This is the second part of my predictions for the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), affiliate marketing, digital marketing, blogs and AI in 2024. Read Part 1 here.
Let's get straight into it.
- Google's surprising new requirement: videos as the main attraction on your site. For Google to feature your video in SEPRs, you need to embed the YouTube video on your page above the fold.
- Backlinks will be super important (maybe even top-ranking factors). Links will also be more critical than ever because, unlike content, they are not within your control. Anyone can create thousands of pages of quality content today, but can you create awesome, authoritative, and relevant links in huge quantities? Probably not. Work hard on creating backlinks, but focus on quality
- Google Adsense will not go away (there is too much money involved). But if Google AI just gives you the answer they could potentially face lawsuits from advertisers, so it makes sense to provide you with links so you can click on a listing. The implementation of SGE AI will mean less clicks and less traffic from search results, but you will still get clicks if you are answering the user query.
- As long as people are searching for something, there will be SEO, but with the advent of AI the SEO industry needs to involve:- in particular how SGE will be affected by reduced click-through rates- SEO's need to figure out how to get Google AI or Bing to use your page as a reference in their results
- Affiliate sites are dead... if you're not a DR 90-something site you shouldn't be just posting review content with affiliate link, you have to OFFER something. So instead of some small-time affiliate looking site, you need to look like a provider and act like a provider. Don't over-complicate it!
- The age of super long wall-of-text pages has passed. if you look at the top results of the most valuable keywords, it's not just your old 4,000-word blog post laid out from start to finish with some basic formatting, possibly a list or two.The sites winning are investing a lot into a more interactive page, broken up visually. Obviously, it costs a lot more to go this route, and it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because the big DR 90 sites focusing on this are the ones who were already ranking #1 with the OLD style of pages so they can afford to spend a couple graphic designer/UX designer salaries on hitting these templates hard.But the fact remains the sites that are going to win the big keywords are going to be more interactive, more visually appealing, and less like a huge wall of text.
- Do you have many legacy pages with poor experience and thin content: giant hero images, irrelevant shopping lists, and broken links? Instead of taking the word “content” literally, think about making your entire site helpful. This should benefit all channels, not just SEO.
- Authenticity is one of the fastest ways to connect with your audience. Use your first-hand experience with the problem to show the reader that you understand what they’re going through and you’ve got a solution that works.
- Almost all new content in 2024 will be AI-generatedI suspect that by 2024, almost all new content on the Internet will be generated by AI and then checked and edited by humans.Use AI, but do so wisely to make things a bit faster and of higher quality, not to generate thousands of articles with the press of a button.
- Content won't be king anymore in 2024I think that Google realizes that almost all content is now generated by AI. They also see the huge amount of new pages flooding their index and, in my opinion, understand perfectly that content is no longer king. Everyone can write very good and high-quality content with the help of ChatGPT, and I think that on page SEO won't be as important as it was before.Continue to publish good, unique content, but don't obsess over it. There are more important ranking signals at the moment.
- Google is prioritizing websites with good user experience, or maybe it's more accurate to say that it penalizes sites with poor ones. This includes websites with too many ads, long articles without a table of contents, etc. Optimize your pages for the best user experience. Reduce the amount of display ads to a minimum.
Yes, 2023 was a nightmarish year for most niche blog owners. There wasn’t even a single full month without an update.
And I think 2024 will be even worse in this regard, with even greater volatility.
Google is struggling to find a way to limit the indexing of all millions of new pages created by AI, and this is bound to affect absolutely everyone. The system is imperfect and often hits great sites that don't deserve to be hit.
Unfortunately, nothing can be done about this issue except to tighten our belts and take our calming pills.
What are your predictions for SEO and digital marketing this year?
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Hi there! I am a seasoned digital marketer with a wealth of experience across a range of marketing activities, from SEO, digital marketing, GPT prompting, social media to email automation and ecommerce, with a love for oil painting, reading and mountain biking.