2024 SEO Predictions.

It’s been a full and interesting year for SEO. We’ve had the usual turbulence of algorithm updates, inclusions and responses to the ongoing development of AI technology, and even a current court case against Google itself. It’s been a 2023 that has kept the industry fresh and ready for the future of search.

In this super brief edition, I'm going to outline and give you the real talk on what I believe is going to happen in SEO in 2024. These are just predictions, based on current patterns and trends.

Let’s divide this foresight into three main predictions. If I get all three, I'm a genius.? If I get two, I did okay. If I only get one -? it is what it is. But let’s put these three things on the SEO fortune table and see how well I do for the 2024 search year that lies ahead of us.

1 - Programmatic SEO. (Large Scale Landing Page Creation For Ranking).

This prediction covers something that has been around for a while and the least crazy of the three. AI has really supercharged the process, and we're seeing some crazy ramps from companies that are already utilising this technique, especially in the field of ‘sales as a service’. Even companies like Monday are using it in their content strategy by mass producing content that is produced by AI, but edited and published by expert humans. (As AI content should). Remember, Google wants content designed for users, and not designed for search engines.

Another example is with Real estate Australia, creating a mass of suburb pages which are generated using Programmatic SEO. It’s super interesting to see, but also relatively risky as occasionally this technique can backfire. I have seen a few sites, especially in the affiliate space, utilise this technique and then see a massive decline in rankings because they didn’t abide by Google's EEAT principles. (Experience, Expertise, Authority, & Trust - The Google gold standard).

Overall, Programmatic SEO is an interesting technique that’s worth keeping tabs on over the next year.

2 - Digital PR.

Digital PR is already exploding in the US and the UK, but yet to hit other markets here in Australia and the rest of the world. But I believe we’re about to catch up.

Digital PR is the evolution of link building, and involves reaching out to journalists to pitch different stories to obtain links. There's about an eighth of the amount of journalists that they were pre COVID, which means it's easier to get a database of journalists and to start creating data led or expert commentary content that will get links for clients - and it works really, really well.

On top of that, it's becoming so affordable now that even small businesses are able to invest in it.

This is the trend in the UK and the US, so let’s just see how the rest of the world catches on…

3 - Google Perspectives.

Now it's no secret that younger audiences are using TikTok more and more to search for restaurants and travel experiences. User Generated Content (UGC) is becoming a big thing, and that's market share that Google has been losing.

I think Google will go hard on this concept of ‘Perspectives’ and short video TikTok-style pieces of content that are designed to show users visual information. I also think that a lot of people, businesses, and brands are going to utilising this more in 2024.

Google should be rolling this out in the next three to six months if they don't get distracted by the AI stuff they're doing in SGE and with Google Gemini. While the ChatGBT-style inclusion into Google’s SERPs has been a massive upcoming focus throughout 2023, I don’t see this as being as 'ready' as the opportunities that are present in UGC appearing in Perspectives -? and the good news is, optimising for those is doable and relatively straightforward.

We're going to see an explosion of that kind of content heading to us in 2024.

What Do You Think?

Those are my big and bold predictions, but as always, let's just see what happens. Comment below with your thoughts and takes as we go forth into a new year that should be very interesting for the search landscape indeed.

Strap in!