Nick RhoadesMany trends come and go. MySpace statuses, puka shell necklaces, inflatable furniture, etc. And there’s a good reason why they’re no longer trends. But some trends stick around longer because they truly work. We’re not talking about mullets either, but if that’s your thing, keep rockin’ it 🤘
We’re talking about new ways to create and market content, new technology, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), and what’s affecting search engine optimization (SEO) in 2024 and beyond. Below, we’ll go over the top three SEO trends with some serious staying power to add to your marketing strategy!
3 SEO Trends That Aren't Going Away
1. Generative AI for Content Creation
The digital world, including search engine functions and SEO tactics, has seen a dramatic transformation as a result of generative AI. Using machine learning techniques, this technology generates new material or data that closely resembles the input data it was trained on.
So how do AI and SEO go hand in hand? Well, companies have begun rolling out generative AI into their content creation processes. Tools with AI capabilities can help create content, conduct keyword research, improve metadata, and forecast SEO trends. For example, generative AI can rapidly produce content on seemingly endless topics, but that doesn’t mean these AI models create accurate content. However, not all of your competitors know that.
Impulse Creative Tip: Use generative AI in the brainstorming process, but don’t rely on it exclusively for content generation. Google’s algorithm prioritizes experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) when sorting the rankings. You don’t want to stake your company’s credibility on content that’s not rooted in reality and research.
Optimizing Content for Google Search Generative Experience
Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) is revolutionizing the way Google handles search intent and results via generative AI.
Google SGE personalizes the search results of users by providing familiar web pages as well as AI-powered explanations of search queries. The goal of Google SGE is to assist users in rapidly gaining a comprehensive understanding of a subject, complete with relevant details, from the very first search.
The Importance of E-E-A-T for Google SGE
Google SGE now places even more importance on E-E-A-T signals:
- Experience
- Expertise
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
While E-E-A-T has an increasingly significant weight on what content Google prioritizes, our friends at SEMrush have analyzed the new featured snippets cards to help us find ways to stand out:
- Create new, original content
- Use listicles on your pages, such as bullets, numbered lists, and checklists
- Establish strong topical authority by leveraging expert opinions and creating easy-to-navigate site architecture across your website
Impulse Creative Tip: One approach to ensure you fulfill Google's E-E-A-T requirements is to showcase your knowledge, authority, reputation, and experience, such as building backlinks and fostering trust via client testimonials and case studies. Showing your work is critical now more than ever.
How Generative AI is Impacting Technical SEO Efforts
Generative AI is capable of performing a lot of on-page SEO, but it can also assist in many technical SEO aspects, such as the following:
Your website’s internal linking architecture: Generative AI can help organize product data and inventory, as well as content, content, to create the most optimal internal linking structure.
Web page performance: Generative AI can analyze the performance of your web pages, such as page loading times. It can then deliver suggestions and actionable steps for optimizing those pages, including how you can reduce page loading times, improve user experiences, and more.
2. Personalized Content Across Your Website
Customers want to feel like you understand their needs (without being creepy, of course). Providing unique experiences and paths through your content that are relevant, specific, and timely for your specific website visitors allows you to guide them and become a trusted source.
If the desired destination is to deliver those unique experiences through content, personalization is the map that will help take us there.
Here’s a helpful way to think about it:
Personalized marketing ➜ Relevant content that meets prospects’ needs and addresses pain points ➜ Trust is built since you’re meeting their needs and interests ➜ Since they trust you, they grow more fond of your brand and turn to you to meet their needs.
Boosting Your Technical SEO with Personalization
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to prioritize and personalize your user experience (UX) across your website. Personalized online experiences increase the likelihood that visitors will stay on a website longer, interact with your offerings, and, if they have a positive experience, come back again and again.
Search engines specifically favor websites with personalized content that’s relevant to users, so creating a great user experience across your website can directly impact your SEO efforts.
Impulse Creative Tips:
- Focus on adding customized product recommendations based on browsing history
- Customize landing pages for particular user segments
- Address audience points through your messaging to drive traffic to your website and retain loyal customers
Location, Language, and Browsing History Personalization
There are several more ways to personalize content to boost your SEO rankings, including the following:
Location-based personalization. Segmenting your audience based on their geography constitutes location-based personalization. A consumer can be guided to a shopping experience tailored to their preferences, as long as you know where they are.
Impulse Creative Idea: Use known locations to invite users to geographically relevant offers or to pair sales reps in the area to reach out for an in-person conversation.
Language-based personalization. Customizing a website's language options can have a big impact on user engagement and search engine optimization. Users are far more likely to interact with material on a website that is written in a language they can understand.
The user's preferred language and location are taken into account by search engines such as Google, Bing, and others when determining page rankings. A website that can automatically transition to the user's preferred language can enhance user experience, boost conversion rates, and, ultimately, increase your bottom line.
Want to go multi-lingual? We can help!
Browsing history-based personalization. According to Google, “Personalization is when you get search results tailored to you based on your activity. Personalization is only used in your results if it can provide more relevant and helpful information. This doesn’t affect all Search results. Instead, some results might be personalized while others aren’t.”
With this information, you should tailor your content to match specific traits of your audience to show up in their personalized search results and drive more traffic to your pages. This includes understanding their vernacular, language, location, pain points and needs, income, and more.
Impulse Creative Tip: With the right customer relationship management (CRM) tool, you can even take this personalization beyond just location, language, and browsing history!
3. User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most cost-efficient and effective SEO content ideas, and it doesn’t seem to be a trend going away anytime soon.
The reason UGC is so vital for SEO is because of the way search engines, especially Google, evaluate and rank websites. Building reviews and feedback will contribute to your authority and trustworthiness, which Google inspects closely when ranking your website.
If you have established credibility with your audience, Google will be more inclined to give your website a higher ranking if you receive great feedback through UGC.
How User-Generated Content Helps with Technical SEO
One of the biggest challenges for businesses and their content strategy is creating new and original content. User-generated content is new and original every single time, making your job easier and also improving your technical SEO.
UGC, when used in the form of testimonials and reviews across your website, eliminates the potential for duplicate content, which is a big no-no for search engines, especially Google. Since Google highly prioritizes new and original content for users, trimming down duplicate content easier page indexing and crawling.
Impulse Creative Idea: Social media is an amazing way to acquire user-generated content because of how easy it is to share thoughts and opinions. Here’s how you can get started:
- If you aren’t already, ensure you have a strong social media presence.
- Encourage your followers to post their experiences with your business on the social platform(s) and tag your business.
- Gather some of the best posts and get approval from the followers who shared their experiences to repost the content as a new post from your business.
- Don’t forget to avoid any copyright issues in the posts, such as music playing in the background of the posts.
- Craft a caption for the post that thanks the follower and highlights your business.
- Post the new user-generated content on your social media page.
- Rinse and repeat!
How to Use These 2024 SEO Trends
Understanding the latest SEO trends gives you actionable insights to position your company correctly, allowing you to stand out from the competition, as well as a chance to strengthen your branding.
So what’s next? Use our Content Marketing Ideas: The Ultimate Cheatsheet to combine these trends with content for each stage of the buyer’s journey and customer journey.
