As we’ve highlighted already (and will undoubtedly continue to be advised in the future), EEAT is just as important as it ever was. This is what Tom Winter believes.

Tom says: “Focus on EEAT – but actual EEAT, not the fake one.”

What is fake EEAT?

“Right now, I see a lot of SEOs trying to figure out how to create EEAT without actually understanding what EEAT is. They are trying to find hacks (because we're SEO experts, we always wanted to find hacks) to simplify the whole thing and add fake EEAT into the articles they're writing.

When I'm talking about fake EEAT, I'm talking about just adding a bio or an author to the article and then thinking that you’re done. EEAT is a little bit more than that.

Google are now at a place where they understand what is valuable for the end user. There isn’t an easy way to go around it; find some kind of checklist for what we can put into an article, and make it happen. All the keyword-stuffing techniques that we used to use don’t work anymore.

We need to do what Google has wanted us to do for the last 20 years and create and add value through our content.”

Tom Vaughton shares that we need to stop relying on the same tools to churn out the same results. Because in the age of AI search, it’s the human SEO perspective and strategist who creates SEO that connects, differentiates, and drives real decisions. Talking points include: What is the value of being quoted in AI? How do you become the brand that AI wants to quote? You advise that SEOs should Stop relying on the same tools to churn out the same results. What do you mean by that? You say that in the age of AI search, it’s the human SEO perspective and strategist who creates SEO that connects, differentiates, and drives real decisions. What do you mean by that? How do you know that customers are making real decisions based upon AI search results? How do you measure the success of this?

We’ve also heard many metrics that demonstrate how short a user’s attention is likely to be once they hit your web page. Sara Fernández Carmona asks whether you’re driving true, demonstrable value straight away.

Sara says: “If your value proposition is not instantly clear, above the fold, your SEO efforts won't pay off.

A lot of websites look good from an SEO point of view – you’re getting traffic, the rankings are there, etc. – but if people land on the site and they cannot immediately understand what makes you different, they will just leave. Then, all that SEO work doesn't translate into results.”

Not all metrics are tangible, though. Anna Bravington asks us a simple question: Are you proud of the content that you are putting out into the world?

Anna says: “As AI becomes part of our workflow, ethical SEO means that you should be creating content that you're proud to put back into the world.”

Does ethical SEO mean human-created content?

“Not necessarily. I'm a huge believer in AI for helping us do things. It's more about human influence and putting a lens on content, so that we have oversight and can give it checks and balances. As clever as AI is, sometimes it doesn't understand nuances and the issues that it has.

When you're looking at AI output, you need to remember that it picks up biases and strange ideas as it’s going along. It’s really good to have a diverse range of humans involved to understand what kind of content we need to be creating to put back into the world.

I work a lot in disability forums. I've got ADHD, so I am neurodivergent, and my son's autistic. I am also classed as disabled because I have fibromyalgia. Therefore, I understand when language may be ableist or isn’t taking people with disabilities into account. That means that I can put a human lens onto my content that AI misses. It doesn't understand these nuances of humanity.”

What worked in content marketing 5 years ago isn’t as likely to work now. Araminta Robertson advises us to focus on bottom-of-funnel in 2026.

Araminta says: “Now, it's more important than ever to do bottom-of-funnel content to help appear for the right topics and the right keywords in Google, but also for LLMs.”

How do you describe the different stages of the funnel, and the content that is needed at each stage?

“It's really important to make that distinction because people have different definitions of what each stage in the funnel is.

To me, top-of-funnel content is for someone who's not aware. They are still very much at the beginning of their journey in terms of making a purchase. I work in the B2B payments and financial services sector, so I’ll use the example of an e-commerce site or merchant who wants to work with a payment provider and start accepting payments online.

At this stage of the funnel, they're still doing a lot of research. How do other companies accept payments online? What different business models are available? They're almost looking for inspiration, and they may not even have a problem yet. They're at a very early stage of their journey.

Middle-of-funnel, they are starting to be more aware that they have a problem. They're starting to do research on types of payment providers, what kind of payments they should be accepting, and what the flow should be. They're trying to understand exactly what the problem is, but they may not be looking for a solution just yet.

Bottom-of-funnel is someone who's aware they have a problem and is actively looking for a solution. In this case, they're looking for things like ‘top payment gateways,’ ‘how to accept payments online with Stripe,’ or ‘Stripe vs PayPal’.

What's key here is that it's non-branded. Often, people assume that the bottom-of-funnel is someone who already knows about your company and is trying to understand how the product works. That could be the case, but I would say that's after the buying journey, because they're already aware of your brand.

We're focussed on non-branded bottom-of-funnel: someone who doesn't know that your product exists and is actively looking for a solution to their problem.”

A key way to beat the competition is to learn from other industries. Rosemary Osuoha teaches us what we can learn from healthcare brands.

Rosemary says: “Healthcare brands can use AI and SEO to reach more patients using research papers.”

How can you use research papers to reach more users, and why is this particularly beneficial for healthcare brands?

“First of all, I'm a healthcare professional. I'm a pharmacist, and I also happen to be in SEO. I've been on both sides, from the healthcare perspective and from the SEO perspective.

From my experience, research papers are always published in academic journals, and that's it. That content is not always repurposed. I used to make that mistake, but over time I realised that this can be a real content engine.

Healthcare brands often invest heavily in research. There's always research work being done. There's always a new innovation or investigation. Sometimes, that research can be beneficial to patients, but they aren’t reading academic journals. Most of the time, patients will just Google their symptoms.

If you are not putting that research work where your patients are, you are losing money, and patients are not getting the right information from an authoritative source.

Besides healthcare brands, this is also relevant for any business that heavily invests in research work. You can take advantage of this if you do any form of research and produce data and statistics to back up the claims that you are making. Instead of leaving it in Google Scholar, you can also repurpose that into long-form content and redistribute it across different platforms like social media, YouTube, etc.

It's relevant to any businesses that carry out research, not just healthcare brands.”

Brandon Leibowitz talks about the importance of focusing on building topical authority in 2026 by creating in-depth content hubs that answer your audience’s questions better than anyone else. Talking points include: What are in-depth content hubs? How do you find your audience’s questions? What metrics do you use to ensure that you are answering the right questions? How do you know what type of content to use? What platform to use? How do you know that these are the right questions? How can you ensure that you are answering these questions better than anyone else?

One of the key challenges at the moment is to identify which tasks should be done by AI and which tasks should be done by a human. This is something that Ahmed Bhula explores.

Ahmed says: “Use AI as part of your SEO workflow, and involve the human element at every point.”

How do you decide what AI should do and what humans should do?

“Where there's administrative work – researching keywords, repetitive tasks, and auditing websites – there's always only one answer, and AI can do a really good job if you train those models for that.

On the other hand, when there's actual content, using AI for content is just repeating the same things that are already on the internet, and there's no human creativity behind that. From my experience, search engines don't like it.”