SEO Techniques That Every Marketer Needs to Master By 2026

If you’re new to digital marketing, SEO, or search engine optimisation, it is how we tweak and refine a brand’s website and online presence so they rank higher on a search engine’s results page. As a result, more users discover the brand and traffic to their website increases, driving real results for their particular business model, whether it’s sales, subscriptions, or rentals. 

But SEO techniques don’t just remain the same. The way users search is constantly changing, as are Google’s algorithms,  so the landscape shifts every year. Some years it might be an inch; another, a mile. So without any further ado, here are some of the things that marketers need to know going into 2026.

Optimise for AI

It’s clear now that AI, in some form or another, is here to stay. With more people than ever using LLMs and AI systems to search, SEO professionals need to adapt their skillset to this new way of searching. 

One difference, for instance, is that ChatGPT primarily uses Bing’s index rather than Google’s. This might have something to do with Bing’s parent, Microsoft, investing £14 billion in OpenAI. There are several tools out there to help you get started on Bing, including their webmaster tools. So, despite only having 4% market share in search, Bing has just become a whole lot more relevant. 

On top of that, LLM’s ranking is heavily influenced by high authority news and aggregator sites – perhaps unsurprising, considering so many user prompts resemble: “I want to know the best pizza places in London” or “give me the top web developers in Manchester”. So if you find the keywords your audience uses to prompt, you can analyse the sources used to generate the results and optimise to rank on those sites.

Double Down on E.E.A.T.

Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust will matter more in 2026 than ever before. View EEAT as a north star for all of your SEO quandaries and find innovative ways to implement each of the four pillars in your practice. This might be an ‘out there’ example, but stay with me: your business could assemble a roundtable discussion with industry leaders, experts, or simply professionals to discuss a hot topic. Let them talk, then post a report on your website that summarises the highlights. Share with the experts themselves and encourage them to share on their own social platforms, like LinkedIn, where they’ll link back to your site.

That singular example aside, you should focus more on fewer, higher-quality backlinks from more relevant, reputable sites. On top of that, in your content, utilise statistics that link to official resources for national or international statistics, as high-authority (particularly government-led) sources are more likely to yield better results. 

Don’t Forget the Basics

You can’t make all of these improvements and adjustments, only for the quality of your content to slip by the wayside. First and foremost, create well-written content aimed at humans, not just search engines. The content needs to attract and hold your target demographic's attention by answering their biggest questions. 

On top of that, optimisation for mobile and desktop remains a neglected point for far too many. Ensure that the website looks polished and functions correctly, with a more minimalist web design to speed up loading times and improve UX (user experience).

In Conclusion

With the world of SEO moving faster than ever, SEO professionals are under even more pressure to tweak our practice to keep up, or – best case scenario – get ahead. Master the basics and adopt new approaches to ensure you’re adapting to the times in 2026.