SEO Trends to Drive Search Traffic in 2024
Are you looking to drive more search traffic to your business in 2024? That's understandable, considering that Search Engine Optimization is the core of your business’s digital marketing. With only a few weeks left before the year ends, companies and marketers are already looking ahead to the new SEO trends to stay on top of the Google search rankings in 2023.
This post looks at the future of SEO and search trends in 2024. Studying these trends and adjusting your marketing strategy will likely increase your traffic and revenue.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy with enormous reach, making it one of the essential factors that can make or break a campaign, project, or business. With SEO, you can market products and services to as much as 70% of the internet population. Google search alone averages 4.5 billion searches daily, constituting 92% of the search engine market worldwide.
Whenever you hear marketers talk about SEO, you often think that it is a set of techniques to rank higher and earn more traffic on your websites. SEO is much more than that. It is a long-term strategy that helps your business grow.
Search Engine Optimization has evolved over the last 10 years. But those who use SEO to drive more search traffic to their business should never stop learning as the trends are constantly changing. Business owners and marketing managers must always be on the lookout for the best ways to increase their search traffic and maintain, if not improve, their Google Search rankings.
SEO Stays Strong in 2024
2024 promises to be loaded with excitement and innovation. As we look forward to what the new year will bring, one thing's for sure: Search Engine Optimization will only get more data-driven in terms of driving Google search rankings based on their target users' intent.
There are new things to try, new tools and tactics to adopt, and new resources being developed. This can be a challenge for many marketers who feel they do not have enough time to get everything they need to do on a regular basis.
So as the competition heats up, you must ensure your SEO efforts are as on-target as possible. To get a more strategic approach and more accurate results, try some of the most promising SEO trends to drive search traffic in 2024.
Top SEO Trends in 2024
Stay ahead of the game and align your Search Engine Optimization strategy with what will work in 2024 and beyond. When planning a successful SEO campaign, we must start by looking at the top seven trends that can drive search traffic to your business next year.
1. Voice Search and Assistance
We are seeing significant changes in the way people interact with computers, as well as in the way people surf the internet. You are most likely to hear the words "Hey, Google" or "Hey, Siri" even if you do not use them yourself.
Voice search and assistance are gaining momentum with no signs of slowing down. While it's been available for several years, it's only recently become mainstream.
The latest voice search statistics report that 4.2 billion devices use digital voice assistants worldwide. This prompts at least 91% of brands to invest in the voice market.
To optimize your voice search, you will need to focus on three things: keyword density, speech patterns, and your Google My Business page.
2. Keyword Planning
Search engines were created as an online index of texts to help users find the information they need more successfully. And the information people need today has changed a lot from what it was a century ago when search engines first came about.
That is why keyword planning is one of the top SEO trends for 2024. It is important to have keyword research plans and user behavior data. Doing so would help you know what your target customers are searching for.
Keywords are the foundation of SEO. As such, you need to identify five key elements to achieve effective keyword research and plan: your services, target market, keyword performance, competition, and related and relevant keywords.
3. Brand Optimization
With the saturation of apps and websites, marketers now try to build brands by optimizing their online visibility and design. Brand optimization is widely adopted by brands that want to generate awareness from customers who may be unaware of their services
Instead of concentrating on keyword planning and the keywords associated with the goods and services it offers, brand optimization aims to increase the brand's value on its own. Its applications will be seen in website design, content generation, social media marketing, and advertising on search engine websites.
Furthermore, consider the Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness (EAT) principle when optimizing your brand. Applying EAT will help make your website a high-quality page. Google aims to present search results with content produced by experts in their subject, driving more search traffic.
4. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google created the technology known as AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, to help websites function better on mobile devices. With AMP, Google search has been able to stay ahead of the curve and meet the growing need for faster websites.
SEO goals for most companies are generally the same: increase traffic and improve sales quickly and efficiently. And nowadays, people access the internet with a device always within their reach: their smartphones. With blistering mobile internet speeds and smartphone use in Asia, Europe, and the United States, more users search for content on their mobile phones.
Mobile page speed does have its bearing on SEO, with mobile-friendly pages improving website loading time and boosting search rankings. As such, website owners have begun building websites that conform to the smaller screen of a smartphone.
With this, AMPs and its benefits speed up your ability to gain new web traffic and will continue as a top SEO trend in 2024.
5. Google’s BERT
The internet has a bit of a language barrier. Thankfully, Google search is making strides to break down that barrier and take this into account with their newest algorithm update, BERT.
Since its release in 2018, the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm has played a crucial part in many natural language processing activities. It is also set to continue its impact on rankings in 2024.
With BERT, machine learning and pattern recognition help computers comprehend search queries. In turn, it improves search traffic for everyone ranking highly in Google. This is because conversational queries are typically significantly longer than informational queries.
Speaking of language patterns, you might want to read more about Semantic Search. Semantics is the branch of linguistics that studies truth, reference, and meaning, and it now plays a huge role in how search engines pick up a user’s search intent.
By better understanding search queries, Google search knows what people are searching for and can improve their search results.
6. Long-form Content
Many marketers mention long-form content as a trending topic they will focus on in 2024. That is because long-form content has proven to be a steady and organic way to drive more web traffic.
Generally, long-form content contains no less than 2,000 words. As such, your content takes readers longer to read. And when people spend more time on a page, Google sends your website more traffic via search rankings.
You can read more about reasons to invest in long-form content here.
7. Video SEO
Video Search Engine Optimization is the art and science of optimizing video content to rank well in search. It’s a hot topic right now, with Google making strides to favor video content and YouTube’s 1B-user milestone.
Combined with video marketing, video SEO will be one of the most effective and top SEO trends to drive search traffic in 2024. Wyzowl has some interesting statistics on video consumption, such as 87% of marketers claiming that using video has increased their traffic.
There are several strategies to optimize your videos for search engines, but keywords still play a major role in video SEO. For example, include effective keywords in the video title, transcript, and descriptions. Furthermore, you must share your videos on websites and social media to increase your exposure online.
Key takeaways
Search Engine Optimization trends can change, so you should always look ahead so you can streamline your digital marketing strategy. Most of these SEO trends are not new, but their popularity will likely increase in the next year and beyond. Many companies will have these eight trends in mind, so knowing this can better prepare you to be on top of the search rankings in 2024.
