SEO Trends And Challenges For The Coming Year

With a new year fast approaching, it’s’ time to review your business’s SEO trends and challenges. We can predict what SEO may look like by looking at the current and upcoming changes in this field.

Google and other search engines update their systems often (which is why they hire expert SEO services). When they run those updates, they change how SEO influences our websites and how they rank with search engines. When we anticipate those changes, we can tailor our strategies to ride those trends and overcome any challenges, ensuring that our websites stay profitable.

Websites thrive or die based on their response to search engine updates. Some increase traffic, while others are harmed, with most others falling somewhere between. Today, we’re looking at the state of SEO, where it is going, and how our websites will react to any predicted changes in search result calculations.

It would be best to spend time, and sometimes a little money, to follow the best SEO practices. With that in mind, we have provided sources for the information in today’s guide. Through these, you can be confident you’re getting accurate information, and you can also use them to read more into the field and how SEO works.

What’s New in 2024?

In the past year, we’ve seen a big shift with the rise of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and more attention to author entities. Now, showing off content based on firsthand experiences is a Google guideline to pay attention to. Google’s latest algorithm update clearly values content from recognized experts in their fields, stressing that both the quality of information and the source’s credibility are equally important.

The use of AI and machine learning in SEO has really changed how we work as SEOs – it can possibly help with content creation, but it’s also changed how your competitiors are working, too. Thankfully, these technologies haven’t taken over traditional search engines, which still matters a lot for many of us in the industry. Instead, AI tools help out and can help us with brainstorming and improving existing content – but we can also run into trouble if we use them to recycle generic content that doesn’t reflect our EEAT.

Local search has grown a lot better, too. Advances in targeted advertising, better review management, and improvements in schema markup have sharpened local search. It’s pretty interesting to see platforms like TikTok affecting local search among the younger crowd – this made a lot of SEOs rethink their strategies for these sites.

Also, there’s a growing attention to optimizing for user signals, driven by Google’s patents. In my practice, it’s a good idea to align content with search intentions and establish an authoritative voice. The content has to impress the algorithms and also connect with users if they’re searching for information or looking to make a buy.

Connecting with SEO gurus through different platforms and news sites is really important, especially when tackling challenges like adapting to algorithm updates, getting the hang of Core Web Vitals, and improving our content with AI without losing the human touch. There are nearly a dozen new algorithm updates launched every year, so you’ll have to do some reading (on blogs like mine!) to stay informed.

From getting the hang of SEO metrics like Core Web Vitals to understanding user intent, the part of an SEO expert in 2024 is as hard as ever. You really need a mix of technical know-how and sharp insight, and as an SEO agency, it’s something we work hard at every day.

The Importance Of Getting SEO Right

Before we can get into the details regarding SEO and how it will change in the future, we should explain why SEO is so important.

First, what is SEO? Search Engine Optimization is simply the process by which we tailor our websites to work favorably with search engines and the reputation of our website and brand across the Internet.

Things you do on-page and in the backend of your site influence how they are displayed online. Strategies used to build an online reputation also play an enormous role in how search engines assess your website and brand. A site with a good SEO profile will rank higher on search results pages, with more people clicking on them. On the other hand, a lousy SEO profile will bury your site, where the masses will ignore it.

As of this writing, there are five main components to every SEO strategy:

1. Keyword Research—This is where you find the best words and phrases to rank for. Then, you can tailor your website to those keywords. They must be achievable but also profitable. For many, this involves targeting keywords that bring in enough traffic without being too competitive.
2. Targeted Content—This is the main body of your site, made up of valid, relevant text that incorporates your keyword research into the content itself. It must appeal to your human audience and the search algorithms ranking your website.
3. On-Page SEO—This is how a page is formatted and optimized with title tags, internal links, and a human-friendly design. Naturally, it intersects heavily with the field of user experience.
4. Off-Page SEO—Brand mentions and link building are big parts of off-page SEO, both of which point visitors toward your site from other places on the Internet. Off-page SEO is essential and requires hard work, patience, and discipline.
5. Local SEO is more important for businesses with storefronts or who serve local clientele, as it tailors your site to appear in local searches. It is primarily concerned with mobile device searches and is necessary for brick-and-mortar businesses to compete effectively.

So, we know what SEO is, but why is it important? When operating a website, you should practice SEO for five reasons:

1. Improved Visibility

When browsing the Internet, we are all spoiled for choice. So many individuals and businesses are trying to get our attention online, and their success is directly tied to their visibility. People need to see your website to click on it, after all.

Your site becomes more visible by ranking higher on SERPs – Search Engine Results Pages. The closer you are to the top, the more clicks you get from busy browsers who want to find quick and easy answers. The top of the very first page is where most clicking happens. By practicing SEO, you can get eyes on your site and build an audience/customer base.

2. Increased Web Traffic

Your web traffic increases as your site becomes more visible and more people click on it. People will try your site out, and if they like it, they’ll even return occasionally. If your SEO targets keywords related to niches or specific groups, you can build a dedicated audience who sees value in your site’s content or products. When a human sees your site and clicks on it, that’s called organic traffic. Organic traffic is the best traffic you can get.

If you get enough traffic, your site can rank for unique positions assigned by Google. There is a bit of irony to the way search engines work. Higher rankings lead to more visits, and more visits will lead to even higher rankings.

One of the most coveted positions is the “featured snippet,” which appears above the first search result. It’s’ a small piece of relevant information that answers the search query. This is often informative content viewed by many other people first.

Later in this guide, we will provide more details on how Google has been pivoting towards expert and authoritative content.

3. Improved Domain Authority

Every website has a domain authority score. Domain authority is a bit like a credit score in that it informs others, in this case, search engines like Google, that your site is reliable, trustworthy, and authoritative.

Among other factors, domain authority considers the site’s age, internal link structure, backlinks, and how many words it has. Assuming the two sites are equal in every other respect, the site with a higher domain authority rating should outrank the site with lower authority. This means that domain authority is paramount. Without it, you won’t be able to compete with other sites for those coveted first-page positions.

Third-party services like Moz’s Domain Authority or Ahrefs” Domain Rating help us understand how authority is calculated. Then, through scores ranging from 1 to 100, SEO aims to nudge those scores higher so that our sites have a fighting chance.

Moreover, every page also has an authority ranking called page authority. Not every page is equal. Your site will have pages that gain more traffic and more helpful information.

4. Better User Experience

SEO concerns ranking factors and the search engine algorithms that calculate them. It’s’ easy to forget that you’re making a site for human beings. If your content is bad or your pages are formatted poorly, people will avoid your site, and no amount of domain authority will save it.

That’s why you need to consider user experience. By practicing SEO, specifically on-page SEO, you will also implement changes that improve user experience. If your organic traffic enjoys the site, they are much more likely to return and may even build online communities around it.

Using scroll and heat maps, you can see conversion rates and how long people spend on your pages. This can show you what works and what doesn’t in terms of format and design. Generally, people like it when a page puts the content/products front and center; it’s easy to digest and isn’t taxing to look at. Your pages should also load fast, so visitors don’t have to wait for the good stuff.

5. Your Site is a Representation of Your Brand

Lastly, it would be best if you practiced SEO because it’s’ the best you can do for your website. Relying on distant search engine algorithms can be daunting, especially if it’s’ how you make your paycheck, but SEO can help us find success.

Through SEO, you ensure your site is the best website it can be and show your customers the quality they can expect from your brand. SEO doesn’t just make your site more appealing to visitors; the practice can also pick up on mistakes made by search algorithms. Even the software used by Google makes mistakes, like indexing websites incorrectly. So, if there are shortcomings in your site or the search engine algorithm, then SEO can help correct those mistakes.

Here are some common things that search engine algorithms struggle with:

• Web page forms.
• Non-text content like video, images, and audio.
• Slang, idioms, and other semantic issues.
• A messy link structure is holding your site’s pages together.
• Duplicated pages exist on the same site.

SEO Trends And Challenges For A New Year

Now that we know what SEO is and how it’s essential for making effective websites, it’s about time we discussed the most significant trends and challenges of 2024.

These are predictions, so they can always be incorrect or become outdated. That said, they are informed by current SEO practices and numerous Google announcements detailing the technology they’re working on for next year.

If you’re interested in SEO, you probably know by now that a single update from Google can change the game. Fortunately, you can be prepared by considering how SEO will change in light of new technology.

Longer, High-Quality Content

There has been a noticeable trend in Google’s updates over the past few years. With the August 2018 “Medic” update and the May 2020 Core Update, Google seems to focus more on authority when ranking search results.

After the May 2020 update, the search algorithms boosted relatively small sites with informative content. Several larger sites with backlinks and product reviews went by the wayside; their content was no longer desirable. Many of those affected were part of “Your Money, Your Life” niches, so they offered products related to medical or financial subjects. Naturally, Google wants to crack down on misinformation and focus on authoritative content for those areas.

This turmoil pushed E-A-T into the limelight. It’s’ an SEO acronym that means Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. To follow E-A-T, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• What is the article trying to achieve?
• Is the information accurate, and are there available sources?
• Does the information come from a trusted source with general information about the authors?

Then, with the answers to those questions in mind, you need to:

• But first, make long, high-quality content relevant to your audience’s interests and the website’s subject matter.
• Imagine and keep notes on the average buyer persona for your site so you know what they value and what they are looking for in your content.
• Include facts and figures to make claims credible and show trustworthy sourcing for your site.
• Include a bio from the author so visitors can connect with them more and see credentials for the topics you’re covering.

Relevant Backlinks Are Still Important

Recent insights from leaked information on Google’s search ranking algorithm reveal how pivotal backlinks still remain in determining website authority and search visibility. Google’s algorithm consistently prioritizes sites with a robust backlink profile, using these links to endorse credibility, relevance, and trustworthiness. High-quality backlinks from authoritative sources signal to Google that others value a website in the digital ecosystem, which can significantly boost rankings.

However, not all backlinks are created equal—low-quality or irrelevant links can detract from a site’s standing. This underscores the importance of a strategic approach to backlinking, where each link contributes to a cohesive, authoritative online presence.

To maintain authority and rank high in search results, you can streamline acquiring high-quality links using tools like Linkee, an AI link-building software. Linkee and other AI link-building software help automate identifying and researching potential link sources and ensuring that backlinks are from credible sources, which is crucial for boosting domain authority and staying compliant with Google’s evolving standards.

Shopping Graph

Many website owners get into SEO because they own e-commerce or affiliate marketing sites; maybe that’s why you’re here. However, after the events of 2020, online shopping has become the primary way that customers get their goods. So naturally, both Amazon and Shopify posted their best-ever results due to this change in how people bought products.

Google’s primary role has always been directing people to Amazon, Shopify sites, or other e-commerce pages where these businesses can make money. Unfortunately, their online shopping tools weren’t that great, and it seems that somebody at Google agreed because now they’re taking steps to make online shopping easier by working directly with merchants.

How do they do that? Through a little thing called the Shopping Graph. Here’s a quick rundown of how it works:

• Uses product and inventory data from retailers directly and keeps track of availability.
• It uses A.I. to constantly change as different brands, sellers, and products become more or less relevant to search queries.
• It also presents reviews related to those brands, sellers, and products.

Google has also partnered with Shopify so that Shopify-based stores can populate this emerging technology.

Here are some other things that Google is planning to launch at the end of 2021:

• Cart Tabs: When you open a new window in Google Chrome, you’ll be shown any carts you’ve left open on e-commerce websites.

• Loyalty Programs: Google is also considering allowing brands to link to your account and establish a loyalty program. Visitors can reap the loyalty program’s rewards, which are consistent across Google’s services.

• Affordable Picks: With searches related to cheap products, Google may offer a carousel of affordable choices. Getting into those choices will be profitable for e-commerce site owners.

• Event Picks: Similarly, Google has implemented a suggested picks feature in retail-based events. They tested this in November of 2021 for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Voice Search

Over time, the way we communicate with search technology has changed. With the rise of smartphones and tablets, people have started to talk through their searches instead. Thanks to programs like Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa, A.I. assistants can quickly and conveniently get stuff done. Google offers its Voice Search technology, too.

As voice search becomes increasingly popular with younger generations, we already see SEO tailored for spoken words, phrases, and ideas. We think this will become increasingly relevant to our SEO efforts going forward. When a customer in 2024 or beyond asks for a product or service, it would be great if your website was the one that gets pulled up.

It’s’ easy to see why voice searching will become popular. It’s’ convenient, and any teething problems are quickly ironed out by sophisticated deep-learning algorithms capable of “learning” human speech patterns. At this year’s Google I/O conference, they revealed one of these machine-learning processes called LaMDA.

LaMDA stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. It’s built on a recurrent neural network called Transformer, which is instrumental to all of Google’s services that need to understand and respond to spoken language. The goal of LaMDA is to better understand human dialog so that the roles of a search engine and a chatbot can be seamlessly combined.

When that happens, sophisticated dialog-based searches aren’t’ far behind. This will add another dimension to SEO, if not take over the field entirely, as everybody flocks to use spoken-word searches instead. It would be best to consider optimizing your site for voice search. It’s’ cost-effective and may give you a head start over other sites if voice search becomes the norm.

Mobile Friendliness

As mentioned above, voice search follows the proliferation of smartphones and other handheld devices. Finally, most consumers have a search device in their pockets, so mobile SEO is becoming more critical than ever. Mobile searches have already overtaken desktop searches and accounted for 55% of page views in 2021.

Search engines can tell the difference between mobile and desktop. This means you need to practice mobile SEO to perform better in people’s smartphone searches. Mobile SEO is heavily oriented around how the site is displayed on a mobile phone screen.

Your site needs to be mobile-friendly, which can be separated into two parts:

1. Formatting—There’s a dramatic difference between a site spread across a monitor and a tiny smartphone screen. Nothing will make mobile users run away faster than a site that can’t be displayed on their phones.

2. Responsive—The mobile site needs to load fast and react instantly to the user’s swipes and other inputs. This typically requires a faster page speed than on a desktop.

Optimizing Video Content

Content is often assumed to be written, but that isn’t the case with many brands nowadays. While there will always be a place for written copy, audiovisual content has become very popular online, possibly due to the rise of social media.

Many brands diversify their content offerings by creating written and recorded content and then disseminating it through accounts on Facebook and Instagram. People also watch videos for product or service reviews, so creating video content can help affiliate marketers and related websites.

Adding video optimization to your SEO strategy checklist can help if you’re creating audiovisual content. Remember that SEO isn’t just about what happens on your site. If your website is the center of your business, making good audiovisual content on platforms like YouTube and Instagram can be a great way to get attention.

From there, they will follow your links to your website, where they may become customers. This builds up your brand and establishes an audience, which is essential for online-facing businesses.

You can optimize video content by:

• First, implement keywords into channel names, titles, and descriptions.
• Use hashtags on video descriptions, too.
• Finally, mention targeted keywords within the video.

MUM Algorithm

Along with LaMDA, Google is also working on a major search algorithm update – the Multitask Unified Model.

First, some context. Google has been working with BERT since 2019. BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. If you remember, Transformers are the machine-learning natural language processors that Google uses to understand and respond to speech in voice search.

For SEO purposes, you must understand that BERT is about determining intent. Using BERT, Google wanted to understand the words on the screen and how they relate to one another to indicate the intent behind the search query.

BERT was implemented over a year, during which the May 2020 Core Update was rolled out. After that update, the focus on authoritative content was because of BERT and how it tried to understand user intent. It found that specific niches were better served by informational content from authoritative voices.

In 2021, Google is advancing its focus on spoken-word searches by replacing BERT with a new model: the Multitask Unified Model (MUM). Regarding natural language processing, the folks at Google claim MUM is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT.

The implications of the MUM algorithm are yet to be seen. However, like the May 2020 Core Update, we can expect a more substantial update that may interfere with a website’s search rankings.

MUM specializes in analyzing images and videos more effectively. These can then be used alongside standard copy and other context clues to estimate the user’s intent when they enter specific keywords.

This is possible through something called multimodality. This is where text, image, and audio-based content are processed and used to inform search results. For example, you could take pictures of products in the future, and Google will process your intent with them and offer related search results on how they can be used.

Including more images in your content may lead to better rankings. MUM can scan photos better than BERT, so there may be a boost if you include them. As for the future applications of this technology, the sky’s the limit.

Passage Ranking

As we have covered, many SEO experts want to rank for the first search result positions, including featured snippets. Now we have passage ranking, yet another way to get your website to the top of a SERP.

Passage ranking is exactly what it sounds like. It is where Google finds a short passage of text that best answers a search query and then boosts it. It will appear before anything else on the results page, so it will get a lot of attention from users looking for a quick answer.

If the passage is clicked, users will be taken to the web page where that ranked passage can be found. This means you’ll also see a traffic increase to your website if you can score one of these.

So, how do you achieve passage ranking? We don’t know yet. We do know that they aren’t keywords. Keywords are static and don’t typically require context to perform well. A passage is nothing but context, making it highly volatile and utterly dependent on how Google receives the passage’s intent. That’s why Google is rolling out new techs like MUM and LaMDA to better understand user intent.

Passage ranking may take time to change how we approach SEO. However, moving into 2024, SEO experts should be alert to those changes in the importance of keywords. While most may stick to conventional keyword ranking, others may try passage ranking instead to circumvent the competition. The best approach is to try ranking for both.

Optimizing For Google’s Page Experience Algorithm

The last identifiable trend on the horizon is Google’s page experience algorithm. Near the start of this guide, we mentioned the relationship between on-page SEO and user experience. The page experience algorithm looks to quantify how visitors are experiencing your web pages, taking out the guesswork.

We already know that user experience is essential. Visitors who like what they see are more likely to continue visiting the website. So creating a good user experience isn’t just good for SEO; it’s’ good business.

However, user experience can be very subjective. People like different things, so how can Google reduce that to an algorithm? It’s’ quite simple. Google wants to do this by tracking signals that indicate how the user interacts with the page. If those signals can be reliably detected and then processed, Google hopes to make an algorithm to turn this subjective experience into science we can study and learn from.

The latest big update from Google is the Core Web Vitals update, which included these page experience updates. So, what does it track? There are three main factors:

1. LCP – Largest Contentful Paint: This metric measures perceived page load speed. This is done by timing how long it takes to show the most significant piece of content on the screen. The ideal time is 2.5 seconds or less. Four seconds or more is considered a poor performance.

2. FID – First Input Delay: This metric measures load responsiveness and page interactivity. It does this by tracking how fast people interact with the page after it loads, measured in milliseconds. They consider less than 100 milliseconds good and over 300 milliseconds poor.

3. CLS—Cumulative Layout Shift: This metric measures a page’s visual stability by tracking on-page elements and measuring the largest layout shifts. A layout shift occurs when an on-screen element changes position or size, sometimes drastically altering the page’s format. For example, ads loading into a page often cause some layout shifts.

While they can’t tell us what users feel when interacting with web pages, these three metrics can establish a user’s engagement level and whether the page works as planned. You want a page that loads fast, is responsive to user input, and doesn’t experience many layout shifts. Thanks to the Core Web Vitals update, those three things are the core of fundamental UX design, and now we can track them.

The page experience algorithm complements on-page SEO, so we don’t expect it to make waves in 2024. It’s not a fundamental change to Google’s search algorithms and how they process web pages. It’s another helpful tool that future SEO experts can use when chasing better page performance.

Summary

That brings us to the end of our SEO predictions for 2024. By examining the trends we’ve highlighted and the challenges they pose, you should be better equipped to navigate the next year of SEO. Many of the technologies included here will stay around for several years.

It seems that search engines are moving toward providing accessibility and authority. Now that everybody can execute a Google search from their smartphone, the focus is on making the search easier. They’re trying to do this by focusing on user intent and making voice search more feasible. As society continues to rely on the Internet, ranking content must be accurate, informative, and well-sourced to curtail misinformation.

The arrival of these changes will bring teething issues and barriers that need to be overcome, even if the trend seems positive for SEO. Fortunately, anticipating these changes allows SEO experts to reap the benefits of these technologies while mitigating the potential adverse side effects.