As we head into 2024, we’ve been looking at what’s grown in popularity this year in the SEO environment. SEO is an ever-changing topic, with Google moving the goalposts on a daily basis. However, the overall goal will never change – give the user the information they want as quickly as possible.
With the advent of technology such as Chat GPT making huge headlines in 2023, and a core Google update rocking the boat back in March 2023, there are a lot of things to talk about as we head into the new year.
AI Content
AI-generated content is a hot topic. SEOs are constantly arguing about whether Google can identify and penalise AI content. But even if it’s not strictly penalised by Google, will AI-generated content surpass human-written content? Using an AI-generator will of course reduce time spent researching and writing content, but it also removes personality. An AI-generator will never be able to add information to your content that’s specific to your business and experiences.
What we need to look at going forwards is how AI can help enhance content (not just produce it). Using software such as Chat GPT, human copywriters can find questions that need answering, generate an article foundation that they can build upon with their own knowledge and research, as well as generate more ideas – but in our humble opinion, AI should never be used in place of humans, especially for SEO.
0-Click Searches
What do we mean by 0-click searches? Google is constantly evolving the search engine results page (SERP), making answers to questions easier to find for the everyday user. This has increased the number of 0-click searches to over 50% (honestly, we found this information via a 0-click search!)
Why are we seeing a rise in 0-click searches? Google is upping it’s use of search features including featured snippets which answer user’s questions without them having to leave the SERP. Have you tried asking “how long does SEO take?” The top of the page gives us a very clear answer by Ahrefs of 3-6 months according to the 4,300 people who answered their LinkedIn poll. What more could you need if you wanted a quick and easy answer to give to your boss?
Google is also promoting its own services more through 0-click searches. Ask for the weather today and you’re treated to Google’s weather forecast. Need a flight? Simply type in flights to {location} and Google will provide you with its own flight search feature. Unsure of when Easter is in 2024? Ask Google and it’ll tell you without you ever having to leave the search engine.
Google is becoming a website in its own right and so 0-click searches are here to stay.
Topical Clusters
Basic keyword research is no longer enough to get your website ranking. With every algorithm update, Google takes another step closer to enriching every single search with its EAT system, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Google wants to ensure each result, especially those on the first few pages, are providing users with reliable answers to their questions. Companies will be finding it harder to rank for keywords and phrases they don’t talk about often.
This is where topical clusters become a huge part of your SEO strategy. Google wants to see that your website is the one to go to for information about a certain topic. This doesn’t mean creating multiple pages all targeting the same keyword, but it does mean creating multiple pages that talk about different areas of a certain topic, thus generating a topical cluster. Each of these pages should rank in their own right, while helping to support the main topic or pillar page. But it’s not just about what you write. It’s about including contributions from industry experts, improving your backlink profile to those articles, and generally getting more engaged users onto your website and interacting with your pages.
Cleaning Up Content
With everything that’s being said on improving topical clusters and writing more content on specific topics, Google is also working on updates that force users to think about cleaning up their old content. Again, as part of their movement towards better EAT results, they want to make sure websites are continuing to provide value again and again.
Previously, a single great article within a pool of poorly written articles would perform well (and perhaps even improve the results of the poorly written ones). However, the tables are turning. Google announced as part of their Helpful Content Update in August 2022:
“Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that's better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”
So cleaning up your backlog of 1000s of article that no longer serve a purpose for your business can have positive affects for your SEO. As we head into 2024, think about auditing your current content and removing unnecessary pieces. This doesn’t have to be a straight up delete, but instead, consider merging many poorly performing pages together to create one, long insightful though-piece that provides quality information to the user.
Collaboration
We’re expecting more collaboration as we head into 2024. Collaboration between SEOs and developers, designers, PPC experts, social media managers, PR campaigners, sales teams, and agencies.
SEO is no longer an after-thought and to really take your digital marketing strategy to the next level, it must be woven throughout your website, set a direction for future campaigns, as well as help benchmark overall company performance. Getting SEOs involved in other areas of marketing will help create a well-rounded campaign that performs better than it would as a standalone project.
Let’s take your next product launch for example. Typically, decision-makers and traditional marketers will create the strategy behind how the product is launched. Going into the new year, we envisage SEOs being more heavily involved in this process, providing quality insight into how other websites are marketing similar products, what people are searching for (to determine product names and straplines), and how content is being created around the topic. This information can then help direct PPC campaigns, social media campaigns, PR campaigns and more – with an overall goal of improving your visibility online.
Final Thoughts
SEO continues to be a big part of digital marketing. Google is getting smarter, yet so are we. As we head into 2024, SEO trends will continue to develop and adapt to the ever-changing world of SERPs but as long as you remember the golden rule of users first, search engines second (while also ensuring your website is technically sound and able to be found by Google in the first place!) things will eventually fall into place.
