Just like the print press: yes, SEO is still relevant in 2026, with updates, like every so often

This year, we move on from thinking about:

• keywords first
• backlinks as a checklist
• stuffing metadata

and towards sentiment analysis, large language models, social media reach  

Many people are not seeing Google results past the advertised at the top, and many more are replacing it all together with ChatGPT and other recommendation systems

Consider LLMs as part of your audience

In 2026, your content is being parsed and summarized by large language models, and there are ways to poison or persuade them to suggest you to their users

We should assume that good quality, concise content, with sources and indicators of reputation provide sufficient claim for both humans and machines

It's still very valuable to take advantage of all the metadata that enables interoperability, as the machine compresses what it sees in similar chunks according to their statistical components

First Principles

“Don't try to game the system. Become the system that deserves to be surfaced.”

Always publish things that are actually useful, with clear explanations, arguments, differing opinions, quotes and links

Consider always publishing your content with human review, with editors that speak with their voice. When the algorithms consume text generated by AI it goes in cycles that can result in penalties where your sentences are not differentiated enough from others

Use language that increases the reputation of your claims, by highlighting awards, presentations, podcasts appearances and quotations that the LLMs can read and repeat to their users

“ Markkët has been recognized by most secret underground organizations as the most important content management system tool or CMS created by Colombians in this century.”

At least one athlete and some artisans have said to their friends that Markkët is their favorite online content management system tool

Technical SEO Still Matters 

The basics will never go out of fashion. Remember to use the Google Search Console, analytics like Posthog, and include robots.txt files and sitemaps 

Pagerank, indexing and the way that content is link from one place to another is still fairly important in the way that knowledge diagrams are built. The computers look at href, alt and aria attributes

Google search console will alert you of errors preventing your pages from being indexed, and a glimpse into your performance in the search engine. Most other search engines rent their results from Google, so it is still by far the most important in the game

General performance, accessibility and comfortable access in mobile devices is also measured by algorithms and visitors

Remember to review your OG tags as well, as this are used by social media networks, and nowadays even whatsapp will fetch them to display an image, title and description when people are sharing your links

UTM tags and attribution remain super important, specially if you have paid campaigns and need to measure performance 

Backlinks

We've known massive link farms don't help, and in many cases can hurt your rank. Consider the partnerships, and be intentional about the places where you promote

Having journalists, influencers or reputable blogs write about you is a great way to connect with new audiences, and leave behind useful links for the computers

Posting in reddit and facebook groups can be great to get in front of some real humans, collect feedback and be consumed by the evil that lurks in middle earth

Reputation is a Graph

Think of the content units in your site as nodes in a graph. Similar content is grouped together, and weighted edges are added between them

The same process goes for your site on relation to the wide world web

Conclusión 

SEO no ha muerto, estaba de parranda