. Use the Growing Data and Tooling Landscape—Strategically

Finally, optimism remains:

• Charlie Whitworth emphasizes that SEO is becoming more exciting due to richer data and more surfaces.

SEO opportunities are expanding—but only for those who use data and tools deliberately, not reactively.

TL;DR: Tips to win SEO in 2026 are about:

• Preparing for AI agents and machine-mediated discovery
• Taking control of structured data, schema, and feeds
• Investing in proprietary, defensible data
• Reinforcing technical SEO fundamentals
• Shifting measurement toward attribution and business value
• Deepening audience and brand alignment
• Actively managing AI-driven brand representation

SEO in 2026 is less about chasing new tactics and more about precision, structure, ownership, and strategic focus. Let’s go through each of them.

1. Crystal Carter

My SEO tip for 2026 is to get yourself, your website, and your business ready for the AI agentic web. If you’ve been paying attention in 2025, you’ll have seen the AI agentic commerce protocol, the A2A protocol, and the AI agentic payment protocol. All of these have been lining up during 2025, and in 2026 I think we’re going to see them really come into play across the wider web.

2. Chris Green

My SEO tip is to master your feeds and optimize all the data you’re passing directly to companies like Google and OpenAI. This is your opportunity to provide concrete facts and clear instructions to those systems, and hopefully protect yourself from generative results that could distort or misrepresent you.

That’s my advice: take control of your feeds, find out which teams manage and build them, and get them to start incorporating your optimization efforts into 2026.

3. Jonathan Jones

Invest heavily in proprietary data so that LLMs can use it and absorb it. Then, you can deny access in the future and make them pay for it. The way the web is going, it’s going to become more costly to produce content, and LLMs are going to run out of content to consume.

The more proprietary data you have, the higher the chance that you’ll be able to broker deals with these companies.

4. Myriam Jessier

I have three SEO tips for 2026:

1. If you’re in e-commerce, your packaging is now your landing page, because with machine vision you need to present it correctly. Customers are taking photos and asking questions.

2. Get familiar with clickstream data, because if you’re tracking prompts and trying to understand your AI visibility, you need to compare your ideal prompts with reality and with what people actually do—and that comes from clickstream data.

3. Get comfortable with the technical side of branding. Deal with the issues the branding department may not like, such as hallucinations and containment. What do you do when there’s brand drift, when features are made up? Who handles that? Who is responsible for checking whether a bot is coming to train on your data or to answer a user question?

That’s on you now.

5. Gabi Troxler

My SEO tip is: don’t forget about internal linking. Optimize your internal links, not just backlinks.

6. Anke Probst

My tip for next year is, of course, to focus on indexation, because in the future you might face issues due to all the spammy content out there.

7. Corina Burri

Focus on the tactics that have always worked. We’ve just heard it at Google Search Central: keep doing SEO, and it will rank in AI as well. And I really, really hope we get a Google Search Console for AI Overviews—so please, Google, just do it.

8. Dan Taylor

My SEO tip for 2026 is to bite the bullet and face your Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics data head-on. Organic search is facing a lot of issues, including loss of clicks and sessions, and the user journey is becoming more multimodal, so you really need to dig into attribution and advertising reports.

Look at how much value organic search is driving as a new-to-brand touchpoint, and then see which channels are taking precedence through last-click attribution. GA4 isn’t the greatest—we all dislike it—but it’s time to start doing this work and telling better data stories to stakeholders and the C-suite.

9. Charlie Whitworth

My SEO tip for 2026 is that SEO is going to be more exciting than it’s ever been. We have more services and more data to understand what users really want, so get smart and use it. Long live SEO.

10. Jonathan Moore

My tip for 2026 is that SEOs will start putting more emphasis on understanding their audience. What I believe is going to happen is that there will be more attention paid to media consumption. If you think about who your audience is—who they are, where they live, and what they do during the day—it becomes clearer how to reach them.

For example, when they wake up and have breakfast, what websites are they reading? What social media platforms are they using? Then maybe they get in the car or take the tube to the office—what podcasts are they listening to? If you map out that process throughout the day, I think more attention will be paid to who the audience is and where they consume media.

That understanding will then be factored into how to reach those people through different forms of content and how to optimize accordingly. This will also help us better understand the messy middle, which ultimately supports optimization for things like AI Overviews and large language models.

11. Alex Moss

My top SEO tip for 2026 is—guess what?—schema. It’s always been schema, but next year, as LLMs become more sophisticated at understanding what’s under the hood in code, they’ll want to optimize token usage. They’ll want to save tokens and understand what an entity is and what something means in as little time as possible.

That’s where schema comes in: it tells them what the entity is, provides the context, and helps them understand the format and structure of the content.

12. Aleyda Solis

Every time you do anything—create content, optimize content, launch a new section, or take actions to improve indexability, crawlability, or rendering—you should ask whether it aligns with your brand. Is it on brand?

Realistically, we need to be much more mindful of where we invest our efforts. It’s not about stopping investment in informational, top-of-the-funnel content. It’s about making sure that this informational, top-of-the-funnel content is actually meaningful to the brand and strongly connected to your product or service offering. That’s the key.

This is a question that shouldn’t be asked only when creating or optimizing content, but whenever you do anything to deliver an experience to the user. Everything should align with how you want to be recognized. This can be applied not only to on-page efforts, but also to how your broader marketing activities are aligned, including digital PR and community management. We’re seeing many answers and citations from LLMs coming from these external sources.

So it’s not just about brand building, but brand optimization, entity optimization, and alignment. From a topical standpoint, creating and optimizing content in a way that’s closely connected to your topical expertise should be a must.

What are your SEO predictions and tips for 2026?

I would love to hear about your own search -SEO and AI search- predictions and tips for next year! Take the SEOFOMO’s 2026 Organic (Traditional + AI) Search Trends Survey now and get the chance to win an SEOFOMO hoodie and mug. I’ll publish the results in a week over here and the SEOFOMO newsletter.