Search Ranking Factors in 2026 (What all SEO’s need to know in order to climb Google’s Ranks)

Date: 05/09/2026

Written by: Ryan Walsh

2026 has been a massive year for search engine optimisation changes. The SERP layouts are changing, there is more use of AI and how content is being evaluated more than ever.

Google E-E-A-T has been around for a while, but talk to any experienced SEO, and they will tell you that how content is being evaluated in terms of quality, now means Google is greatly clamping down on low-quality or spammy content.

 

Relevance and authority

Digital marketing agencies, such as Walsh & Partners have been talking about how to improve a businesses search engine optimisation for over a decade. During this time, we have mentioned various ways you can improve relevance and authority.

However, as this article will now illustrate, Google has modified and changed its algorithm significantly over the last decade. Since the very early days when Google was using Google “PageRank” things have changed massively.

Let’s therefore explore how Google’s algorithm has changed and shifted, and how it works now in 2026.

 

Google AI Overviews / AI Generated Answers (Optimising your website for this)

Google AI Overviews is not nothing new, in matter-of-fact Google first introduced AI Overviews back in 2024.

Back then, when Google first rolled this update out, it was called the “Google Search Generative Experience”. Now it has become part of Google’s main SERP’s, often above the organic rankings, therefore often grabbing the shopper’s attention.

This causes a problem and an opportunity for businesses in 2026.

That is, the Google AI Overviews, this AI technology will extract a very precise and short answer for the customer and present the answer at the top of the fold. This has given rise to a “zero click searches”– meaning, no businesses organic SERP results are clicked.

Its important for SEO experts to understand this, SparkToro’s 2024 zero-click research, that shows that 58.5% of Google searches in the United States now end without a single click.

The term “Position Zero” has been created, meaning the business has been cited as a “Google AI Overview”.

However, that in itself is a problem, as the CTR can be low on a website, even if it manages to rank 1st organically.

However, there is also an opportunity that has come from Google adding Google AI Overviews into the SERP.

That is, if your businesses content marketing is used as the answer, then your business can be cited at the citation.

This does two things; it can generate greater brand awareness for your company. And also, where the visitor numbers have decreased in Google’s organic section, you could gain more visitors through being cited as a source by Google’s AI Overviews.

How to better optimise your businesses content marketing for AI platforms and Google AI Overviews.

 

Logical Structure

The content marketing needs to have clear headings. Use H1-H6 tags. Make sure that the content marketing has a logical flow. Add FAQ section, use schema mark-up on this section, it helps Google understand the work.

 

FAQ Sections are key

The AI platforms, and Google’s AI, wants to offer the shopper very precise answer to a question. For this to happen, if you write FAQ section, where you offer very good answer, the AI platforms, and Google are more likely to cite your answer in the Google AI Overviews.

 

Be unique and produce reliable data or insights

We fully appreciate that conducting market research, that can be very costly. For example, asking 1000 people what they think about a product, service, or gaining their view on something can be expensive. This is due to conducting in-depth market research, that’s very costly.

However, publishing reliable data and market research, this can mean that your work is cited by the LLM’s.

Google’s organic algorithm, also likes reliable data, so this can improve the pages Google E-E-A-T score.

 

 

Be the expert, be the thought leader

Google wont rank highly content thin, or generic AI text. Google has stated and communicated through Google EEAT, that they want work that clearly shows the author of the work is an expert in terms of what they are talking about.

Therefore, we think more than ever, in 2026 “Experience” is going to be more important, in terms of making it clear you have first hand experience of what you are talking about. The LLM’s, the organic results, and AI Overviews, need authors of work, that clearly have in-depth knowledge and expertise over what they are talking about.

Therefore, whether it’s a highly experienced lawyer or plumber, who have written or had a lot of input into the written work, this work will rank higher. It is also much more likely to be cited in the Google AI Overviews. As Google’s algorithms are now clever, they know, whether the person is a true expert on that subject.

Content thin work, doesn’t cut it.

Google can see little effort has been exerted to write that text, therefore wont rank that page as high.

 

Here’s how you can improve the Google E-E-A-T score for that page:

Write the authors name- Link also to LinkedIn- this helps show the authors’ experience

Experience- write about real world experiences, such as for example problems encountered and how these were overcome

Add unique pictures- not stock photos, as unique photos show for example, you were there, actually say fixing a boiler in real life.

U.X and Behavioural satisfaction metrics are likely to gain even more importance.

Google has always wanted to offer shoppers the best possible answer to any question it asked.

Therefore, Google Rank Brain is constantly using its algorithm and AI to see how satisfied shoppers were with the results.

Therefore, Google’s algorithm monitors the following:

Bounce rates (If visitor leaves without visiting another page)

Dwell time (How long is the shopper spending on each page)

 

Technical SEO

It’s important that your website is super-sonic, so check your e-commerce websites Google Core Web Vitals. Make sure you make your website as fast as possible.

 

Content Marketing

You may have heard many online marketing agencies talk about “topic clusters” and creating “pillar content”- the reason is simple- Google doesn’t just look at keywords on the page anymore. Using again Google EEAT Google wants to see how much of an expert you are on the subject; how much quality content marketing has been written? How is the work interlinked, then the algorithm and the AI can gather whether the authors, the business are an expert on that area.

Basically, if you’re regularly writing about a subject, say Swiss Watches for example, and the work is gaining a lot of organic visitors, high dwell times, and this combined with low bounce rate, the work is showing high engagement. If the work shows high engagement, what this means is that the work is interesting to the reader. Then, when you start to gain strong backlinks, this shows you’re improving your business’s authority. When you do this, you start to get considered by Google’s algorithms as an expert in that area.

 

Google’s Knowledge Graph

This is nothing new for 2026, but you should still understand about Google’s Knowledge Graph.

If you show authorship on your work, plus this work is receiving strong engagement, such as dwell time. Then a lot of backlinks, this is when you are improving your businesses “semantic SEO”. This is when Google starts to better understand your company’s brand as experts in that area. Whether you are writing about luxury cars, watches or say shoes, it doesn’t matter, if you have strong EEAT throughout your work, Google will start to consider you as experts in that area.

 

Multi-modal content

As this article has mentioned, gaining a higher dwell time is important. One way to improve dwell times, plus lower bounce rates is to use a combination of video, text, audio and images. This way, it shows that you’re trying to answer the question as well as you possibly can.

For example, let’s say you’re writing about backlinks, how an e-commerce company in 2026 can generate more backlinks.

What you could do is, have SEO expert in that area produce a YouTube video explaining how to build backlink to e-commerce marketing managers.

Alternatively, you could include a SoundCloud recording.

You could also, add infographics which explains step by step how to build backlinks.

The point we are making here is, that by adding say YouTube video, with say an SEO expert explaining something, you can often improve the pages dwell time. This means, that when your page has much higher dwell time than the competitors, your page will be ranked higher. Google’s algorithm is therefore always monitoring dwell times, and bounce rates. Pages with significantly higher dwell times will rank highest.

 

Semantic SEO

What the best SEO consultants in the UK understand is, that for a business to rank high within the organic results, and for your company to be cited in Google AI Overviews, you have to also improve your semantic SEO, here’s how you do that.

• Gain more brand mentions on high quality websites
• Gain more high-quality links
• Gain positive reviews
• Make the text more AI readable

When you read certain articles regarding how to improve your businesses GEO or SEO, then often its recommended to write in a “AI readable structure”.

Now what is meant by this is simple, to write in short sentences very exact answers to a question. These can then simply be extracted and cited as an answer in the AI answers.

Of course, you have to also improve the authority of the page as well.

 

Here’s how to better optimise your content marketing for the AI systems:

 

Clear headings

• It’s important to have clear headings, write these in the same way a customer would ask you a question.
• Write therefore in an FAQ format.
• Logical formatting
• Use logical formatting
• What is meant by that is, have a clear flow throughout the written work. Use title tags ranging from H1 to H6 to mark-up the text
•  Schema markup
• Do add schema mark-up as this helps the algorithms and the LLM’s to better understand the page.

 

Why is Schema mark-up considered so important to GEO and SEO?

 

There are different types of schema mark-up that you can add to a page, these include FAQ schema, product schema and review schema.

 

Why is important to keep our businesses content marketing up to date?

 

It’s important to update and rewrite sections of the content marketing if they are no longer relevant.

It’s been the case for some time, that is that Google prefers to rank content marketing higher if it’s been updated and offers up to date advice. This is why publishing pages, and content marketing is not something that should be done once then never amended.

Instead, it’s a really good idea to go back from time to time to reword and update your content marketing.

You can then use Google Search Console to ask if the work can be recrawled.

 

Trust signals, business reviews, on Trustpilot, Google Business and Yelp

It’s important whether you’re implementing e-commerce or local search engine optimisation to gain positive reviews.

Positive reviews left on review platforms, like Google Business and Trustpilot, help to improve the “trustworthiness” of your business, which is part of the Google EEAT advice. This means, that when you accumulate good reviews, left over a sustained period, this helps to improve organic rankings.