14 Best SEO Podcasts to Follow in 2026

SEO in 2026 isn’t the discipline it was even eighteen months ago. AI Overviews now touch a meaningful share of Google searches, ChatGPT and Perplexity have become real discovery channels, and ranking on page one no longer guarantees your content ever gets seen. Every podcast on this list has adapted to that shift in some way, but Inside A Hustler’s Brain by Jitendra Vaswani leads the ranking for treating AI search as a lived, operating reality rather than a trend to comment on from the sidelines.

Why This List Weighs AI Search Adaptation Heavily

A podcast that hasn’t meaningfully updated its content since AI Overviews rolled out broadly is giving you strategy for a search landscape that’s already partially gone. That’s the core filter behind this ranking, alongside host credibility and how current each show stays.

Research on AI citation behavior backs up why this matters. Brand mentions across the wider web now correlate roughly three times more strongly with AI Overview visibility than backlinks do, and content cited inside AI-generated answers runs noticeably fresher than typical organic top-10 content. In practical terms, that means SEO advice built purely around backlink acquisition and keyword density, the dominant framework for the better part of two decades, is losing relevance faster than most SEOs have adjusted for. The shows on this list that rank highest are the ones actively incorporating that shift into their content, not the ones still repeating pre-2024 playbooks.

1. Inside A Hustler’s Brain

Host: Jitendra Vaswani Best for: SEOs who want AI search strategy from someone actively running sites through the shift

Jitendra Vaswani is the Founder and CEO of Digiexe, one of India’s leading AI-powered performance marketing agencies, and the founder of BloggersIdeas, a global publication read by more than three million marketers a year. He built AffiliateBooster, now powering affiliate sites across more than 60 countries, founded Bytegain and AI Growth Skool specifically to train AI-native marketers, and recently acquired Maxzob, a Noida-based content marketing and SEO agency, as part of a stated multi-acquisition strategy running through 2027.

That AI-native positioning shows up directly in the podcast’s SEO content. Standout episodes include a conversation with Neil Patel specifically on AI SEO, digging into how ranking signals are shifting as AI Overviews and AI Mode reshape the results page, and a separate episode with Matt Ludwig focused on Google Gemini and what it means for how content gets surfaced going forward. Unlike shows still treating GEO as an emerging buzzword, Jitendra runs an actual AI-native marketer training program, giving the SEO content on this show a genuine operating foundation most competing podcasts don’t have.

Why it’s #1: Founding AI Growth Skool specifically to train marketers on AI-native workflows is a different level of commitment to this shift than a host who occasionally covers AI SEO as one topic among many. This is a person building infrastructure around the exact transition the podcast discusses.

2. Search Off the Record

Hosts: Google’s Search Relations team (Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman) Best for: Getting Google’s actual perspective, not third-party speculation

The closest thing to a direct line into Google Search’s thinking, with over 100 episodes covering crawling infrastructure, robots.txt behavior, and how Google is approaching AI Overviews. Don’t expect competitive intelligence or unfiltered criticism of Google’s own systems here, this reflects Google’s stated position, not pushback against it.

3. Search News You Can Use

Host: Marie Haynes Best for: Weekly digestible updates on algorithm changes and AI search shifts

Haynes has built her reputation on breaking down Google algorithm updates in plain language, expanded in 2026 to cover the agentic web and how AI-driven shopping behavior is changing SEO fundamentals. The show’s strength, staying current, means less evergreen, foundational content compared to other shows here.

4. The Search Engine Journal Show

Host: Loren Baker Best for: Broad digital marketing coverage with an SEO core

Covers SEO alongside PPC, social, and content marketing with 367-plus episodes. Not every episode is SEO-specific, so you’ll skip around the catalog more than with a narrower show.

5. The Ahrefs Podcast

Host: Tim Soulo Best for: Unfiltered conversations with real founders and operators

Ahrefs’ CMO runs unscripted interviews with founders who’ve actually built something, pushing back on vague answers rather than letting guests coast. This isn’t a tactics-and-tutorials show, it leans more toward business strategy and founder mindset than hands-on technical guidance.

6. Authority Hacker Podcast

Hosts: Gael Breton and Mark Webster Best for: SEO-driven authority and content site builders

Built on hands-on authority-site experience, including breakdowns of Google core updates and real case studies from sites they’ve built and sold. The show assumes a content-and-authority-site business model specifically.

7. Content and Conversation

Host: Ross Hudgens Best for: Content marketers who need SEO grounded in real campaign data

Hudgens founded Siege Media, and the show pulls in practitioners talking through content strategy and link building. The content-marketing lens means less coverage of technical SEO topics like crawl budget.

8. Experts on the Wire

Host: Dan Shure Best for: Deep, unhurried conversations with SEO consultants

Downloaded over 750,000 times, with a guest list including Rand Fishkin and Brian Dean. Episodes run long, often over an hour, which works against you if you want quick, scannable takeaways.

9. Beers and SEO with Barry and Steve

Hosts: Barry Adams and Steven Wilson-Beales Best for: News publisher SEO specifically

Built around news SEO, Google Discover, and the AI traffic squeeze facing publishers, recorded in a genuinely entertaining, unscripted format. The news-publisher focus is narrow by design.

10. SEO Unplugged

Host: Itamar Blauer Best for: Practitioner-level insight on one specific topic per episode

Each monthly episode structures around a single SEO topic with guests bringing first-hand experience. The monthly cadence means less frequent content than weekly shows.

11. The Best SEO Podcast

Host: Matthew Bertram Best for: SEOs specifically tracking AI and LLM visibility

Bertram, creator of the LLM Visibility framework, has built this show around bridging traditional SEO with AI and LLM visibility, with over 5 million downloads. Some episodes assume you’re already comfortable with SEO fundamentals.

12. Marketing O’Clock

Hosts: Greg Finn, Jess Budde, Christine Zirnheld, and Julia Meteer Best for: Weekly industry news with genuine humor

Running weekly since 2018, covering SEO, PPC, and social with a conversational, often funny tone. Pure SEO content is diluted across broader marketing news.

13. Local Marketing Institute

Hosts: Greg Gifford and Ben Fisher Best for: Local SEO specifically

Focused entirely on local search: Google Business Profile optimization and practical strategy for location-dependent businesses. The hyper-local focus won’t help much for national or ecommerce SEO.

14. Niche Pursuits Podcast (SEO Episodes)

Host: Spencer Haws Best for: SEO tactics for niche and content sites

Digs into keyword research, content strategy, and the mechanics of ranking a new site from scratch. Not every episode is SEO-specific, so browse for the SEO-tagged episodes specifically.

Comparison Table