Win by being the brand that AI wants to quote - Tom Vaughton

Annabelle Sacher shares that digital PR is one of the most powerful keys you can use to unlock the door to AI search visibility in 2026.Annabelle says: “As we move into 2026, it's clear that AI search strategy needs to become a core focus for us as SEOs.We know that the search landscape is evolving really, really fast. While, currently, AI only makes up a small percentage of the search landscape, it's growing – and it's growing quickly. One of the biggest unlocks/most powerful levers in this new era is digital PR (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a little biased).While general industry consensus suggests that platforms like YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia are the most heavily cited by AI systems (which is not untrue), what my peers and I are increasingly noticing across the industry is that features in high-quality, topic-relevant, authoritative publications are having a significant impact on AI-driven search visibility.I'm noticing a really clear trend through my work with clients: AI systems are prioritising credible and relevant media placements, and those are being served more and more frequently in AI-generated responses. This is a really big opportunity for brands to tackle the new world of AI search.If you want to future-proof your SEO strategy, it's key that you invest in digital PR that earns mentions and backlinks from trusted voices in your niche. It's not only going to build more broad brand authority, but position your content, brand, and products to be surfaced by AI – which might very well become the dominant mode of search.”

One way that you can compete with other sites that are relying too heavily on AI is to raise your editorial standards, explains Alex Moss.Alex says: “Be concise and raise the game of your editorial standards.”Why is being concise more important nowadays?“Machines, LLMs, and agents are all ingesting content using tokenization. The more tokenization that's used, the more processing power is required. It’s almost like the content version of site performance and site speed.If there's a slow-loading site, it's going to take a while for people to load, which might impact UX and other metrics like CTR. But when it comes to content, content for content’s sake was a bit of an old, grey hat technique of just scaling content and doing any old thing to get as much exposure, and as many keywords, as possible. Now, being too detailed doesn't always help. Don't blabber on too much, is the informal way of saying it.Often (especially with tech or startup sites), you go to the About page, read four sentences, and you still don't know what they do. They use very colourful, fluffy, and salesy words to impress the human. Right now, though, the audience is not just a human; machines are the audience as well. They're ingesting that content, and they don't get sold by that kind of language. They get sold by direct language: things that get to the point, answer the questions, and solve a problem. That is the direction content should be going.We've let ourselves down over the last few years by lowering the standards of editorial in general, so that anyone can make content for content's sake. Now, this will take away content mediocrity and raise those standards – not just in general everyday content, but also for journalistic editorial content online. They will have to adapt to higher standards in order to have the best exposure.”

Jeremy Horne shares that analytics should be core to your SEO strategy in 2026 Talking points include: What is a media mix model? Why should analytics be at the core of a marketing strategy? How do you use analytics to power a marketing strategy? How often should you revisit your analytics in relation to powering your marketing strategy? What metrics are key? What software do you use? How do you work with other marketing departments? How has this changed over the years? How is this likely to continue to change?

If you’re an e-commerce business, Joe Hale suggests that you may be missing out on a significant ranking opportunity.Joe says: “E-commerce stores need to be using collection pages to maximise the potential of their SEO.”What are collection pages for e-commerce sites?“Collection pages for e-commerce sites are essentially category pages. They are lists of products that live on the site, and there's so much potential that so many brands aren't taking advantage of.There is no technical difference between a collection page and a category page, but I use the term ‘collection’ because that's what it's called on Shopify. Many of our clients (and many e-commerce businesses around the world) use Shopify, and it actually makes it easier to build out these pages.You can build out a collection or a category page across any CMS, but on Shopify, it's so easy to use. It can be done poorly, because the barrier to entry is much lower, but that allows people to get involved, undertake this as a project, and build out this opportunity from a non-branded keyword perspective.When people are doing it poorly, they just build collections for the sake of it, or they might build three different variations of the exact same type of collection. It might be that they exclude one type of product in one, or they built a collection of t-shirts three years ago, and then they built another collection of t-shirts two years ago, and then another one year ago.Actually, part of the process is a lot of cleanup as well. Because it's so easy to fill out these collections, people just go in and make new ones rather than optimizing the ones that are already there.”

Once you know what you want to be an expert in, Andreas Voniatis advises that you should produce meaningful research to stand out in AI search.Andreas says: “Produce scaled insights in your content, to get your website AI-recommended.”Is that the same as scaling content production?“No. Scaled insights is about producing research that has achieved a significant sample size, which means that the insights contained therein, within your content, have significance.That's really important for AI because it means that it's likely to generalise well, and whatever you're describing is likely to apply in the real world.”Is it more linked to enhancing your own personal and brand authority?“That's a very succinct way of putting it.”

One of the big content questions to ask yourself to begin with is: ‘What do you want to be known as an expert in?’ This is something that Pieter Serraris explores.Pieter says: “Don't let AI take away your focus from your bigger SEO strategy.Stay focussed on topics and topical authority.”Should AI be part of your overall SEO strategy?“With a lot of companies, everything seems to revolve around AI: getting ranked in ChatGPT, getting a spot in AI overviews, etc. That seems to be the main focus point for a lot of companies.Brands are suddenly starting to add FAQs en masse, for FAQs that aren't even relevant and are way too broad. I had a client who suddenly started ranking number one for the word ‘bread’, even though they're a B2B ingredient supplier. Adding all of these FAQs shouldn't be your main focus. You should still remember who your audience is and what your SEO strategy is, as it used to be before ChatGPT suddenly came along.A few years ago, we were seeing much more maturity in the SEO world. People were starting to think about EEAT and topical authority. If you looked at LinkedIn two years ago, these were the topics that people were talking about. Now, it's only about AI and how to rank there.Obviously, it is important, but you shouldn't want to rank in these tools just for the sake of ranking; you still have to remember what topics are important for your company and for your interaction with your audience.Take a step back. Make use of ranking in AI platforms like ChatGPT if it's a relevant interaction point for you and your audience, but not just for the sake of a vanity metric. That’s what a lot of SEOs are losing themselves in.”

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.”