With all the changes in SEO over the last few years, it’s difficult to figure out what’s important. Scour social media and you’re bombarded by conflicting arguments that insist SEO is dead or it’s more important than ever.
How do you win at search today? Do the traditional SEO best practices still work or are they mutating into something else?
Underpinning these questions is a very real anxiety: where should you spend your time?
I sat down with Be Found Online’s Director of Organic Search Jon Pappas, along with Dain Sundstedt, senior SEO account manager and Lauren San Gregory, SEO and analytics account manager, to get the inside scoop. We talked about what’s working, what to prioritize, and how to stay ahead of the curve with everything SEO in 2026.
Are SEO best practices still best?
“Traditional SEO is still important,” explains Pappas. “We feel like traditional SEO is the foundation. It sets the table to have future success in an AI-driven world.”
According to Search Engine Journal, page-one ranking doesn’t necessarily correlate as closely to LLM citation as it did even a year ago. In mid-2025, there was a strong overlap, as noted by a Semrush study. But by the end of 2025, Ahrefs data showed only around 12% of AI Overview citations ranked in the top ten.
“This is important because it is shifting our perception of the significance of being on page one,” says Sundstedt. “At the same time, page-one ranking is still critical enough to remain a goal.”
Many of the techniques to help your content rank in AI overviews are not new. But if you haven’t been prioritizing them, it’s time to start. Here are a few practices to follow:
- Schema. Schema markup helps search engines understand what your content is about. While it’s not new, Pappas explains, “the importance of it has amplified significantly.”
- FAQ. Answering the questions your audience is asking about your industry, products and services has become important again.
- Llms.txt files. An llms.txt is a formatted text file on your website’s root directory. It provides guidance to AI models about content usage, authority and restrictions to help LLMs find the most important canonical content.
- Internal linking. Using best practices for internal linking helps guide AI understanding and discovery.
- Digital PR and backlinks. Being found on your own website isn’t enough. Backlinks and digital PR help cement authority and credibility.
Evolving strategies for content
If where you want to get found changes, what does that mean for how you get found? Content has always been king. But the type of content you should prioritize has shifted.
“Instead of focusing on one piece being the crown jewel on your site, like a complete guide, think about covering a topic from a variety of angles,” says Sundstedt. “Use a query fan-out to help you with the process and think like an LLM crawler.”
For example, if someone searches for “best laptop for college,” the LLM conducts additional queries related to the topic in the background, like “laptops with good battery life” and “portability with laptops.”
By getting ahead of that process and creating pieces for those additional queries (and using a good internal linking strategy!) you can increase your chances of being favored in AI overview results.
LLMs want what searchers want: quick and clear answers.
AI isn’t very different from search engines in that way. SEO writing best practices have dictated clean, clear and skimmable content structures for a decade or more. Headers should lead you down the page. Titles and intros should make it easy for the reader to know exactly what they’ll get for their time investment.
And adding FAQ to your product pages and other areas of your website gives you the perfect opportunity to use questions in your headers with very direct answers below them.
Content across platforms
Your website is important. But if you want to show up in LLMs, prioritize multi-modal content. “Make your best content work across a variety of formats,” says San Gregory. “Reusing the same core ideas in different mediums, such as video and imagery, helps strengthen brand recognition across the wider web.”
YouTube mentions are the strongest predictor of visibility in AI, even stronger than backlinks or domain authority. Profound research shows YouTube is the #1 most-cited domain in Gemini (it’s #90 in ChatGPT).
“Treat SEO as a more integrated, cross-functional discipline, not a standalone channel,” San Gregory says. AI overview citations look at authority across the web, including third-party mentions, social media and consistent brand signals.
To quote Ross Simmonds, CEO of Foundation Marketing, “Do things that add value to your customers, whether it’s for GEO, AI, SEO purposes or not.”
Websites alone don’t build sufficient trust. Humans do.
Five things to focus on for SEO in 2026
If you’re just starting to build your digital footprint or looking to pivot your strategy for today’s SEO, here are some recommendations to help you focus your efforts:
Technical SEO. “Technical SEO has not changed much and is still very important,” explains Sundstedt. Make sure your website allows proper indexing and complete a full technical audit to identify any weaknesses or errors.
Keyword research. Conduct keyword research and match the search volume with the audience’s intent when developing your content calendar.
On-page SEO. Make sure you’re following best practices with your content, such as mapping keywords to title tags and meta descriptions.
Off-page SEO. “Think about fanning out your presence online,” says Sundstedt. LLMs and Google like to pull results from places like Wikipedia, YouTube, Reddit and directory sites. Your online reputation is no longer solely controlled within the constructs of your own website.
Build your E-E-A-T immediately. “Public-facing team members should position themselves as subject matter experts in their respective fields, both onsite and off,” San Gregory says. She recommends building a presence on LinkedIn, participating in interviews and podcasts and obtaining further certifications in the field. As she explains, “Websites alone don’t build sufficient trust. Humans do.”
Key performance indicators (KPIs) in the age of zero click
Sessions are no longer the most important KPI for attention. “Shift your perception on metrics,” says Sundstedt. “You’ll find a lot of your SEO tactics still make an impact, just not necessarily in the form of sessions anymore.”
Think more of impressions, keyword rankings, AI Overview rankings, LLM visibility and citation counts.
Some KPIs marketers should pay attention to include:
- Zero-click surface presentation. This relates to AI answering the question for users directly, so they never click through to a website.
- AI visibility and citations. These metrics tell you how visible you are and how often your content is cited across different platforms.
- Engaged session rates. Logging into your Google Analytics, pay attention to the percentage of your audience that actively engages with your content.
- Brand mentions and sentiment in LLMs. Measure your AI share of voice to see how often your brand is mentioned compared to competitors and whether the mentions are favorable or negative.
- Vector index presence rate. By tracking the percentage of content stored in the vector index, you can make sure your website is accessible for LLM citations and troubleshoot if there’s an issue.
Recommendations for SEO professionals
For young professionals interested in gaining experience and increasing their SEO knowledge, there are several good SEO courses. As you can tell by this post, the field is constantly changing, and certification courses can be a great refresher for more advanced practitioners, as well:
- Semrush Academy offers several certification courses, all free.
- HubSpot Academy offers a range of SEO courses, as well as other digital marketing certifications—also free.
- Google Career Certificates offers several career certificates through Coursera, including SEO & Search Marketing.
If you’re just beginning your SEO career, “I would start getting familiar with SEO tools, specifically Screaming Frog,” said Sundstedt. “This tool has been a gold standard for technical SEO aspects for decades.”
Be Found Online SMEs also highly recommend following industry leaders on social media, as well as publications like Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal.
Top experts to follow:
- John Mueller (Google Search Central) for official debunking
- Barry Schwartz (Search Engine Roundtable) for daily updates
- Duane Forester
- Chris Long
- Rand Fishkin
Another agreed upon recommendation: grab a copy of The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer and Jessie C. Stricchiola. It’s been one of the most respected resources to get a base of knowledge on SEO for years.
SEO isn’t going to stop evolving anytime soon, but that’s part of what makes it an exciting field.
Sources
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-i-o-didnt-end-seo-the-risk-is-somewhere-else/575660
https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-ai-mode
https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-search-overlap
