21 SEO Experts’ Projections for 2024 – A Comprehensive Guide to Stay Ahead in Google’s Search Game

SEO experts point of view, in the world of SEO, most practitioners will tell you that we’ve passed through an extraordinary period of change and rapid learning. From the explosion of Generative AI – first with ChatGPT and then the race to grasp the Board. Google Updates that were unexpected. And finally, the exhaustion and closure of Universal Analytics, making the learning curve for GA4 quite a challenge for anyone not already familiar.

In 2024, as the drumbeats of Gen AI’s introduction grow louder, the primary focus will be on adopting new tools to assist in enhancing workflow and productivity. For those not adept at experimenting and writing with AI, there’s a real risk of falling behind.

We don’t see AI as a replacement for skilled content creators or SEOs, but rather as an opportunity to enhance what we’re already doing. 

In 2024, what should the focus be in the SEO experts profession?

1. Kevin Indig Growth Advisor:

If Google’s peculiar algorithm updates in 2023 have shown us anything, it’s that the bar for content and domain quality has risen faster than we anticipated. In 2024, we need to find ways to increase the production of high-quality content and build a portfolio for our content. Using AI is the clearest path, but we need to improve output quality and incorporate human inputs significantly. AI may generate incorrect content in some cases, but we underestimate how beneficial it can truly be.

2. Pedro Dias, Technical SEO experts and Growth Advisor, Visually:

Answering the question of what the SEO experts profession should focus on in 2024 is challenging. This is mostly because SEO is affected by specific issues that need solutions at various levels of online business, and each business may have different requirements based on their stage.

However, if I have to choose a common issue that I observe across the board, it’s the misalignment between what SEO experts and businesses expect from search. Therefore, a practical action would be for SEOs to eliminate this gap and have clear communication about what can be expected from their business through search and where they stand in that regard.

A tangible strategy would be for SEO experts to understand the expectations of their businesses from search and discuss openly what needs to be done and why. Many SEO experts might not do this well – perhaps because they lack a strategic vision for how their product should appear in the search ecosystem in 2023. They often hit walls and don’t progress. They need support to move forward. It doesn’t matter how advanced or skilled you are in Python or AI or how conscious you are of specific search locations. If you can’t solve the “business-related issue,” you will be stuck for an indefinite period.

3. Eli Schwartz, Author of “Product-Led SEO” and Growth Advisor:

With the advent of creative experiences, Google will leave SEO experts behind, focusing on its own top funnels rather than leaving SEO at the top. To be fair, it’s not really “taking” it; they’re just responding to what was fundamentally commoditized information. Until now, Google has only searched for brief answers when it could rely on structured data that was more likely to be accurate.

In this ballot, topics like population density, sports scores, the sign of the ticker, heads of states, and all kinds of results we see in knowledge graphs today will be in the search results. The meaning of results appearing in search implies that SEO experts moves from the top funnel to the middle funnel:

• Instead of targeting desired keywords to eliminate the maximum volume of clicks, SEO experts’ efforts need to be more nuanced, focusing on eliminating the maximum volume of irrelevant clicks using precise words that resonate with the intended audience.
• Ensure that your content aligns with the actual persona of the buyer.
• Use header words that modify the intent you were targeting, such as “price,” “review,” and “features.”
• Finally, write content that compares with your competitors.

These insights from industry experts guide us toward a future where SEO is not just about ranking but understanding the changing dynamics of technology and user behavior. It’s about adapting, communicating, and creating content that resonates with real people in an AI-driven landscape.

4. Shelly Walsh, SEJ, and ShellShock in Practical Wisdom for SEO experts Content:

With significant changes in SEO, it’s time to see what remains fundamental and never changes. One of the foundations of good marketing is putting the user first. Recently, in the face of Google’s lack of trust issues, it was revealed how user clicks are an element that affects visibility. This highlights that Google places emphasis on user signals because they know the user holds central importance in everything.

If you can understand that SEO is crafted around making it as clean as possible from user interference, you have the right mindset to build your practical wisdom. This technique highlights technical SEO experts and sheds light on the creation of content that stands out. Connecting users with action is not complicated, but doing it well is genuinely challenging.

Pay attention to the cross-section of usable, transformative, technical virtue, and high-quality content creation. AI tools are evolving to reshape the landscape of SEO experts regulations, but they can’t change fundamental principles. Tools are tools, and they can’t replace applied knowledge, experience, and skill. When everything is changing, grasp what remains essential.

5. Jamie Indigo, Senior Technical SEO experts Lead, DeepCrawl:

E-commerce SEO experts need to understand how Google is changing its role in SERPs. Companies don’t want to become a search engine that users use to search for products; they want to be the place where users buy products. SERPs will continue to cut pages from the category and product list pages in favor of showing direct results in SERPs.

“Niche Name Store” could be the place where traffic to your category and product list page has historically come from. Now, “shop” queries (and many other transactional keywords) animate SERPs, powered by the Shopping Graph.

Everything from prices, product reviews, seller reviews, multiple images, and the last “buy now” can be shown by Google without leaving the SERP. Google is using its new notes feature to promote UGC social proof and make quick changes easier.

Results from organic shopping (filtering the visual representation of a product in search results) will continue to be important. This means SEO experts need to become merchants and improve their feeds.

Some additions, such as discounts, can be combined with free feeds. Using fields like “discounts” to create Google SERP Shopping pages that show both organic and paid results.

6. Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO experts Brand at Wix:

An interesting thing I’ve seen is a significant increase in rank fluctuations in Q3 2023 (per Semrush data). When comparing rank fluctuations over the past few years, there’s a clear difference.

To see this, you don’t need to be a data scientist. In the last four months (really low), we’ve had updates in August 2023 Core, September 2023 HCU, October 2023 Link Spam update, October 2023 Core update, November 2023 Core update, and then November 2023 Review update.

The clear question is: What role does AI play in this? Is AI behind all these rank fluctuations?

Yes and no.

The scenario reminds me of COVID. When COVID hit, ranking patterns changed. New questions had new intentions, and understanding and acting on those new questions had to be done through an algorithm. Now, what’s happening reminds me of that. And I think AI is behind it, but in my opinion, it’s beyond AI.

See some things that Google has recently announced, like the [Search Labs’ experimental feature] notes, to say that they are trying to reward more content that is dependent on experience over H-E-A-T from a point of view filter.

I’ve been saying for years on the Soapbox: we don’t describe how quickly changes happen in trends in content or how effective those changes are. The web is going through a fundamental change.

Yes, a big part of it is AI-generated content that opens the floodgates. (I know Google has said they’re not targeting AI-generated content, just low-quality content. However, citing the Enamel House, “What’s the difference?”)

But a lot of it is how quickly content trends are changing. Proof of this is in the ads I mentioned and the themes you see in them. That is, a focus on information that is based on real experience and is dependent on people – not just brands or authors who are seemingly only on the internet either.

So, what should SEO experts focus on in 2024?

Not AI. Not SGE – content trends.

The advent of AI has restarted the conversation about what users want in content, how they want to use it, and how skeptical they are about it (I’ll tell you, it’s a big part of the conversations my team has at Wix when we create content). At this recent point, the more specific, nuanced, and goal-based the content, the more the user will trust it.

Google knows this. And while it has focused on the great AI race, in my opinion, any lack of progress in Bing’s market shares will be taken as a strong signal that AI is not what the user ultimately wants (although it may be what shareholders want, so don’t expect it to go anywhere).

Back to topical parsing, an increase in relevance, and an increase in quality (which, for these purposes, I’m going to clarify my ability to provide documented experience). Google will return to its basic focus in 2024 – rising user trends and content trends.

7. Katie Morton, Senior Managing Editor, Search Engine Journal:

Adaptability and progressive practical wisdom in 2024 and beyond. With the implementation of AI, one thing we can anticipate from now until the end of time is the rapid advancement of technical inventions. As a result, our thinking and working methods in the SEO experts industry will undergo almost constant changes, which I dare say will be exciting.

While 2023 saw remarkable updates from Google in terms of algorithms, we have yet to see everything. SEO experts need to be accustomed to regular algorithm updates, ranging from one to five every two months, to stay competitive in SERPs.

To stay competitive in SERPs, creators in the SEO experts and content realm need to adopt a practical wisdom that includes the creation and modification of multi-modal content—meaning content that includes video, audio, and images along with text.

The ability to enhance multimedia content will soon become a significant aspect of SEO, as AI becomes more adept at creating content. It is evident that Google’s algorithm improves with these advancements in AI understanding of audio, video, and images. This improvement will increase the competitive pressure on SEO experts stuck in a text-only content environment.

Helpful content is king. Google has emphasized that when it comes to content, assistance is more important than ever. Users are consuming content rapidly, marketers are finding that the use of video increases sales.

With the help of multi-modal content, and Google’s growing ability to understand video, audio, and images, it is evident that multimedia content will play a significant role in SERPs in 2024.

Google recently announced its multi-modal AI model, Gemini:

“Gemini is built from the ground up for multi-modality—reasoning in text, images, video, audio, and code without any impedance.”

Google has promised the integration of Gemini into Search, Ads, Chrome, and AI. Utilizing signals, Gemini can synthesize code, text, and images. This data and multi-modal input can provide extensive understanding, context, and insight.

While Google’s launch demo faced criticism for being a staged demo rather than a documented one, I believe it marks a significant advancement in Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Scale Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU). After its complete release, following the initiation with Gemini Pro on December 13, 2023, and additional versions releasing in the coming months of 2024, we’ll have to wait and see if Gemini lives up to the hype.

It’s likely that Gemini’s influence will remain because it’s a benchmark against the progress of competitors. As AI models continue to learn and evolve in response to their public reception, deepening your symbiotic relationships with marketing, sales, and your product and web development teams will be crucial for business success.

In the face of ongoing economic challenges, Return on Investment (ROI) is crucial for capitalization. The best professionals in SEO have practical business wisdom. They understand the deep revenue streams that they provide to different business units, and how to appeal to these users most effectively to generate maximum revenue.

For SEO experts, working closely with marketing, sales, product managers, and web developers will be more critical than ever in 2024. User Experience (UX), content design, and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) will be key to driving traffic to business websites and platforms through SEO.

For the harsh economic realities of 2024 and beyond, a comprehensive perspective on digital practical wisdom will be needed—so that traffic is not only brought to the website but also transformed into meaningful leads, revenue, and business growth.

In 2024 and beyond, there will be a unique and constant transformation in SEO. The continuous progress, training, and integration of AI in the SEO experts industry, along with changes in how we create content and how Google perceives it as “helpful,” will demand a thoughtful and visionary approach globally.

8. Motoko Hunt, President, International Search Marketing: 

As SEO experts, we focus on search engine algorithms and ranking/visibility. In 2024, my hope is that more SEOs pay attention to clients’ business goals and provide SEO experts recommendations that assist them in achieving their objectives. Sending a list of 100 action items is one thing, but it won’t help unless the items are implemented.

Often, the delay in revenue is not because they lack interest in solving issues. Every company has different processes, resources, budgets, etc., and they have priority items. Try to understand how the client’s SEO/IT/Content processes are organized and how they work.

If you can prioritize action items in small steps, it usually gets adopted gradually. Deals also progress faster if you can build a business case that shows how the company can benefit from solving every problem. We SEO experts live deeply in the world of SEO, but our clients are not SEO experts. People who need discussions on SEO improvements are definitely not SEO experts.

Breaking down your recommendations into small action items makes it easier for them to understand what needs to be done. We are in a good time where most businesses understand the importance of SEO. It’s not about convincing them of SEO; at the same time, there are hundreds of SEO experts to choose from.

In addition to SEO experts skills, how you work with clients can set you apart from other SEO experts in 2024.

9. Snippet Digital’s Co-founder and Product Lead is Suganthan Mohanadasan:

SEO experts need to pay attention to how people search online, especially when it comes to acquiring information about new civilizations that span thousands of years. It’s noteworthy that not everyone exclusively relies on Google for their online searches anymore.

Social media platforms have become crucial search engines for many, especially when looking for information about experiences such as travel, vacations, or the latest trends. On the other hand, topics related to medical and financial matters are still being searched on Google. Therefore, understanding where your target audience is searching and adjusting the practical wisdom of your content accordingly is essential.

This might mean creating content specifically for certain social media platforms or integrating existing content into the right channels to connect with your audience effectively.

10. Duane Forrester, VP, Industry Insights, Yext:

I’ve been doing SEO since 1998, and here I am, shaping my opinion based on the knowledge, learning, and insights gained throughout my career. It’s a constantly evolving space, challenging to correct misconceptions, but the effort is always rewarding.

In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT on a large scale. Admittedly, most of us didn’t fully grasp the implications of these changes brought about so quickly. Nevertheless, we’ve agreed, and I anticipate further agreements until 2024.

A crucial area that will require attention is structured data. With the advent of systems powered by generative AI, more crawler-fed systems are scoring data where users turn for answers. Structured data aids all systems in better understanding content. It’s not just a “Google thing.” Leaving it behind opens a door that competitors can walk through. Shut the door, get to work.

Hard on its heels, I expect that when it comes to the journey of content and audience, we are on the brink of seeing a new understanding of what it means to be “useful.” Search engines have been talking about the importance of “being useful” for years, but SEO experts teams still focus on researching key terms, creating pages that fill content gaps, and sharing them.

While it’s essential for a SEO experts program to remain strong, teams also need to incorporate understanding the customer’s listening, extracting emotions, and comprehending intent into the mix. Researching desired terms is akin to an old playbook, and it is being adopted by businesses that listen to customers effectively and give them exactly what they are looking for.

Close to my heart, a prediction is that marketing, content, and SEO teams will realize the need for close collaboration with all teams. Systems will need to be in place to break down silos and use historical data to smash ceilings. SEO experts programs need to understand what is happening on social platforms.

Sharing adopted knowledge is crucial to understanding what is changing and what isn’t so that SEO can improve the practical wisdom of its content. There are many more examples, but I hope that 2024 is the year when we start to see these changes rooted in real business terms.

In 2024, it is indeed a cross-team collaboration year: buy pizza, invite your colleagues, and align on common goals.

Ending on a note related to AI, I predict that 2024 will be the year when personal agents will be adopted on a large scale, reaching a level of usage that will have real effects.

We are at the dawn of a new era in search technology where platforms built on user trust will be constructed, not only preserving their personal information but also providing guidance from sophisticated search tools. Whether in the form of virtual characters or GPT-style programs, these tools will perform searches with the same efficiency as users. As they become more mainstream, businesses will need to focus on building data and user value relevant to business goals.

11. Dean Taylor, Partner and Head of Technical SEO, SALT.agency:

Google’s efforts to bring “hidden gems” in search to the public eye make us ponder how we structure and present our valuable page suggestions and beneficial objectives.

In my opinion, the attempt to bring “documented content” to the public eye, in part, has been seen in the increased visibility of Reddit in search visibility – because despite our opinions about the usefulness or “standard” of a lot of content on the platform, it is certainly well-documented, real, and filled with firsthand knowledge. It could be an initial “more is better” approach.

Measuring it on large websites could be a challenge. Nevertheless, it’s achievable – and a way to prepare for it in any organization is to leverage your advocates and create “we experience content.”

For e-commerce businesses, it can be as simple as identifying your most loyal customers (sales, lifetime value) and gaining access to them at a specific product or category level to create content for a wide-ranging brand. This content can add value to Product Listing Pages (PLPs) and Product Description Pages (PDPs), enabling them to provide a unique recommendation alongside the best ecommerce landing pages for other brands.

SaaS companies can facilitate discussions on product and tangential topics in their environment under the leadership of the community by making it easier through content. They can be taken away from third-party forums that open doors to engagement for competitors.

12. Navah Hopkins, Optimizer:

This can really be simple and foundational, but there are still people who lack practical UTM wisdom and cookie consent in their marketing efforts. The return to it is imminent as the secrecy of privacy makes it challenging to understand what can be tracked.

The importance of cookie consent and UTM parameters is because attribution is changing continuously, and without solid UTM wisdom, there are chances of traffic going astray. Furthermore, with a reduction in tracking IDs like gclid and fbclid, having a unified UTM system ensures that PPC and SEO experts can coexist with information on irregularities. Make sure that the naming schemes in your entire organization are consistent.

Cookie consent has been crucial for parts of the European Union and the United States for years. In 2024, it is expanding to other U.S. states, so those who either put it on the back burner or don’t want to jeopardize visibility should keep playing catch-up.

Cookie consent doesn’t need to be complicated, and you don’t need to make it troublesome. You need to make it an opt-in conversation and let people choose which cookies they are willing to accept for tracking.

13. Ross Tavendale, Managing Director, Type A:

In 2024, SEO experts should embrace AI. Not just for creating content or doing all your work, but as a gateway of computing power on a scale your laptops and even virtual desktops have never seen.

In 2024, SEO experts should step out of their campaigns and think about the deliverables as ‘input data sets’ and understand how they are rooted.

For example, technical audit is an input data set, GA is an input data set, and content differences are an input data set—all tied together with a simple joining key – the URL. Keeping this in mind, we need to consider how we interact with these deliverables and how we want to use and explore the data in the GPT data explorer to merge, clean, and argue.

We also need to think about how we can transform John Mueller and Matt Cutts into a robot. Everything they’ve written can be turned into creative by downloading transcripts and creating a GPT bot based on their 10 years of videos, podcasts, and articles, giving answers to your SEO questions.

14. Gianluca Fiorelli, International and Strategic SEO Consultant:

Pay attention to analyzing the journey of search… using Google as a tool.

We live in the era of the messy middle. Search results pages are blooming with the peculiarities of search, and the rise of the “0 Click SERP” is a result of how Google is dealing with the messy middle.

So, now it’s important to understand what path a potential search journey might take from an initial “germinal” query.

We can conduct this research through focus groups and the analysis of listeners’ opinions. While it’s true that what we discover may not necessarily be what Google thinks the same listeners might be searching for.

Therefore, how can we see search journeys that Google deems most probable?

It’s crucial to look at a feature that has been practically present since Google’s inception and has been updated this year: the search menu, which now presents filters and headlines.

Okay, but how can we use them?

We can use them just as people ask for search journeys. If we can use People Also Ask as a way to get possible titles for creating informational content centers, we can do the same with the titles presented in the search menu.

For example: “Warhammer minis painting.” Since you’re enthusiastic about Games Workshop games, you have a website, and you want to be prominently displayed on Google.

Google presents us with topics that are:

1. 40K
2. For beginners.
3. Painting guide.
4. For money.
5. Guidebook.
6. Service.

If we click on them, we are sent to a new SERP that shows us the search results for the relevant rephrased question:

1. Painting Warhammer minis.
2. Beginner’s guide to painting Warhammer minis.
3. Warhammer painting guide PDF.
4. Small painting for money Warhammer.
5. Warhammer 40k painting guidebook.
6. Warhammer Minis higher painting service.

We already have three possible search journeys in mind:

Practical guide to painting Warhammer minis: 1) Type of Warhammer game (40K, but it could also be Age of Sigmar or any other game). 2) Per level (beginner, intermediate, and advanced painter).

Painting guides, downloadable PDFs (for us, it could be a lead generation gold), and books (optional? It could be).

Warhammer painting marketplaces (“Small Warhammer minis painting for money” and “Warhammer minis higher painting service”), which could be a real source of income if we want to build a business around the passion and enthusiasts of Warhammer.

This is just a small example of the insights we can have about potential search journeys from our users within Google, and we should always keep this in mind during our search journey.

We – as we can also ask with – can dig deeper by clicking on the titles of titles we’ve just seen. And there they are, hidden in plain sight.

15. Juno Anderson, Freelance SEO Consultant:

As always, it seems like SEO is going through a unique and transformative crisis. It’s clear that Google (and others) are redefining what “search” is, continuously evolving relationships between searches and publishers. Given the vast amount of content on the internet (thanks, SEO industry), Google is carefully choosing what it eats and what it serves to users.

So, it’s not just about creating content, obtaining links, and maintaining a robust technical foundation. It’s not even about organizing it neatly into various verticals. And if it gets indexed, there’s no guarantee that your content will appear on any level of Google or bring traffic to your website.

Therefore, what do we do? We establish a system that fundamentally prepares content (whether Google needs it or not), follows the trail of coverage (as traditional PR in the industry sites and the role of links improve us), and enhances websites (which play a rapidly diminishing role in search).

In my opinion, there are practical things we can do. We can evaluate our content marketing machinery critically (using survey and feedback tools) to ensure that it is genuinely created for the benefit of the audience, not just an attempt to sell to informed buyers.

We can allocate our link-building budget wisely by training our call center staff, understanding our user experience, and improving our reach. We can ensure that our senior executives are media-trained, ready for interviews and quotes, and produce concise videos that showcase their skills.

We can offer our best tools for free so that hearts and minds can be won over. We can choose to prevent becoming a dispenser of spammy content, focusing on creating content, obtaining links, and making websites better. We can build an industry that excels in showing businesses how helpful they are to their audience, leveraging the vastness of domain expertise that no other industry can match.

16. Sherry Bonelli, Owner of Early Bird Digital Marketing:

In 2024, SEO experts need to forget about writing “SEO-optimized” content and, instead, focus on creating valuable content for their readers if they want to achieve high rankings on Google. With Google’s helper content system, it’s clear they will reward content that is written for the end user – not just content written for search engines.

Google’s helper content system creates a signal through its automated grading system to ensure that people see original, helpful content in search results. This means that SEO experts need to think differently about how they write and enhance content.

Firstly, think about the questions your customers are asking about your presented products or services and then write documented and informative content about those topics. Forget about keyword stuffing and instead focus on answering questions about your audience’s subject matter.

Make an effort to quickly answer specific questions about the topic in your content – avoid writing long, flowery paragraphs just to add more words to your content. Get to the point and answer the questions.

Additionally, make sure to include unique content – such as original research you’ve conducted, case studies, surveys, a unique perspective from an industry expert, or other special content not found in other materials about the subject. (This means you need to review competitive pages!)

Think about how your content will stand out among all the other content about the same subject. What unique offering can your content provide that’s different? Ensure that the author is writing from experience, and that experience is clearly shown in the content. Google is looking for expert opinions from people with real experience in the subject – so make sure the experience is evident in the content.

For example, would you trust content written by an accredited LEED Green Associate or someone who’s just passionate about using recycled materials in building construction? Who has more authority and expertise? If the content is written correctly, Google will view LEED Green Associate as having more authority and expertise.

Afterward, make sure that you’re building “authoritative rules” in your company – people who are recognized as experts who know about the topics they’re writing about. This essential skill follows the S-E-A-T (Experience, Experience, Authority, and Trust) according to the recently updated Quality Raters Guidelines (which every SEO should be familiar with).

You can get your authors to contribute guest blog posts to well-known industry sites, write webinars, speak at events and conferences, be expert panelists, be guests on podcasts, etc. through which you can accomplish this. Make sure to highlight all these things on your author’s bio page and link back to your site and articles, webinars, podcasts, etc.

Once you have a solid, helpful piece of content for your readers, you can enhance the header, ALT tags, title, and description tags – and discuss other basic SEO matters. In 2024, content will be all about the end user. Start writing helper content today!

17. Ellie Berry, SEO, and Content Consultant:

As we move into 2024, I would recommend initiating legal proceedings against Google’s ongoing distrust cases and any future cases that may arise. It seems like this is just the beginning for Google and other major tech companies.

Thanks to the Department of Justice (DOJ), we have acquired a lot of valuable information about Google’s algorithm, which is relevant to anyone working in SEO. For example, we’ve learned that there are three pillars to ranking: On-page (what the document says about itself), Links + Anchors (what the web says about the document), and User Interactions (what users say about the document).

While we’ve known about On-page and Links + Anchors for years, User Interaction has been somewhat of a mystery. In the past, Google has denied using things like click data for ranking.

But now we know that Google is measuring user interactions in four ways:

• Hover/Mouse movement.
• Clicks.
• Scrolls.
• Whether the user enters a new query.

Although some documents with this information surfaced in 2016, we now know how Google is using click data and based on some edited information, it might still be relevant.

This is concrete evidence that your meta-data needs to do more than just describe accurately. It should provide immediate value to the user, be informative (and compelling), and earn the trust to obtain those clicks. Once you get the click, you need to keep the searcher engaged with content that meets these standards.

It’s nothing we haven’t thought about before, but now we know.

We should all see what more we learn from this case in 2024.

18. Sources Shepherd, Founder and Head of Zyppy SEO:

So, I hate to say it, but in the light of the case of America vs. Google, it has become remarkably clear how much Google relies on user behavior data to shape real web rankings.

For years, Google has told SEO experts to “focus on the user,” but we’ve never understood the hidden reason that was true: Ranking is entirely dependent on clicks, scrolls, additional searches, and more that are all based on user behavior.

What does ‘focus on the user’ mean beyond the generic platitude? Mostly, it starts with a title, followed by details and a favicon that users want to click on more than others. But it’s more than that. It displays a navigation that highlights your expertise, authority, and trust.

Working with Google Quality Rater, it only takes me a little time to review each page, just like it takes users. Is your topic clearly evident on the page? Or do users need to click and search to find it? Does your logo clearly indicate what you do?

Google can’t read your logo, but users can, and Google can read users. So, if you label your blog as “blog” in your navigation, how is it to label something for your expertise, like “Protein Research,” “Tennis News,” or “Coffee Blog.”

Finally, ensure prompt and direct answers to users’ questions. Google is excellent at determining when a user is satisfied. These suggestions might seem tired and like common pieces of advice, but we’re starting to learn that behind them, Google has a lot of real science.

19. Dixon Jones, CEO, InLinks:

Explore your own data layer search!

It’s clear that AI is taking a big step. We can compete with it, but, in my opinion, it’s like banning books or restricting printing presses. Nevertheless, it’s coming, heralding a new era that could take shape in the form of widespread AI networks.

If you have your unique data, you can leverage it to stay one step ahead of the game.

An excellent example could be your statistical data. It’s interesting and can be used for analysis.

AI can still help you instantly analyze data, but if the data is yours and yours alone, you may find something unique and hopefully something helpful.

20. Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager – Microsoft Bing:

Take control of your SEO game with IndexNow for real-time indexing.

IndexNow is a free protocol that empowers websites to control their content indexing instead of relying on traditional crawling methods. With a simple ping, websites can now update their content with speed across multiple search engines, providing users with highly relevant information during searches.

With rapid expansion expected by 2024, more than 10 search engines are anticipated to support IndexNow, benefiting millions of websites.

21. Martha van Berkel, Schema App:

Schema Markup’s role in humanizing SEO in 2024.

2024 is a year where Schema Markup’s value will surpass meri results. Its symbolic significance will determine how your marketing content is understood by services powered by search engines, AI, or Large Language Models (LLMs) that aim to provide answers to your users.

To make the story of your brand and content understandable to machines, SEO experts need to use Schema.org—building a graph of knowledge around your content. The AI graph of your content will help AI and search engines understand relationships between entities on your site, providing a control point for your organization to ensure your content and brand are understood as per your intentions.

As humans, when we read content, we don’t just read words. We connect ideas with our experiences and existing knowledge.

In 2024, SEO experts can use Schema Markup to create meaningful connections in data to engage and delight current and future users. There’s no doubt that the SEO industry is changing faster than ever before.

For SEO  experts with more than five years in the field, the challenge is to embrace and learn new skills of utilizing AI tools. They need to understand how search is prepared to see it more comprehensively and gain deep knowledge for problem-solving.

For those entering the industry, it’s an exciting time. They will play a vital role in interpreting signals and adopting new technologies locally. However, it’s still essential to understand the basics to know when and how to use tools.

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