Hive SEO Manchester 2026 was split into two parts: a hands-on training day, followed by a full day of talks, panels, networking and plenty of SEO discussion. With 20-minute presentations and expert panels tackling some of the industry’s hottest topics, there was no shortage of debate.
I attended the Technical SEO Masterclass hosted by Gerry White. The room was made up of around 15 attendees with a real mix of experience levels, including college students, SEO executives, senior specialists, department heads and people who have worked in search for years. That variety made for some great conversations, with everyone bringing different perspectives and experiences to the table.
5 Key Takeaways
- Should redirects always be excluded from XML sitemaps?
One of the more interesting discussions centred around redirects in XML sitemaps.
In most cases, the answer is yes – only indexable, canonical URLs should be included. However, migration projects introduced a bit more nuance. During large-scale site migrations, temporary dirty sitemaps containing redirected URLs can help search engines discover and process redirects more efficiently.
As with many things in SEO, context matters.
- Pagination in sitemaps isn’t black and white
Another topic that sparked discussion was paginated URLs in XML sitemaps. My default approach was always to exclude paginated pages. However, there are exceptions…
If valuable products or content can only be discovered through pagination, including those URLs may help search engines find and crawl them more effectively.
The conclusion? Pagination isn’t a straightforward yes-or-no decision. It requires a bit more thought and depends heavily on how a website is structured.
- Is schema key to improving AI visibility?
Schema markup came up repeatedly throughout the training day and the conference itself, although there were some interesting discussions around exactly how much impact it has on AI visibility.
With organic product listings becoming increasingly prominent and AI-powered search experiences continuing to evolve, structured data is playing a bigger role in helping search engines understand content, entities and relationships between pieces of information. It also remains essential for eligibility in many enhanced search features and rich results.
However, some recent research from Ahrefs has challenged the assumption that schema directly improves AI citations. Studies have suggested that while AI-cited pages are more likely to use structured data, this may be correlation rather than causation. In other words, sites implementing schema are often the same sites investing heavily in technical SEO, content quality and authority building.
Despite the debate, the consensus throughout the event was that schema is still worth implementing, even if it isn’t a guaranteed shortcut to AI visibility.
- Robots.txt isn’t absolute
A simple reminder, but an important one. Robots.txt does not prevent pages from being indexed; it only controls crawling.
If a blocked URL has enough signals pointing to it, Google can still index that page despite not being able to crawl its content. It’s a distinction that’s easy to forget, particularly when troubleshooting indexing issues.
- Reporting is getting harder
Several speakers touched on the growing challenges around SEO reporting.
Ranking volatility since recent Google updates has made performance trends more difficult to interpret. Daily rank tracking is becoming less reliable as a standalone metric, while GA4 continues to create headaches due to attribution challenges and inconsistent setup practices.
One platform that kept coming up in discussions was Google Search Console. Many SEOs now see it as one of the most trustworthy data sources available because the data comes directly from search results rather than being influenced by attribution modelling.
One theme ran through almost every conversation during the masterclass: very little in SEO is absolute.
Many of the best discussions weren’t about finding a definitive right or wrong answer. Instead, they focused on sharing experiences, discussing different approaches and learning what has worked in real-world situations.
SEO continues to evolve at a remarkable pace, and the most valuable insights often come through conversations with other practitioners. Events like Hive SEO provide the perfect environment for those discussions, making them incredibly valuable for both aspiring SEOs and experienced professionals.