2024 Ai & SEO Trends To Watch Out For
In the world of SEO – search engine optimisation, things can change in the blink of an eye and in late 2023 Google put the digital marketing world in a bit of a spin. Their latest update being dubbed HCU – The helpful content update. It sounds productive, but has SEO’s scratching their heads as to what the logic is. All-in-all, if you want to rank above your competition, you need to know the latest SEO techniques and be aware of the latest SEO trends.
Google makes several changes to its search algorithms periodically. While most changes are minor, they can still impact how you approach and implement your online campaigns. Keeping on top of the most recent (and relevant) SEO trends can help ensure you can adapt well to the changes.
Below are some of the SEO trends to look out for this year:
Artificial intelligence, Ai, will continue to evolve in 2024
Over the years, artificial intelligence is considered a pioneering force in the evolution of SEO. In 2015, RankBrain was introduced. RankBrain is a machine-based search algorithm that helps the search engine giant push more relevant results. While only in its fifth year, we see indications of how AI will dominate SEO in the coming years.
The latest step in artificial learning progression is the introduction of Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding or BERT, which Google announced in October 2020.
For the uninitiated, BERT is Google’s network-based technique for natural language processing. It is crucial since it deals with the very basics of how people search for information online.
BERT affects one in ten searches and gives Google a better insight into how language is used. It also helps the search engine gain a better understanding of the context of particular words within searches.
While BERT (and RankBrain) cannot be optimised, it is considered a clear signal of how Google understands the language. This means that webmasters need to focus more on creating natural, useful, and high-quality content. Put – write content for users, not the search engines.
In 2023, HCU was the update – The helpful content update, which is much in-line with the theme of BERT. Create content that’s helpful for users. Anything Ai written isn’t overly valuable. It’s not written by a human, it’s not breakthrough, it’s just recycling already known information. If you think about it, Google is in the business of giving us accurate and authentic search results. Ai isn’t authentic, so it makes a lot of sense that Google might penalise Ai written content, and reward the genuine.
The Future of SEO & Google’s focus on entities.
So what the heck are entities?
If you have an e-commerce shop, this might be easier to understand if you can relate it to using tags in your product range. If you’re selling beach shorts, you’d make a tag and assign it to every pair of beach shorts you have. You’d also create a tag called “blue”, and tag each pair of blue beach shorts, as well as blue hoodies and blue socks.
If you are selling shoes on your site, you need to consider the different colours, sizes, types, and brands. Each pair of shoes represents a distinct entity. This means you need to think about how each product is framed, so it meets the expectations of users searching products by colour, name, brand and size, as well as Google’s learning capabilities.
This is the future of SEO drastically increasing the quality of user experience, and ai generated search engine results. If you want visibility in 2024, upon Google Bards Ai release in Australia, you’ll optise for this.
Google is investing a lot of resources into entities. For Google, entities are “a concept or thing that is unique, singular, distinguishable, and well-defined.” Entities don’t have to be physical. It can be something as vague as a colour or an idea that people might want to search for. As long as it is unique, distinguishable, singular, and well-defined, it is an entity.
The description of an entity is sourced from a patent Google submitted in 2015 named “Ranking Search Results Based on Entity Metrics.” While only a few patents get people excited, this one caused quite a stir in the technical SEO scene since it takes machine learning to a new level. It also allows Google to calculate the probability of intent more accurately, giving it an understanding of both tone and user language.
Entities also place less reliance on links as a ranking factor. This can result in the need for significant campaign changes, depending on what your SEO strategy is. If anything, the most crucial aspect you need to consider is how Google understands your website’s entities.
Predictive search will get better.
In June of 2017, Google released Google Discover, which prompted a new kind of search—one that is query less. Discover is a content recommendation tool that is AI-driven. It has 80 million active users. By understanding the different topics the user is interested in, it identifies the most accurate content to deliver.
There are two ways to boost the performance of content within Discover, according to Google.
- Post interesting content
- Use images of high-quality
You also need to ensure content is unique and creates an excellent experience for users. If you publish clickbait articles, the probability of your articles appearing in Discover is very minimal.
Another way to increase your chance of appearing in Discover is to arrange your content semantically so Google can understand your work and ensure that your site is proficient technically.
E-A-T won’t apply to every site (but it still matters).
E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is something people should know well. However, it also pays to remember that:
- E-A-T is not a ranking factor
- E-A-T is crucial for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages and topics
While the two statements can appear contradictory, they make sense when you consider what Google defines as YMYL. YMYL, according to Google’s Rater Guidelines, is a topic or page that “could potentially impact a person’s future health, happiness, safety, or financial stability.”
In other words, if the information found on the page has the potential to change an individual’s life, it is considered YMYL and offering E-A-T is crucial. On the other hand, if your site is filled with your collection of dog and cat pictures, then showcasing expertise or authority is not required.
The problem is that most websites (including ones heavily invested in SEO) often have YMYL topics or pages. Nowadays, Google is taking massive steps to ensure questionable or low-quality YMYL content is weeded out.
As mentioned earlier, websites can’t optimise for E-A-T since it’s not an algorithm. However, it is recommended that you implement changes to ensure your site gives the right kind of quality signals to Google.
Semantics and topics over keywords.
Google is brilliant when it comes to understanding what a user is searching based on just a few essential keywords. In part, this can be attributed to topic modelling. This algorithm has a thorough and deep understanding of semantics and aims to provide users with troves of information.
This means the importance of creating in-depth, high quality, and useful content for users has never been more critical. However, you also need to take into consideration the information structure. Some studies indicate that Google’s crawlers prefer pages with semantic sites and groupings designed around topic modelling.
Video SEO Optimisation
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and it’s driven by SEO. If you’re not already loading videos onto your website, you should be. Convenience wins the race, always, and videos are convenient, so although written content is important, people prefer to watch videos in many cases, especially for explainer videos and how to’s. SEO professionals have keyword research tools that indicate if their webpage should have a video on it – if it’s expected by users and the importance for SEO ranking factors within your industry. SEO trends continually show that video is becoming more and more important, year after year. Within YouTube, it’s important to get your tagging right, to research competing videos and channels, and understanding what users are searching. Transcriptions are helpful too, as your videos can be promoted to those who are hearing impaired. Optimising for YouTube search queries is important for SEO.
Zero-click searches in search engine results.
Zero-click searches explained simply, are, online search queries being answered directly on the search engine results page (SERP) without the need for users to click through to a website. For example, FAQ schemas, as shown below.
In these instances, the search engine provides concise and relevant information directly within the search results, eliminating the need for users to navigate to external websites. This can involve displaying snippets, knowledge graphs, quick answers, or other forms of summarized information, making it convenient for users to quickly find answers to their queries. Zero-click searches have become more prevalent with the evolution of search engine algorithms and the emphasis on delivering a seamless user experience. While they offer efficiency, there are discussions about the impact of zero-click searches on website traffic and the visibility of content creators, as users may not always engage with the full content on external websites.
In late 2023, Google has made it far harder to have your FAQ schemas displayed in SERPs, but again, most users don’t click through to the website dishing up the content, so the real value isn’t the listing, it’s in the content embedded in your website.
Conclusion
The world of SEO is exciting and promising. Nowadays, it has become pretty damn obvious that traditional search results and links are no longer the only essentials of any organic campaign. While both still carry weight, ignoring the latest trends can hinder your SEO efforts from reaching their full potential.
It’s quite the deep dive into the world of SEO. If you’re tinkering and toying with it as a business owner, just remember that people in the industry spend their entire careers mastering it. It’s probably smarter to use a professional digital agency rather than the DIY approach.
Reach out if you’d like to chat.
Ash
Over & Out.
Share
