As we approached the end of 2025, debates within the SEO industry swirled over whether AI necessitates a strategic shift. These discussions have continued into 2026, but now, we’re diving into tangible testing and implementation stages.
To truly adapt to the ever-changing search landscape, it’s crucial for us to dismantle the SEO silos and allow our SEO teams to lead as strategic quarterbacks in enhancing brand authority.
Traditionally, organic search has been an invaluable source of insight into consumer behavior, platform evolution, brand positioning, and organic influence.
In our current environment, large language models (LLMs) are heavily influenced by earned media content. Press releases, social media content, UGC, your own website, retail platforms, YouTube, and Reddit discussions—all play significant roles in shaping LLMs’ understanding of our brands and products, enabling them to generate accurate responses for users.
The time has come to introduce a new operational model—one that transitions SEO from a purely technical discipline to a pivotal driver of brand presence.
A phased blueprint for a cross-functional AI SEO team
Discussing 2026 with brands often elicits the same response: “There’s so much to tackle, and we can only manage so much at a time.” They’re not wrong. Attempting to address every concern simultaneously squanders resources.
The key to a more effective AI SEO operating system is prioritizing what matters most and ensuring cooperation across organizational boundaries based on prioritization.
Focus on higher-priority collaborations through your SEO quarterback, executing actions in well-planned phases rather than all at once.
Phase 1: Collaborating on your owned assets
Essential collaborators: Web development, content, and product teams.
Before concerning ourselves too much with marketing and influencing an LLM’s view of our brand, it’s vital to focus on the accurate facts we convey through our owned assets. Building a robust AI search foundation begins with our own website, where we exert the most control.
The SEO pivot
We’re transitioning from optimizing solely for specific search terms to ensuring data is structured for undeniable extraction by bots.
The collaborative effort
The SEO quarterback partners with product and sales teams to identify information LLMs might need based on actual customer conversations and product usage. These insights guide the content team in addressing information gaps and inform the web development team to implement structural adjustments for improved extraction.
The goal
Our aim is to establish a definitive truth source for our brand. We want all factual claims about our products—from practical uses to specifications and availability—to be so clear and structured that they become the primary reference, ensuring AI sources reliable, accurate data from us.
Failure to do so leads AI to generate information based on assumptions made from elsewhere.
Phase 2: Collaborating on your earned assets
Essential collaborators: PR and communications, creative, brand, social media, and commerce teams.
Once we have our foundation in place, expanding into other sources is crucial. LLMs often prioritize external voices and sources over our internal narratives.
AI search generates responses by validating facts across the internet. This is where our SEO strategies must align with PR and communications efforts to influence the sources AI trusts.
The SEO pivot
Rather than amassing numerous backlinks, we focus on gaining high-value citations to foster brand mentions and authority in niche domains. This shift moves from old-school link-building to crafting enduring narratives that accrue brand authority.
The collaborative effort
The SEO quarterback collaborates with PR and communications teams to transition from episodic media engagements to an “always-on” approach by recycling and syndicating content stories.
Creative and brand teams integrate with the larger content strategy, providing insights into topics supported by video content. The period is ripe for including the organic social team, aligning themes across platforms to maintain narrative consistency and maximize content utility.
For ecommerce brands, commerce and marketplace teams offer a valuable source for chatbots in verifying product data. Maximize retailer real estate as part of your broader product description page (PDP) strategy.
The goal
We aim for consistency in factual validation—whether it’s the technical specifications on a retailer’s PDP or the sentiment expressed in a press article. By transforming these off-site entities into extensions of our truth foundation, we sculpt the consensus AI requires to accurately represent our brand.
Phase 3: Building your brand and community
Essential collaborators: Social and community management, paid social and search, affiliate marketing teams.
The final phase focuses on influencing human signals from user-generated content. AI models supplement their learning by scraping platforms like Reddit, YouTube, third-party review sites, and niche communities to gauge public perception.
While Phase 1 is about our narrative and Phase 2 focuses on expert opinions, Phase 3 ensures our community corroborates these narratives.
The SEO pivot
We now optimize for community authority and sentiment, shifting from mere presence in social spaces to actively shaping narratives where AI models learn human preferences.
The collaborative effort
The SEO quarterback collaborates with social and community management teams to determine where the audience engages, what drives LLM influence, and which conversations to naturally participate in or leverage.
These insights inform the paid search team for ad copy testing or landing page strategies that align with brand directions. Coordination extends to the affiliate team for relevant domain placements and the paid social team to synchronize influencer scripts with thematic nuances that refine brand messages.
The goal
Our objective is to build brand associations and scale important conversations within our community. By expanding and nurturing these discussions, we uncover genuine customer insights to inform broader strategies.
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Integrated execution: The data exchange
This operating system relies on exchanging data, insights, and executional support. The SEO quarterback ensures every team receives the necessary inputs and strategic insights for excelling in AI search.
| Team | What they provide to the SEO lead | What they receive from the SEO lead |
| Content team | Topic expertise and high-quality creation | AI-driven keyword strategy, optimization guidelines, performance data |
| PR and communication team | Brand messaging and outreach support | Search trend analysis, brand mention monitoring, and authority targets |
| Commerce and marketplace team | Product data, reseller insights, customer pain points | PDP strategies, product visibility |
| Social media team | Engagement data, social trends, content distribution | Trending topics, cross-platform strategies |
| Web dev team | Technical infrastructure, site performance | Technical SEO audits, implementation priorities |
| Creative team | Visual assets, brand identity | AI trends, optimization data, performance insights |
Architecting your 2026 SEO team
It’s crucial for our SEO lead, whether in-house or from an agency, to hold a vocal role at the strategy table. If their role is limited to occasional audits or keyword lists, we’re missing essential insights for success.
We need an SEO leader who takes charge in steering the AI SEO operating system, emphasizing internal strategy, performance, insights, and innovation.
This leader is tasked with examining AI data and making pivotal decisions on whether to focus on content or PR strategies. Their involvement is integral in shaping the brand’s identity across multiple channels.
Agency vs. in-house: Balancing nuance and innovation
The frequent question of whether our quarterback should be an internal employee or an agency partner persists.
Ultimately, having a dedicated internal lead as the primary strategist—regardless of tactical execution—yields the best results. Full-time employees possess nuanced understanding, internal networks, and profound product knowledge otherwise hard to duplicate externally.
As SEO is inherently situational, maintaining an innovative edge solo can be challenging for in-house teams. A supportive agency partner expands the team’s capability by asking insightful questions, offering additional resources, sharing broader industry insights, and fostering collaboration.
Whether an in-house team or agency supplements your resources, the requirement remains the same: a strong leader who can nurture the cross-channel collaborations AI search demands.
AI search success stems from cross-channel collaboration
A championship team isn’t crafted merely by recruiting a star quarterback, a solid offensive line, and an elite receiver. Winning demands that the entire team follows the same playbook.
By 2026, isolated SEO strategies resemble a quarterback left in the locker room. The talent might exist, but no points are scored until the full team hits the field.
In the evolving search landscape, changes to strategic execution aren’t merely necessary—they are imperative. Elevating SEO from a technical corner to the organizational core transforms it from an expense to a vital driver of brand authority.
Empower your SEO lead to dictate plays, dismantle silos, and cultivate a brand that stands indisputably strong before both bots and human audiences.
Inspired by this post on Search Engine Land.
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