SEO, AI search and online visibility in 2026
Last updated: September 2026
Search has changed - and it’s still changing.
People don’t just search by typing a few keywords into Google and scrolling through a list of blue links anymore. They ask questions in a more natural way that mirrors how we speak, refine those questions as they go, and increasingly use AI tools, social platforms, communities and other sources to find information.
Google now includes AI-generated answers alongside traditional search results. Tools like ChatGPT and other AI assistants can answer questions directly. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and YouTube are also places where people find information and business recommendations.
So, SEO hasn’t disappeared. But being visible online is no longer just about where your website appears in Google. It’s about being understood, being useful and being visible in the places where the people you want to reach are looking.
That changes what good content looks like.
Search is wider than Google now
For a long time, SEO was mostly about helping your website appear in search results. Keywords, rankings and clicks were the things people talked about.
Those things are still important, but they’re no longer the whole picture.
Someone might discover your business through a Google search. But they could equally see it through an AI-generated answer, come across a recommendation on social media, find a discussion on Reddit, or even hear about you at a networking meeting.
The next obvious step is to search for your business by name, visit your website, read a few pages and decide whether you’re the right fit. In other words, the journey from searching to choosing has changed.
You don’t need to be everywhere. But it’s worth thinking about where your ideal customers are likely to discover you, what they’ll find when they do, and whether the information they come across gives them a clear and consistent understanding of your business.
That’s where SEO and broader online visibility start to overlap.
👉 If you’d like a practical guide on getting found online and turning visits into enquiries, you can download my free guide here →
The fundamentals of search visibility are still important
Clarity, usefulness and trust
Search may have changed, but some things don’t.
If someone finds your website or content, they still need to understand what you’re saying, decide whether it’s relevant to them, and have enough confidence to take the next step.
1. Start with clarity
Before worrying about keywords or rankings, ask:
Can someone quickly understand what you do?
Is it obvious who you help?
Does your content answer the question someone came looking for?
Are you using language your customers will understand?
Is there a clear next step when someone wants to find out more?
Clarity isn’t an SEO trick or technique. It’s simply good communication - and that applies to your content too.
2. Make it genuinely useful
The best reason to create a piece of content is that it gives someone something useful. That might mean answering a question, explaining something complicated, helping someone make a decision, sharing your expertise, or showing them what to consider before they take the next step.
Useful content doesn’t have to be long, complicated or packed with information. It just needs to do its job properly.
There’s no magic word count, and more content isn’t automatically better. A useful article might be 500 words or 2,500 words. The important thing is whether you’ve answered the question properly and given the reader what they came for.
Tip: A good way to find useful topics is to look at “People also ask”, Reddit, or Quora, then write content that answers those questions properly.
3. Give people reasons to trust you
People are understandably cautious about information they find online. They want to know whether the person giving the advice knows what they’re talking about, whether the information is accurate, and whether the business behind it can be trusted.
That’s where the ideas behind E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) can be useful.
E-E-A-T isn’t a magic SEO checklist you can use to win the game. Instead, think of it as the things that help a person decide whether they trust what you’re saying. That might include:
Sharing your own experience rather than repeating generic advice
Showing what you know through useful, specific information
Being honest about what you do and don’t know
Using examples, evidence and references where appropriate
Keeping important information accurate and up to date
Making it clear who is behind your content
Showing real work, results, case studies or client experiences where relevant
These things aren’t just useful for search. They’re useful because people need reasons to believe you. And that becomes even more important when someone is deciding whether to spend money, get in touch or trust your advice.
👉 Want to show what you do through the people who’ve experienced it? Learn how I can help you with case studies →
4. Think people-first
This is one of the reasons I still think writing for people (not search engines) is the best place to start.
Write as if you’re explaining something to a person who genuinely wants to understand it:
Use your own perspective
Give examples
Explain things clearly
Avoid using jargon just because it sounds more professional
Next, think about how the content can be structured so that it’s easy to find, easy to read, and easy to navigate.
Good search-friendly content doesn’t need to sound like it was written for a search engine. In fact, I’d argue it’s better if it doesn’t. Write it in a way that people can understand and with useful enough that they’re glad they found it.
Look at questions and intent, not just keywords
Keywords do still have a place in search. They can help you understand what people are looking for and the language they use to describe it. But a keyword on its own doesn’t tell you very much.
Think about the difference between someone searching for:
“website audit”
and someone asking:
“How do I know whether my website needs a complete redesign?”
They might be interested in the same general topic, but they’re looking for quite different things.
It’s why I think it’s more useful to start with the question or problem behind the search, rather than trying to choose a keyword and build content around it.
What is this person trying to find out?
What problem are they trying to solve?
What do they already know?
What might they need to understand before they can make a decision?
What would make the information genuinely useful to them?
This also helps you decide what kind of content you need. Sometimes, the answer will be a blog post. But sometimes it could be a service page, an FAQ, a case study, a guide or clearer information on a page that already exists.
If you’ve understood the topic properly and written something useful, you can naturally cover the different questions and phrases people might use without trying to fit every variation of a keyword into the page.
Personally, I think this is one of the more positive ways search has evolved both for the writer and the end reader.
Where to find useful questions
To come up with the most useful content, start with the things you already know:
Questions customers ask you
Conversations you’ve had with potential clients
Questions that come up during your work
Search suggestions and related searched
Your own website search data, if you have it
Comments and forums where people are discussing the topic
You can also use things like Google’s People also ask (one of my favourites), Reddit, or other online communities to see how people are talking about a topic. The aim isn’t to collect hundreds of keywords.
It’s to understand what people want to know, so you can create something that helps them.
Make your content easy for people to understand
Once you’ve worked out what someone is trying to find out, the next question is simple:
Can they understand what you’ve written?
It may sound obvious but I’ve seen all kinds of examples over the years where the writing makes information harder to understand than it needs to be.
The thing is, you know your business and subject inside out. Your reader probably doesn’t. That means you need to make it easy for someone to follow, not clever or complicated.
Write like a person
This is where conversational writing can help.
It doesn’t mean writing everything as if you’re chatting to your bestie or filling every paragraph with jokes and exclamation marks. It means writing in a way that feels natural and clear, as if you’re speaking to a person.
Use the words you’d use when explaining something to a customer
Avoid jargon where possible - if you need to use a technical term, explain it
Say what you actually thing - your experience and perspective are part of what makes your content useful.
Tip: If you struggle with writing, record what you want to say and transcribe that. Then read what you’ve written out loud - if it doesn’t sound natural, have another go.
👉 If you’d like some practical ideas for making your writing sound more natural, take a look at How to write conversational content: 10 simple tips and example →
Make information easy to navigate
Good writing is about more than the words. The way you structure your content makes a big difference too:
Use headings to break up longer pieces
Keep paragraphs reasonably short
Use bullet points where they’re useful
Put the important information where people are likely to see it
Don’t make someone work their way through five paragraphs before they discover the answer to the question they came to ask.
People don’t always read online content from beginning to end. They scan, jump between sections and look for the bit that’s relevant to them. Making that easy isn’t “writing for Google”, it’s writing for people.
Think about accessibility
Clear content should be accessible to as many people as possible. That means thinking about things like:
Clear headings and a logical structure
Descriptive link text
Good contrast and readable text
Meaningful image descriptions where needed
Avoiding unnecessary jargon or unexplained abbreviations
Making sure important information isn’t just shared through visuals
You don’ t have to become an accessibility expert - just get into the habit of asking:
Could someone understand and use this information easily?
It’s a useful question for pretty much any piece of content you create.
Build visibility in more than one place
If search is wider than Google, it makes sense to think about your visibility more broadly too. But, to reassure you, it doesn’t mean you have to be active on every platform going.
For some businesses, Google will be the most important. For others, people might discover them through recommendations, industry directories, social media, professional networks, online communities or other websites.
The most important question isn’t where you can get more visibility. It’s where the right people are likely to discover a business like yours. That could mean:
Being easy to find in relevant search results
Making sure your business information is accurate in important directories and profiles
Being visible in places where your potential customers already spend time
Building relationships that lead to recommendations and referrals
Sharing useful content in the places where it makes sense for your audience
Making sure other relevant websites can reference or link to your business
But you don’t have to do all of these. If you try to have a presence everywhere, that can quickly become a full-time job in itself.
I’d rather see a small business choose a few relevant ways to build visibility and do them consistently than spread itself too thinly trying to keep up with every new platform or trend. And remember, visibility isn’t just about being seen. If someone discovers you somewhere else and then visits your website, what they find there is still important.
Tip: Your email list is one of your most valuable marketing channels - you own it, and it’s not controlled by algorithms 😉
Don’t forget about what happens when someone finds you
Getting someone to your website is only part of the job.
Once there, they need to work out whether you’re relevant to them, whether they can understand what you do, and whether they can trust you and know what to do next. You might think that sounds less like SEO and more like good website content.
And it is, that’s the point.
Attracting lots of website visitors isn’t that useful if the people who arrive can’t work out what you do, can’t find the information they need or can’t decide whether you’re trustworthy enough to get in touch.
So, it’s always worth looking at your website from the perspective of someone who has just discovered you:
Is it immediately clear what the business does?
Can people tell whether it’s relevant to them?
Does the website answer the questions they’re likely to have?
Is there enough information to help them decide whether they trust you?
Is it easy to find the important information?
Is there a clear next step?
You may not need more traffic. You may just need to make better use of the people who are already finding you.
👉 I’ve written more about this in Getting found online is only half the story → including why visibility, clarity and trust need to work together.
Your website is still an important part of that journey. Not because every customer will arrive there directly from Google, but because it can give people somewhere to find the information they need when they’re deciding whether you’re the right fit for them.
Final thoughts
SEO has changed, and it will keep changing.
There will always be an new update, a new platform, a new way of searching or a new thing we’re told we should be doing. But you don’t need to chase all of it.
Instead, focus on the things that are less likely to go out of date:
Be clear about what you do
Create useful content
Understand what your customers are looking for
Make it easy for people to find and understand your information
Give them reasons to trust you
And remember that getting found is only the beginning. The goal isn’t to be visible everywhere or attract as much traffic as possible. It’s to be visible in the right places, to the right people, with information that helps them decide what to do next.
