QUESTION: How do you choose keywords for small business websites in 2026?

ANSWER: Honestly, choosing keywords hasn’t actually changed all that much! You still need them, and they will still impact what your content will return in searches for on both traditional search, and Answer Engines. 

Keywords have NEVER been so important, in the age of AI

Even though things are changing.

Choosing the keywords for your website has always been important – from the dawn of web browsing, the internet has needed a way to categorize content. And keywords are that solution. Now, as you probably already know, search is changing. Lucky for you, it’s actually making keyword optimisation MORE important, instead of less! And that means if you’ve been blogging for ages to help with your DIY SEO management, then you’re already ahead of the game.

Now I know this is counter to most of what’s being said online about “AEO” or “Answer Engine Optimization”. There’s a lot of information out there right now about how it’s “completely different” and “revolutionizing search” and “throwing out the rule book”. But there are a whole variety of reasons that’s not accurate, and is (in my opinion) mostly a tactic to sell you new SEO management products touting to have solved these new “problems” – so many, that we can’t go through them all here.

It’s true search is changing – but what matters, isn’t.

I’ll agree wholeheartedly that browsing online is changing, much in the way that we went from calling the local library (yes, really) when we had a question, to looking that thing up online. It was a short-lived age, but it’s ABSOLUTELY something people did, I promise. Anyway, the change now, doesn’t look like the difference between a phone call and a Google search – instead, the Google search itself has become… conversational. Searches are happening in GPTs, from a variety of makers – dubbed (at this point) “Generative Search” and/or “Answer Engines” depending on where you’re getting your information.

And that change is happening fast, too. So fast, that it’s honestly not the easiest to keep up. But just because HOW searches happen is changing, doesn’t mean how the engine chooses the RESULTS is changing.

Luckily… you don’t have to reinvent the wheel

The good news, is even though things are changing from an experiential point of view, behind the scenes? Luckily, under the hood, a LOT of the same metrics as pre-2026 are used for recommending businesses and answers in general to queries made on GPT based search. I mean, how would the systems understand what’s on a webpage, without that page having been optimised for a keyword or two?

While these systems aren’t crawling your pages in exactly the same way, and are in many cases franken-hallucinating your content onto potential customer’s screens not-quite-in-the-order you intended… they still take in your page content, digest it, and somewhat-suitably distill the gist, which they either use to cite your website (list it in the results/answers) or to regurgitate your information without citing. Does that first option familiar? It should, because… that’s how traditional SEO works. Your page is distilled into its most important parts, determined by a ton of metrics including everything from your page speeds to the words and photos that appear there, as well as where else on the internet links to it and how, and then… it’s spit out by a search engine when the people who need what you do make a related search.

And that’s… well, that’s pretty much how it STILL works, just with a few added bonuses. We’re not going to get into more detail about the “how” today, however, we ARE going to talk about choosing those keywords, since we’ve already established that you’ve still got to do it!

You STILL need keywords for your posts, which means picking them!

Since you still need to choose keywords for your posts and overall web content… that means you’ll need a process to do that. And as tempting as it is, I wouldn’t recommend asking those answer engines we were just talking about – I would recommend using the goo in your noggin.

I recommend choosing a combination of short tail and long tail keywords

Even in the age of AI, “short-tail” and “long-tail” keywords are relevant. Actually, in most cases, even MORE relevant, because when it comes to the slight differences in how GPT powered search works, users ask it more specific, conversational questions. Which means you should be optimising for the answers to those questions!

To be fair, that’s how I personally recommend approaching “long-tail” keywords anyway. “Long-tail” keywords – or “keyphrases” – are usually my recommended keyword structure for posts on your blog, like this one. They’re more targeted, and specific to a question you’re answering for your potential customers.

“Short-tail” keywords, or “keywords”, are usually quippier, and have a much higher search competition. So for my website, a keyword might be “brand designer” and a keyphrase might be “brand designer for photographers”. If I was writing a blog post, it might be titled “How to choose a brand designer for photographers”, and it would, obviously, answer that question!

The trick, is that post – “How to choose a brand designer for photographers” – would link back to the primary page I use on my website for brand design services. And every time I create another post that includes a keyphrase related to the short-tail keyword “brand design”, and I link it back, it gives search engines more and more information about what I’m an expert in.

And it does the same for you!

So my recommendation, is to choose primary, “short-tail” keywords for your overarching, core website pages, like your homepage, and your about page, and the individual pages for your services. And then, you can plan to expand on the level of detail, by optimising your blog posts and secondary pages for longer-tail keyphrases, that are connected to your primary page keywords, but more specific.

Where to do your research

Companies that provide SEO services are pretty big on telling small business owners that SEO takes a ton of research and time, and that you need a whole suite of tools to make it happen. I personally don’t ascribe to that, because let’s face it – if you don’t know what your customers are searching, then you have bigger business-identity problems to consider before working on your website. It might sound harsh, but it’s true.

However – that doesn’t mean that some of the tools out there aren’t great at what they do, and super helpful when you need to prompt your brain a bit to come up with more long-tail keyphrases to write posts about! My favourite tool out there to help with that, is Answer The Public. Now, I want to be fully transparent, that I have the free version of this tool. I do NOT pay for an account, nor do I (as of April 2026) get anything for telling you that I use it, or that you should use it too.

But Answer The Public is a pretty cool tool – you can give it a keyword about your work, and it will literally tell you what related searches are happening, and their search volumes. Why is that cool? Well, it helps you determine what questions are most valuable to answer in your blog posts, to capture search volume! So when you get stuck, I recommend looking there.

There are OF COURSE many other tools out there, and they all have their pros and cons – but my biggest recommendation when it comes to DIY SEO management, is ensuring that you’re keeping things SIMPLE. Because otherwise? Well, otherwise you’re just not going to do it.

Don’t overthink SEO, at the end of the day… it’s about what people search!

Here’s the thing about DIY SEO management. You can ABSOLUTELY do it. Full stop. And I’m not saying that to follow it up with “if you want to waste a ton of your time” or anything like that – what’s happening with GPT search integration is actually a WIN, that I personally believe in the long run (assuming it doesn’t all immediately become adspace, which time will tell), will save both money and time for small businesses.

The point of blogging on your website has ALWAYS been answering customer questions. It’s ALWAYS been providing valuable information that solves problems people are searching for the answers to. And if you’ve been looking at it that way so far – it’s actually unlikely that you need to change ANYthing about what you’re doing to ensure you’re cited in Answer Engines, contrary to what many professionals would like you to believe.

Now, if you’ve been approaching it as a way to stuff keywords into your website, and have taken a quantity over quality approach to blogging up until now, yeah, you’re going to have to change tack. But the overall selection of keywords in 2026? It’s the same process it always was. And keeping it simple means you’ll stick to it.

Looking for support with your website’s SEO?

If you’re looking for a bit of support with your website’s currently DIY SEO management, I’d love to talk about how I can help! Whether that’s putting together a suite of blogging tools for you, suggesting a schedule, or ghost writing your content… we can create a plan that will help your website return in search not just on Google, but on Answer Engines too! Just reach out, and we can start the convo about getting you sorted.