When Bob Dylan wrote, “The times, they are a-changin’,” he wasn’t talking about SEO. But he could have been if Google was around back in the Sixties. That’s because there always seems to be something new in SEO, and keeping up is a bit like trying to hit a moving target.
As we reach the last three months of 2024, a new set of trends is here yet again, and this time they’re a pretty big deal. From AI Overviews to E-E-A-T, there’s a whole host of SEO stuff to dig into as marketers all over the world try to keep pace.
With that in mind, here are some of the best SEO trends for 2024 that’ll get you ranking, outflanking and banking on success.
AI and machine learning: the new search engine optimisation powerhouses
Perhaps the most significant trend in SEO strategy this year (2024) is the integration of AI and machine learning technologies. Search engines like Google are using these advanced capabilities for deeper insights into user intent, with the aim of delivering more relevant and personalised search results.
But AI’s impact extends far beyond refining search algorithms. AI is changing the way SEO fundamentally works thanks to a little something called AI Overviews.
What are AI Overviews?
Google's new AI Overviews feature is looking to shake up the search experience by delivering quick info summaries right on the results page using AI. Essentially, Google has recognised that us modern internet users have incredibly short attention spans (or it doesn't want to get left behind by ChatGPT. We'll leave you to decide). So, rather than bombarding us with a flood of links to chase, it’s aiming to serve up concise, pre-digested summaries front and centre to streamline our thirst for knowledge.
The thinking behind it? Keeping eyeballs glued to Google's own content ecosystem rather than quickly bouncing out to other sites and apps (or, you know, using ChatGPT). More sustained user engagement means more advertising dollars and tasty first-party data insights for Google to eat up. Plus, the overviews showcase Google's homegrown Gemini AI system that scans and remixes web info into skimmable, highlight-reel packages.
It's optimised for peak efficiency when you just need a quick yes or no answer to pressing questions like "is this mushroom edible or will it melt my brain?" Or "do cargo shorts still make you look like a dad from the 90s?" Bite-sized knowledge nuggets without the fluff.
Of course, the rollout hasn't been seamless so far. Early hiccups like dishing out potentially dangerous misinformation and failing to separate satire from fact are definite blemishes. Not to mention frustrated voices from publishers concerned this will put an end to even more of their traffic as users get their burning queries satisfied without ever leaving Google's walled garden.
But you can expect the Google team to iteratively improve and refine the AI Overview approach. An optimised 2.0 version could be a way to match hyper-relevant info nuggets to any query with surgical accuracy. Just another big wave of disruption we'll all need to study, adapt to, and ultimately ride as the AI tide rises.
E-E-A-T: rising credibility standards
In the era of rampant misinformation and increasingly sceptical online audiences, one overarching SEO trend is Google’s escalating emphasis on website and content credibility factors.
Specifically, the search engine giant has articulated the key pillars it evaluates through its “E-E-A-T” criteria:
- Experience. Does the content creator possess direct, first-hand experience related to the topic? This experiential perspective lends greater authority.
- Expertise. What are the recognised credentials and qualifications of the content producer? Proven subject matter expertise holds more weight.
- Authoritativeness. How reputable and influential is the website or author based on metrics like high-quality backlink profiles, citations and online community stature?
- Trustworthiness. Do transparency practices, privacy policies and external reputation factors signal a trustworthy, reliable source that audiences can depend on?
To optimise E-E-A-T signals, SEO professionals should adopt more rigorous vetting and credentialing processes for content producers. Building author biographies, highlighting relevant accolades and earning quality backlinks from respected industry authorities have become essential tactics.
Content that can’t demonstrate a high E-E-A-T standard will increasingly struggle to gain visibility in search results as user scepticism around unreliable sources grows. Additionally, maintaining organic traffic is challenging due to evolving search behaviours and AI-generated content, but the long-term benefits of increased organic traffic through SEO are substantial.
Human-first content principles
Related to the push for greater credibility and more comprehensive content experiences, the overarching SEO trend for 2024 is creating genuinely valuable, user-centric, and “human-first” content assets.
Gone are the days of superficial keyword stuffing and churning out keyword-optimised blog posts without any real substance. As search engines become more sophisticated at gauging genuine user satisfaction signals, producing quality content that thoroughly addresses specific needs, challenges, interests and intents in a helpful, engaging way is paramount.
A few human-first content principles SEO professionals are embracing include:
In-depth topic coverage
Rather than creating dozens of shallowly optimised pages for individual keywords, the focus shifts to definitive long-form pillar pages exhaustively covering entire topics and user journeys.
Creating content that directly answers user search queries is essential to enhance discoverability and user satisfaction.
Natural language optimisation
Optimising for how humans actually search using natural, conversational language, as opposed to just isolated keywords and rigid phrasing. This involves aligning your content with user search intent and preferences to ensure it answers search queries effectively and resonates with your target audience.
Multiformat mediums
Blending written content with complementary visuals, video, audio, interactive tools and other multimedia formats to create more immersive, memorable educational experiences.
Incorporating video content can significantly enhance visibility in Google search results and improve user engagement.
Original research and data
Earning visibility and building authority by conducting proprietary research studies, surveys and data analyses to surface insightful, previously unavailable information.
This human-centric approach actively demonstrates E-E-A-T credibility and positions businesses as trustworthy subject matter leaders in their respective fields. Combine this intentional mindset with the capabilities of AI, and producers finally have the ideal tools to create truly audience-centric content experiences optimised for both human and machine audiences. Appearing at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) significantly benefits brand awareness and generates impressions.
Local prominence signals
While national and global SEO efforts remain necessary for large-scale brands, locally-focused optimisation continues growing in importance for any business serving a geographic region or consumer base.
Search engines are continuously refining their ability to detect local intent within queries and prioritise showing nearby, community-relevant results accordingly. General queries for services like "plumbers" or "electricians" now frequently yield local business listings before any other standard website content.
On top of technical local SEO best practices like Google Business Profile management, citations, review monitoring and schema markup—maintaining a robust local social media presence and positive digital reputation is crucial.
Platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are expanding their local discovery features. Their traction—especially among younger demographics—means local businesses must implement holistic local SEO strategies spanning traditional search engines and these emerging hyperlocal digital channels.
Whether through dedicated local landing pages, targeted local link building or building a strong local community following, establishing prominent, authoritative local search presence across all relevant platforms is essential as localization trends accelerate in 2024 and beyond.
The visual frontier: video SEO
While video has been an increasing focus of SEO strategies for several years now, its importance is projected to surge to new heights in 2024. From an audience perspective, video consumption across all devices and platforms has skyrocketed in our society. Viewers demand more visual, interactive and engaging content experiences.
Search engines have taken note. Google continues enhancing its video indexing and ranking capabilities to surface relevant clips directly in search results and even overlay visual content on standard result pages. Video content ranking in Google search results is becoming increasingly significant, impacting SEO strategies by necessitating a focus on high-quality, engaging video content.
Optimising video content with strategic titles, descriptions, closed captioning and video sitemaps has become table stakes. But SEO professionals are increasing investments into producing higher quality, purposefully architected video content hubs covering focused topical areas.
Everything from building dedicated video landing pages to generating video content series and creating supporting content resources mapped to video information architecture. And it’s all with the explicit intent of boosting visibility and engagement across all potential video search access points, whether traditional or visual.
The future of search is increasingly multi-modal. Those combining enhanced text, images, audio and video content in rich, multimedia topic clusters and pillar pages covering comprehensive subject overviews will see outsized dividends as visual search behaviours accelerate.
User experience prioritised: core web vitals
While not an entirely new concept, the 2024 SEO landscape sees heightened prioritisation and scrutiny of core user experience factors spanning technical, engagement and trust components.
On the technical side, Google’s Page Experience initiatives like Core Web Vitals continue placing greater emphasis on quantifiable metrics around loading speed, responsiveness, visual stability and security. 2024 will likely bring expanded PageExperience ranking criteria and penalties for underperforming sites.
Understanding how user behaviour impacts search demand and content optimization is crucial. To retain user attention and stave off bounce rates, content and experiences must deliver genuine value, interactivity and relevance tailored to intent signals like device type, location, interest categories and previous engagement history.
Ensuring trust through transparency is the final key UX pillar. Businesses that prominently feature clear data practices, contact accessibility, author credentials and evidence-based thought leadership tend to convert better and build lasting loyalty.
As AI content generation proliferates, search engines are rewarding websites prioritising authentic human authorship, expertise, and transparency – giving user experiences built on those principles a distinct edge in visibility and engagement.
Lean into automation
The ever-increasing scale, complexity and dynamism of the digital search landscape makes relying solely on manual SEO tactics extraordinarily unsustainable for businesses with more than a handful of web properties.
That's why leveraging intelligent automation technologies to streamline and optimise processes at an enterprise scale is another major SEO trend to double down on in 2024. Whether website crawling, data aggregation, performance visualisation or proactive recommendation engines - automating tedious human workflows frees professionals to focus on higher level strategy and decision making.
When combined with AI-driven content production and programmatic SEO tools to procedurally generate high volumes of targeted pages at scale, automation enables previously unattainable levels of content coverage, velocity and personalization. The competitive playing field essentially tilts towards tech-forward SEO operations.
However, automation also introduces new discipline requirements for governance, security, cross-functional collaboration, and lifecycle management. Successful SEOs in 2024 will be the ones adeptly designing and orchestrating these intelligent automation workflows to produce outstanding content experiences efficiently at scale. And it’ll be without sacrificing brand integrity or optimisation rigour in the process.
So, while technologies like AI and intelligent automation are clear centrepieces of the 2024 SEO landscape, their empowering capabilities also bring elevated accountability for businesses to operate in an ethical, responsible manner, as we'll explore next.
Ethical content production standards
With the impressive advances in AI language models and content generation tools, a major emerging issue around potential misuse must be addressed proactively through ethical SEO practices in 2024 and beyond. Ethical practices in search engine optimization are crucial for long-term success, ensuring that strategies are sustainable and trustworthy.
Questions around copyrighted material infringement, disinformation and bias perpetuated by inherently flawed training data, and the overall quality control of experiences created by artificial means all require thoughtful governance frameworks.
Google has already taken measures to detect and penalise sites generating low-quality AI spun content at scale—but this is just table stakes. SEO professionals navigating this ethical frontier must establish robust processes and checkpoints around:
- Original content provenance. Can generated content be traced to accurate training datasets to ensure originality and prevent recycling or plagiarism violations?
- Privacy and copyright compliance. What gatekeeping procedures exist to avoid exposing personally identifiable information or copyrighted material in generated outputs?
- Bias and disinformation detection. How can impartiality be enforced to generate ethnically representative, factual information without perpetuating societal biases or spreading misinformation?
- Human review or signoff. What level of editorial oversight from qualified subject matter experts exists to finalise outputs before publication and distribution?
- AI content disclaimers. Should generated content be transparently disclosed and differentiated from human authorship to properly set audience expectations?
Beyond the technical considerations, fostering corporate cultures that value these ethical principles as seriously as quantitative performance metrics themselves will enable sustainable, trusted technology adoption.
Addressing AI’s ethical implications head-on means you can mitigate risks and build a competitive advantage rooted in brand integrity and credibility. Those dragging their feet will potentially face damaged reputations and visibility penalties as standards rise.
The 2024 SEO landscape is evolving into a multi-dimensional expanse where artificial and human intelligence meet head-on.
- Staying ahead of emergent trends
- Investing in the right enabling technologies
- Adhering to ethical standards
These are the aspects that businesses can navigate to meet tectonic shifts to not only remain competitively visible in search, but positioned to deliver unparalleled audience-centric content experiences.
Summary: SEO trends in 2024 and beyond
From AI integration and intensifying credibility standards to optimising for search-generative experiences and prioritising ethical content governance, the SEO trends shaping 2024 are redefining what visibility and true audience-centricity mean in our increasingly digitised world.
The evolving nature of search engine optimisation highlights the importance of aligning content with user search intent. Those embracing this new paradigm will thrive, while the stubborn relics will fade from relevance.
If you want to stay ahead of the curve, partner with Conturae today. Thanks to our innovative platform, you can seamlessly integrate AI and machine learning technologies. This integration will not only optimise your search engine performance, enhance your content's E-A-T standards, and ensure your SEO practices are ethically sound but also provide you with a sense of reassurance and confidence in your digital strategy.
Are you ready to transform your SEO game and drive unparalleled success? Contact Conturae today to see how our cutting-edge solutions could help you dominate Google's search results and engage your audience like never before.
