What You Need to Know About SEO in 2024

Quick Takeaways

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) remains a critical component for online success in 2024. This article breaks down the key aspects you need to know:

• Understanding SEO: SEO aims to enhance your website’s visibility to search engines like Google. While the exact algorithm details are proprietary, following search engine recommendations is crucial for improving your site’s ranking.
• Evolution of SEO Practices: SEO strategies have evolved into ethical (white hat) and manipulative (black hat) approaches. Ethical SEO focuses on creating genuine, user-friendly content, while black hat SEO uses deceptive techniques that are often penalized by search engines.
• Impact of AI: The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has transformed content creation. Search engines now use AI to assess content relevance and user satisfaction, making high-quality, well-structured content more important than ever.
• SEO Best Practices for 2024: Key practices include optimizing page load speed, diversifying media content, earning credible recommendations, and structuring content for AI and search engine bots.

By understanding and implementing these strategies, you can enhance your website’s performance and stay ahead in the competitive digital market. Read the full article to dive deeper into each section and ensure your SEO practices are up-to-date and effective.

Understanding SEO

Even though many entrepreneurs are already well-informed about SEO, a refresher to grasp the most critical points wouldn’t hurt.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. The goal of optimizing your website’s SEO is to make it more attractive to major search engines, primarily Google.

How Google’s Algorithm Works

Keep in mind that the exact workings of Google’s algorithm, which determines the position of your page in search results, are known only to a select few within Google. Other search engines operate similarly.

The Importance of Relevance

Knowing exactly how the algorithm works would allow manipulation of Google’s results, making pages appear first even if their content is not particularly relevant to the user’s search. This would undermine Google’s commitment to quickly providing the best results based on search terms, user location, intent, and other criteria.

Search Engine Recommendations

Search engines themselves provide recommendations to content creators, developers, and designers to guide them in creating sites that are optimal for the end-user.

Following these recommendations doesn’t guarantee a first-page ranking, but ignoring them is almost a surefire way to never get there. For example, if a site is not mobile-friendly, is very slow, or if the content is not relevant, it is almost impossible to reach the first page.

Applying these recommendations is the foundation for creating websites that hope to receive traffic from Google.

Evolution of SEO Practices

The Role of Search Engines

The use of search engines by internet users has become a norm for almost two decades. This makes search engines a powerful channel that can drive significant traffic to websites. Sites on the first page for frequently searched terms attract a lot of traffic, which they can monetize in various ways.

SEO Approaches: White Hat vs. Black Hat

This lure of gain has led to the creation of several SEO approaches, mainly what we call white hat and black hat SEO.

White Hat SEO

White hat SEO is ethical. It follows the recommendations and strengthens a site’s presence through techniques focused on gaining traffic naturally. This includes forming genuine partnerships and encouraging visitors to share their content on social media.

These techniques help sites gain credibility with users, which in turn, builds credibility with Google and other search engines.

Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO, on the other hand, aims to gain credibility directly with search engines by mimicking behaviors that look like user credibility gains.

This involves tactics to keep users on their sites longer and to make Google believe that the content is appreciated and relevant.

Differences Between the Approaches

The difference between these approaches is clear. One aims to create a genuine brand with real traffic, eventually requiring less SEO effort because users will promote it through shares and recommendations. On the other hand, techniques deemed harmful are regularly penalized by Google, which updates its algorithm to better detect them.

When this happens, it’s a free fall: some sites drop from thousands of daily visits to just a few dozen, or even disappear from results altogether.

Ethical and Sustainable SEO

Today, those who continue using black hat tactics generally aim for temporary visibility, such as for an event. However, due to the associated risks, more people are turning to paid advertising, which is safer, ethical, and offers guaranteed results.

The Advent of AI

Since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI, followed by several other models, there has been a surge in content creation, mainly AI-generated content. Experts have debated and published articles on the topic. Some argue that it harms SEO, while others see the opposite. In the end, the majority of search engines have issued statements ensuring that whether content is AI-generated or not, as long as it is clearly disclosed and the quality is maintained, nothing will prevent an AI-generated article from being prioritized over a human-written one.

This allows content creators who are experts in their field but lack writing skills to use AI to draft, correct, and format their ideas optimally.

While not all content on the web will be of high quality, and many will rely on generative AI to create articles from scratch despite lacking expertise in the topic, they won’t go far. Without contributing their own knowledge, their articles will inevitably fall into the “already seen” category. Generative AIs rely on what they’ve already read to rewrite new texts but lack the ability to create novelty. If they do, the accuracy and relevance of their creation are generally quickly detected as non-expert.

AI in Search Engine Algorithms

Keep in mind that giants like Google have integrated AI models into their algorithms for several years. This allows them to better judge the relevance of content before presenting it in their results and to analyze whether users are satisfied with the results.

Is SEO Still Important in the Age of AI?

The answer is yes. Even though more users are turning to AI platforms for their searches, providers like OpenAI also use Google results to determine relevant content to train their models. They won’t find a more precise ranking of results than Google’s. Leveraging its experience is therefore a viable option.

When it comes to commercial searches or ensuring the accuracy of information to avoid the potential hallucinations of AI search results, users still prefer search engines over AI. This behavior will likely evolve towards more AI usage, but search engines still have a bright future ahead.

SEO in 2024: Key Points

We have already published an article dedicated to good SEO practices in 2024, but to provide maximum information within the same article, we will recap the most important points to remember.

1. Fast Loading and Response Time

Despite the need to create articles with multiple chapters for quality publication, the reality is that you must convince the reader in less than 10 seconds that your article is what they are looking for. Internet users sometimes take less than 5 seconds to judge if a site answers their questions. If your page is slow to load and the search that led the user to your site is not quickly addressed at the beginning of the article, users will return to Google looking for other results. This signals to Google that your content is not relevant, penalizing future display.

Solution: Optimize your loading speed using free tools like Google Webmaster Tools. Ensure reader retention from the start with a summary or a quick recap of the most important points. Use techniques that allow users to quickly find their answer and entice them to learn more in detail once the main answer is provided.

2. Use of Media

The use of videos is more effective than text articles. People are increasingly impatient and prefer video versions. However, relying solely on video may be optimal on dedicated platforms like YouTube or TikTok, but not for Google. Although Google can read video content, it only does so after having several preliminary elements indicating that the video is worthwhile.

Solution: Diversify the media on your sites. Use diagrams, audio versions of articles, and provide SEO metadata that allows Google’s robots to know what your media contains in advance. Use techniques like schema tags to textually indicate what the media contains. This approach is effective not only for search engines but also for AIs, helping them classify your content quickly.

3. Recommendations

A few years ago, having more links pointing to your site from other well-visible sites was crucial for search engines to gauge a site’s reputation. Today, this practice is still considered, but its impact is much more controlled. Its final contribution in quantity is less significant, but in quality, it has become extremely important. Whether it’s recommendations based on verified user reviews or recommendations from influencers, the closer these influencers are to the recommended activity sector, the better.

Solution: Promote partnerships with influential people within your audience.

4. Staying Ahead: Targeting AI Results

More and more users are turning to AI for their searches. Search engines like Bing have integrated AI responses into their search results, a trend we will see increasingly. One might wonder what benefit your content cited in AI responses will bring without links to the site. This may seem like a behavior that negatively impacts visits in the short term, but targeted and quality traffic will follow.

Solution: Structure your code to allow AI bots to classify your content easily, quickly understand your articles, and build credibility with quality recommendations.

5. Regular Updates and Fresh Content

Regularly updating your site and publishing fresh content is essential for maintaining and improving your SEO ranking. A static site with just a few pages can rank for brand-related searches but will struggle to compete for competitive keywords using white hat techniques.

Solution: Keep your site updated by publishing new articles regularly. Update old articles to reflect the latest industry trends and maintain a content calendar to ensure consistent posting. This encourages search engines to crawl your site frequently and shows that your site is professionally maintained.

6. Technical Configuration

A proper technical configuration is crucial for SEO success. Ensure automatic redirection to HTTPS, proper domain registration with a distant expiration date, and avoid 404 errors. Well-structured URLs are important to prevent duplicate content issues, which can be seen as over-optimization.

Solution: Implement automatic HTTPS redirection, keep your domain registration up-to-date, and regularly check for and fix 404 errors. Structure your URLs carefully to avoid duplicate content and ensure a clean, efficient site architecture.

You can be the best in your field, but if you’re the only one who knows it, it would be a shame for you and your potential readers.

The importance of your SEO strategy is one of the main keys to reaching your target audience at the right time, in the right place, and in the best way.

Need an SEO Audit?

Do you already have an SEO strategy in place and want to validate it or get a second opinion? Do you need to create your SEO strategy tailored to your needs and business objectives? Are you reaching many readers but few match your niche?

Request an SEO audit from our experts, accompanied by recommendations and tips tailored and personalized to your business, niche, and competition. Your business deserves it.