What Actually Matters for SEO & AEO in 2026?

Despite being around for decades, SEO seems just as mysterious now as it did back then. Now AI is in the mix too and it’s only getting more complex. Meanwhile your creative energy is slowly being sapped.

So we’re here to give you the quick and dirty guide to your SEO quick wins. Showing you the SEO low hanging fruit, so you can focus on your passion.

Remember that different pages have different purposes

Your website serves as a platform to speak to your potential customers or audience. Each page within your website is aimed at achieving different things. SEO matters across all of them, but there’s a few areas where you should put your focus.

Home Page: Your Home Page’s primary purpose is to engage users and direct them towards further action. You need this page to be SEO optimised so that it shows up in Search Engine & AI results, but you need to be careful of alienating users with too much text, keyword stuffed headings etc.

Product & Service Pages: These pages are designed to convert users into customers. You want them to take action – buy a product, book an appointment etc.

Blog Pages: Your blog pages are a great opportunity for SEO and AEO optimisation as they offer you a space for long-format content. But remember, you want these pages to showcase the value of your product or service to users also.

About Us Pages: Your ‘About Us’ page is all about building connection and trust. Telling your story authentically. SEO and AEO should take a back seat to showing your authenticity, but you can still ensure your keywords are present.

Step One: Define Keywords for your SEO & AEO Optimisation

The goal of SEO and AEO is to convince algorithms and AI that your content is useful for a person. It decides this based on what a person searches and the data on your website. When it believes it is useful, it serves it to them as search results or links in an AI response. This in turn gets you more users.

But which users do you want? Simply getting more users does not mean more sales or bookings. You want to show up for people who will connect with your story and your offering.

4 Ways to define your SEO Keywords

1. Brainstorming: Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Then list anything they might be googling or asking AI related to your offering.
2. SEO Tools: There is a myriad of tools out there that can help you. Don’t splash out on paid tools,
3. Google Auto-Complete: When you start typing in google, it offers suggestions based on what people are searching . Try typing the start of sentences and see what shows up.
4. Ask AI: Getting AI to brain-storm keywords for you ius

Short-Tail vs Long-Tail Keywords

This is just fancy talk for how many words are in your keywords phrase. Short Tail is simply mentioning ‘Shoes’ on your website. Long-Tail delves into the fact that they are Vegan Leather Womens Business Shoes.

When you only use short-tail keywords you’re competing with everyone. When you get your long-tail keywords right, you’re speaking to your target audience. This means you’re only competing for attention within your niche.

Step Two: Optimise your Websites Content

Now that you know your keywords, start putting them everywhere. Headings, Images, Alt-Text, anywhere thle & MEta Descat makes sense. However, don’t forget each pages purpose. Stuffing everything full of Key-words can turn users away.

The Easiest ways to SEO Optimise your Website:

We’re going to start with the high-impact low effort options and move our way down. These are our quick wins for getting your SEO & AEO sorted.

1. Page Title & Meta Description: This one is too often overlooked. Not only is it a big contributor to your SEO, but it is what shows up in the Search Engine. Use a free Headline Analyzer to optimise the page title. But don’t just focus on the number, remember your target audience, ensure you’re speaking to them too.
2. Headings: Firstly, ensure each of your pages has a Heading that is an H1 and that it mentions the key words you are targeting. Then, ensure that the other headings in your page are correctly formatted as headings, and again, capture keywords within them.
3. Robots.txt and Sitemap: These are a little bit less simple if you’re not tech-minded, but they’re worth it. They control what parts of your website are crawled and what parts are discovered. They make it easier for Google or AI’s to know what’s there and serve it when relevant. Talk to your developer or jump on google to get the details for your specific website.
4. HTTPS: This is a security functionality, when you click into the web-address of your website, check if this is coming up at the start. That means you offer your users stronger data protection. Your domain will be weighted more strongly, search engines and AI will take your site more seriously and so serve it more.
5. Key-Words throughout Content: Without changing too much, scroll through your existing content and ensure that your keywords are present, especially long-tail keywords.

More ways to SEO Optimise your Website:

Diminishing returns start to kick in here. Be careful of over investing time in making everything perfect. However, it won’t hurt to keep these in mind as you work through your website.

1. Images – Alt-Text, and Naming: These used to be a big factor in SEO. However, with the rise of AI and Vision models, algorithms scan the image for information and Alt-Text simply confirms it. Nonetheless, Alt-Text was originally built for accessibility, by using alt-text you make your website accessible to the visually impaired.
2. Website Speed and Performance: Whether your website loads quickly and displays well on Mobile and Laptop play into your rankings. Google Search Console has a URL inspection tool that will show you a whole lot of detailed info on where you can improve. This can be pretty overwhelming, but also very insightful.
3. Linking: How your page connects to the web of other pages is part of what the algorithms consider. Cross-link across your site, not just making the link “Click Here” but instead outlining the key-words and purpose of the page. For example, Check out my Strategic Partnering Service. Link to external websites where relevant.
4. Back-links: This one plays a huge role but is also a lot of effort. Having your site linked to by high ranking websites increases your authority hugely (plus you can get traffic from these sites too). Building legitimate links is hard work and time-consuming. One effective technique is reaching out to businesses you already feature on your site and asking them to return the favour.
5. Answer-First Content: When writing content, ask a question you think the target audience may be searching or asking AI. Then, make your first sentence a direct answer to that question. This writing technique makes you more likely to be served as the answer to their question.
6. Topical Authority and Deep Content: Your ability to make gains in this area relies on what already exists in your space. This tactic requires consistent, ongoing, time-heavy investment. Our tip is to focus on the tightest version of your niche and start working from there.