Webinar Recap: Strategizing for SEO & GEO Success in 2026 and Beyond

See what the Progress Sitefinity webinar revealed about the changing search landscape, the rise of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and what marketing and IT teams should prioritize next.

Search isn’t disappearing. But where people search, how they ask questions and how they consume answers are changing rapidly.

Traditional search results now sit alongside AI-generated summaries, while platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot, as well as social platforms and online communities, are becoming a bigger part of discovery. Increasingly, users can find the information they need without ever clicking through to a website.

So, where does that leave SEO?

In the Sitefinity webinar, Strategizing for SEO & GEO Success in 2026, Alex Shumarski, Zach Stone and Preslav Atanasov looked at what’s changing, what isn’t and how organizations can adapt their SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategies without abandoning the fundamentals that already work.

How Search Is Changing in 2026

One of the clearest themes from the webinar was that search isn’t going away. Instead, where people search, how answers are assembled and what happens after a search are changing.

Traditional search still operates at enormous scale. As discussed during the webinar, Google processes roughly six times the daily query volume of ChatGPT, which itself receives around 2.5 billion prompts a day. But user behaviour is shifting, with repeat Google searches reportedly falling by around 20% in the U.S. as people increasingly get the answers they need without refining their search.

That shift is also affecting clicks. Research highlighted during the webinar found that roughly 60% of Google searches ended without a click to an external website in 2025, while organic click-through rates dropped to around 0.6% when AI Overviews appeared.

Discovery is spreading across more channels too, with more than 40% of Gen Z and younger millennials reportedly turning to TikTok or Instagram for some searches, while Reddit sees around 80 million searches each week.

For marketers, that creates an important distinction: declining clicks don’t necessarily mean declining visibility. A brand can influence someone’s research, appear in an AI-generated answer or make a buyer’s shortlist without that person ever visiting its website.

SEO Isn’t Dead, But Success Looks Different

Despite the changes, the webinar was clear on one point: SEO isn’t dead.

Many of the fundamentals that have helped organizations build search visibility remain important.

Search engines and AI systems still need to access and understand content. That means crawlability, indexation, internal linking, XML sitemaps, structured content, metadata and technical hygiene continue to matter.

Content quality remains just as important.

Rather than producing large volumes of content or focusing excessively on individual keywords, organizations need useful, expert-led content that addresses genuine user intent. Authority built through brand recognition, subject-matter depth, consistent publishing and reputable backlinks also remains an important trust signal.

As Stone explained, the surface experience of search may be changing, but many of the signals underneath it is not.

The difference is that organizations now need to think beyond whether a page ranks.

From SEO to GEO: Ranking vs. Inclusion

That shift brings Generative Engine Optimization into the picture.

One of the clearest distinctions in the webinar was between the goals of SEO and GEO. With traditional SEO, the question is often: Do you rank? With GEO, another becomes increasingly important: Are you included?

Generative engines draw from multiple sources to construct an answer, so visibility may come from having your brand mentioned, expertise represented or content cited, even without a website visit.

That makes clear, structured content increasingly important. Direct answers, question-based headings, definitions, lists, tables and step-by-step content can make information easier for generative systems to identify and use.

The goal isn’t to write for machines instead of people, but to create useful content with enough clarity and structure for both.

Authority Extends Beyond Your Own Website

Optimizing individual pages is only part of the picture. Generative systems can encounter information about an organization across review sites, media coverage, partner websites, social platforms and online communities, making consistency increasingly important.

During the webinar, the speakers illustrated this with a company describing the same product as plant-based, vegetarian, organic and a meat alternative across different channels. Conflicting descriptions can make it harder for systems to understand what the product actually is.

The same applies to brands. Clear positioning, consistent messaging and strong entity signals help systems understand who an organization is, what it does and where its expertise lies.

Third-party validation through reviews, media mentions, backlinks, original research and community discussion also contributes to that picture, reinforcing the importance of E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Named authors, credentials and real-world expertise can further strengthen those signals.

Create Content Worth Referencing

The rise of generative search also raises another question: if AI systems are synthesizing existing information, why should they choose yours?

The webinar’s answer was to give them something worth referencing.

Original research, proprietary data, real-world case studies and a distinctive point of view can help content stand apart from information that simply repeats what already exists elsewhere.

Topic depth matters as well.

Rather than relying on isolated pages, organizations can build interconnected content around the subjects most closely associated with their expertise. Individual articles can answer specific questions while linking into broader topic clusters that reinforce that authority.

The aim is not simply to produce more content. It’s to make it easier for search engines, generative systems and audiences to understand the areas in which your organization has genuine expertise.

The Technical Foundation Still Matters

None of those content strategies will achieve much if search and AI systems can’t properly access the information.

The webinar highlighted several technical priorities, including accessible HTML, clear H1-H3 heading structures, robots.txt and crawler accessibility, Core Web Vitals, page performance and schema markup.

Structured data was particularly important. Article, FAQ, product, organization and other relevant schema can provide additional context, helping systems understand what content represents and how information relates.

Teams should also check that infrastructure or content delivery configurations aren’t unintentionally blocking AI crawlers from important resources.

GEO introduces new considerations, but it doesn’t replace the need for solid technical SEO.

Measuring Visibility When the Click Doesn’t Come

If fewer searches result in a website visit, traffic and rankings can no longer tell the entire story.

The webinar highlighted three measures for understanding visibility within generative experiences:

• Citation rate: Tracks how often content is referenced or linked in AI-generated responses.
• Presence: Measures how frequently a brand appears across relevant prompts and questions.
• Sentiment: Considers how those systems describe the brand.

These don’t replace traditional measures such as rankings, organic traffic, referrals and conversions. Instead, they provide visibility into what happens before someone reaches a website, or when they never visit at all.

The speakers also stressed connecting AI referral traffic to business outcomes, particularly as visitors from generative platforms may have already completed more of their research before arriving.

SEO and GEO Are Team Responsibilities

Another major theme from the discussion was that modern search optimization can’t sit with one person or team.

Marketing has a role in understanding audience intent, building topic authority, creating answer-first content, maintaining consistent messaging, developing original research and strengthening the organization’s presence across relevant communities and channels.

IT and development teams provide the technical foundation through crawlable architecture, performance, structured data, secure and scalable hosting, APIs, content delivery and technical quality assurance.

There is also shared responsibility around content architecture, internal linking, taxonomy, tagging, measurement and ongoing optimization.

As the speakers emphasized, SEO and GEO aren’t one-time projects. They are ongoing operational disciplines.

How Sitefinity CMS Can Support SEO and GEO

Toward the end of the webinar, the discussion turned to the role of the CMS in supporting these changing requirements.

Many of the fundamentals covered throughout the session depend on having the right content and technical foundation in place. From structured content and schema to metadata, performance and flexible content delivery.

The speakers also highlighted Sitefinity capabilities designed to bring optimization closer to the content workflow.

The Sitefinity SEO Agent can provide feedback while teams work with content, helping identify opportunities around areas such as headings, keywords, phrasing and tone.

The webinar also previewed the Brand Agent, designed to help teams identify inconsistencies in brand messaging while working with content, and discussed capabilities for creating and publishing schema for different content types.

The goal is to make optimization less of a separate exercise after content has been created and more of an integrated part of the way teams create, govern and publish it.

Build the Foundation Before Chasing the Next Acronym

Looking ahead, the speakers expect search to become increasingly distributed, personalized and conversational.

Instead of simply searching for something like “best CRM software,” users can ask much more specific questions based on their organization, requirements and circumstances, and receive a synthesized response tailored to that intent.

That changes how organizations need to think about visibility.

But perhaps the most important takeaway from the webinar was also one of the simplest: don’t rush to optimize for AI while ignoring the fundamentals.

Strong technical SEO, clear positioning, genuine expertise, useful content and a well-structured digital foundation remain essential. Generative search doesn’t make those things less important. If anything, it gives them more places to have an impact.

Missed the live session? Watch the webinar on demand for the full discussion and practical recommendations for building SEO and GEO strategies in 2026 and beyond.

Watch Strategizing for SEO & GEO Success in 2026 and Beyond.