16 New SEO Trends to Look for in 2024

The SEO industry is unpredictable, just like algorithm updates that Google launches from time to time.

If you have been following us for a while, you know that we make every effort to keep you updated with the latest happenings in the SEO industry.

SEO trends are one of the topics that we know has to be constantly updated because there isn’t another industry which is as dynamic as SEO.

The trends that worked wonders a few years ago are no longer a trend – for example, voice search – as the algorithms have become smarter day by day.

We are entering 2024 and the trends we are seeing are somewhat new in the industry and are making quite a statement. Of course, some of the trends that we listed in 2023 still remain to be a growing fad but there are some new entrants.

As SEO practitioners, it’s important for us to keep abreast of trends. While we do so, we want the community to get the hang of the same so that the industry sets new standards and gives a slamming reply to people who look down on SEO as a done and dusty industry.

But are these real trends or just speculations?

We have listened to some of the top industry experts over the last few months, and the trends listed below have been seconded by them.

However, if you’re asking for proof of success from implementing these trends below, all you need to do is check the growth projectile of Stan Ventures.

We have implemented the following SEO practices and you can be certain that we do exactly as we preach, not only for our brand but also for the countless clients we serve.

But of course, until Google reveals all the ranking factors, which they will not, SEO is half speculation and half data-driven.

We removed Voice Search from this list as the pandemic has done major damage to the growth prospect of Voice Search.

This may be because of the wide use of masks. We aren’t sure, but the truth is people aren’t talking to computers and smartphones as much as they used to, and the only instance they use voice search is while driving.

Google Trends also shows the keyword trend coming down for Voice Search.

Without further adieu, here are the top SEO trends you need to keep in mind when optimizing your website for better rankings and traffic.

1. Updating Content

Updating content on a website is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, fresh and relevant content can help improve the user experience, which can help improve the ranking of a website on search engines. Additionally, regularly updating content can help keep a website up-to-date and accurate, which can also help improve its ranking on search engines.

In fact, if you check most of our blogs including this, you can find that we have updated them with relevant information consistently. Some blogs, like the Google Algorithm Update, are updated as soon as Google announces a major update.

This is an example of a page that has been performing higher just because we keep it relevant to the users.

What this means is if you have a page that’s bringing you a ton of traffic, then it’s not a job done.

It’s a job that has just begun!

Over the next couple of years, there will be sites that create better content than yours.

They may add new information, datasets and insights that will naturally attract Google’s attention.

To keep up with them, you need to update the content regularly with some nifty tips or important updates like we do here.

What I mean to say is that to make evergreen content, you need to frequently water it for more useful information and enrich it with additional value.

So, what happens to the content that fails to do it?

Over time, stagnant content will get pushed down the rankings on Google and eventually will go out of the top results.

Content that is relevant and helpful today will turn out to be junk and unhelpful in a year or two if left unattended.

That’s why we list Updating Content as the most important SEO trend to watch out for in 2024 and beyond.

Travis McKnight, Content Strategy Architect at Portent while talking in our SEO On-Air podcast episode said he did an experiment to prove that updating the content can help in better rankings.

Listen to him here:

2. Expect Fewer Organic CTR

We have seen a lot less CTR from Google ever since the search engine giant came up with multiple SERP features that provide direct answers to users’ queries. 

It all started with Google’s instant answers, wherein users get the answers they need and that too without the user having to navigate away from the search results.

Now, with Google’s Search AI Overviews (or generate search experience), the CTR is expected to decrease even further as the answers are more in-depth and Google compiles the best results on the web to create its own.

Here is a screenshot of how AI Overviews affected the CTR of the blog that you are currently reading.

In fact, Google is trying to keep the users within its ecosystem as that gives it more control to provide relevant information. 

Additionally, the more time users spend on Google, the search engine can sell ads and make the users navigate to its associated services like Maps, YouTube, Shopping, People also asked for etc. 

Google is also testing a new ads interface wherein the ads will be displayed among the organic results, making them more camouflaged.

Let’s take a look at one of the product-based search queries with high buyer intent as an example:

“buy iphone 15 pro max”

If you do a quick search for this term on Google, you will end up seeing ads on the top and on the sidebar.  

As you can see the official website of Apple, appears only after the ads.

Now, one of the newest additions to the Google SERP features is a filter that resembles to Amazon that appears as the left sidebar for buyer intent queries.

Here is an example:

Google has recognized that Amazon and other ecommerce giants are turning into search engines of their own kind and it’s important to make relevant changes to the search experience secure the user base.

As you can see here, the majority of the screen real estate has been hijacked by Google’s SERP features, making it almost impossible for websites other than the official Apple site to get click-through. 

According to Smart Insights, the #1 ranking position in Google’s organic search results now has an average CTR of 39.8%. The CTR for the 2nd position is 18.7%, and for the 3rd position, it’s 10.2%.

Backlinko’s analysis also provides some interesting insights. They found that the top result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 27.6%. Additionally, the top 3 Google search results cumulatively receive 54.4% of all clicks. This data shows a notable variance in CTR depending on the ranking position, highlighting the importance of striving for higher rankings, particularly the top spot​​.

However, with the Google planning to rollout SGE-based search results across the globe by 2024, the click through rate to organic pages should be far less than this estimation. That’s not only because most of the traditional organic pages appear way down in the SERP rankings but also due to the extensive AI-generated answer that Google offers the users without them having to move their cursors and click on any of the results displayed.

We believe this trend will continue to increase as Google wants users to spend more time on its associated verticals. 

In fact, in 2020, Sparktro’s Rand Fishkin had analyzed data sets from Similar Web that estimated 64.82% of searches happening on Google end up without a click. 

During the last four years, these numbers should have increased even further, considering the efforts made by Google to keep users within its ecosystem. 

3. Google’s Generative AI SERP Layout & Functionality Changes

Google is, indeed, envisioning a future-proof ecosystem powered by AI.

In fact, AI is a key term that has appeared in most of the recent announcements made by Google including its latest Pixel 8 series smartphones.

The Search Generative Experience, now renamed Google AI Overviews, is currently in beta testing and expected to be rolled out to the public by 2024. This will have a huge impact on the overall user experience, and we are expecting a sea change in the way people use Google search in the future.

While beta testing AI Overviews, I found Google to be too intrusive in the initial days, wherein the AI result took over at least 50% of the above-the-fold real estate. However, they decided to put the results under drop-down later on, which helps the top ranking results a bit more visibility. Another reason for Google adopting this change is because of the low click-through rate of their ads.

But here’s the catch. Google will eventually attempt to display relevant ads with the AI Overviews box or above it. Think of it as a personal shopping assistant. The AI search engine will show ads based on user’s preferences and help them make purchases without leaving the answer box.

From a business perspective, that’s a huge benefit for product and service websites. Swish and flick, and the user becomes your customer.

Google is making these AI enhancements possible by leveraging Language Learning Models, including BARD, MUM and PaLM2.  

4. Google to Reduce Crawling and Indexing Frequency

We know for sure that Google is reducing the number of times it crawls and indexes websites tremendously. 

We tried looking into the crawl stats of multiple websites and found that Google has considerably reduced the crawl rate since 2021. 

Google has yet to adopt a protocol like Index Now, which Bing and Yandex have adopted. With Index Now, search engines are informed about the content changes that happen within a page so that it becomes easier and faster to crawl and add them to the index. 

This saves search engines a lot of resources, as they would otherwise have to crawl an entire website to identify new content. 

We heard from John Mueller sometime back that Google may be adopting a protocol similar to IndexNow, but it hasn’t materialized yet. 

So, why are search engines trying to limit the number of crawls?

Indexing and crawling are processes used by search engines to discover and add web pages to their databases. 

Crawling involves using bots or spiders to scan the web and follow links from one page to another. In contrast, indexing involves storing and organizing the information found during the crawling process.

Now, when it comes to the environment, the impact of indexing and crawling is pretty minimal since it mostly involves using computer servers and other digital technology. 

However, like any other form of computing, it can contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems if the electricity used to power the computers and servers comes from non-renewable sources. 

We are aware that Bitcoin mining has caused climate damages in excess of the actual coin value. This is extremely troubling from a sustainability perspective.

In fact, Google has been committed to its carbon-neutral policy and is trying to reduce its carbon footprint completely by 2030.

There are only two ways to do this. The first method is to reduce the environmental impact of their indexing and crawling operations by using renewable energy sources, like solar or wind power, to power their servers and other computing equipment. 

The other one is to optimize their algorithms and use other technologies to reduce the energy required for indexing and crawling. 

We believe Google is adopting the second option because it can be implemented faster than completely moving to renewable energy. 

However, over time, Google will definitely try to make indexing and crawling more sustainable without compromising on the efficiency of crawling and indexing. 

5. Links Are Important As of 2024

The May 2024 leak of Google’s internal ranking documentation has provided the SEO community with unprecedented insights into the search giant’s algorithm. One key revelation stands out: backlinks remain a valuable component of Google’s ranking factors.

Key Insights Related to Backlinks from the Leak:

1. Continued Importance of Links:
   • Backlink diversity and relevance are still crucial, although their weight in the algorithm has decreased. PageRank is still in use.
2. Fresh Links Hold More Value:
   • Links from newer web pages may have a higher impact than older ones, highlighting the importance of continuously acquiring fresh backlinks.
3. User Engagement and Click Data:
   • Google’s NavBoost system uses click data to influence rankings, emphasizing user engagement and backlinks’ importance. This was earlier confirmed when Google documents were presented as exhibits during the antitrust trial in November 2023.
4. Penalties for Poor Links:
   • Spammy or mismatched links can lead to demotions, underscoring the need for high-quality, relevant backlinks.

In November 2022, John Mueller said during an office hour session that Google would try to reduce its dependence on backlinks as a ranking factor.

LIVE Q&A from brightonSEO

We know that Google has been spreading a lot of fear about getting penalized for building backlinks. The truth is that Google has been continuously failing to crack down on link-building practices such as blogger outreach, guest posting and link exchange.

These strategies involve sharing quality content on highly relevant websites. Though there are certain ways in which websites incentivize this process, it’s so discreetly done that it’s almost difficult for Google to trace down how they were built. 

That said, Google’s SpamBrian algorithm, which was added to the core algorithm in 2018, has become much more efficient. 

According to Google, in 2020, the spam brain was able to keep 75% of spam results out of Google search results and coming to 2022 December, the search engine giant is confident that its spam filtering system can thwart 99% of spam results from appearing to the users.

What we have seen is that there is still high potential for link building strategies such as manual blogger outreach, influencer outreach and genuine form of guest posts. 

One thing to add here is that smart SEO agencies like Stan Ventures will move towards getting brand mentions moving forward, as we know the sentiments around a brand is a key ranking factor. 

Talking specifically about Guest Posts and manual blogger outreach, both of which offer value to the users without the exchange of money, will remain key to link building strategies. 

I’m not talking about publishing content on sites that write about everything under the sun. Sites that you shortlist must have a target audience specific to an industry. 

For example, if Stan Ventures is going to get a do-follow link by publishing a guest post on a  real estate site, Google’s SpamBrain will nullify the link juice passed. 

However, if we are publishing guest post content on a reputed site like Kinsta, or MarketingPros, the value of the link is so high that Google cannot ignore it. 

Listen to what Bin Cochran, the Marketing Director at Marketwake say about the importance of backlinks.

6. Growth of Blogger Outreach and Personal Branding

We believe that personal blogs are seeing the sun set upon them, as very few blogs are able to find their true audience. 

As a result, most bloggers will look for reputed sites within their specific niche to publish content. 

This way, they can be sure that their articles will get multifold readership and engagement. 

More people will adopt this strategy as a personal branding activity as Google is soon showing signs of moving towards being an entity-based search engine. 

With Google mapping each author (an entity) to a particular niche (another entity), its algorithms will be able to determine the writer’s Experience and Expertise and eventually decide whether to rank their content on the search engine results page. 

Thus, authors and brands must ensure that they have enough digital evidence to prove their credibility and experience in a niche. 

This is why we have E.E.A.T as our next trend to watch out for in 2024. 

7. E.E.A.T

Since the 2018 medic update, we have noticed the term EAT appearing predominantly in the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. 

Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are among the top SEO trends of 2024, and that’s especially because Google decided to add another E for experience to this acronym. 

Google has added experience as a new addition to E A T, making it E E A T. 

All four factors are aimed at helping Google understand how accurate, honest, safe, and reliable the content is in terms of ranking on search results. 

If your website is in a niche where your products, services, content or suggestions can affect health, financial stability, safety or society, it requires higher E E A T weightage.

The content published on such websites falls into a category called YMYL (Your Money or Your Life.)

This means that users accessing content from such sites may experience negative impacts or consequences if they decide to trust what they see. In fact, most topics on the web are not YMYL and do not require a high level of accuracy or trust.

However, if your website falls into the YMYL category, Google will seek more E E A T factors to ascertain that your site is dependable.

In addition to this, Google looks for E E A T factors before ranking online stores and product review sites. 

For online stores, Google will check if they have secure online payment systems and reliable customer service. 

When it comes to product review websites, Google will check whether they contain honest and in-depth reviews that help readers make informed purchasing decisions. 

Now, let’s focus more on the newly added Experience ranking signal.

According to Google, the new experience signal within EAT will help assess if the author, brand or website has first-hand experience with what is conveyed in the main content. 

So, for example, if I’m to write about the consequences of EMI payment delay, Google checks if I’m sharing my personal experience in the banking and finance sector within the content or if that’s missing, it goes and checks external signals on the web. 

To give you more context, if I’m reviewing a Stock Market app, in addition to checking my experience in the stock market, Google will now check within the content if I’ve used the app.

In many cases, content produced by individuals with a wealth of personal experience can be more trustworthy and effective. 

For example, which would you trust more: a product review from someone who has actually used the product or a review from someone who has not? 

Content produced by someone with personal experience may be more reliable and useful.

We could find a high correlation between what Google means by experience and the purpose of launching  Helpful Content updates. So, we expect Google to launch more helpful content updates in 2024.

8. Core Web Vitals

Before we heard about the Passage Indexing, the SEO community was frenzy about Core Web Vitals. 

As you may already know, Google has been pushing webmasters to provide a better page experience to users. 

This was basically to ensure that any user who visits a page from Google search results shouldn’t exit the page due to poor page experience. 

Page Experience Algorithm has been there for some time now and core web vitals will become a new addition to it starting May 2021. 

This means it will join the existing Page Experience signals, such as HTTPs, Intrusive Interstitial, Safe Browsing, and Mobile Friendliness, to determine pages’ rankings. 

Core Web Vitals is a set of three key page experience metrics that provide Google with data about the user experience offered by individual web pages. 

The Three Core Web Vital Factors are:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) (Replaces First Input Delay – FID)
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CIS)

FID will be replaced by a new metric called Interaction to Next Paint (INP) starting in March 2024.

According to Google, INP is a more comprehensive measure as it assesses a page’s overall responsiveness to user interactions by observing the latency of all click, tap, and keyboard interactions that occur throughout a user’s visit to a page.

Unlike FID, which only measures the input delay of the first interaction, INP also includes the processing time and the presentation delay until the next paint occurs. This change means that INP will provide a broader understanding of the page’s interactivity and responsiveness over a user’s visit, not just at the initial interaction.

Google has confirmed that Core Web Vitals will be a determinant of page rank, but the impact will be limited to mobile search results.

Adding to Google’s own documents, websites that have activated AMP may not have to worry about Core Web Vitals compliance as AMP-enabled pages usually fulfill the requirement. 

AMP pages are rendered from Google’s server and they have minimum elements that otherwise may take more time to load. 

However, Google cautions webmasters against using heavy images and other external elements within AMP as it could affect the web vitals score. 

It has to be noted that Core Web Vitals will not be a primary signal to rank pages on SERP. Google says that it will continue to rank web pages with high-quality content and links even if the site doesn’t comply with Web Vitals standards. 

So, if you’ve activated AMP, that means you have saved the time and money to optimize the site for Web Vitals. 

9. User + Search Intent = Helpful Content

2024 is the year when you’ll prioritize the search intent of the query and user behavior over everything else.

People’s search intent and behavior are ever-changing. They go to Google or other search engines to find answers to their queries or to learn about a topic in general.

When businesses understand what users are searching for and provide them with content that answers their questions, then the business also benefits from it along with the users.

According to Britney Muller of Britney Muller LLC, SEO experts need to move away from traditional SEO practices that hold little to no value today as the algorithms keep getting stronger. 

They should rather pay more attention to search intent. Paying close attention to search queries will allow businesses to create competitive content that the online audience wishes to consume. 

Mary Hynes, CEO of Marie Haynes Consulting Inc., admits that in order to ace SEO in 2024, you’ll need to be excellent in providing the right information to users.

The latest Google Helpful Content Update is a significant move from Google to ensure that only quality and useful content makes it to the top positions of Google. Announced in August 2023, the update is aimed at taking down the sites that offer surface-level content from the top of the search results. Additionally, the new signal will classify websites based on the helpfulness of the content. This means Google can now flag a website as unhelpful if a considerable number of articles are found to be less reliable.

Websites that use AI to autogenerated content, may also feel the heat of the Helpful Content update. Google recommends websites to use real people to write content for real users.

What we also know is that Google is going to get better at understanding when users are looking for expert advice and will rank the content pieces that followed the E.A.T guidelines above others. SEO experts can dominate search in 2024 only when they truly understand what users are searching for.

Brands will need to cater to audience requirements more than promoting their brand or their products and services. This means not forcing users to sign up on your site or showing them unnecessary pop-ups on your site or redirecting them to registration forms. 

Steven van Vessum, VP of Community, ContentKing, believes that besides understanding what the users are looking for, they should also take note of the preferred content type (videos, podcasts, articles, etc.) and deliver accordingly.

Alexander Kesler, CEO, INFUSEmedia, gave some additional advice on search intent. According to him, businesses should analyze the on-site journey and search data of their organic leads. This will not only help them to understand the search term they used to find your content, but also on-site search keywords for all the pages they have visited within your website. This data aggregation will help brands map it to the content journey. 

10. Localization of SEO

We believe local businesses are going to see more traction from Google as there is a definite push towards highly localized search results.

This means it’s time to focus on generating quality reviews on Google My Business and even on other review platforms that are authentic.

Over the past few months, we have seen country-specific content and businesses benefit from search results instead of global entities.

This means that Google wants to showcase results that will be beneficial to the users. For example, the results I get for the keyword “solar panels for home use” in the US are different from those shown in India.

That’s because the sites ranking in the US are not serving the people in India, at least directly. But, despite it having higher authority when compared to the Indian counterparts, it fails to rank.

Even though this is a macro example, Google is doing the same in the micro-level, wherein the search results (not only the Map pack) change based on the user’s location.

Moving forward, websites that want to target local audiences should include the name of the city, state, or country so that Google doesn’t miss ranking your website higher.

11. Customer Analytics, Retention & Lifetime Value

SEO has evolved a lot over the years. In 2024, brands need to work harder to bridge the gap between web traffic and SEO ROI. This year, data on behavioral analytics will become one of the major areas of focus.

With Google evolving at a fast rate, conversions and revenues have become more important than ever. Keyword volume will take a backseat this year and it will be more about behavioral analytics. 

Brands have to focus on what their customers are doing, how they are doing, and what could be done to make them take action on your site even faster. You have to reverse engineer that to the content you produce. 

COVID-19 has proved that keyword research isn’t always useful when the world is in constant reflux. Behavioral analytics will unlock hidden content opportunities that keyword research otherwise fails to detect. 

Businesses will need to focus more on customer retention and increasing customer lifetime value (LTV). It will be all about understanding your customer best and providing them with possible solutions through content or risk losing them to some other business that understands your customer better. 

Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte, encourages companies to provide improved customer services online. Brands need to establish a process with their sales and support staff to ensure that they are aware of important and incoming questions or requests by customers that can be resolved with help resources. 

You should explore your Google Search Console keyword data with common question modifiers to find relevant topics that can be addressed. Ensure that these queries are answered clearly and published to relevant FAQ sections on the website.

It is easy to lose the attention and trust of the audience if you fail to give value to your customers. Brands have to retain an interest in customers by providing them content that is comprehensive, useful, and factually correct. Writing such content requires focus and commitment.

12. Brand SERP Optimization, Knowledge Graphs & Entities

This year, keeping a close watch on brand SERPs and knowledge panels will become very important. Understanding who you are, what you offer, and what audience you serve will hold a lot of value for other businesses. 

We may even start to see personalized knowledge graphs in 2024. Google has so much information about you, including your search history and behavior, email, and social media, it might be able to scale up the process of personalizing knowledge graphs.

What does this mean for SEO in 2024? It means optimizing a brand’s entire digital presence like its social media profile, Youtube channel, etc., in order to influence Google to feature them the way they want. 

Today, it’s not just about your website and what it showcases, but it is about your brand’s entire digital presence and how they interact with each other on SERP. SEO experts must understand how NLP (natural language processing) and entities play a role in Google rankings.

The Importance of good keywords still remains crucial but it comes secondary to understanding topics related to the query and the intent behind it. 

Google Discover is the only place where there are no keywords at play. The only way to optimize for it is by establishing your entity in the knowledge graph and honing how it is connected within the topic layer, as per Jes Scholz, the International Digital Director at Ringier.

Some of the activities that Scholz suggest to focus are:

1. Ensuring a correct and complete organization markup.
2. Establishing a strong presence on knowledge bases such as Wikidata.
3. Claiming your knowledge panel to use the posts by Google feature.
4. Setting up Google My Business profile for brick-and-mortar businesses. 

13. All SEO Is Mobile SEO

Ensuring that your website performs well for mobile devices is something that you must continue to take care of in 2024. Mobile device user experience will be a big focus for all SEO experts. 

Simplicity is the key to a user-friendly web design. You also need to personalize your website content according to the needs of your users. Google will eventually ignore your desktop site and completely focus on your mobile site to determine your rankings.

So, if your focus on improving user experience on mobile devices has been the bare minimum to date, it’s time to shift your focus entirely on it. If you have a separate desktop and mobile site, it time to consider migrating to a mobile responsive site

14. Assess, Adapt & Execute

In 2024, thinking out of the box will be more important than ever. You need to have a better perspective of the opportunities that are there in front of you. This is the time to get organized, build a plan, and work according to it. 

Shifting to a more strategic SEO plan will be critical to help you stay atop your competitors. It is recommended to shift your focus from user behavior to a dual process of understanding the market in which these consumers operate first and then take a more strategic approach to the changing demands in real-time. 

You should utilize various tools, platforms, and sources available to you to understand how economic, social and psychological factors impact search demand and then look at understanding consumer behavior at a deeper level. 

15. Long-Form Content

One trend that will help you outrank your competitors in 2024 is consistently publishing long-form and relevant content on your website. The content should adhere to E.A.T guidelines and should be 2000-word long or more. 

As long-form content continues to garner importance in 2024, well-written long-form content can even cross the 2000-word threshold and aim to standardize a 3000-3500 word mark. 

16. SEO Scalability

If you want to beat your competitors in 2024, you should focus on building scalability in your SEO services. 

Mark Traphagen, Vice President of Product Marketing and Training, seoClarity recommends listing all the tasks and workflow and then determining which of these steps could be automated using SEO tools.

You should also set up an alert system that monitors significant changes like ranking of your important keywords, URL changes, or changes in content. Establish SoPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for any other tasks you can’t automate.

Conclusion

These are the SEO trends for 2024. Implement these SEO strategies on your website and stay ahead of your competitors. Which of these strategies do you think will be the most important in 2024?