Kavin Paulson
This is the first part of a four-part article series that connects evolving past trends to the present and covers the top 5 key trends to watch for in 2024. Plus, find a bonus section on a recent development that could potentially disrupt the search landscape.
They are some of the most sought after social media thought leaders in the world. They are widely-recognized and are greatly influential on social media. We thought it would be fun to test their intelligence 😉 and ofcourse, we knew that the views and insights shared by these experts would be useful to our readers.
In 2016, 8 years ago, I argued in one of my articles titled ‘SEO: Redefining Theory, Policy & Practice’ that the definitions of SEO (at that point in time) were too narrow and were not broad enough to capture the essence of the ‘evolving and holistic’ nature of SEO. I also put forth a definition for SEO that could stand the test of time. Here it is:
“SEO is a process that involves practices and activities that directly and indirectly, without violating the guidelines/policies of the concerned search engines/platforms and devices, influence factors that help maximize the visibility of your website, app or relevant content across search engines, platforms and devices for the right audience, at the right time when search happens or when information is implicitly sought.”
After successive onslaught on spam over the years, Google took a significant step forward to combat spam with its aggressive manual penalty drive in 2013-14. Though Google had been fighting spam for many years even before that too, 2014 marked a major shift in the SEO Industry’s (at least a significant section) view and approach towards SEO. Till that point in time, excluding the SEO professionals at the two extreme ends of the spectrum, the strict white-hat advocates and the unapologetic black-hat practitioners, the majority in the middle was happily oscillating between white-hat, gray-hat and sometimes black-hat. Post-2014, the scenario changed, most of the professionals in the messy middle aligned with Google’s version of SEO, though perhaps not perfectly. It’s not to say that spam doesn’t happen now – spam and the quality of search results seems to be a never-ending discussion, however, the mainstream narrative of the SEO and it’s approach saw a big change and since then, the SEO landscape has progressed in the direction many of us expected and on top of that, we have also witnessed some big bang developments recently that we didn’t see coming which has impacted the SEO landscape at a whole new level!
Mobile-first approach, voice search, Google becoming a conversational engine, things not strings/Entities, (Hummingbird), context, personalization, user satisfaction, user experience, relevance, trust and authority, great content, featured snippets, link earning vs link building, user intent, Rank Brain (AI/machine learning), social signals and other developments were all the hot topics of discussion around that time. The SEO survey we did in 2014 captured the major conversations that happened in SEO around the time. (you may want to take a look at the successive surveys we did in 2015 and 2016 and a roundup post on SEO trends in 2017 and a post in 2018 that captured the SEO opinions of many of the top SEO experts).
As you may know, all these factors have gained strength over time and, even though many predictions and relevant discussions happened around AI/machine learning, new-age devices and platforms (beyond Google) that seemed like shaping the ‘search’ landscape like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, BLE and others, the big bang disruptions like ChatGPT, Gemini and the latest Meta AI and alike and the introduction of SGE (though Google becoming a conversational engine was predicted by SEOs, the format was probably not visualized that the way it is now) which is now called the AI overviews (still in testing phase and rolled out in some parts of the world) are the kind of developments, that we SEOs didn’t foresee, in the current form and shape back then obviously.
However, some of the SEO industry veterans did answer some exciting futuristic questions on SEO in this post in 2015 and some of the technologies and developments we discussed about are making progress and may materialize sometime in the future.
If you look at this year’s SEO trends and predictions, most part of them are extensions of the trends that have been emerging over the years (if you refer to the survey reports that we published in 2014 onwards (links given above) with the articles that have been published across the web in 2024 on SEO trends, you’ll understand that most of these are not new developments) .
I won’t delve deeply into all the trends, as many excellent articles already cover them extensively. Instead, I’ll focus on a few prominent trends that have developed or emerged in 2024.
Helpful content & First-hand experience
The concept of EEAT and Google’s helpful content system is well-known, however the importance and focus towards building people-first content that is based on first-hand experience and written/vetted by subject matter experts has gained prominence in 2024, and with the emergence of AI and AI-based content, first-hand experience has become a major differentiator for Google to ensure quality of the content ranking in search results.
Authorship/publisher entities gained important since last year as Google’s massive 2023 EEAT knowledge graph update confirms and so hinted by the recent Google leak document.
User Signals
The importance of page experience, user experience, user satisfaction (IS score, information gain) has been emphasized by not only Google, but the importance of these factors has been discussed and established by the thought leaders in the SEO industry since the past many years.
There has long been a debate within the SEO community regarding Google’s use of various user signals to measure both user experience and satisfaction with search results, as well as the web pages users land on after clicking those results.
Some of the factors that have always been suspected to be ranking factors or signals (but not confirmed by Google or denied to be ‘ranking factors or influencers’ by Google in the past) may actually be ranking factors – the Anti-trust Trial revealed that Google maybe using ‘clicks data’ aka user interactions to serve search results. Additionally, the recent Google search document leak hints that Google is likely using user interactions signals, including chrome data, to evaluate user satisfaction with the content they consume when they visit web pages. It’s worthy to be noted that AJ Kohn wrote a brilliant article on long clicks, short clicks and pogosticking many years ago. Other important revelations in the documents, I believe, have always been suspected to exist, though Google might have not confirmed or denied their role in the past such as ‘brand bias’ (probably because of the brands’ strong signals that establish their authority and trustworthiness. The key takeaway or hint here is that brand building contributes to your SEO performance), ‘SiteAuthority’ equivalent to ‘Domain Authority’ as we call it etc. Google has denied in the past of having overall domain authority or website authority signal or score.
It is also to be noted that the former Google employee, Eric Lehman hinted that user signals like clicks data may become less important over time with machine learning/natural language processing systems like BERT and MUM.
SGE/AI Overviews
Search Generative Experience (SGE), which has been renamed now as AI (Artificial Intelligence) Overviews, has so far been the biggest disruptor in the Google search landscape this year. There have been many predictions and questions arising around how this new development will impact the search landscape and what impact it will have on search user behaviour and organic traffic.
We’ll discuss the potential impact of the AI overviews that it may have on the search landscape in the later part of this article series.
Visual Search
Many years back it was predicted that voice search was going to be the next big thing however it didn’t live up to the hype though it continues to be one of the modes of search (and not to be ignored definitely) however the visual search, with Google lens and AI integration, seems to have the potential to have a big influence on shopping search in the near future. The feature to perform search by uploading a video is another important step in that direction.
Google Redditt Partnership
This is another significant move from Google that we’ve seen this year. As a result of this partnership, Google has got access to Redditt’s Data API, which has resulted in more visibility for Redditt threads in Google search. As a surprising move (as I write this article), Reddit blocked Bing and other non-paying companies from crawling and accessing Reddit’s content archive.
However, Reddit’s spokesperson gave a statement to The Verge that the move isn’t related to Reddit’s recent partnership with Google and hinted that Reddit is in talks with other search engines too for a similar agreement with Reddit that may get them the access to Reddit’s vast content archive.
What does this mean for SEO? We’ll discuss the reasons and impact of this move in the later part of this article series.
Bonus: Another important trend to watch out for in 2024 that isn’t related to Google or traditional search is the possible launch of SearchGPT (which is still in the testing phase) which seems to be a potential disruptor in the search landscape. More on this in the later part of this article series.
In the next part of this article series, I discuss the big bang changes happening in the non-Google search landscape and Google’s strategies to stay ahead in the game. You can read the full article here.
This article addresses SEOs across board – so, if you are an experienced professional, you may already know some of the things I have discussed in the article and they may sound obvious but they have been purposefully discussed to connect the dots and present the whole picture so that SEOs at all levels ( including beginners/newbies ) can understand.
SEO 2014: The Biggest SEO Survey of the Year
The Experts Speak: The One Big Change Expected in the SEO Landscape in 2016
5 Google Updates that Rocked the SEO World