SEO WEEK 2026

SEO Week was one of those rare events where you leave feeling both validated and challenged at the same time. Here’s what stuck with me.

We’re on the right track. And that matters more than I expected.

One of the biggest takeaways wasn’t a new tactic or a tool. It was hearing other smart people in the industry talking about the same things we’ve already been doing for clients, and understanding more deeply why they work.

Reddit. Video. PR. Building real authority in specific topics. Earning mentions and citations rather than just chasing links. These aren’t new concepts for us, but hearing the broader industry align around them was genuinely reassuring.

There’s a lot of noise right now about what SEO even means in an AI-driven world. SEO Week cut through a lot of that. The fundamentals of creating content that people actually trust and reference? Still very much the game. The delivery mechanism is just evolving.

The gap between SEO and AI search is smaller than people think

There’s been a lot of “SEO is dead, GEO is everything now” energy online lately. After spending a few days with people in the industry, I’d push back on that pretty hard.

The fundamentals that make content perform well in traditional search, being a credible source, answering questions clearly, and earning real mentions from real people are the same fundamentals that get you cited in AI-generated answers. The delivery mechanism is changing.

It means you don’t have to blow up what’s working. You have to build on it with some new thinking layered in.

Measuring AI performance is the Wild West right now.

This was one of the most useful parts of the conference, not because anyone had a perfect answer, but because it confirmed we’re all figuring this out at the same time.

One of the honest gaps we’ve had is knowing which tools to use to track how our clients are showing up in AI-generated answers. Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, these aren’t search engines in the traditional sense, and they don’t come with a Search Console equivalent. (Yet.)

Getting to talk directly with vendors and hear what tools other agencies are using in practice was extremely helpful. We’re already testing a few things as a result and I’ll be sharing more on what we find as we dig in.

Video and AI tools are changing how fast good work gets done.

The other thing that excited me was seeing how people are using AI-powered production tools to create content faster without sacrificing quality.

Video in particular has always been the thing we’ve told clients to do while quietly not doing enough of it ourselves. And if I’m being honest, a big part of that on my end has been imposter syndrome. Watching people like Mike King, Lily Ray, and Wil Reynolds show up consistently and own their space made me feel like I didn’t have enough to add. SEO Week kind of snapped me out of that. Being in a room full of people who are just as deep in this work as I am, and seeing them share what they know without overthinking it, was the push I needed to get out of my own way.

Seeing the actual tools people are using in practice, not just the ones everyone talks about theoretically, gave me a much clearer picture of what a real workflow looks like. The gap between “we should do video” and “we actually have a workflow for doing video” got a lot smaller after those conversations.
We’re already putting some of this into practice, starting with our own content. Which feels like the right place to start before recommending it to clients.

The takeaway I keep coming back to.

SEO Week didn’t make me feel behind. It made me feel like the work we’ve been doing has been pointing in the right direction and gave me a clearer map for what comes next.

The agencies and marketers who are going to win in AI search aren’t the ones scrambling to game a new algorithm. They’re the ones who have been building real authority, creating content people actually trust, and staying curious enough to keep learning.

That’s what we’re focused on at Epic Notion. And honestly, it’s pretty exciting.