Google frequently updates search algorithms to serve helpful search results to users. Thus, the SEO process continuously changes with time. You need to change your website accordingly to rank on the first page.
If you are an SEO expert, you know it’s not something you learn once. The best SEO techniques are constantly changing, and what was successful in the SEO world this year will more than likely not be successful in the coming years.
SEO experts have weighed in on what they think will be the top SEO trends in 2024. As experts in their field, you may want to take their advice and try these tactics.
SEO Trends 2024
1. Voice Search
Like the rise in mobile phones, voice search will continue to expand yearly. Even though voice search is still another kid on the piece in the search engine space, it has sufficiently increased energy.
Thanks to a great extent, more digital assistants are entering the business sector. Voice look and digital assistants are generally new, so expect further improvements and changes to the business sector as consumer requests evolve. It radically changes the search scene.
Desktop quests will cover top-to-bottom content, which requires a longer reaction. Voice search will be founded on sharp reactions for individuals moving. This implies that neighborhood SEO / search engine optimization will be progressively imperative to your crusade, keeping in mind the end goal of taking advantage of more particular search demands.
In several years, voice search has arguably been the most considerable change in how SEO practitioners approach their strategies. Even more so than standard web search, voice search prioritizes immediate, concise answers, stripping away extraneous detail to get me just the facts around the voice search query.
As such, we anticipate that the increasing popularity of voice search may benefit sites and pages that write in brief, concise methods, giving users (or speakers!) just the information they need in a consolidated package.
To optimize for voice search in SEO, we recommend utilizing schema code to help search engines better understand your site’s pages’ content and context. Schema code is a universal language that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others have all agreed to recognize as the single way to identify critical pieces of information on a page.
For example, using schema for eCommerce allows you to tag what parts of the page contain a price, color, size, shipping, and other options. This way, if a user searches for Blue Converse shoes, the search engine can immediately scan the page and find the best match for that query.
Adding schema markup is relatively easy, and a good SEO can readily partner with an excellent developer to place it on your site in a few days.
With the development of Siri, Alexa, and many other personal assistance voice apps, businesses and services will have to change the way they present their information. For these voice applications to distribute their information correctly, companies must change their information to more answering questions/problem-solving type of presence.
This will become a bigger SEO trend as the development of these products continues to expand.
2. Structured HTML Question and Answer Snippets for Voice Search
The trend I’ll be hopping onto is providing more structured HTML question-and-answer snippets near the top of my pages to optimize the chance my page will be pulled out for voice search.
This is becoming increasingly important as more people use Siri, Alexa, and voice search when looking for answers to questions. This can even be used for eCommerce stores by answering questions at the top of the page such as, What is the best coat for hiking in the rain, etc.
3. Transparency and Trust
Website transparency and trust will be a theme for the next few years. Too many hidden writers and so-called experts are curating bogus content on the internet. The Google Medic update will begin the effort to crack down on low-quality and fake websites.
Trust will also be at the forefront of SEO trends. Allowing user mechanisms to solicit feedback will be critical. It will be equally important for website owners to respond to feedback to improve customer confidence.
4. User Signals
We saw strong evidence in 2018 that user signals are playing a much more important role in search rankings, and I think that role will continue to expand in 2024.
If you build great, informative pages, keep users on your site, and don’t give them any reason to click back to the search results because they need more information, your chances of ranking high increase dramatically.
We’ll do everything we can to improve all pages of our sites, creating content that answers questions and adding even more videos, assembly instructions, and owner’s manuals.
5. Website Optimization and Content Marketing
I believe voice-optimized websites will start to flourish as Google puts more emphasis on voice queries. So, optimizing voice phrases in your content will become the new norm.
Page speed, mobile optimization, and HTTPS will become even more of a ranking factor, and websites that ignore or take these issues lightly will suffer. Optimized product descriptions will still be the defining factor in your struggle to fight for organic traffic.
Most eCommerce companies lack a proper content marketing strategy; aiming to become a hub for basic queries loosely related to your product can make stealing Google-rich snippets easy and rewarding.
6. Website Speed
When reading ‘SEO best practices,’ people usually expect to find something extraordinary and creative. While there are tons of valuable ideas for optimizing for SEO, some significant features tend to be underestimated; one of them is website speed.
Looking at this from a user experience perspective, will you wait for a website to load? Of course not! You’ll find other sites (which might be your competitors) and get the information you sought.
That’s why I firmly believe that when it comes to website optimization and SEO best practices, one needs to start from the very beginning and pay attention to things that might seem less important at first sight but are not in the long run.
So, only after going through all the basics of site optimization should you focus on other stuff. Just to be clear, I’m not saying there is some sort of ranking system. It’s important to understand that, first of all.
A user has to find your site (where keyword research, meta tags optimization, etc., come into the picture). After that, your main task should be keeping visitors on your website – where your site speed becomes critical.
Another factor you should consider is mobile optimization. This is important since the number of search queries made via mobile devices is constantly growing, and it’s super important to meet this user need.
7. Video Content Optimization
However, when discussing other tactics that will work great, I can’t help but mention video content optimization. Different types of content production will lead to adaptations in search engine algorithms.
For instance, video content will be crawled directly instead of what we have now – crawling only the traditional text content surrounding the video.
8. Accelerated Mobile Pages
With Google’s mobile-first index update in March 2018 and the mobile speed update in July 2018, it is clear that Google is prioritizing the mobile version for content and ranking – which makes sense if more than 50% of the world’s searches are done on a mobile device.
Local results are more likely to be obtained through mobile searches. Users want faster results without clicking through to another page, and image results and videos often appear higher in mobile searches.
Identifying keywords for mobile searches, understanding your users’ intent, and what micro-moment Google thinks the user is in (discovery, research, purchase moments, to name a few) are essential first steps to optimizing for mobile.
Using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) where possible will help improve user experience as Google continues to emphasize page speed across devices and Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool to make sure your content reads quickly and plays smoothly across mobile devices.
Note: Implementing AMP is not mandatory; if you can achieve speed with AMP, then it is good.
9. Mobile-Friendly Pages
People are always searching for products and businesses through smartphones in their local area while on the go, which will continue to be popular.
Mobile-friendly, responsive sites achieve higher rankings in Google searches, primarily while searching on a mobile device. Mobile-friendly sites are much faster, easier, and more affordable for many businesses and their customers. As smartphones evolve, this will become an even more significant SEO trend.
10. Local SEO
Local SEO marketing has become more popular. As businesses grow and add several locations, local SEO helps customers find your business in their area.
With mobile-friendly sites evolving as well, local SEO will help those looking for stores in their area while searching on the go.
Businesses can increase their local SEO by listing themselves on Google My Business, Google Maps, Yellow Pages, review sites such as Yelp, and professional associations/directories.
11. Providing Value to the user
Backlinks used to be everything. However, like keyword stuffing in the early days of SEO, Google is bound to realize that, like other manipulating schemes, backlinks are easily manipulated.
Methods like paying for backlinks, exchanging backlinks, and manipulating backlinks via personal blogs cause Google to realize other, better metrics that measure a site’s strength and popularity.
Enter Bounce rate, Time on Page, and Click-Through Rate.
These metrics show that Google’s website truly delivers value to the user. If a user stays on a website, that tells Google the website was helpful to a visitor.
The audience engagement strategy to pursue is providing actual user value. This is done by publishing unique content and solving the users’ problems when they seek help browsing the Internet.
12. Know Your Target Audience
The ever-increasing frequency of updates from Google ensures newer trends in SEO. Moreover, the emergence of mobile phones as the device of choice for browsing the internet has revamped the rules of the game to a great extent.
As mobile search results increase their say in SEO, the website’s page speed and responsiveness will play a vital role in 2024. Optimizing the content of an eCommerce portal for search engines is essential.
While several SEO tips can be helpful, the most important is creating and using the content that buzzes with your target audience. All online businesses must create original content and support it through meticulous practices such as meta-tagging.
Furthermore, with voice recognition algorithms improving, enabling the users to take to Voice Search, the websites would have to comply with new rules for conversational queries to be on top of SERPs.
13. Aim for One of the Top Five Spaces on Google Search
What’s better than ranking #1? Ranking in a featured snippet. A featured snippet appears at the top of the results page and satisfies the user’s desire to answer quickly and efficiently.
Most featured snippets are pulled from the content occupying the top five positions on the results page, but that doesn’t mean the top spot is out of reach for a newer or less authoritative website.
My top tips for ranking in a featured snippet include creating content that answers specific questions, using bulleted or numbered lists to break up content logically, and featuring high-quality images and videos with relevant metadata.
Earning social shares and backlinks will also help to cement your content’s quality and relevance.
14. Review Score
Google’s August update, often called the Medic or YMYL update, shows how serious Google is about recognizing a website’s trust and authority. That’s why I think that one of the significant trends is that reviews will become a much stronger ranking signal for eCommerce and businesses.
Google is looking for ways to establish whether real customers recommend the websites it favors. One of the easiest ways to do this is by analyzing the data made available by the many independent review websites.
In 2024, I believe that no amount of links or good content will be able to make up for a large portion of negative ratings a business receives.
Hence, business owners need to think about improving their service and getting happy customers to leave their positive reviews.
15. Flat Site Structure
It’s becoming increasingly important for websites to find the perfect balance of complexity and simplicity, especially considering the methods search engines use for spider sites.
A flat site structure means managing content, running countless page crawls, and creating an overall user-friendly experience. Likewise, a flat site structure enables visitors to find any page on your website with the fewest clicks.
However, formatting your site architecture properly requires serious SEO agility. We found that the easiest way to flatten our site was to promote lower pages through internal links.
16. Backlinks from Related Websites
We will be looking to employ focused backlink work through 2024.
As a men’s fashion brand, working with men’s fashion bloggers and gaining natural backlinks makes sense. This drives the right traffic to our eCommerce store and builds domain authority, resulting in a higher search engine ranking.
In 2024, don’t get backlinks to gain a backlink; make sure they’re relevant and serve a purpose.
17. Micro-moments
Although we are not an online retailer, we recommend that eCommerce businesses at least employ voice search optimization based on our findings. This is because if you want to catch your customers online (which is all the time nowadays), then the best time would be in their micro-moments.
Micro-moments are instances when consumers need things instantly, and they go online to search for them, like a birthday gift, a gadget for fixing something, or how to do a specific task. That’s when you can cache their attention by coming up on top of the voice search pages because they are too busy to type.
18. LSI Keywords
LSI keywords have been increasing in prominence. In 2024, they are just going to end up well-known and regular. LSI is an indexing and recovery strategy using a numerical formula to distinguish patterns in any content section.
LSI keywords add context and intention to your post. These are essential keywords that should be utilized alongside your primary keywords. Web crawlers like to see LSI keywords in a blog entry. LSI discovers equivalent words for keywords.
LSI (otherwise called co-event) can enhance your pursuit rankings when Google comprehends the theme you’re expounding on and its importance to the search query.
19. Rich Answers
Rich Answers is Google’s latest strategy for reducing the repetitiveness of customers looking through a summary of indexed lists to find the most suitable site to satisfy their proper inquiry. Google performs this by exhibiting a single site’s snippets at the top of the result page, which they accept to give the best response to the question.
Sites containing special or restrictive content could benefit from rich answers, which normally incorporate links to their data source. This is one way for quality content makers to succeed in SEO/search engine optimization battles.
20. Well Optimized Landing Pages
Having many very streamlined landing pages is an incredible method for creating leads. A CTA lead-era structure that augments opportunities. SEO is about putting the effort in and not attempting to get fast fixes or simple movement.
For each landing page you have, upgrade it for SEO/search engine optimization and guarantee your web plan and content work together to convey a quality affair.
21. App Store Optimization (ASO)
The rise of mobile has brought about a more noteworthy number of organizations delivering applications, consequently making a requirement for application store improvement (ASO), keeping in mind the end goal to go up against one another.
More specialized profound connecting parts of application administration are also required, whereby application pages appear in search lists.
Initially, applications are filed on the App Store and Google Play, not on Google Search. This made it significantly more difficult for Google to streamline its inquiry capacities—advertisers will need to advance on both application stores rather than just on Google Search.
Applications are presently filed on Google Search through the App Index. The pursuit positioning of applications falls under the App Pack or Deep Link class.
Organizations hoping to catch portable clients need to create and advertise applications that take prospects straight to their authority applications, avoiding a visit to the site.
2024 won’t be the year of innovations; however, it is essentially the season of innovative advancements in advances and strategies, which have indicated great potential.
Great Informative Post Vinay! I like all the 21 points you mention in this post. all of them are trending in 2020 recently voice search. Keep posting, Good Luck! :)