2024 SEO Trends & Predictions To Help Best Optimize Your Website

Semantic Search and Intent Optimization

As we delve further into 2024, SEOs are beginning to shift towards semantic search and intent optimization. This evolution truly is a fundamental change in how search engines interpret and respond to user queries. Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing and surface-level content optimization. In the current age, the spotlight is on understanding the nuanced context of searches and aligning content with the searcher’s intent.

Semantic search refers to the process by which search engines use artificial intelligence to discern the context, intent, and meaning behind a user’s query, rather than just matching keywords. This approach enables search engines to deliver more accurate, relevant, and personalized search results. For SEOs, this means a pivot towards creating content that doesn’t just contain the right keywords but is also rich in context and answers the underlying questions users are asking.

To excel in this era of semantic search and intent optimization, here are actionable strategies for SEO professionals and novices alike:

Focus on Topic Clusters: Instead of isolated keywords, organize your content around broader topic clusters. This approach helps search engines understand your site’s expertise in a specific domain and serves users with comprehensive resources.

Optimize for Featured Snippets: Given that featured snippets often answer direct questions, optimize your content to answer specific queries concisely and clearly, increasing your chances of landing in this coveted spot.

Leverage Schema Markup: Implementing structured data (schema markup) helps search engines understand the context of your content, making it easier for them to match your pages with relevant queries.

Understand Your Audience: Dive deep into user behavior, preferences, and pain points. Use these insights to craft content that resonates with their needs and surpasses their expectations.

Quality Over Quantity: In a world dominated by semantic search, the quality of your content is paramount. Ensure your content is well-researched, authoritative, and offers unique value to your audience.

As we navigate through 2024, aligning SEO strategies with semantic search and intent optimization principles will be crucial. By embracing these trends, SEOs can ensure their content reaches the right audience and significantly improves user experience, driving both engagement and conversions. This shift is not just about staying ahead in search rankings; it’s about fostering a deeper connection between brands and their audiences in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Content Marketing & SEO

SEO is an industry of buzzwords and phrases: EEAT, topical authority, silos, and programmatic SEO, to name a few. These phrases can be boiled down to one main strategy: CONTENT!

Now, more than ever, SEO can feel more like Content Marketing. This trend doesn’t come without merit. Developing highly targeted, high-quality content (articles, videos, guides) around a singular topic is an amazing way to get your foot in the door, take over that room, and then slam the door behind you.

Think as a consumer. If you are in the market for automotive parts, would you rather buy from a site/brand that just gives you a landing page with products? Or one that offers a wide range of products, comparisons of those products, mod guides, videos testing the products, and videos building their own vehicles with the parts? The answer, in most cases, is easy: you want the site that helps you find the best part for your specific needs!

Google looks at sites in this same way. If Google can crawl your site and see that you cover a topic from every level of the purchasing funnel with strategic linking between the content, you will be rewarded for that with increased SEO keyword rankings.

Tristen Pursley, SEO Strategist

AI-Generated Content Is For Real in 2024

Content created by artificial intelligence has been a thing for some time now, but with software such as ChatGPT dominating the market and Google’s Gemini entering the scene, it looks like 2024 may be the year that AI content takes another giant leap forward.

Questions remain. Can AI content be trusted to be accurate? Will AI-generated content be unique or will we begin to see a bland sameness to content springing up across the internet? Will Google reject content created by AI software?

The answers to these questions will become more clear as we see more creators use AI to build content on their pages.

One thing we know for sure: humans will continue to play an integral role when it comes to creating unique and creative online content for the foreseeable future. ChatGPT and other AI content generators can be valuable tools for writers, but not a replacement for human creativity and expertise. The ultimate goal of AI-assisted writing software is to augment human capabilities, not to replace them. Some ways AI will assist content creators include:

1. Content generation: AI can quickly generate written content, such as blogs, product descriptions, and press releases. This can save writers time and effort, allowing them to focus on more creative tasks or write longer blogs that tend to rank higher in search engine results. In most cases, AI content generation will be a starting point for human writers. Once the software churns out a product, the content will be edited, modified and shaped by an actual writer to give it a unique presence that carries the proper voice for the client and adds value for the audience. Writers will also be necessary to optimize the content for SEO.
2. Research assistance: AI software can be used to quickly gather information and data on a specific topic, which can assist writers when initially approaching a topic.
3. Create Structure: AI can create a basic overview of how a blog should be structured, leaving blanks for the writer to fill in with expertly crafted and unique content.

There’s no doubt that AI-generated content is getting more sophisticated. We’re seeing some legitimately well-written pieces of content created solely by artificial intelligence. But the “human touch” is still missing, and that is a component that Google demands to be present in 2024. Content creators who try to take the shortcut and simply churn out mountains of content that’s been completely written by AI will likely find their pages plummeting in SEO rankings.

Stay tuned. This trend is just heating up and is certainly one to watch as we move forward.

Eric Barnes, Director of Content

What are the Downsides of ChatGPT For Content Creation?

As we mentioned above, AI software—specifically, ChatGPT—can be a helpful tool that makes your content-writing process more efficient. Your topic research and article outlining can be more streamlined, leading to quicker turnaround times. Plus, you can use the full content pieces that ChatGPT spits out as a comparison tool to gauge how engaging and insightful your content pieces are compared to what advanced AI software can create.

With that being said, we believe the downsides of using ChatGPT for content creation outweigh the benefits—especially as it relates to content that ranks well on Google. Viewed through an SEO best practices lens, here at the current and future negative possibilities of entirely relying on ChatGPT to produce content:

ChatGPT is Google’s Arch Nemesis (And We Don’t Expect Google To Lose)

ChatGPT is the brainchild of AI company, OpenAI, and has quickly bubbled to the consumer surface thanks to major investments from Microsoft, which currently holds a 49% ownership stake.

Moreover, Microsoft owns Bing. Bing is the leading search engine rival of Google in the United States. And Bing is scheduled to integrate its ChatGPT functionality into Bing’s search results in March of 2024, with an expressed goal of providing direct answers and insights to search queries rather than page links.

Google recognizes this legitimate threat to its dominant search engine market share, which currently hovers near 87%. In fact, with the launch and integration of its own AI system, RankBrain, into its search algorithm, Google has been spearheading AI advancements in search since 2015.

Google has a better version of ChatGPT ready, and now they have an impetus to fast-track its release. And to ensure it comes out on top, Google’s algorithmic systems have, and will continue to be, updated to identify ChatGPT-created content and reduce its search performance. We trust Google has all the resources, technology, and years of AI-related testing necessary to take down ChatGPT—and all the content it churns out—head-to-head. Thus, any content created by ChatGPT will be the opposite of optimized for successful search performance.

ChatGPT: Evolving Beyond Beta with Enhanced Features and Global Reach

As of 2024, ChatGPT has significantly evolved from its initial beta release. OpenAI has introduced numerous updates to enhance user experience and functionality. Notably, ChatGPT now supports multiple languages, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, making it accessible to a broader audience​.

• ​The introduction of ChatGPT Enterprise in August 2023 marked a significant milestone, offering enterprise-grade security, unlimited high-speed GPT-4 access, and advanced data analysis capabilities​. This version is tailored for businesses seeking robust AI solutions.
• ChatGPT’s updates also include the ability to remember the previously selected model for Plus users, avoiding the need to default back to GPT-3.5, and the introduction of multiple file uploads for data analysis​.
• Additionally, the ChatGPT app for Android has expanded its availability to several countries, including the United States, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil​​.

Also new for 2024 is the memory feature, which allows ChatGPT to remember details from your conversations across multiple devices, so you don’t have to repeat information. This memory can be used to recall personal details or preferences, such as your toddler’s love for jellyfish or that you own a neighborhood coffee shop. Users can manage what ChatGPT remembers and even opt for a temporary chat where the conversation won’t be saved. Additionally, OpenAI has implemented security and privacy settings to give users control over their data​.

Although ChatGPT has made strides in stability and reliability, users must remain cautious and understand the platform’s limitations. The model’s responses are based on its training data, and while it strives for accuracy, it may not always have the most up-to-date information or be free from errors and “hallucinations.” As with any AI tool, verifying ChatGPT’s content is crucial, especially when using it for SEO content creation, where accuracy and timeliness are paramount.

The Future of ChatGPT: Beyond Free Access

ChatGPT has been a valuable free resource for content research and development, but its advanced technology comes with significant maintenance costs. OpenAI’s investment in ChatGPT’s continuous improvement suggests that the platform may introduce pricing models in the future to sustain its growth and development. As the user base expands and the technology advances, it’s wise to anticipate potential changes in access and pricing.

ChatGPT Team is a new plan designed for teams of all sizes, providing a secure and collaborative workspace to maximize the benefits of ChatGPT at work. It includes access to advanced models like GPT-4 and tools like DALL·E 3, as well as a dedicated workspace for your team with admin tools for management. ChatGPT Team aims to enhance team efficiency and work quality with features like custom GPTs that can be tailored to specific needs and workflows. The plan is priced at $25 per user per month when billed annually, or $30 per user per month when billed monthly​

Eric Barnes, Director of Content

Featured Snippets Remain Crucial in 2024 SEO Strategies

The rise of voice search and the continued dominance of mobile indicate that featured snippets will persist as essential features of many search engine optimization strategies. Voice search is critical because voice assistants read featured snippets to answer people’s questions. And mobile is a factor because featured snippets take up a majority of most mobile screens, blocking out other search results.

What Are Featured Snippets?

Featured snippets are direct answers to questions that people ask Google. They appear above the organic search results on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). A snippet generally includes the title and URL of the web page where Google found the answer. There are four different types of featured snippets:

• Paragraphs
• Lists
• Tables
• Video

Paragraphs, usually 40 to 60 words long, are the most common type.

Why Are Featured Snippets Important?

Featured snippets are important because they have the coveted spot at the top of Google’s search results, above the first organic result. They generate around 35% of all clicks, although the click rate depends on the user’s search intent. Because of their prominent position, featured snippets are also a fantastic way to increase brand recognition. As Google hones its algorithms, featured snippets are expected to become more common.

Best practices for getting featured snippets include:

1. Perform keyword research to ensure you target search terms and queries people use.
2. Place your question, including the search term, in a heading.
3. Answer the question immediately below the heading, making sure to incorporate your targeted search term.
4. Keep your answer short and to the point.

If you know how to optimize content, you know how to get featured snippets. Because Google doesn’t share its methods, there are no hard-and-fast rules for achieving a snippet. But the steps above can help you take advantage of this 2024 SEO trend.

Beth Earle, Content Writer

Video Content for SEO Content

It is quite clear that more and more video content is being populated onto the Google SERP. Google has made a shift in the type of content it is looking for, not only through the Google Helpful Content Update, but also in the actual type of content it is looking to provide users. According to Ahrefs, YouTube’s organic traffic has increased 27.7 million visits in January of 2024, additionally SEMRush is reporting that YouTube has the most page-one keywords it has ever had in over 2 years (34.2 million in August 2022 vs 52.8 million in January 2024). A clear indication that Google is favoring the video content from YouTube.

Adding Video Content to Your Website to Improve SEO

Luckily, we know YouTube isn’t the only one seeing the benefits of Google favoring video content. Video content has been found to drive over 150% increase in organic traffic when following SERP best practices. We have seen this with many of our own clients who leverage a video strategy as well as their standard SEO strategy. Corsa Performance is an example where they have been incorporating video content into their SEO strategy for most of 2022 and have seen exceptional results since then.

When it comes to video creation it can be a beast to take on so here are some guidelines into what kind of videos you should be adding to your website.

• Product Category Videos: These should go on your main product category pages. Take a similar approach to bottom content with these and explain what the category is, subcategories that may be related, and what industries or applications it may have. This is more of a general all encompassing video.
• Product Videos: Product videos will go on product pages and are a great way to show users how to use a product in the most ideal way. Adding these at the top of a product page has been shown to increase conversion rate vs products that don’t have a video
• Instructional Videos: These are excellent videos to be incorporated into blog articles. This can vary from a “How to” video, to an installation video, or even just a video giving general information that fits a blogging format.

How to Optimize a Video for SEO

When it comes to optimizing a video for SEO benefits, think of it like you would any other website. The YouTube Channel acts as a homepage, videos act as category pages or blog posts. There are a few things to keep in mind while optimizing videos for SEO.

1. Video Title
2. Video Description
3. Video Tags
4. Closed Captioning

Optimizing these video elements to the SERP best practices and with proper keyword research can bring in a very high return on your videos when it comes to increasing traffic. Adding video content to your website to increase organic traffic is a trend that has been picking up speed over the last few months, and with Google looking to offer high-value content to users, this is an excellent way to increase your organic rankings and traffic.

Tom Hennie, SEO Strategist