The Digital Marketing Podcast by Exposure Ninja

SEO in 2026 isn't what it was in 2024 — or even late 2025. Today's most successful businesses aren't choosing between traditional search engine optimisation and AI Search strategies. They're mastering both.While Google still processes 16.4 billion searches daily compared to ChatGPT's 800 million prompts, the quality of AI search traffic tells a different story. Some data shows visits from ChatGPT convert at five times the rate of traditional search, making AI Search Optimisation essential for businesses targeting high-value customers.The challenge? You can't afford to optimise for one at the expense of the other. Google's AI Overviews reduce click-through rates by roughly 50% when present on search results pages, whilst AI tools like ChatGPT rarely recommend brands directly from their own websites — they cite third-party sources instead.In this video, I reveal:• How SEO works in 2026 across both traditional web search and AI search platforms — including the "hybrid SEO" approach that captures traffic from both• Why traditional on-page SEO remains the foundation (and which technical elements matter most for AI search optimisation)• The critical role of schema markup in helping AI tools understand and recommend your business• Why digital PR and third-party mentions have become more important than traditional backlink building — with real examples of how AI tools source their recommendations• A behind-the-scenes look at Elite Renewables (one of our own websites), demonstrating practical optimisation using Rank Math Pro• The emerging impact of AI agents on SEO strategy and what this means for your website's user experienceI'll also demonstrate ChatGPT's Atlas browser in agent mode, showing exactly how these AI tools navigate websites and make purchasing decisions — revealing why optimising for both human visitors and AI agents is becoming essential.If you're ready to understand how SEO works in 2026 and implement a strategy that captures traffic from both traditional search engines and AI platforms, this episode provides your complete roadmap for staying ahead while your competitors figure out which approach to choose.
Watch this as a video instead: https://exposure.ninja/seo-2026
Get the show notes: https://exposureninja.com/podcast/373/
Listen to these episodes next:
The BEST SEO Strategies for 2026 — https://exposureninja.com/podcast/368/
The BEST AI Search Optimisation Strategies for 2026 — https://exposureninja.com/podcast/366/
How To Create and Optimise Your Content for AI Search — https://exposureninja.com/podcast/363/

You already know your customers are using ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews to research buying decisions. The strategic question is: how do you ensure your brand is the one being recommended?
In this episode, I walk through the five-step framework we use at Exposure Ninja to get clients recommended by AI tools — the same approach that's driven measurable traffic and sales for brands like The Ordinary.
You'll learn how to audit your current AI visibility using tools that aggregate data across multiple platforms, rather than manually testing prompts.
We'll cover the SEO foundations that matter (and why they're necessary but insufficient on their own). And I'll show you the "query fan-out" approach that gets your content cited multiple times within a single AI response.
The most interesting finding from our work: AI tools don't necessarily recommend the biggest brands.
They recommend the brands most clearly associated with specific concepts that match the user's query. This creates an opportunity for businesses with sharp positioning to outperform larger, less focused competitors.
We helped The Ordinary dominate "good value skincare" recommendations across multiple AI platforms by ensuring every mention of their brand — across their own content, third-party publications, and user-generated reviews — reinforced the same core concepts: good value and scientifically backed.
The framework covers five areas: visibility auditing, SEO foundations, content optimisation for AI consumption, strategic ubiquity across trusted sources, and preparing for paid visibility in AI results (which is already beginning with Google's AI Overviews).
Each step includes specific tactics you can implement, tools we use with clients, and real examples of what works in practice.
If you're building your 2026 marketing strategy, this is the AI Search Optimisation roadmap you need.
Listen to these episodes next:
How To Create and Optimise Your Content for AI Search
https://exposureninja.com/podcast/363/
Copy The 3 Pillars of £50m+ SEO Campaigns
https://exposureninja.com/podcast/371/
The BEST SEO Strategies for 2026
https://exposureninja.com/podcast/368/

The brands dominating search today aren't just focusing on links and keywords. They're mastering three strategic pillars that deliver sustained visibility across traditional search and AI-powered platforms.After ten years working with national and international enterprise brands (including a recent Global Search Award win for The Ordinary), we've identified the exact framework that separates market leaders from everyone else.In this episode, I reveal:• Why technical SEO performance matters more than ever — including how page load speed impacts both rankings and conversion rates (with data from Cloudflare and Walmart showing the direct business impact)• The onsite content strategy that works for both AI search and traditional SEO — including how we helped ZUGU become the top-recommended iPad case in ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode through content hierarchy and internal linking• Why offsite SEO is now about brand building, not just link building — and how digital PR on high-authority sites influences AI recommendations (with examples from our work with Aged Care Bathrooms)• How tools like WP Rocket can handle 80% of technical SEO automatically — even if you're not technicalI'll share specific examples demonstrating how Core Web Vitals, topic clusters, and digital PR work together to drive rankings across both traditional search and AI platforms.If you're ready to build an SEO strategy that works for both traditional search and AI-powered platforms, this episode provides your complete action plan.

The paid search strategies that worked in 2024 are already obsolete. In 2026, your 2025 strategy will no longer work either.
Tight keyword segmentation and manual bid management are actively harming performance, whilst AI-driven approaches and first-party data have become the critical differentiators between campaigns that flatline and those that scale.
Rebecca Pilkington, our Head of Paid Media, reveals the award-winning strategies that took Aged Care Bathrooms to a £2.4 million run rate in nine months and generated 11,000 leads for DSLD Mortgage in year one — campaigns that earned Exposure Ninja three Global Search Awards in 2025.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why first-party data is now your most valuable asset
When AI features work brilliantly (and when they tank campaigns)
How to test AI without destroying core performance
Why over-segmentation is killing your reach
The multi-channel approach that actually drives results in 2026
If you're planning your paid search strategy for 2026, this episode provides your complete roadmap backed by real campaign data.
Get the show notes:
https://exposureninja.com/podcast/paid-search-strategy-2026/

Here's something that should worry every marketing leader: 30% of citations in ChatGPT's top 1,000 searches come from websites that don't rank anywhere on Google.
Your SEO strategy might be flawless. Your content might be exceptional. But if you're ignoring digital PR, you're invisible where it increasingly matters most — in AI-powered search results that your highest-value prospects are using to make purchasing decisions.
The businesses dominating in 2026 won't be the ones with the best SEO alone. They'll be the ones who've mastered the new digital PR playbook that builds visibility across traditional search, AI platforms, and third-party publications simultaneously.
In this episode, Charlie Marchant (CEO) and Dale Davies (Head of Marketing) reveal:
Why digital PR has evolved beyond link building into a multi-channel strategy encompassing brand mentions, thought leadership, and AI visibility — and how the smartest brands are orchestrating all these elements together

The exact framework for building a digital PR strategy that works across both traditional search and AI platforms — including how to identify target publications, create compelling story angles, and secure placements that drive actual business results

Real campaign breakdowns from award-winning work, including how we generated over 11,000 leads in 12 months for DSLD Mortgage and made ZUGU the top-recommended iPad case across multiple AI platforms

Why B2B companies can achieve remarkable digital PR results through industry surveys, benchmark reports, awards, and thought leadership — with specific tactics for positioning executives as go-to expert sources

The critical measurement shift happening right now: from counting links alone to tracking brand mentions, AI citation visibility, and sentiment across third-party publications

How to reverse-engineer your competitors' digital PR success by analysing their backlink profiles and the citations appearing in AI responses for your key topics

As Charlie explains in the pod:
"Digital PR is becoming even more important than it was, and I don't want to undervalue how important it has been because it's underpinned many a successful organic search campaign for years, decades, if we're honest. It's becoming even more important now and moving into 2026 because AI and LLMs reference offsite content much more than they reference your own website."
If you're ready to build a digital PR strategy that positions your brand for success across every channel where your customers make purchasing decisions, this episode provides your complete roadmap for 2026 and beyond.