The SEO landscape is constantly changing with the industry’s newest SEO trends. We have seen so many SEO changes in the past few years, and there is a possibility of witnessing more of these in 2024. SEO continues to be a game of adaptation as new SEO changes are released to optimize websites for relevance in search rankings.
Unquestionably if you own a website, you’ll be running the SEO industry in 2024. Suppose you haven’t started focusing on this. In that case, it’s time to get ready to take the actions required to keep your site competitive in this industry as a few months remain this year.
- Content Quality
The quality of content largely determines ranking success. The original content of high quality was a big trend in 2021, especially in B2B enterprise SEO. But many business owners question what “quality content” actually means. A good SEO is incomplete without high-quality content. Relevant and useful content on your website can encourage visitors to stay longer, improving search engine rankings.
Organizations must use highly-strategized content to reach a targeted audience with the nuanced subject matter. Content needs to be highly relevant, offer expert-level information, and engage customers at the right time and in the right manner.
- Localization of SEO
SEO for local searches has become more of a priority than ever before in the last few years. It is defined as optimizing a site to ensure online content runs smoothly and predictably in a specific location. Localizing your content, keywords, and even sections of your site means your brand can compete successfully with international companies such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba. Whether you’re a purely local or you have a global website, the localization trends are impacting every business.
It’s important to pay attention to quality reviews and how people search for your business on google since it can directly impact conversion and revenue. In addition to it, your website should include the name of your city, state, or country so that Google will not overlook it when ranking your website.
- Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT)
To improve the quality of content on your website for search engine optimization purposes, you should refer to the EAT principle. It is the concept that Google uses as part of its guide when evaluating websites and is something that businesses must be aware of when developing web content.
By establishing EAT on your site and understanding how it functions, you can ensure that you are more likely to see gains in the event of a core algorithm update from Google. As Google announced three core algorithm updates in 2021, EAT was a huge trend in navigating Google’s constantly evolving algorithm and artificial intelligence updates. Be sure to support your claims with statistics and facts, and include links to reliable sources.
- Desktop Page Experience (UX-Driven SEO) and Core Web Vitals
Google gradually implemented the Page Experience Algorithm in 2021. This algorithm update consists of several user experience signals, such as the Core Web Vitals, which essentially evaluate the overall experience with the web page. It was applied first to mobile devices and was completed by the end of March 2024 – and the desktop version of the update followed soon after. Therefore, it is likely that a page’s experience will be a more important ranking factor for both mobile and desktop websites.
Moreover, you can use Core Web Vitals to determine rank with existing Page Experience signals like Intrusive Interstitial, HTTPs, Mobile Friendliness, and Safe Browsing. The Core Web Vitals provides Google with information about the user experience on each web page based on three key metrics: Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
- User Intent
In addition to developing machine learning components and continued updates to its search algorithm, Google has shown its commitment to improving user experience. It has made its efforts for years as in 2015, RankBrain was launched, followed by Mobile-First Indexing in 2017 and Neural Matching in 2018.
As a result of these efforts, Google prioritizes mobile indexing and ranking of web pages. In 2024, mobile experience will continue to be paramount and become even more important, at least until mobile-first indexing becomes standard.
- Structured Data
In search engine optimization, structured data is organized and tagged with specific text groups that search engines can quickly comprehend and return accurate results. Google feeds structured data from the Knowledge Graph into the markups on each site.
The use of structured data can increase your click-through rate (C.T.R.) and drive additional traffic. An improved C.T.R. can indirectly boost your rankings as a user behavior signal. As Google continues to emphasize hyper-personalization and solving problems, and answering questions directly, implementing structured data on your website is a way to prepare for the future of search.
- Voice Search
Voice search has been off the radar for a while in terms of SEO, partly because of the state of technology. Since then, Google has designed its search results pages to display shorter answers, mostly using Featured Snippets and Answer Boxes.
According to Google, 27% of online users worldwide use voice search on mobile devices. The number of voice searches at home has surged since the Covid-19 pandemic, as more people spend longer at home. As a result of these statistics, any business seeking the highest level of traffic to its website should implement Voice SEO.
- Video SEO
It has been seen that video usage soared over in 2021. Globally, people watch an hour and a half of video content every day. It’s only about 15% of viewers that watch videos more than three hours daily.
Your SEO strategy should include creating optimized video content. You can optimize your video through channel description by including a user-friendly overview of your channel. In addition, keywords also play a critical role when you optimize your video content.
- Long Content Form
Publishing long-form and relevant content on your website will help you outrank your competitors in 2024. Creating long-form content that adheres to EAT guidelines and exceeds 2000 words can greatly improve your search rankings once you shift your focus. Moreover, content that keeps a reader engaged can be considered a great strategy. - AI-Generated SEO
Last year, OpenAI made available the machine learning model G.P.T. -3. Due to this, AI-assisted SEO content tools such as copy, Jarvis, Headline, and others are on the rise, helping content teams create more SEO-friendly content faster. Tools like these can generate content such as meta tags, titles, topics, paragraphs, and even whole articles from very few inputs. Although AI-generated content is not a suitable replacement for human copywriting, it may be a useful starting point. By 2024, we can expect more content teams to use A.I. copywriting tools. - Google Page Experience Update
One of the biggest announcements about SEO changes to come out of Google this year, the Page Experience Update essentially confirms the user experience update has started rolling out in February and will be completed by the end of March 2024.
The Page Experience Update is based on what Google is calling Core Web Vitals, which measure the speed and usability of a web page. Core Web Vitals look at metrics like page load speed, the responsiveness of the page, interactivity, and whether or not the content layout shifts as the page loads.
Core Web Vitals represent the subset of Web Vitals that is applicable to all web pages. Find out more about What are Core Web Vitals? and how to improve them.
In a nutshell, this update emphasizes Google’s commitment to displaying only high-quality links in its search results. The better the user experience of the web page, the more likely it receives weight from the search algorithm.
How can you prepare for this SEO change in 2024?
Improve the page load speed, reduce the bounce rate, and eliminate unexpected layout shifts for any pages of your website experiencing these issues. To see if any of these are influencing your web pages, you can perform a website audit.
How You Can Prepare for SEO Changes in 2024?
Learn more about your audience, and then create great content your audience wants to consume. Establish author bios for all of the content creators on your website, which detail their expertise and link out to authoritative sites for definitive proof. Useful, high-quality content can lead to other people and influencers sharing your content, which boosts your brand strength. Finally, monitor reviews of your brand across the internet, and address negative ones right away.
FAQs
- Do SEO updates take a long time to take effect?
Although there is no definitive answer on how long it takes to start seeing organic results from SEO, most experts agree that it typically takes four to six months. - What causes SEO to take so long to work?
The reason it takes so long to get results from SEO is because of several factors: SEO keyword difficulty, competition, inbound links, and domain age. Due to this, SEO can take a longer or shorter time, depending on how you approach these key areas. - SEO better than Google Ads?
In terms of quick, top-of-page results, Google Ads are better, while SEO is better for long-term Google rankings. SEO is more suitable if budget and time are both unimportant.
Want to Learn More?
Every company today needs a robust SEO strategy to compete in today’s hyperconnected world. If you’re ready to up your game with this highly sought after skill, check out our comprehensive PCP Digital Marketing course today. Similarly, if you’re a business leader and you want to help your team get up to speed with the latest and greatest tools and techniques in digital marketing, have a look at our Corporate Solutions options.
