Search engine optimisation guru, Neil Patel, recently hosted an insightful webinar, Search Engine Rewind 2024, highlighting some of the most significant SEO developments of the past year, the top SEO trends in 2024, as well as future trends in search and content marketing. The webinar provided helpful tips on how to customise digital marketing strategies for success in the AI-powered digital era.
Here are some of the key insights from the webinar, along with Relevance’s own insights that digital marketing professionals need to take onboard to ensure they remain one-step ahead of their competitors.
SEO trends 2024: Key SEO tips & insights
- Human written content attracts more than 5 times more traffic than AI-generated content
- The way we search is changing
- Voice search optimisation should be front-of-mind
- Google updates are targeting low-performing, unhelpful content
- Video is now essential
- Keep paying attention to link-building
Human-written content is king
In the age of AI, with tools such as ChatGPT, it can be tempting to save money and time by using AI to write content, from social media posts to long-form features, instead of using the services of a professional content writer. Indeed, Neil Patel noted that the widespread use of AI has resulted in a flood of low-quality content crowding out top positions on the SERPS.
However, research by Neil Patel’s team shows that human-written content generates five times more traffic compared to AI-generated content, and continues to perform better over time. While AI tools such as ChatGPT can be useful when creating content, such as to generate ideas, create article outlines, or to search for information, solely relying on AI when it comes to content creation will lead to lacklustre results. Indeed, according to Neil Patel’s webinar, 96% of content indexed by Google sees no meaningful search traffic.
Relevance’s team of content specialists understand how to create content that not only ranks, but delivers meaningful results. We use powerful SEO content software to help ensure we always deliver the best content we can, ensuring content is the right length, covers key topics we know that the target audience is searching for, is rich in semantics, and follows natural language patterns to enhance visibility.
The way we search is changing
A key SEO trend in 2024 is that search is no longer synonymous with Google as the way we search and the tools we use are changing.
According to a survey carried out by Neil Patel’s team, 30% of respondents use AI chatbots like ChatGPT to look for information. For younger audiences, including GenZ, TikTok is the number one search tool, with 74% of GenZ using this platform to search for information. However, this does not mean that there are less users on Google, just that more people are searching across multiple platforms. Optimising your content to rank not just on Google but across multiple platforms is key to reaching a large audience.
In early 2024 we recognised the importance of optimising content for ChatGPT, writing an article on the best tips on optimising your content for ChatGPT.
“The number one marketing opportunity for 2024 is optimising for AI and having them recommend your product or services,” Neil Patel says.
Voice search is growing
According to Neil Patel’s webinar, more than 1 billion searches are conducted every month via voice search. In the US, 41% of adults use voice search daily, with around 20% of mobile searches being voice.
There is no question that voice search will experience real growth over the next few years. Optimising content for search is therefore a vital SEO tip in 2024. For content creators, this will likely mean creating conversational content and using key phrases that users are likely to use in voice search, including using much longer-tail keywords. Don’t forget to use the ‘speakable’ markup to highlight sections of content that are especially relevant for text-to-speech conversion.
Google updates are targeting unhelpful content
Google is continuing to reduce unhelpful content, including content that it considers spam, with two spam updates in March and June this year. These updates were designed specifically to combat the flood of AI-generated content, which takes us back to the importance of human-written content.
Neil Patel’s team noticed that since these updates there have been large visibility drops for many sites, especially smaller publishers, a smaller presence of review-based content outside of review-orientated searches, and heavy drops in visibility and clicks for FAQ and how-to content.
Video is essential
Video is becoming more important. In the webinar, Neil Patel shared that his team had noted that when a search result page contained a video above the fold, searchers clicked on it 61% of the time. And, while people prefer consuming short-form video content, long-form content is far more memorable, enabling marketers to build a stronger brand. Furthermore, it’s important to note that video isn’t just content anymore, with new features like Google Lens, which enables users to ask questions while videoing their surroundings for content.
Videos posted on platforms like TikTok, are now also appearing on the SERPS, showing the importance of embracing an omni-channel marketing strategy. SEO in 2024 means that it’s no longer sufficient to optimise for just one platform, instead, brands need to market across multiple channels.
Relevance offers video services for luxury brands that offer a turnkey, end-to-end solution, from pre-production to distribution. Our video marketing services, including both short-form and long-form videos, are designed to excite audiences and drive engagement and awareness. We also offer highly immersive 360 virtual tour services that harness the power of best-in-class technology, offering the ultimate marketing tool for luxury brands, from superyacht brokerages to supercar brands and luxury real estate agencies.
Hyperlocal SEO in 2024
Searches are increasingly becoming hyper-localised – think local neighbourhood rather than city based. Using geo-targeted keywords, specific city names and neighbourhoods will help your business be found online.
At Relevance, we utilise geo-targeted long-tail keywords, which can further emphasise the online authority of a specific brand in a particular location. Search engines are becoming savvy enough to understand the query’s specificity, knowing whether we are talking about a certain neighbourhood (or even a certain street). Keywords with low search volume are increasingly significant when it comes to creating an airtight local SEO strategy.
Keep paying attention to link-building as part your 2024 SEO strategy
Link-building continues to be a powerful tool in a digital marketers arsenal, with links signalling to Google that your website is worth paying attention to.
Research by Neil Patel’s team shows that 96% of sites in Google’s top 10 positions have more than 1,000 links from unique domains. Furthermore, 76% of their web pages had backlinks from external sites.
According to Google, SGE (Search Generative Experience) “places even more emphasis on producing informative responses that are corroborated by reliable sources” underpinning the importance of a robust backlinking strategy.
Relevance’s dedicated digital PR team has secured thousands of quality backlinks for our clients, through a combination of media outreach, PR campaigns, established relationships with online publications, and custom backlinking strategies. We also manage online advertorials for our clients, negotiating high visibility campaigns in prominent publications such as WSJ Magazine, the Financial Times, and The CEO Magazine.
How can we help with SEO in 2024?
Relevance is a leading, full-service creative and marketing agency that delivers powerful results for luxury brands targeting UHNWIs. We stay abreast of the latest SEO trends and search algorithms ensuring highly impactful campaigns that deliver a robust return on investment. If you want to power up your digital marketing campaigns in 2024, contact us today.