SEO isn’t dead… but the way you’ve been doing it is.

There's a lot of noise in the

SEO industry right now.

Traffic is down, clicks are

disappearing, and brands

are watching their organic

results quietly collapse.

A lot of people are shying away from sharing their opinion, but that's not really our style. We've always believed that the best client relationships are built on honesty, even when it's uncomfortable. So, here's our take.

The Reality Of SEO In 2026

7.5 million blog posts are published daily, yet 60% of searches end without a single click. Reports are showing that Google traffic to publishers is down a third in one year.

Despite this, brands are still asking their agencies to "just write more blogs."

Someone is asleep at the wheel. And I'd argue it's not the brands…

The Game Already Changed

The last decade of SEO was built on a version of Google that no longer exists. Keywords, backlinks, meta descriptions… it all worked, and then quietly, it didn't.

The uncomfortable truth is that a lot of SEO strategies being sold right now are legacy thinking dressed up in a new invoice.

Agencies that know their stuff know the game has changed. Some have told their clients, some are getting round to it. Some have absolutely no idea and are very confidently invoicing you anyway. Clients, understandably, trust the people they're paying.

What Has Actually Changed?

48% of Google searches now return an AI answer before a single link. Clicks are down 34 to 46% when that happens.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini aren't just AI tools anymore… they're search engines, used by millions of people every day who will never see your carefully optimised blog post.

Reddit threads are outranking corporate content. Somewhere out there, a bloke called Dave who typed "does anyone else find X really annoying??" in 2021 is getting more visibility than your brand's carefully crafted, agency-approved, sign-off-took-three-weeks blog post. Painful, we know.

And then there's GEO. Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of getting your brand cited by AI tools, not just ranked by Google. It's the new frontier, and most brands haven't started yet.

The Question You Need To Ask Your Agency

When did you last ask your SEO agency what they've actually changed in the last 18 months? Not what they're monitoring. Not what they're reporting on. What they've changed.

If the answer is "not much"… that's your answer.

What Actually Works In 2026

In my opinion, the goal shouldn’t be to just rank in top positions anymore. It's to be cited.

AI models don't serve up a list of blue links and hope for the best, they pick a source they trust and quote it. That source could be you. But only if you've built genuine authority across the internet, not just optimised a page on your own website.

Original opinions. Direct answers. Brand presence in communities, in trade press, in the places where real conversations happen. That's what gets you cited. That's what wins now.

And yes, Reddit. Google paid $60 million for access to Reddit's data, that's not a coincidence.

So What Now?

If this has made you question what your current SEO strategy is actually doing, good. That's the point!

The brands that will win in the next 12 months won't be the ones who waited for their agency to catch up. They'll be the ones who asked better questions, demanded a fresh approach, and treated search as the evolving, human-first discipline it's become.

At TMC we've been rebuilding how we think about SEO and GEO from the ground up. If you want to have an honest conversation about what that looks like for your brand, get in touch, we're here for it!