Women in Tech SEO 2026: The highlights you need to know

The Women in Tech SEO Festival, founded by Areej AbuAli, has become one of the most important dates in the search calendar. Hosted at the Barbican Centre, it brings together the people shaping the future of our industry to share what’s working, challenge what isn’t, and push search forward together. This year, Andrea Swan, Ailis Rhodes, Steph Naylor, Katheryn Watson, Elissa Wilson, Ella Bailey, and Dan Nutter joined from our SEO, Content and Digital PR teams. They immersed themselves in the conversations defining what’s next, from technical innovation to the evolving role of brand in search, and brought back the insights that will shape how we help clients grow in 2026 and beyond. We’ve put together their key takeaways below. Whether you’re refining technical foundations, scaling content strategy or building authority through Digital PR, these are the ideas worth paying attention to.

Understanding the changing landscape

Crystal Carter on “When Agents Meet Websites: How to Get Up to Speed for 2026”

AI assistants like ChatGPT, Atlas, and Gemini in Chrome are growing fast. Crystal covered everything from what agents are, what the agentic web is and how to optimise for agents. She shared that both business and consumers are driving the growth of agents, with 40% of Business Executives saying they will be involved with agentic in 2026 [Gartner].

• Key insight: websites must include rich, verifiable content so agents can provide accurate recommendations.
• Marketing impact: the chatbot is doing more heavy lifting in the funnel, leaving humans to validate. Detailed content will become critical for trust.

Tina Reis’s talk on “How to Use Data to Get Buy-In for SEO: Real-World Strategies”

Tina Reis tackled a challenge we see every day: getting great ideas out of the slide deck and into production. As Tina pointed out, if you can’t win over your stakeholders, your strategy stays on the shelf. The secret? Addressing the two sides of buy-in: the intellectual and the emotional. By using data storytelling, we can satisfy the data-driven “intellectual” side while using a narrative to connect with the “emotional” side. It’s the perfect formula for turning “maybe” into “let’s go.”

• Key insight: combine data storytelling (intellectual appeal) with narrative (emotional appeal)
• Pro tip: simplify visualisations, highlight the win, and annotate clearly to make insights impossible to ignore

Zoe Burke on “Crafting Content with Purpose: Making Your Words Work Harder”

Zoe talked us through her “PURPOSES” mnemonic to ensure content works harder:

• What’s the point: determine what you are doing is a good use of time.
• Understand the intent: what is the audience looking for?
• Research on SEO tools isn’t enough: go beyond search volume data and look at competitors, social media, etc.
• Planning for multi-platform: how can content be used on multiple platforms?
• Optimise content everywhere: use keyword research for social scripts, in PR, email, etc.
• Spin it for social: SEO, content, and social work well together.
• Evolution: evergreen content as a concept is dead. Content plans need an evolution plan.
• Stop single use content.

Leveraging AI and search

Aleyda Solis on “AI Search: Where Are We So Far and How to Win in the Current Landscape”

Aleyda unpacked the current AI search landscape and what it means for traffic, visibility, and future purchasing behaviour.

• Key insight: AI search is not separate from traditional search. There’s heavy user overlap. As AI interfaces mature, purchasing decisions may increasingly happen within them.
• Marketing impact: Future-proof your strategy by tracking emerging metrics like visibility, citations, and sentiment, not just rankings. Strong alignment between SEO, PR, and community teams will be essential.
• Tool spotlight: As AI search evolves, new tools are helping marketers track visibility beyond rankings. Radyant AI Search Dashboard monitors brand citations across AI interfaces, SimilarWeb provides broader traffic and competitive insights, and Waikay focuses on AI search exposure and sentiment. Together, they help teams measure and optimise for AI-driven discovery.

Dawn Anderson’s session on Debunking and Demystifying Generative Information Retrieval

Dawn cut through the noise surrounding generative search and challenged the industry to stay grounded in evidence.

• Key insight: In a fast-moving AI landscape, misinformation spreads easily, even among SEOs. It’s okay to say “I don’t know” while we test and learn.
• Pro tip: Focus on fundamentals. High-quality, technically sound, authoritative content still underpins success, regardless of interface changes.

Looking Ahead

AI search trends are reshaping how brands are discovered, evaluated, and trusted. From agent-led journeys to evolving visibility metrics and community-driven authority, the rules of search are changing fast. The brands that win will be the ones building technically sound, insight-led, multi-platform strategies designed for how people, and AI, actually explore the web. If you’re rethinking your SEO, content or Digital PR strategy for 2026, now is the time to act. The future of search won’t wait. Connect with our team.