What should you prioritize for SEO in 2026? Chima Mmeje offers six tips for staying on top of SEO in 2026, including how to optimize for agentic AI, build entity clusters, and track LLM metrics to stay ahead.

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Hi, my name is Chima. You already know who I am, so I'm not going to do more than that to introduce myself.

You've heard so many things about AI search, Universal Commerce Protocol, business agents, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's very confusing to know what to trust. I'm here to bring you the truth.

This is what you need to focus on in 2026, without all of the confusion. Let's get into it. 

Number one, build entity clusters that cover the full query fan-out. Links are still important, but we are kind of evolving towards language-based models.

And what this means is that the relationships are more about entities and semantic relationships than link-based relationships. So we need to start optimizing more for entities than anything else. And that is why you're going to need to start thinking more topical clusters than keyword clusters.

This is like SEO 101, if I'm being honest. But my point is SEO is still very important, and we're coming back to the basics again.

Topic clustering, so you pick an entity, you map intents to the cluster for each entity, and what you're basically looking at is awareness content, comparison, evaluation, and decision. 

Awareness is top of the funnel. There have been a lot of discussions about whether we still need to create this type of content. I say, yes, we absolutely do. I even have an op-ed on The Moz Blog about this.

And then you have your comparison content, like alternatives, best of. You have your evaluation, and you have your decision.

There's another blog post I wrote on Moz about the six money-making content formats for SaaS companies. I encourage you to check that out because it really deep-dives into this. And I also have a guide on The Moz Blog on topic clustering that you should absolutely check out, which also covers this in detail.

Okay, you build your cluster, and then you have an internal linking system that goes pillar, spokes, back to pillar. This is for that link-based site.

But more importantly, you also want to make sure that when you're writing the content, you are covering intent on a granular level for passage-ready structure.

That means that you're making it easy for LLMs to be able to crawl your content, to be able to take passages, to be able to take text, and then to feature it in their systems.

And finally, add structured data where it clarifies meaning. I feel like you should always be adding structured data. Again, we're coming back to the basics of technical SEO and the fundamentals of SEO with this. But still very important. That's my point. 

Number two, there's been a lot of talk about what we should be reporting on as clicks are declining.

My answer to that is that we have to evolve our reporting beyond traffic, which is what we've been talking about in the SEO industry for a long time – traffic, traffic, traffic.

Okay, but what happens beyond that? Still track LLM referrals. I know people are saying that LLMs don't send a lot of traffic. There was something that Mark Williams-Cook said in the last webinar that we did on Moz, where he said that LLMs are more of an influence channel than a traffic channel, and I absolutely agree with him on that. So track referrals because it gives you more of a directional guide of how well you are performing in LLMs. 

Also, add self-attribution reporting. Lily Ray says that it's a great way to understand how people are finding your content.

Now, you should also be tracking branded demand as an influence proxy. So you're tracking branded impressions, branded search leads, direct traffic trends, because if you're seeing more traffic coming to your website, it's likely because you're getting featured on LLMs, on Google's AI search results. These are good things to add to your reporting.

SERP features, are you showing up on any other SERP features outside of the number 1 to number 10? Maybe you're showing up on AI Overviews, AI Mode, video, all of these Google SERP features. LLM citation depth tracking. I don't have a better name for this, but my point is that how near the top are you in LLM citations?

Obviously, you want to be as near to the top as possible because if you're getting featured near the bottom and there are other competitors ahead of you, nobody is going to look at you. It's kind of like how you would see position 10, and you have somebody at position 1 to 3. Of course, I'm going to go with the person who is one to three over the person at the bottom. So this gives you an indication of how relevant and how influential your content is on LLMs.

And then finally, you want to be looking at session quality signals. What this means is that when people eventually make their way to your website, how satisfied are they with your content? Are they going back to the SERPs to restart their search again? Are they taking any other actions? How quickly are they bouncing? What are they doing next? This, for me, is perhaps the most important thing that we can be tracking, in addition to all these other LLM features. 

Okay, number three, use community as a growth engine.

I feel like people see community as extremes. Maybe they want to start something like Women in Tech SEO, which is like a big initiative, or they just want to go on Reddit and start spamming. None of that is the answer, in my opinion.

When I think about community, I think about getting involved in the channels where your audience already spends time. Trying to understand them, trying to understand what works, and then using that existing channel as an engagement to get active, rather than trying to start your own, because that is expensive. That is really, really expensive.

So here is what I personally do. I run meetups. I run local events. We bring people who are influencers. We bring people who are experts together. And I think that is a great way to understand the languages that customers use when they talk about your products.

You can speak to them. You can hear the problems that they have with the products. You can collect feedback. You can collect testimonials in real time. You can nurture relationships with your existing customers, and you can use that opportunity to show products in action.

For me, this is the best use case of community as a growth engine, because I personally see it as something that is pretty low lift.

Now, the next one I'm going to talk about, which is becoming very, very important, is optimizing for agentic AI and autonomous search.

In the past, I've ignored this. I've been like, "Hmm, not everybody is going to use agentic AI. Why do I want to allow an AI to take action for me, like spending money?" But Google has been shipping features recently that have made this now imperative.

So the first thing you want to do is that you want to make sure that your product's availability is clear. You're not just having things like sold out or things like that. It should be clear what's available and what's not available. You want to make sure that pricing is clear, shipping, returns. All the steps that somebody will take to convert should be clear.

You also want to make sure that you strengthen structured data so that when they crawl your website, agents can easily understand the information on your website.

You want to fix crawl frictions that would hurt conversion paths. Make sure that the path to conversion is clear. 

You want to avoid JS-only rendering where possible for critical content, because these AI crawlers are crawling in real time. Ain't nobody got time for JS rendering.

Ensure that the product data is consistent across your site, schema, and feed. This is very, very important. I've heard this a lot from so many experts. This is extremely important. Consistency in your product data and information that you have out there. And then a clean information architecture. 

Now, the next one I want to talk about is doubling down on E-E-A-T with proof. Again, fundamentals of SEO, my friends.

Fundamentals of SEO, but they are still so important. The way to get mentions and citations that are credible is to come from people who use your products, people who have experience with your products. You want to feature real experts who are sharing thought leadership and first-person-led type of content.

You want to be doing original research, original data, stuff that people want to share, that will get you citations and mentions organically. You want to get involved with your brand and with your own SMEs by contributing expert quotes and commentary.
How do you get more mentions? How do you get more citations, if not by having good E-E-A-T? Again, fundamentals, but these are still important.

If you take nothing away from this, remember this: technical SEO, still very important. Content marketing, still very important. E-E-A-T, all of the fundamentals, are still very important. 

And now, finally, invest in influence optimization.

I saved my favorite for last. What this means is that, the way I see it, the battle for attention, especially for B2B brands, is moving towards LinkedIn. I'm seeing more and more SaaS companies that are investing in influencers to talk about their product, to share product use cases on LinkedIn, on YouTube, the places where their ideal audience spends time.

You need to start doing this not just to get mentions and citations, but also to expose your product to new audiences. And also, it's really good for getting those positive sentiments about your product.

So you'll hear this again and again and again, digital PR. I said this last year. I say this again, digital PR. Expert commentary again, podcasts, and newsletters. Can you get featured on some of the top podcasts in your industry and then naturally plug in your product without being salesy? Can you get featured on the newsletters that everybody is reading?

Partnerships and mentions. Partnerships, for me, is a great way. This is where you now start to have influence marketers become very important. How do you partner with all the right people that folks in your industry listen to and go to for attention on social media? Because this, partnerships, has to be social-led, YouTube, newsletters, LinkedIn, X if I may say so. Where your audience is getting information, these are the people that you want to be influencing.

And then, if you do all of this, but you haven't standardized your brand narrative, honestly, you're just throwing money down the drain. Extremely important, standardize your brand narrative across channels. Make sure you have the same information across all of your websites and off-page information.

And that's it. Your top SEO tips for 2026.