Expert Predictions For SEO in 2024

As 2024 gets closer, the world of SEO is set for further transformation, with new trends and technologies shaping its course. The past year has seen a surge in startups leveraging SEO for increased online visibility and customer engagement, a trend likely to continue into the next year. This move towards SEO is particularly important for startups, offering a cost-effective way to connect with their audience amid limited resources​​.

Another area experiencing rapid change is the integration of AI in SEO, highlighted by the rise of platforms like ChatGPT. With its growing user base, ChatGPT’s role in content creation and keyword optimisation has become increasingly prominent. This development indicates a shift towards more AI-driven strategies in SEO, with many experts predicting a greater reliance on AI tools in the future.
 

Our Experts:

 
Mike King, CEO and Founder, iPullRank
Alex Leech, SEO Expert, Mabo.
Jotdeep Drarh, SEO Manager, Cartwright Communications
Olivia Ashley Sparks, SEO Strategist, The Evergreen Agency
Ben Howe, SEO Director, SEOMG!
Nick Boyle, SEO Director, TAL Agency
Sherin Malick, SEO Account Director, The PHA Group
 

Mike King, CEO and Founder, iPullRank

 

 
“In 2024, Search Generative Experience (SGE) will reshape user habits, the CTR curve, and how we approach rank tracking. SGE introduces a revolutionary search paradigm, emphasizing conversational interactions and knowledge enrichment. Instead of presenting a mere list of links, SGE offers an immersive, interactive journey enriched with features like rich snippets, featured answers, and knowledge graphs. With enhanced query understanding, users will pivot away from broad head terms towards exploring the extensive long tail. “”Context windows”” created the follow-up question feature will personalize the experience, while extensive AI-driven snapshots will reconfigure the traditional CTR curve by relegating the ten blue links further down. This seismic shift in user experience mandates JavaScript rendering for SEO tools tracking rankings.

“Simultaneously, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is poised to become the favoured paradigm for generative content and optimization. RAG is the computer science concept behind SGE that leverages content indexes for prompt-based fine-tuning, creating fact-grounded content. As awareness of RAG grows, it is poised to dominate content creation due to its fact-based output, reducing the risk of misinformation.

“Looking ahead, I hope that SEO tools begin to incorporate vector embeddings so we can move to semantic analysis and better catch up with modern search engines. This will allow AI models to understand the meaning of text at a deeper level, and search engines will be able to return more relevant and informative results. Most SEO tools do not use vector embeddings currently, but if we’re lucky, somebody might build a vector index of the web in the same way that there are link indexes.”
 

Alex Leech, SEO Expert, Mabo

“Search Intent is King

Search intent will be more important than ever. Google is personalising the search experience more each year and sites that create ‘people first content’ will benefit in 2024.

Helpful content is at the heart of what Google wants SERPs to be (Helpful Content Update, August & December 2023), so I can only see more changes to the algorithm to reward this.

Expertise Will Out

There has been a recent emphasis on rewarding expert content written by people who know what they’re talking about. Google has touched on this in recent updates, and I expect to see more in 2024.

It’s been speculated that Google is doing this to combat the ever-growing amounts of AI content published daily.

This will also make content writers level up, having deep knowledge of a topic or audience will improve content for consumers and be rewarded by Google, a win-win for everyone.

Be Prepared… For Updates

Reactivity is key, SEOs must be prepared. 2023 was a year of rapid-fire Google Updates with almost monthly updates from July.

Gone are the days of large, sparse updates, digital marketers must be ready to adapt to the ever-changing SEO landscape in 2024.”

Jotdeep Drarh, SEO Manager, Cartwright Communications

“2024 is expected to see huge transformation in the way marketers formulate results-driven SEO strategies. This change is forecasted by Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), and the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

SGE is set to see users of Google clicking less on websites in results pages, instead being shown answers to their queries directly in Google. This highlights main factors to consider: ensuring a website gets more real-estate space in results is paramount, and aligning website content to customer search intent is more-so important.

How can this be done? Specialists have summarised that there is to be renewed emphasis on content created by experts, countering the prevalence of machine-generated material. This places value on content which demonstrates human expertise and originality.

For SEO, I foresee 2024 challenging marketers to provide a holistic approach to marketing strategies, combining technical expertise and user-centric content. Previous focus has been on long-tail and short-tail keywords, but I think the emergence of SGE will see SEO strategies focus more on authentic content to stand out from AI generated content, where bringing unique customer stories into website content will stand you out from competition.

Think of a superhero movie – your customer is faced with a pain point (villain),and your website content acts as the tools needed to overcome the villain. Upon coming across your content, the customer becomes the hero, leading to them becoming brand evangelists.”

Olivia Ashley Sparks, SEO Strategist, The Evergreen Agency

“Olivia Ashley Sparks is an SEO strategist at The Evergreen Agency. Olivia is the point of contact for the agency’s client portfolio and is responsible for keeping them up to date with any retrospective comments or updates from relevant departments within the agency, as well as strategic developments or achievements made by the team.

Liv has a love for all aspects of SEO and harnessing unknown potential within clients’ websites. In her day-to-day role, you can find Liv conducting technical audits, on-page optimisation, keyword research and strategic planning to ensure all client’s websites reach their full potential.”

Ben Howe, SEO Director, SEOMG!

“In 2024, the importance of EEAT ranking principles (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust) will only increase. AI-driven features in search results will necessitate a focus on long-tail search, and 2024 will be the year we leave behind traditional keyword research techniques.

Basic tips for meeting EEAT requirements include showing transparency about practices, first-hand experience in content, and providing an insight or information extract not found anywhere else.

Initially, EEAT principles applied to Your Money Your Life (YMYL) topics, but now apply on a “sliding scale” to more or less any content theme.

Meanwhile, Ben’s tip for entity-level keyword research is conceptually simple. He recommends analysing keyword modifiers across a vast set of similar entities and applying those common modifiers across all sub-topics of these entities (regardless of whether there is demonstrable search volume at that level).

Collaboration with product experts and paid search teams will help refine and validate this. In short, the advice for 2024 is to prioritise these areas over tiebreaker ranking factors like Core Web Vitals. Most technical SEO will be secondary to content quality and relevance.”

Nick Boyle, SEO Director, TAL Agency

“Google’s ‘job’ continues to be to present searchers with the best possible answer to their queries, so intent will become more important than ever in 2024. Why exactly are people searching, and what are they looking to do with the results? Are they searching for information, or do they have their card in their hand ready to pay?

There are generally three types of intent we talk about: informational, navigational and transactional. Each type of content you produce for your site should strive to hit one of these purposes depending on where it’s placed. SEOs will need to think about the terms they are using on those pages, and what those words drive people to do. Words such as ‘explore’ and ‘discover’ encourage browsing, whereas ‘shop’ and ‘buy’ suggest a transaction. Small signals like these can help define a page’s purpose very quickly.

“The changes we’ve seen in Google over the past few years have been geared towards creating a more intuitive and satisfying user experience, even more focus on search intent is just the next step (one we’re already well on with making).”

Sherin Malick, SEO Account Director, The PHA Group

“Despite the increase of AI tools and changes to Google, SEO has remained as important as ever in 2023, and some would say even more so. As we head into 2024, SEO should remain a key part of every brand’s marketing strategy.

Increased importance of E-E-A-T

With the Helpful Content update being updated, 2024 will start to see even more importance on authoritative and trustworthy content. Brands should expect to create useful and engaging content for their users, as well as ensuring they are answering questions to fit in with user intent and even longer tail queries. By merging your content and SEO strategies, your content will have data backing it to ensure it is valuable to users.

SEO will work alongside AI

Despite reports of ‘SEO is dead’ because of the increasing use of AI, 2024 will see SEO teams working with AI, not against it. The search landscape is set to change with SGE rolling out to more users and the launch of Gemini meaning that AI content will be smarter and more accurate. Brands need to keep up to date with ongoing AI releases. SEO will be more important than ever to ensure brands are visible within the SERPs, as well as making sure that what is coming out of AI is reliable to meet users needs.”

Naomi Francis-Parker, Head of SEO, The Evergreen Agency

“Naomi has been with Evergreen for five years and now heads up the entire organic side of the agency as Evergreen’s Head of SEO. She is incredibly well versed in the core disciplines of digital marketing including content marketing, promotion and the technical side of SEO.

Naomi consistently stays one step ahead of all new developments, keeping up to date with every forum and newsletter in the industry to ensure she remains at the forefront of the forever-changing landscape. With an inquisitive, fastidious and adaptable approach to digital marketing, Naomi is in charge of setting the strategic direction for all of the brands that Evergreen works with. She has personally set the commercial strategic direction for several ambitious ecommerce brands, resulting in significant online growth and revenue.”