Day 2 of SEO Week 2026 managed to make an entire room of marketers collectively confront our feelings.
Which, to be fair, was overdue.
After spending hours on Day 1 breaking down embeddings, retrieval systems, rerankers, entropy, and invisible AI infrastructure, we shifted gears on Day 2 to something a bit messier: people.
Trust, fear, identity, bias, decision making, creativity, persuasion and change management – the emotional side of marketing that most of us pretend is “soft” right up until it completely determines whether anyone buys anything.
Like last year, the Psychology of SEO wasn’t really about SEO in the traditional sense but more about understanding human behavior in a world where AI increasingly moves between brands and audiences. Unlike last year, though, we’re further along in the AI search process and agentic search with, well, excuse me for saying but extreme personalization is now a major consideration. We spent Day 2 talking about figuring out what matters when information becomes infinite, content becomes automated, and everyone is suddenly trying to do three jobs at once because a robot can do so much of so many of our jobs now.
Day 2 was thoughtful, occasionally existential (honestly, lots of existentialism the whole week!), weirdly therapeutic, and again my personal favorite day of the conference.
Also, at least three talks felt like group therapy sessions disguised as presentations. We needed that.
Here’s a look back at Day 2 👇
Jump to the speakers
Download all of the decks from our SEO Week Day Two speakers #
SEO is a performance channel, GEO isn’t. How do you pivot? #
We love Wil. His energy is undeniable, and in true Wil fashion he opened the day by immediately throwing everyone into a full identity crisis.
His talk focused on the growing disconnect between traditional SEO measurement and the new reality of AI-driven discovery. And underneath the tactical discussion was a much bigger message about trust, credibility, and deciding what kind of marketer you actually want to be.
Wil basically challenged the entire room to stop optimizing for visibility alone and start thinking about whether people actually believe what brands are saying.
"We're at the point in marketing when you have to decide who the f*ck you want to be."
- Wil Reynolds
Key points
- Visibility alone is not meaningful if it doesn’t create trust
- GEO and SEO operate under different measurement systems
- Marketing should focus on belief and credibility, not just reach
- AI-generated “zombie content” creates trust problems
- Domain authority matters less than actual authority in a niche
Important Takeaway
The future belongs to brands people actually trust, not brands producing the largest volume of forgettable content.
Resources
SEOs Own Less Than We Think: The Influence Gap No One Trains You For #
Bianca took us back to practicality with a focus on internal blockers, something everyone deals with but nobody likes talking about.
Legal teams, stakeholders, slow approvals, organizational politics; the soul-draining reality of trying to get anything done at a large company. Many of us have been there, and soul-draining is genuinely accurate.
Instead of framing constraints as obstacles, Bianca argued that smart teams treat them as strategic inputs. Which sounds obvious until you think about how many people spend 70% of their week angrily Slack messaging about approvals.
“View constraints by other teams as the start of your own strategy and not the blocker.”
- Bianca Anderson
Key points
- Constraints can become strategic advantages
- Legal concerns often come from uncertainty and risk perception
- Objective language reduces organizational friction
- Visibility and credit-sharing increase long-term buy-in
- Collaboration beats territorial behavior
Important Takeaway
The teams that move fastest are often the ones best at navigating people, not just technology.
Resources
The Death of the Middleman: Why “Good Enough” AI is Killing Traditional Marketing #
John’s session hit one of the biggest themes hanging over the entire conference: if AI handles more production work, what’s left for humans?
His straightforward answer was refreshing – the real differentiators are taste, judgment, empathy, and strategy, the kinds of skills AI still struggles to replicate because they come from lived experience, context, and nuance.
John focused heavily on how agencies and teams need to rethink their value proposition now that execution and production work are becoming increasingly automated.
“AI can make the content but it can’t make people care.”
- John Doherty
Key points
- AI is eliminating production bottlenecks rapidly
- Human value increasingly comes from taste and judgment
- Agencies must shift from selling labor to selling outcomes
- AI accelerates workflows but not strategic thinking
- Teams need people who can orchestrate systems, not just execute tasks
Important Takeaway
The future isn’t human versus AI. It’s humans who know how to direct systems versus humans who don’t.
Resources
Run Persona Run: A Year in the Life of Me, Myself, and AI #
Garrett somehow managed to make personalization both fascinating and deeply unsettling (he also had us laughing with his wildly, purposefully misattributed quotes to Abraham Lincoln and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, to name a few).
His presentation walked through a wild, fascinating year-long experiment that kinda scared me, testing how AI search systems respond differently to various personas, behaviors, contexts, and signals. The results were pretty clear and a little jarring – AI systems are increasingly trying to infer who you are, not just what you typed.
Which is creepy when you say it out loud, let’s be honest.
“Google has everything and it’s creepy as hell. They want more with your explicit permission.”
- Garrett Sussman
Key points
- AI search results increasingly vary by persona and context
- Search is shifting from prompt interpretation to person interpretation
- Personal data heavily influences recommendations
- AI personalization creates fragmented experiences
- Different personas receive dramatically different brand visibility
Important Takeaway
The future of search may be less about universal rankings and more about individualized realities.
Resources
How YOU can Navigate the Fractured Funnel and the Rise of Delegated Choice Using Behavioural Science #
Azeem brought behavioral science into the conversation and reminded everyone that people are not nearly as rational as we marketers love to tell ourselves they are.
His talk was all about concepts like the Default Effect and Status Quo Bias, and how they influence modern search behavior, especially as users increasingly rely on AI systems, social platforms, and recommendation engines to make decisions for them.
Also, somehow a story involving fake royal tea endorsements made complete sense in context. (This is why I love this conference.)
"We accept what's already there. We don't question the pre-selected option."
- Azeem Ahmad
Key points
- People tend to trust default choices automatically
- AI systems inherit and amplify bias
- Younger audiences increasingly discover through social platforms
- User behavior varies heavily by generation
- Discovery habits are fragmenting across platforms
Important Takeaway
People are increasingly outsourcing decisions to systems they barely understand, which creates huge implications for trust and influence.
Resources
Managing the FUD Out of Change #
Brittan’s talk was a bit of a collective exhale after a morning of facing the realities of AI trying to know us, like really really know us.
Instead of doomposting about AI disruption, she focused on how teams and individuals can navigate fear, uncertainty, and doubt without spiraling into paralysis. It was practical, grounded, and refreshingly human.
We needed this one by mid-afternoon.
“What if we use fear as a signal and not a strategy?”
- Brittan King
Key points
- Fear should be treated as a signal, not a strategy
- Trust is becoming increasingly important in decision making
- AI disruption creates emotional as well as operational challenges
- Cognitive sovereignty matters in rapidly changing environments
- Teams need healthier approaches to uncertainty
Important Takeaway
Adaptation becomes much easier when fear stops driving every decision.
Learning from “Trifecta” Content - Pages That Drive Rankings, Visibility, and Engagement #
Amanda tackled the increasingly impossible definition of “quality content.”
Her talk explored how content now has to satisfy multiple gatekeepers simultaneously: traditional search engines, AI systems, and actual human audiences with functioning attention spans. Great. Really nothing to worry too much about, right?
The larger point was that quality is now the *starting point, *not the differentiator.
“The entire paradigm of how we think about content has shifted.”
- Amanda Milligan
Key points
- “Good content” has become the baseline expectation
- AI systems reward information-rich content
- First-person experience increasingly matters
- Content needs to perform across multiple platforms simultaneously
- Actionable insights matter more than generic data dumps
Important Takeaway
Modern content has to do more than rank. It has to teach, engage, differentiate, and survive AI interpretation.
Quality Wins: How to Scale AI Content Without Losing What Makes It Work #
Alex focused on one of the biggest tensions in modern marketing: how do you scale content production with AI without flattening your brand into generic sludge?
Using data from billions of citations, he talked about what AI systems actually reward and why freshness, specificity, and strong brand context matter. The phrase “don’t become a content factory” was felt in the room for sure.
"We moved from thinking about the whole page to a specific passage.”
- Alex Halliday
Key points
- AI systems increasingly reward information-rich passages
- Fresh content has significantly higher citation likelihood
- Human oversight still matters heavily
- Brand context shapes AI content quality
- Volume alone does not create authority
Important Takeaway
Scaling content is easy now. Maintaining quality and differentiation is the hard part.
Teach The Shit Out Of Everything #
Ian was very straightforward and oddly reassuring. Reminding us that teaching remains one of the most powerful ways to build trust online, regardless of how search interfaces evolve, was grounding. AI systems, search engines, and humans all tend to reward people who really help others solve problems, and we needed that reminder.
Funny how that keeps surviving every algorithm shift.
“Teaching builds trust.”
- Ian Lurie
Key points
- Teaching builds trust across platforms
- Real expertise matters more than performative authority
- Helpful content solves practical problems
- AI systems reward trust-building signals
- Educational content creates long-term value
Important Takeaway
The brands and people who genuinely help others will continue to outperform those chasing shortcuts.
Resources
I Have a Degree for This: Reclaiming Your Expertise, Identity, and Edge in an AI-Mandated World #
I was really looking forward to Angela’s talk. She closed the day with one of the most emotionally honest talks of the conference, and it definitely exceeded my (admittedly already high) expectations.
She explored the anxiety many of us are feeling around AI mandates, productivity expectations, skill atrophy, and the pressure to constantly move faster. Rather than pretending everyone is thrilled about AI transformation, she acknowledged the discomfort directly.
The room appreciated it. I know I did.
“It is worth it to use your mind than to take the easy way out.”
- Angela Clark
Key points
- Many professionals fear losing creative and critical thinking skills
- AI mandates create real emotional and operational tension
- Teams need buy-in, not just tool adoption
- Workplace access to AI tools creates equity concerns
- Human expertise still matters deeply
Important Takeaway
The future of work isn’t just about adopting AI tools. It’s about preserving the human skills that make those tools valuable in the first place.
Resources
Post-Content Meetups #
After a psychologically involved day, SEO Week spread out across the city into a series of sponsor-hosted gatherings from AirOps, Yext, and DemandSphere. We found more energy to keep conversations going over rooftop drinks, vinyl DJ sets, lightning talks, and open bars. One of the best parts of SEO Week has always been the conversations that happen after the sessions end, and Day 2 fully delivered on that tradition.
AirOps
AirOps and Tech SEO Connect hosted what they perfectly described as an “official unofficial” SEO Week afterparty, and the vibe leaned much more New York nightlife than traditional conference networking event.
The space filled quickly, continuing the day’s conversations over drinks, bites, with NYC DJ Justin Strauss. It felt curated without feeling overly polished.
The event gave people room to keep talking through the ideas from the conference in a setting that felt social instead of transactional.
Demandsphere
DemandSphere brought back its FOUND Meetup for the second year, again hosting attendees in a Midtown loft space that felt both cozy and packed.
Alongside food, drinks, and an open bar, DemandSphere featured a series of lightning talks where speakers had three minutes to present their ideas before the audience voted live for their favorites. The competitive element escalated quickly once people realized the top prize was a Mac Mini.
The format was a great for the crowd: fast, funny, creative, and surprisingly insightful.
Yext
I ended up at Yext’s rooftop gathering at Elsie Rooftop and Empire Terrace; it was exactly the kind of atmosphere you want after a packed conference day. Super chill, conversational, and full of smart people trying to decompress while still accidentally talking about AI search.
There was a lot of laughter, some genuinely great discussions, and a steady background buzz around the Knicks vs. Hawks Game 7 watch party happening alongside the event.
Final Thoughts on Day 1 #
Last year Day 2 was my personal favorite, and the same was true this year. It’s fascinating how the importance and advancement of personalization seems to be growing exponentially; the meaning of “Persona” is now wildly more inclusive in ways we’ve never faced before. The content on this on Day 2 was like a giant reality check. We’re not “getting there” – we’re here.
And underneath all of it are still people trying to figure out who to trust, what to believe, how to adapt, and how to maintain some sense of identity while the internet keeps shape-shifting every six months.