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When you need a service, there is still no better resource on the internet than a Google Search. Sure Tik Tok and Instagram can help you buy a t-shirt or a fidget spinner but hiring a plumber or finding a local show time is still best done on Google. Appearing at the top of a Google Search was one of the best places for quality service businesses to get in front of new customers in 2023.
That doesn’t mean things won’t change. In 2023, we saw things like generative AI become more mainstream, SERPs change, and an everlasting trend towards video and consumable content other than blogs.
No matter how SEO may change in 2024, one thing is clear, people will still be relying on Google to find critical services for the foreseeable future. At Mad Mango Marketing, we don’t follow SEO trends like other agencies. We stick to what we know works and that’s one thing, consistency. Consistent content posting, consistent link building, and consistent competition analysis will eventually get you to the top of Page 1.
For more, you can read our article: "What Actually Gets You Penalized By Google?"
The landscape of SEO was reshaped by AI and ChatGPT in 2023. These technologies are not just trends; they're revolutionizing how content is created and how we understand user behavior. They enable faster keyword analysis and content idea generation, making it essential for businesses to use AI to accelerate research. Where some get lost, in our opinion, is going down a road where the AI is planning everything and creating everything content wise. AI can only pull information from what already exists online, therefore the chances of it creating anything new and of value is low without a seriously time consuming back and forth with the bot….so much time, you may actually save time simply writing it yourself!
As Google's search algorithms evolve, so does the way the layout of the search result pages look. Understanding these changes is crucial for any SEO strategy because there may be new ways you can take advantage of a Google Search as well as reasons your current rankings may be getting less powerful. This is one area where it helps to follow trends in SEO. Businesses need to be agile, adapting their schema and layout tactics to align with new formats and user intents. Below are a few updates in 2023 that might hint towards future updates in 2024.
The rise of multimedia content is undeniable. Even though we’re not sold on Tik Tok taking over Google anytime soon, there is no denying that people crave engaging, dynamic content – particularly videos – but also infographics, or interactive tools. Mad Mango's case study demonstrates this trend's effectiveness. It's not just about words on a page anymore; it's about creating a rich, multi-sensory experience that captivates and informs.
With the proliferation of smart speakers and voice-activated devices, optimizing for voice search is increasingly important. But where do these speakers get this info? Often from Google Searches! We expect Voice Search to disrupt the SEO space similarily to that of the Featured Snippet. The update in search will still rely on websites that do good SEO, it will just direct more users to only the top result, making ranking number one even more critical. This doesn’t mean anyone but #1 wins. Many Google Searches are looking for comparable content or content that would not benefit from getting information from a single website. So no, voice won’t kill SEO. It will make speaking clearly to humans even more important.
In 2024, Google continues to emphasize the importance of Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) in content. Websites that demonstrate genuine expertise and provide user-focused content continue to rank higher. This underscores the need for content creators to not only display their qualifications but also to ensure their content resonates with their audience’s experience and expectations.
User experience metrics like site speed, mobile responsiveness, and visual stability, known collectively as Core Web Vitals, remain key factors in Google's ranking algorithm. Being a content and backlink SEO agency first, Mad Mango Marketing's focus on the upkeep of these Core Web Vitals showcases the importance of a clean bill of health in Google Search Console.
The first step to SEO in 2024 is making sure you know what SEO is and what it does. SEO is about building an information hub on your website for your expertise, SEO is about building meaningful relationships with other websites, SEO is about loading up the top of your funnels with genuine traffic, and most importantly SEO is about the customer being able to find the information they need to solve their problem.
SEO is not, placing the same word on your site 100 times. SEO is not throwing up an AI-generated blog without a single human improvement to that blog, and SEO isn’t even always about sales.
As you may have heard, it takes anywhere from 7-10 times for someone to see your name and logo before they decide to go with you. SEO is capturing people who are searching for services without knowing a company name, odds are many SEO visitors have not heard of your business before. SEO brings these people to your site, it then takes other efforts like email list building and being able to retarget these visitors with ads at a later date that really is the secret value of SEO.
So before you start an SEO campaign, have a plan as to what you want to do with this top of funnel traffic once it comes.
Once you know why you are doing SEO, Mad Mango can then develop a tailored content strategy that caters to your clients’ needs. This takes introspection as a business owner and Mad Mango is here to guide that discussion. What questions are you hearing every day? What are the ways people most commonly need your services? Once you have the answers to these questions you can reverse engineer your content plan around the client making for great SEO.
Once you have this quality content, the backlinks come naturally. Sure it takes a little outreach, but there are many sites out there that you may not even consider that would link to this information if you are truly providing quality content to your customer. Again, it is on our team at Mad Mango along with the business owner to ask the questions to really understand how the customer ends up on your website. Once we understand the customer we can understand what sites are best to place links on to grow the authority of the domain, making it easier for future content to rank.
In 2024, it will still be critical to pay attention to a few key technical SEO aspects for small to medium sites. For giant sites with 100,000 products or News websites competing for daily eyes, this paragraph is not for you. For everyone else, the content matters much more than the tech. As long as the site is being crawled and of average load time, Google is more interested in delivering the best info rather than the fastest website. We remain focused on things like Core Web Vitals and making sure Ahrefs Site Health is reporting a clean bill, but past that, most of your SEO energy should be invested in creating content and relationships in 2024.
2023 was a year we saw our business grow to all time highs. We saw SEO becoming more mainstream everywhere we looked…and that is a good thing. It’s a good thing because SEO is about making your website usable for your customer. It’s about honesty and transparency and delivering more value to more people. Those who were successful in 2023 with shady tactics may see success in 2024 but the mission of Google is to deliver the best, legitimate content and if you stick with a plan, eventually the fly by nighter’s will fall off page 1. Search Engine Optimization is about building something for the long haul.
Reach out to Mad Mango Marketing to Learn More About SEO in 2024 & How You Can Get Started!
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