We interviewed more than two dozen SEO professionals to learn what skills will be fundamental to search careers in 2026. Here’s what they had to say…

Top Skills SEO Pros Need for 2026

The modern SEO professional is no longer just a “Google search specialist.” By 2026, the role looks more like an AI-literate growth strategist who can connect user behavior, machine understanding, and commercial outcomes.

Across our interviews with SEO experts around the world, some themes surfaced repeatedly: mastering AI-driven search, levelling up in data analysis, and expanding SEOs’ remit to include UX, CRO, content, and other related disciplines.

As SEO manager Dorothy Edgar observes, “upskilling in complementary areas has never hurt in the past, and it’s especially important now… [this] has also helped me future-proof my role in a time where SEO as we know it may change dramatically very quickly.”

The Top 5 SEO Skills for 2026:

1. GEO / AEO / AI Search Optimization Skills

“As AI surfaces become our new search engines, SEOs need to speak their language. Learning how AI interprets entities, context, and prompts will define who shows up in conversational results.

. . . I see GEO / AEO as the next phase of my Topic Entity Strategy –  shifting from optimizing for search engines to teaching AI systems how to understand your expertise.

Traditional entities (like people, places, or brands) tell AI who you are.
Topic entities tell AI what you’re known for.

By mapping your brand to the core concepts you want AI to associate you with,  like “local SEO,” “AI visibility,” or “semantic optimization,” you create a retrievable web of meaning.

This approach moves GEO / AEO beyond theory: instead of tracking prompts or keywords, I track topic entity presence, how often your expertise shows up in AI answers, how well it’s understood, and how consistently it’s connected back to your brand.

That’s how we measure, optimize, and benchmark visibility in the age of retrieval.”

— Aimee Jurenka, SEO Strategist at RicketyRoo

“Rethinking visibility in the age of AI —  We’re no longer just chasing that top spot in search engine results, but making sure our content stands out in AI-powered overviews, chatbots, and conversational search. With more and more people having conversations with search engines, rather than just firing off a query and waiting for a response, how we think about visibility is changing.”

[A key skill SEOs will need in 2026 is…] “Balancing LLM + User Content Needs: Based on the concept of semantic triples, AI models are basically tuned to pick out pithy answers, bullet point lists, and tables from the rest of the text so they can mash them up into their own responses. However, this type of short, straightforward content structure is not how humans read and resonate with a message. Finding the tough balance between the two will be a highly underrated skill.” 

— Jon Clark, Managing Partner at Moving Traffic Media

“Semantic analysis: Now it’s not enough to just research some keywords and optimize for them. We need to focus on creating topical authority and semantic relations within our content to have higher chances of ranking in AIO or AI tools.”

— Raquel González Expósito, CEO & Founder at Seoulful Connect

“AI & Data Interpretation / Prompt-Driven Research — With AI reshaping content discovery and ranking, SEOs must be able to critically interpret AI outputs, understand semantic weighting and vector-based relevance, and ask precise prompts to uncover opportunities. This skill ensures that strategies derived from AI tools are reliable, accurate, and aligned with business goals.”

— Stephen Akadiri, Senior SEO & Organic Growth Specialist at Grey

“Content strategy for topical authority development — With AI search and AI features becoming more prevalent, it’s not enough to be a top source of information; you need to be THE source . . .

. . . The goal post has shifted; it’s no longer just about “top 10 ranking”. It’s about becoming the definitive source for your niche, so AI systems recognize, trust, and cite your content. Tactics that will help move the needle are: 

1. Building topical authority and creating comprehensive content
2. Providing original data and first-hand experience/insights 
3. Optimizing for multimodal search and thinking about taking up as much search real estate as possible 
4. Continuing to do SEO fundamentals and doing them well.”

— Josh Petit, SEO Manager at SnoCountry

“GEO is becoming a critical part of SEO as AI-driven search and LLMs shape how information is discovered, and has changed the way users search altogether. That said, it’s important not to lose sight of traditional SEO fundamentals – strong technical and on-page optimisation, high-quality content that follows E-E-A-T principles should remain the foundation before adding specific ‘AI optimisation’ tactics. 

To move the needle with GEO, structured, authoritative, and easy-to-understand websites are key (which, in truth, isn’t anything new!). This includes maintaining accurate business listings, implementing schema markup, and ensuring your content clearly signals relevance and brand identity. Encouraging reviews and user-generated content that reference your business in context can also help LLMs and AI assistants associate your brand with relevant queries.”

— Chloe Steele, Assistant SEO Manager at PrettyLittleThing.com

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2. Data Analysis Skills

“Data analysis is the key to helping clients understand what is happening in a no-click world. Being able to understand GA4 is not enough, SEOs need to be able to correlate GA4 with Google Search Console or other tools … to build a picture of what is going on.”

— Sara Kavanagh, Director of SEO at Candidsky

“Now with AI, we get an extra layer of data we need to include in our strategies, so being good at analyzing and interconnecting all that information will be a good skill to have.”

— Raquel González Expósito, CEO & Founder at Seoulful Connect

[Key skills for SEOs in 2026 include…] 

“Data Storytelling – More people, including CEOs, are questioning the value of SEO in light of AI, so communicating your results and proposals effectively with data becomes more important. 

Testing and Data Analysis – It’s not enough anymore to just follow SEO best practices because how effective those are will vary depending on the niche and the specific website. Instead, we should formulate hypotheses, test them, and evaluate the data before we draw conclusions. This is also good in uncertain times, when we don’t know where exactly AI/LLM strategies are going to end up. ”

— Tina Reis, Senior SEO Strategist at Muhlert Digital

[Key skills for SEOs in 2026 include…]  “Python — If you’re working on large sites with reams of data to analyze, it’s a no-brainer. You can use AI to write a script that suits your exact needs and streamline your work process.”

— Dorothy Edgar, SEO Manager

[Key skills for SEOs in 2026 include…] 

“1. Storytelling with data – This will be vital in understanding how and why results may appear in LLMs/AI but not highly on page 1 of organic results (traditional), or vice versa.
2. Data analysis – To fulfil the above, a good SEO needs to understand how to parse the data they are receiving, and how it informs the recommendations we provide.”

— Eric Hoover, SEO & AI Search Director at Kepler Group

[A skill that will be crucial for SEO professionals in 2026 is…] “Data Analysis — AI is causing attribution to get even messier, so SEOs need to be more comfortable looking to the data to navigate this. We won’t find black and white answers but we need to use data to the extent that we can and not just rely on assumptions or what LinkedIn influencers are saying we should do. At this point, AI visibility doesn’t necessarily equate to revenue, so SEOs have to double down even further on using data to make decisions and guide their work towards what actually impacts the bottom line.”

— Natasha Burtenshaw-deVries, Director of Organic Growth, Flywheel Digital

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3. Broadening SEO Skillsets (UX, CRO, & More)

“Honestly, upskilling in complementary areas has never hurt in the past and it’s especially important now. Not only has expanding my technical knowledge made my life as an SEO easier, it has also helped me futureproof my role in a time where SEO as we know it may change dramatically very quickly.”

— Dorothy Edgar, SEO Manager

“[SEOs should have] at least top-level full-stack marketing understanding. As traffic decreases, SEOs will have to have skills to be able to convert the traffic they do get better. This includes CRO, UX, but also paid channels and social organic. I.e., understanding how and where SEO improves/detracts from conversions from those other channels and how we can better align across all channels.”

— Emina Demiri-Watson, Head of Digital Marketing at Vixen Digital

“Basics in CRO are a must. UX impacts conversion, and in a no-click era, it’s crucial that SEOs are able to advise on how to convert once we do get a click.”

— Sara Kavanagh, Director of SEO, Candidsky

“Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration (UX, Accessibility, and Content Design) — The role of SEO is expanding beyond traffic acquisition into experience optimisation. To remain relevant, SEOs must develop strong collaboration skills across disciplines—working closely with UX designers, developers, content strategists, and accessibility experts. This ensures that content not only ranks but converts and provides meaningful value to users. In 2026, being able to advocate for SEO within product, design, and editorial conversations will be just as important as knowing how to optimize a meta title.”

— Rejoice Ojiaku, SEO Manager at Nelson Bostock Unlimited

[A key skill for SEOs in 2026 will be…] “Thinking more commercially rather than just traffic orientated, understanding customers in depth. 

Some of us have been able to get by so far by bringing traffic and leads, but I think one of the skills we will need to develop is understanding how to be more commercially inclined. That means SEO won’t be just split into three parts of the funnel, but into holistic thinking around commercial impact. 

We’ll need to develop research skills to understand what people are searching for, how they get to that content, and what content converts them, so we make stakeholders see more and more how much we have an impact on the business in an era where trends could make us overlooked in the long run.”

 — Angèle Chevalier, SEO and Content Strategist at CharlieHR

“Research, read, and stay informed. Explore how things are developing, approach everything with reserve, and challenge things. Be informed about SEO, LLMs, but also other areas, broaden your knowledge and skillset. Be curious.”

 —Iva Jovanovic, SEO Conference Organizer & Digital Marketing Specialist (SEO & Content) 

“Holistic understanding of how different marketing channels work together – only focusing on SEO doesn’t work anymore because ranking factors for both traditional search engines and AI search reach into other disciplines. For brand authority, a key factor for AI visibility, for example, you need to know content strategy + digital PR + social media.”

— Tina Reis, Senior SEO Strategist at Muhlert Digital

“Cross-Disciplinary Strategy (UX, Accessibility, Content Ops): SEO teams have always been at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, but that is quickly shifting from nice-to-have to a must-have across all organizations and verticals. To deliver really satisfying online experiences that both search engines, LLMs,  and visitors love, you need to be able to bridge the gaps between search visibility, user experience, and conversion optimization.”

 — Jon Clark, Managing Partner, Moving Traffic Media

(On SEOs’ remit expanding into other channels) “With more and more changes coming into the search landscape, i.e, AI, SEO can no longer just be SEO. If you want to deliver a successful SEO strategy, you need to be looking beyond what traditional SEO used to look like.

SEO is an ever-evolving channel; nothing ever stays the same. We are always having to change to improve, but this has always been within the channel itself, such as the way we implement technical changes or what type of content we create.

Now the changes we are needing to make are merging into other marketing channels and so to evolve and remain relevant you need to consider the overlapping into other channels within your strategy. 

An example of this is if you want to deliver the best experience for your customer, you need to be investing in CRO as well as SEO.

There is no point spending time and money driving traffic to your site if the experience delivered when they get there is poor – you aren’t going to convert.

In my opinion, CRO is the missing piece to a complete SEO strategy to deliver revenue growth through organic search.”

 — Jess Batin, Head of SEO & CRO at Lantra

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4. Stakeholder Communication

“Strategic Communication and Cross-Functional Influence – SEO in 2026 is inherently cross-functional, requiring collaboration with AI, data, content, and brand teams. The ability to communicate technical insights in plain business language, demonstrate value, and influence stakeholders will be critical for maintaining resources, guiding strategy, and ensuring SEO remains central in an AI-first ecosystem.”

— Stephen Akadiri, Senior SEO & Organic Growth Specialist at Grey

“Communication Skills – 80% of an SEO’s job is to educate other teams and stakeholders and translate the changes to non-technical people to actually improve business and implement things. Communication is needed for it. Bonus: Go do improv, it helps a ton.”

— Patryk Wawok, Co-founder & Head of Technical SEO at Organic Hackers

“Stakeholder management – as we see an increase in C-suite discussions due to SEO being front of mind thanks to the rise in LLMs, the more successful SEOs will think more like CMOs and ensure that they are thinking about the wants and needs of the business as a whole and how organic channels (website, video, socials, email etc) all fit into a broader plan”

— Kevin Kapezi, Director & SEO Consultant at Growthack.io

“SEO is only effective if you get your recommendations implemented. So being an effective communicator to get across the importance of SEO activity is key.”

— Jess Batin, Head of SEO & CRO at Lantra

[An essential skill for SEOs in 2026 is…] “Client/Manager Expectation Management – being able to explain data (or the absence of it) to concerned clients and/or bosses.”

— Andrew Cock-Starkey, Founder & SEO Consultant at Optimisey

[Key skills for SEOs in 2026 include…] “Client communication skills, an evergreen skill that helps clients stay calm and confident when everything in search is changing fast. Good communication ensures they understand what’s happening — and why there’s no need to panic in the ever-evolving world of SEO.”

— Katarina Dahlin, Senior Growth Hacker, WhitePress

5. Multichannel & Multimodal Strategies

“Cross-channel understanding — Thinking not about how individual pages are performing in SERPs, but how SEO works alongside socials, paid search, PR and content marketing to boost visibility across multiple channels.”

— Natalie Stubbs, Senior Technical SEO at Lumar

“Users seek solutions everywhere, not just on websites. Social media and forums are powerful tools to showcase your solutions to potential buyers and expand your brand reach.”

— Ana Perez, SEO Manager

“As search moves toward multi-modal, entity-centric discovery, SEOs need to structure content around meaning rather than just keywords or URLs. Expertise in designing site architecture, managing entities, implementing schema, and creating taxonomies will allow content to be understood and surfaced accurately by AI models and across platforms like YouTube, visual search, and marketplaces.” — Stephen Akadiri, Senior SEO & Organic Growth Specialist at Grey

“Cross-Ecosystem Discovery – Strategically building brand presence and authority across multiple platforms where users and AI actually discover content (Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, social).” — Irina Ginghina, SEO Director at Modern Citizens

“Omnichannel Search Optimization — I really feel like this is an area that isn’t taken into account enough in the SEO industry. With the shift into AI search, I believe in 2026 that SEO will be less about ‘ranking’ in a traditional SERP, and more about orchestrating how a brand is experienced across every search surface e.g. from a brand’s website, AI chats, to app store listing pages to social profiles. The brands that win will be those that ensure every touchpoint remains consistent, credible, and an up-to-date representation of who they are. 

This AI-driven search shift challenges SEOs to think beyond traditional rankings and keyword research as this is no longer enough. They will need to collaborate closely with content, digital PR and wider digital marketing teams more than ever before, with the aim to maintain alignment across multiple channels, and ensure that structured data, TOV, and brand signals overall remain accurate. 

To address this, SEOs should audit all search touchpoints, leverage structured data so LLMs and search engines can understand content, monitor updates across other platforms, and use insights from what LLMs are sharing about your brand to identify areas for refinement, e.g., this may be from social channels, Reddit threads, listicles. It’s also worth regularly checking how LLMs are presenting your brand to spot any gaps or inconsistencies early.”

— Chloe Steele, Assistant SEO Manager at PrettyLittleThing.com

Other Notable SEO Skills to Hone or Develop in 2026:

Content Quality: Topical Authority, Fact-Checking, & EEAT

“Content quality will always be the main priority in any marketing work – whether it’s for websites or other channels. In terms of SEO, content quality is a major part that influences the results. 

With the rise of LLMs and AI, the quality of content has decreased. People are using them as shortcuts to create things instead of using them to help the process. 

Always think of the user and what you are serving them. Quality content is a must.”

 —Iva Jovanovic, SEO Conference Organizer & Digital Marketing Specialist (SEO & Content) 

“Trust and Authenticity Signals — As AI tools, platforms, and processes accelerate the amount of AI slop being pumped out into the world, finding a way to cut through the noise will be more critical than ever. 

“Just create great content” has never been enough. In 2026, search and AI platforms will be looking for new ways to discern and understand authenticity and trust. 

It will be the oft-repeated game of whack-a-mole, where, as one trust signal emerges, a way to fake it will follow shortly after. 

When everyone says “Build your brand,” what they often mean is “Be a voice people trust.” 

— Andrew Cock-Starkey, Founder & SEO Consultant at Optimisey

[A skill that will be crucial for SEO professionals in 2026 is…] “Fact Checking — AI combined with the state of the world is making this more critical than ever. It needs to be baked into every step of a workflow involving AI, not left until the end or for someone in a formal reviewer role.”

—Natasha Burtenshaw-deVries, Director of Organic Growth, Flywheel Digital

Building Brand Authority

“The way LLM-type search surfaces work means a much wider breadth of opinion is summarised, so a multi-site presence and consistency in what is being said about you is more important than ever.

This means that effective digital PR, getting people to talk about your brand, your story, your data, on trusted websites, with consistency, will pay even bigger dividends than before, link or not.

The challenge, ironically, is AI; there are fewer journalists and a huge spike in AI spam sent to them. I would focus on building those relationships and cutting AI out, so they know you can be relied upon.”

— Mark Williams-Cook, Director at Candour

[A skill that will be crucial for SEO professionals in 2026 is…] “Brand Reputation Management — As AI and LLMs evaluate brand credibility, SEOs (more than ever) will need skills in monitoring online reputation, managing reviews and UGC platforms to ensure that signals of authority and trust are accurately represented across search.”

— Chloe Steele, Assistant SEO Manager at PrettyLittleThing.com

“LLMs and AI tools are heavily reliant on two things —old school SEO and brand presence across the web. Focus on ensuring citations, reviews, content, and UX, and it’s been shown that AI presence increases. There is no “secret sauce,” no shortcuts; achieving results from LLMs requires dedicated actions and research, and this goes beyond marketing – it’s all about the customer journey.”

— Chris Evans, SEO Specialist

“It’s become clear that gaining visibility in AI isn’t about optimization—it’s about creating brand and trust signals so strong that AI would be foolish not to put you front and centre. Focus on brand first and content optimization second to get the traffic and impact from AI that drives real results, not just visibility as a vanity metric.”

— Natasha Burtenshaw-deVries, Director of Organic Growth, Flywheel Digital

“I think brand reputation and authority will be more important than ever in 2026. We’ve always talked about becoming a reference in your niche and getting backlinks from reputable sources, but now it’s even more important to showcase that expertise through your own data, expert quotes or insights, and contributions from real professionals in the field, all of which help strengthen your topical authority.

As we know, brand authority isn’t built overnight. Most of the brands already showing up in AI-generated responses are there because they’ve been doing the work for years and have earned that recognition. We’ve always focused on getting dofollow backlinks, and that’s still relevant, but simple brand mentions will also matter more now, since AI models can recognize and display those sources.

That’s because AI doesn’t just evaluate backlinks; it looks at mentions, reviews, EEAT consistency, and other credibility signals. So, strengthening your digital PR and content marketing efforts will be key. You should also check how AI tools mention your brand to understand how they perceive your business, and identify ways to improve both visibility and trust.”

— Raquel González Expósito, CEO & Founder at Seoulful Connect

[On GEO and brand authority] “Every industry and every site (and their audiences) are different. GEO/AEO with the ChatGPT 4 update has rolled right back into SEO. If the LLMs just scrape Google results, be there or pull the blinds and shut the curtains.

What does and will continue to matter is brand presence on the wider web — social media, YouTube, and publications, a clear site structure, well-written and executed content, and keeping users engaged. This will inevitably help with getting into those LLM mentions and keep the flow of sessions and sales going.

We can definitely also use LLMs as a useful tool for identifying how it understands the brand and the site, and the way it goes about retrieving information (via long-tail queries) and what links it provides to sites and when, to understand how we can capture traffic. Building out content around these long tails and customer pain points could likely get more visibility than purely focusing on search volumes.

Monitoring brand searches can also be an indication, as when there are no direct links from LLMs users might try to navigate to the pages via branded Google search. Just means we need to connect more dots in our tracking and reporting.”

— Kamilla Revfy, Senior SEO Manager, Rebel

“Good content alone is not going to move the needle anymore. We need strong brand authority. Things that have long been seen as “nice to have” or “bonus SEO” are now must-haves, such as Digital PR to generate positive brand sentiment and brand mentions.”

— Tina Reis, Senior SEO Strategist at Muhlert Digital

Streamlining SEO Workflows & Automation

[A skill that will be crucial for SEO professionals in 2026 is…] “AI-Assisted Workflow Design: The bottom line here is that mastering how to use AI tools in auditing, content generation, and technical analysis can genuinely make you more efficient. SEOs who figure out how to connect all these dots, from keyword research to final publication, will end up scaling their operations in a more thoughtful way. Similar to the 10x developer, you’ll be a 10x SEO. :)”

 — Jon Clark, Managing Partner at Moving Traffic Media

“Automation skills, learning new tools, or finding ways to automate parts of daily work to become more efficient. Not everything needs to be fully automated with AI agents — even a simple Google Apps Script can help with keyword mapping, or a well-crafted prompt or simple automation can make your daily SEO work faster and easier.”

— Katarina Dahlin, Senior Growth Hacker at WhitePress®

“Streamlining SEO workflows with AI tools — I do see this becoming more of a focus now that AI is in a better place and we have a better grasp on what it is and isn’t good at. However, I think the ultimate focus here will (or at least should be) on using AI to improve the quality of our work, not just scaling it and working faster.” 

—Natasha Burtenshaw-deVries, Director of Organic Growth, Flywheel Digital