The world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is ever-evolving, with new trends and techniques emerging each year. As we approach 2024, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the curve and understand the latest SEO trends that can help your website rank higher in search engine results. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the top 10 SEO trends to watch for in 2024.

1. User Experience (UX) Will Take Centre Stage

Google has always emphasised the importance of providing a quality user experience. However, in 2024, UX will become an even more critical factor in SEO. Google’s recent updates indicate a shift towards user-centric ranking algorithms, making UX a key SEO trend.

Improving your website’s UX involves optimising page load times, ensuring easy navigation, and making your site mobile-friendly. Additionally, providing high-quality, relevant content that meets users’ needs is paramount.

Mobile-First Indexing

With the majority of internet users accessing the web via mobile devices, Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing. This means that Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Hence, ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is no longer optional but a necessity.

Mobile optimisation involves responsive design, fast loading times, and easy navigation on mobile devices. Websites that fail to optimize for mobile may see a significant drop in their search engine rankings.

2. Voice Search Optimization

With the rise of smart speakers and voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, voice search is becoming increasingly popular. By 2024, it’s expected that a significant portion of all internet searches will be voice searches.

Optimizing for voice search involves focusing on long-tail keywords and natural language. This is because voice searches are typically more conversational and longer than typed searches. Additionally, it’s important to provide concise, direct answers to questions that users might ask.

Featured Snippets

Featured snippets play a crucial role in voice search optimization. These are the short answers that appear at the top of Google search results in response to a query. Google often uses these snippets for voice search results, so aiming to rank for featured snippets can significantly improve your voice search visibility.

Creating high-quality, informative content that directly answers users’ questions is the key to ranking for featured snippets. It’s also important to structure your content in a way that Google can easily understand and pull information from.

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Influence SEO

Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing various industries, and SEO is no exception. Google’s AI algorithm, RankBrain, plays a significant role in search rankings. In 2024, AI will become an even more integral part of SEO.

AI can analyze user behavior, identify patterns, and make decisions based on these insights. This means that AI can help you understand what type of content resonates with your audience, allowing you to optimize your content strategy accordingly.

Machine Learning

Machine learning, a subset of AI, will also play a crucial role in SEO. Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data and learn from it, improving their performance over time. This can help you identify SEO trends and make data-driven decisions.

For instance, machine learning can help you understand which keywords are most effective, which backlinks are driving the most traffic, and which content is resonating with your audience. This can help you fine-tune your SEO strategy and achieve better results.

4. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google uses to measure the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a webpage. These metrics will become even more important in 2024, as Google continues to emphasize the importance of page experience in search rankings.

Optimizing for Core Web Vitals involves improving your website’s load time, interactivity, and visual stability. This not only improves your website’s user experience but can also boost your search engine rankings.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a Core Web Vital that measures the loading performance of a webpage. It’s the time it takes for the largest content element on the page to load. A good LCP score is considered to be 2.5 seconds or less.

Improving your LCP score involves optimizing your server response times, using a content delivery network (CDN), and optimizing your images and other resources.

5. E-A-T Will Become More Important

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a framework that Google uses to assess the quality of a webpage. In 2024, E-A-T will become even more important in SEO.

Improving your website’s E-A-T involves creating high-quality, accurate content, building high-quality backlinks, and establishing your brand as an authority in your industry. This not only improves your search engine rankings but also builds trust with your audience.

YMYL Pages

YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life”. These are pages that can potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. Google holds these pages to a higher standard, so if your website has YMYL content, it’s crucial to focus on E-A-T.

Improving E-A-T on YMYL pages involves providing clear, accurate, and up-to-date information, citing reputable sources, and having qualified authors write your content.

6. Long-Form Content Will Dominate

Long-form content has been a trend in SEO for a while, and it’s expected to continue in 2024. Long-form content tends to rank higher in search engine results, as it provides more comprehensive information and keeps users engaged for longer.

Creating long-form content involves going in-depth on a topic, providing valuable insights, and making your content engaging and easy to read. It’s also important to structure your content well, using headings, subheadings, and bullet points to make it easy to navigate.

Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique is a strategy for creating long-form content. It involves finding a piece of content in your industry that is already popular, creating a piece of content that is even better, and then reaching out to the right people to share it.

This technique can help you create high-quality, engaging content that ranks well in search engine results and attracts backlinks.

7. Video Content Will Continue to Grow

Video content is becoming increasingly popular, with platforms like YouTube seeing massive growth. In 2024, video content will continue to be a major SEO trend.

Creating video content involves understanding your audience’s needs and interests, creating high-quality videos that provide value, and optimizing your videos for search. This includes using relevant keywords in your video titles, descriptions, and tags.

Video SEO

Video SEO involves optimizing your videos to rank in both Google’s and YouTube’s search results. This includes using relevant keywords, creating engaging thumbnails, and providing accurate captions and transcripts.

Additionally, promoting your videos on social media and your website can help increase their visibility and drive more traffic.

8. Local SEO Will Be Crucial for Small Businesses

Local SEO is a strategy that focuses on optimizing a website to be found in local search results. This is crucial for small businesses that operate on a local level, as it helps them compete with larger, national brands.

Local SEO involves optimizing your Google My Business listing, collecting and responding to customer reviews, and optimizing your website for local keywords.

Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. Optimizing your Google My Business listing involves providing accurate and up-to-date information, posting regular updates, and responding to reviews.

This can help improve your local search visibility and attract more customers.

9. Semantic Search Will Play a Bigger Role

Semantic search is a technique that search engines use to understand the context and intent behind a search query. In 2024, semantic search will play an even bigger role in SEO.

Optimizing for semantic search involves focusing on topics rather than just keywords, understanding user intent, and creating content that provides comprehensive answers to users’ queries.

Topic Clusters

Topic clusters are a method of organizing and linking content around a central topic. This helps search engines understand the context and relationship between different pieces of content, improving your website’s semantic search optimization.

Creating topic clusters involves identifying a central topic, creating a pillar page that provides a comprehensive overview of that topic, and linking related pieces of content to that pillar page.

10. Zero-Click Searches Will Increase

Zero-click searches are searches where the user’s query is answered directly in the search results, without them having to click on any search result. With the rise of featured snippets and other SERP features, zero-click searches are expected to increase in 2024.

Optimizing for zero-click searches involves aiming to rank for featured snippets, providing direct, concise answers to common queries, and optimizing your website’s structured data.

Structured Data

Structured data is a type of code that helps search engines understand the content on your website. It can help your website appear in rich search results, like featured snippets, which can increase your visibility and click-through rate.

Implementing structured data involves using schema markup, a type of structured data vocabulary that helps search engines understand your content.

In conclusion, staying ahead in the SEO game requires keeping up with the latest trends and techniques. By understanding and implementing these top 10 SEO trends for 2024, you can improve your website’s visibility, drive more traffic, and achieve better results.

Get in touch with us to learn how we can help you with your SEO.