It’s a brand new decade and you might be wondering what’s new in search engine optimization (SEO).
What are the updates you should know about? Where will SEO take you in 2024?
While SEO best practices are still in place, there are some key changes that could alter the way you approach search marketing.
Here’s what you need to know about SEO in 2024.
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Content built around questions
With the introduction of the BERT search algorithm Late last year, Google confirmed that it now understands the context and intent of search queries.
For businesses and marketers, this means a change in how content must be written to have a chance to appear higher in search engine results.
Instead of creating content around keywords, content should be crafted to answer questions and address user search intent.
Why that? Because users search more naturally, with questions, knowing that Google is able to interpret those questions and provide more accurate answers or results.
We can see proof that Google prioritizes answers to questions with augmentation Highlightswhich are the first results you see at the top of the page:
Source: Google search
Featured snippets are quick answers to people’s search questions, and because of their coveted position, they’re the primary focus for anyone doing SEO in 2024.
Zero Ranking is dead, but things get complicated
Over the past few years, highlights have been recognized as a zero ranking position, because they are always listed above the typical organic search results.
However, Google is now saying a featured snippet is the top ranking organic result, or what SEOs call the number one search result.
This gets confusing because we still have the number one result in the typical organic search results and then we have featured snippets, which are also called the number one search result.
As you’re reporting this year, it will be critical to indicate what your number one ranking means: does it mean you have the traditional list with the title tag, etc., or does it mean you have a featured snippet?
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It is placing itself at the top of the search results
While it’s still useful for companies to earn a featured snippet for brand awareness, this top list has led to a decrease in website traffic for featured snippet owners.
That’s because, with Google providing the answers through snippets, users don’t always have to click the link to get more information.
Knowing this, it will be critical to understand other ways to rank on the first page, which may include videos, answering questions on sites like Quora or Reddit, or publication of articles on sites with high domain authority like LinkedIn or Medium, for example.
Finally, this year you’ll want to review the meta descriptions and title tags of your website pages, as a recent one poll revealed that there are two main reasons why users click on search results:
Specifically, it will be important that your meta descriptions and title tags are aligned with user intent to increase the chances of higher clicks; you can read more about investigation of intentions to gain knowledge.
How skilled are you with your SEO best practices? Try answering these SEO practice test questions and evaluate yourself.
Learn more about search engine optimization
If you want to boost your career and search marketing knowledge, check out Simplilearn’s SEO training course. You’ll learn the latest tools, techniques and concepts while gaining hands-on experience through interactive projects and labs.
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