I spend a lot of my week with headphones on. Walking the dog, driving to meetings, doing the dishes. Somewhere along the way, podcasts became how I keep up with an industry that changes faster than I can read about it.

If you’re looking for the best SEO podcasts, this is the short list: 12 shows still publishing in 2026 that are actually worth your time. They’re useful for SEO professionals, marketers, business owners, and content strategists who want current, credible insight on where search is going, whether you’re just getting started or already deep in the work.

The problem with most “best SEO podcasts” lists is that they pad themselves out. Twenty or thirty shows, half of which stopped publishing in 2023. Nobody has time for that, and neither do you.

So here’s the shorter version. Twelve shows I actually keep in my rotation, picked because they still publish, teach something real, and cover the parts of SEO that matter right now: Google updates, AI in search, technical SEO, content strategy, search marketing, and practical business advice. I already wrote up the tools side of your 2026 SEO stack, so think of this as the other half: the stuff that goes in your ears instead of your browser.

One note before we get into it. Search has changed more in the last eighteen months than in the five years before that, and half these shows now spend serious time on AI search, not just blue links. That’s not filler. If your traffic, content strategy, or client work depends on organic visibility, keeping up with trustworthy SEO thinking is no longer optional. Google finally published its own guidance on optimizing for AI search, and it’s worth reading alongside any of these.

How I chose these 12

Three rules. One, the show has to still be publishing. A dead podcast is a blog post you can’t skim. Two, signal over noise. I don’t care how big the download numbers are if every episode is a forty-minute ad. Three, it has to teach me something I can use, or at least change how I think about the work.

Those rules are why a few well-known shows didn’t make the cut, including a couple that simply stopped publishing. More on those at the end.

The 12 best SEO podcasts in 2026

1. Search Off the Record

This is Google’s own podcast, Search Off the Record, hosted by the Search Relations team as the record host team from Google Search: John Mueller, Martin Splitt, Gary Illyes, Lizzi Sassman, with Danny Sullivan dropping in. If you want SEO information straight from the people who work on Search, this is the closest you’ll get. Recent episodes have dug into how Google’s crawling actually works, with behind-the-scenes insight into Google Search, whether you even need a website in 2026, and what AI is doing to search.

Honest take: it’s still Google talking, so you’re getting the company’s view, not unfiltered truth. Listen to understand how Google wants you to think, then cross-check it against the independent voices below. Best for separating what Google actually says from what the rumor mill claims it said.

2. Search News You Can Use

Dr. Marie Haynes has been the person I trust most on Google algorithm updates for years. Her weekly show breaks down what’s moving and what to do about it, and lately she has gone deep on the shift to AI and agentic search. When I needed to make sense of the March 2026 core update, hers was one of the first places I went.

Fair warning: if you’ve followed Marie for a while, the show leans much harder into AI now than it used to. That’s where search is heading, so I get it, but it is a different show than it was two years ago. Best for making sense of core updates without spiraling.

3. The Search Engine Journal Show

Search Engine Journal is one of the few SEO publications I actually read, and the show is the audio version: interviews with practitioners and the occasional big name, built around whatever is happening in search that week. Loren Baker and the SEJ crew know how to ask a useful question. Best for news plus practitioner interviews, without the fluff.

4. The Ahrefs Podcast

Tim Soulo, Ahrefs’ CMO, hosts this, and the trick is that it is barely an SEO show. It’s a marketing show. He sits down with founders and growth leaders and gets into positioning, hiring, branding, the business stuff that actually decides whether your SEO matters. If you’re tired of tactics and want to zoom out, this is the one. Best for SEOs who want to think like marketers instead of technicians.

5. Crawling Mondays

Aleyda Solis is one of the sharpest technical SEOs working, and Crawling Mondays is her video-first show. It lives on YouTube but you can stream the audio anywhere. She runs interviews and panels, often on technical and international SEO, which are two areas most shows skip. The catch: it is not weekly. New episodes show up roughly monthly, so don’t expect a steady drip. When they land, they’re worth it. Best for technical and international SEO you won’t get elsewhere.

6. Search with Candour

Jack Chambers-Ward puts this out every Monday from the UK agency Candour, and he is a genuinely good interviewer. He pushes guests past the surface-level answers, and the topics swing from technical SEO to digital PR to whatever Google just changed. If you want one reliable weekly show with strong guests, start here. Best for a steady weekly rundown that doesn’t recycle the same advice.

7. The SEO Show

Michael Costin and Arthur Fabik are two Australian SEOs with about a decade each in the trenches, and their episodes run around twenty-six minutes, which is roughly one commute. The whole point of the show is separating tactics that work from advice that just sounds good, and it’s written with business owners and do-it-yourself SEOs in mind. No fluff, no long intros. Best for short, practical listens when you’re pressed for time.

8. EDGE of the Web

Erin Sparks has been doing this for years, and the format is a weekly news segment paired with interviews, often with names you’ll recognize. It is high-energy, which either works for you or doesn’t, but the news coverage is consistent and the guest list is strong. Best for a weekly news-and-interview combo with some personality.

9. The Long Game

This is Omniscient Digital’s show, run by their co-founders, and it leans less toward “here are five quick tactics” and more toward how content and SEO actually compound over time. They are well past 200 episodes, it comes out weekly, and the conversations favor strategy and the mental models behind why some content wins. Best for content strategists and B2B marketers who want depth over hacks.

10. Niche Pursuits

Spencer Haws and Jared Bauman run this one, and it is less pure SEO and more how to build an online business that happens to run on search. The interviews are where it earns its spot: real site owners walking through real numbers, what a Google update did to their traffic, how they recovered or didn’t. New episodes land weekly. Fair warning, it ranges wide into affiliate sites, newsletters, and monetization, so not every episode is strictly about ranking. Best for people building a content site who want honest numbers, not theory.

11. Authority Hacker

Gael Breton and Mark Webster have been at this since 2016, and Ahrefs has voted it the top marketing podcast more than once. It started in classic SEO and affiliate territory and has lately gone deep on AI tools and automation, which is either exactly what you want right now or a turn you’ll want to know about going in. The episodes are systems-first: here is the workflow we built, here is what it replaced, with actionable strategies grounded in white-hat SEO and case studies. It comes out every couple of weeks, and it also does a good job of breaking complex ideas into practical steps for listeners who are still leveling up. Best for operators who would rather automate the busywork than grind it out by hand.

12. SEO 101

If you want an SEO podcast for beginners, this is the one I hand people first. Ross Dunn and Scott Van Achte have been running it since 2009, which makes it the longest-running SEO show going, and the whole premise is teaching SEO from square one without burying you in jargon. New episodes come out a couple of times a month, and even John Mueller has admitted to listening. Pair it with a solid grounding in how to do keyword research and you’ve got a real foundation. Best for beginners and small business owners who want plain-English SEO.

New to SEO? Where to start

If you’re just getting into this, twelve shows is too many. Don’t subscribe to all of them. Start with SEO 101 for the fundamentals; beginners often do well with shows that present SEO lessons in manageable steps, as Recipe for SEO Success did. Then add Search News You Can Use so you’re not blindsided when Google changes something. That’s it. Two shows, one for learning and one for staying current.

The fastest way to feel less lost is to understand the AI side too, because it is reshaping everything these shows talk about. If you want the plain-English version of how generative engine optimization actually works, read that first, and the AI-heavy episodes will start to make sense, while beginner-friendly shows such as SERP’s Up also helped people understand real world examples, applications, and trends.

A few shows I left off (and why)

Three omissions worth explaining, because you’ll still see them on other lists.

The Recipe for SEO Success was the show I used to hand beginners. Kate Toon ran it for about a decade and made SEO genuinely approachable for small business owners. She wrapped it up in early 2026, though, after close to 300 episodes. The back catalog is still a great place to learn, so it earns a mention. Just know that new episodes aren’t coming.

SERP’s Up, the Wix show with Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein, was a fun way to stay current. As far as I can tell it has gone quiet, with nothing new since early 2025, and Mordy has since turned up co-hosting the news segment on EDGE of the Web. If it comes back, I’ll be glad. For now, the archive is the draw.

Experts on the Wire by Dan Shure is one of the most technically interesting SEO shows ever made. The reason it’s not on a “worth your weekly time” list is simple: it barely publishes anymore. If you want a weekend project, the back catalog is a goldmine. Just don’t expect new episodes on a schedule.

How to actually fit these into your week

Here’s the part most of these lists skip. Twelve podcasts sounds great until you realize that’s ten-plus hours of audio a week, and you have a job.

So don’t. Pick two. One to keep you current, one to make you think. Listen at 1.25x if your brain can handle it. Skip episodes that don’t apply to you, because guilt is not a content strategy. When those two start feeling like a habit instead of a chore, add a third.

The shows are only useful if what you hear turns into something you actually do. Apply those actionable insights by testing clearer calls to action to improve conversion rates, using attribution tracking to see what actually drives leads, and simplifying web pages so skimmers are more likely to keep reading. That’s the whole game, and it’s the part the podcasts can’t do for you.