A lot has happened in 2025 which has directly or indirectly impacted the SEO industry. It’s been a big one, to say the least! Over the last few weeks we have been starting to prepare and put together our strategies for our SEO clients for 2026 to help their businesses and brands continue to grow in the new year.
I have also just attended the Women in Tech SEO Fest in Melbourne, so it’s safe to say I am brimming with ideas and are feeling even more passionate about my industry and excited for SEO in 2026.
So without further adieu, let’s jump into our top SEO tips for success in 2026:
Nailing the SEO fundamentals is essential
Ensuring you are nailing the SEO basics is not only important for search engines and people, but it is an essential attribute for showing up in AI searches as well. The question though, is what are the SEO fundamentals? My answer for this, is pointing to Google’s SEO Starter Guide. In a nutshell it is:
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Following crawling and indexing best practices
- Having a technically sound website that loads quickly, avoids broken links, has a great structure and internal linking
To achieve this and know you are nailing these SEO fundamentals involves having Google Search Console set up and be using and monitoring it. Get to know this free tool from Google and learn about each and every report and what they mean.
You can also utilise tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs and more to help monitor the technical elements of your website to further improve.
Consistency across your site and technical elements are key – as John Mueller from Google recently reiterated.
Create content like no one else
I know that sounds scary and maybe somewhat impossible – but to stand out in search, in AI, you NEED to show your point of difference and what makes you, your brand, your business special.
Now you don’t have to recreate everything from scratch but for your website content to succeed in 2026, it needs to offer something extra, something people won’t get elsewhere. This could be:
- Including personal experiences
- Including quotes from staff, customers, experts in your industry
- Using your own images and videos
- Using data from your own studies and analyses
It is this content which gives Google, AI and people a reason to take notice of you in amongst all the same-same noise out there.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness aka EEAT
EEAT has been a framework for Google that has been around for years – however I feel it is coming into it’s standout era now and 2026 will be the year business owners really take notice.
How can you show off your EEAT on your website?
- Experience: Share real stories, insights, client wins, behind-the-scenes moments, basically anything that shows you’ve actually done the thing, not just read about it.
- Expertise: Make it obvious why you know your stuff. Showcase credentials, years in the game, niche knowledge, and the humans behind your content.
- Authoritativeness: Build your digital rep. Think quality backlinks, positive mentions, media features, awards, partnerships – all the signals that say “these people are legit”.
- Trustworthiness: Have a website people feel safe on. Clear contact details, solid About page, transparent policies, secure checkout/HTTPS and most importantly content that’s genuinely helpful TO PEOPLE.
So my advice? Tighten up your EEAT heading into 2026 and you’ll put yourself in the best position to show up wherever people are searching online or offline .
Accessibility
Ensuring your website content is accessible to humans and machines (aka Google, ChatGPT, etc) is vital. And to be honest I swear by the KISS principle – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Your content needs to be easy to read, understand and access. Forget about flashy website design that makes it hard for people across different devices. Black words on white pages is the way to go. Here’s a few tips:
- Ensure fonts and buttons are large enough for people on small screens to read and click
- Use a tool like Blisk.io to check how your website looks and functions across devices
- Add ALT text to images so people with screen readers can understand your visuals
I find one of the best ways to test your website accessibility is user testing – send your website out to a number of people of different ages, genders, backgrounds and get their feedback.
Structured data
If structured data isn’t part of your SEO strategy, it needs to be. A lot of CMS’s do help make your life easier when it comes to this. For example Shopify automatically adds product schema to your product pages to tell Google and AI exactly what your product details and attributes are.
Structured data, schema, json-ld is code in the backend of your web pages which tells machines like Google the exact specifics of elements on your page.
I recommend adding structured data for:
- Products
- LocalBusiness
- Organisation
- FAQ
- Article
- Recipe
- Review
- Breadcrumb
There are so many, which is why I would recommend checking out Google’s Structured Data Guide.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
I know I am a broken record on this topic but if you are a local business where customers come and visit, then it is absolutely essential to not only have but keep your Google Business Profile up to date in 2026.
Our clients receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in business through their GBP’s, and they will continue to remain an extremely important part of our SEO strategies in 2026 – we check in on these weekly and make updates for our brick and mortar clients.
Own your brand in search
When was the last time you Googled your brand or searched for it in ChatGPT or your favourite AI tool?
Now is the time to help AI define your brand and look for missing information gaps. If AI is confused about who your business is and what you offer – start putting content into place to fill those gaps.
Owning your brand in search is vital in 2026. And on this note, ensuring branded search traffic is growing will show that your brand is growing.
How can you work this out? Simply go to your Google Search Console account and look at the branded queries, e.g. those search queries where people are searching for your business name.
Hot tip: Are people searching for reviews on your products and business? Then make sure you have a reviews/testimonials page on your website!
Build your brand across channels
I love SEO (and Google Ads) but it cannot be your entire marketing channel. And this is even more important in 2026. Organic search, paid search, Google is only part of your marketing channel – we all know the saying, ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ right?
Google, ChatGPT/AI and most importantly, people favour brands they love and see often. Brands who are consistent and genuine.
So alongside investing and growing through SEO via Google and other search engines, it is important you also build your brand in other ways, my favourites in order of priority are:
- Email marketing
- YouTube
- Social Media
- Digital PR
Be proud to spread your brand message far and wide. If you love your brand as much as you want your customers to love it, then it’ll show. There’s a reason Morgan and I are nearly always dressed in Grand Cru Digital merch – we love our brand, we love our clients and we want to be front of mind for small businesses in Australia needing SEO & Google Ads services.
When it comes to SEO in 2026, things are going to change more. Focusing on keyword rankings is going to drop and instead we are going to be focused on:
- Building impressions from key audiences
- Improving branded searches
- Analysing data across channels instead of in silos
- Extending SEO beyond the first purchase/lead to promote repeat purchases
The digital landscape is changing, but here at GCD we are ready and excited with open minds and genuine care for our clients and providing them the best possible service and source of knowledge possible.
Here’s to a ‘Grand Cru’ aka ‘Great Growth’ 2026 for us all.
