SEO in 2026 is just good content marketing with a technical backbone. I've been tracking the correlation between keyword rankings and actual user engagement metrics for a couple of years now, and the data keeps pointing the same way: clicks, time on page, and scroll depth are dwarfing everything else in Google's weightings.
It's less about tricking PageRank and more about being the resource that keeps people from hitting the back button. For me, that means spending less time on keyword stuffing and more on structuring pages to answer the intent quickly - then backing it up with real examples or data tables.
Someone in another thread called it "usability-first SEO," and I think that nails it. If you're still chasing volume over helpfulness, you're going to see your traffic drop off a cliff in the next core update.
