SEO trends for 2024 presented by international experts

We’d like to invite you on a fascinating journey through the world of the latest SEO trends for 2024! We are extremely excited to share with you unique insights into what lies ahead in the dynamic world of digital strategy.

 

We have brought together the knowledge of leading experts from Poland and around the world to share their visions for the future of the industry. It’s not just a collection of facts, but a veritable mosaic of perspectives that show how diverse perspectives on these topics can be inspiring and valuable.

 

We will not only analyse forecasts for the most developed markets, but also listen to the voices of experts from places where new concepts and ideas are taking shape in a slightly different way. You’ll find here information on key trends and strategies that experts believe could revolutionise your approach to SEO.

 

Do you have it in you to dig deeper and understand what challenges and opportunities 2024 will bring? Let’s begin this fascinating journey through the world of SEO, looking at it through the eyes of those who are ready to change and break the rules of the game.

 

SEO Trends for 2024

 

Check out what our experts have to say.

 

Damian Sałkowski

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

Google joining the AI race and the launch of the Gemini model. The event took place at the end of the year and does not yet have an impact on the SEO industry, but quite soon it certainly will. Google using the new models may change not only the way search results are displayed (SGE, search generative experience), but also the way the algorithm works itself. We will already feel these changes in 2024.

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

I forecast 2 significant changes:

1. Extensive introduction of SGE (search generative experience) – for some queries Google will display the full answer generated by the language model which will significantly affect the CTR from search results, sites providing easily classifiable content will definitely lose visibility. 
2. The internet and Google are now flooded with massively generated content by AI. There is nothing wrong with the process itself, which Google also claims, but sites that do it incompetently, publishing thousands of article simultaneously and using language models non-optimally, will be penalised on a massive scale. Google is already catching and penalising such cases. There may also be a significant indexing problem. Google, in an attempt to deal with spam, may increase the threshold for entry into the index, and the indexation time itself may increase.

 

What new trends do you notice in linking and what strategies are currently effective in building quality links?

Even at the beginning of 2023, the trend in Poland was a renaissance of PBNs. However, after the updates at the beginning of the year, PBNs (especially those of lower quality) are not producing satisfactory results. Most of the industry has reverted to classic and proven methods such as sponsored articles.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimisation and SEO performance in the coming year?

Artificial intelligence is developing so rapidly that predicting anything for more than three months is virtually impossible. Google is already introducing SGE and will certainly be expanding heavily in this area this year.

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

I predict that more and more user queries may be taking place outside of the Google search engine itself. Both YouTube, TikTok and verticals services have been the first choice for search for many people (especially younger ones) for some time now. This makes it necessary for SEO professionals to start thinking a little wider and go beyond just Google search. As marketers we should always be where our customers are, if at some stage in the funnel they are on YouTube for example then that is where we should be doing SEO. Content marketing in 2024 cannot be limited to articles only, we should bet on different forms and cater to different platforms in this way. 

How will Google’s search engine adapt to such changes? In addition to the SGE snippet, which is expected to provide answers directly in the search results, we can expect more types of snippets. There may be more video content, more images and more elements in the results that respond to the user’s intention in a precise way.

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

I recommend paying particular attention to the E-E-A-T issue. When Google tries to deal with AI-related spam, sources with high authority are sure to gain.

 

 

Robert Niechciał

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

Directly from an SEO perspective, the most important event in my opinion was a Google algorithm update called the Helpful Content Update. This update took place in August 2023 and brought a number of perturbations and apparently influenced 4 further Google algorithm updates in Q4 2023. 

The Helpful Content Update automatically identified challenges and necessary strategies for 2024 for the entire industry worldwide. Unfortunately, this class of update lacks clear documentation and also assumes the continued use of AI (simplification) to assess content relevance. This, in turn, gives huge room for error on Google’s part (AI models operate with some probability, which is never 100%, and that means it can and does get it wrong, it is biased). The scale of the loss of traffic by the business was and still is huge.

From a point of view not directly related to the SEO perspective, but nevertheless somewhat based on SEO activities, it is important to highlight the increasing impact of AI on our industry, the strategies of opportunity and the threats. Because of the exponential growth of AI, our industry has definitely changed irrevocably. And this has just taken place in 2023.

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

In my opinion, and based on all the knowledge I have, I expect further development of the Helpful Content Update and everything that works in and with the content layer. I deeply hope that each further algorithmic iteration will be better, the models used will be better (more accurate). This will lead to the chance that the results will be more predictable and able to be better planned. 

Personally, I place a HUGE emphasis on content and I believe there is a hidden strategy here for 2024. However, to keep things simple – it is worth considering the aspect of content debt created over the years on the internet and how Google processes content. This debt is the industry’s biggest challenge in 2024.

 

What new trends do you notice in linking and what strategies are currently effective in building quality links?

On the subject of links, no change – rather boring. Both in strategies and on the algorithmic side. Quality, quantity, uniqueness. However, I can call a trend the fact that with links we accelerate a domain to the point where it starts to gain human signals. These signals build a story. In turn, the story pushes the domain further. This is how it works. I believe that currently human signals are more important than links. Without links there are no human signals and so on and so forth. 

So, in conclusion, I would say that the trend may be to build links precisely from places where you will easily get the most positive human signals. For me, this makes sense and this is how I plan to operate in 2024.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimisation and SEO performance in the coming year?

It’s hard to catch this speeding train, so I don’t want to forecast news directly in AI, although I have some hunches. In terms of impact on SEO, we can expect more and more tools. Are they necessary? Probably not 🙂 What seems to be needed, and will definitely be a trend, is the use of AI agents/assistants in SEO strategies and building dedicated GPTs/models for each project we run. All in all, it is already being said that 2024 will belong to AI agents. And I agree with this. I also estimate that in 2024, the winner will be whoever professionally implements the so-called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) in their operations and does so on a massive scale. I am currently working on this together with Senuto and I can see that it will change a lot. Everything else is hype and another tool.

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

People don’t want to read too much anymore, they consume content differently. They want clear quick answers here and now. An example? If you want to change the oil in your car, you don’t need to read what a car is. On the other side is Google, which feeds on content and gives us traffic ‚based on content‘. This is a collision of sorts that needs to be considered. What to do to keep one side and the other happy? There are solutions to this and they are probably in the areas of semantics, ontology, data structures… A good idea would probably be to surround written content with, for example, AI avatars that read it. Such a solution would certainly be interesting, and yet it’s within reach.

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

Keep your fingers crossed 🙂 And, seriously, put the focus on ‚quality and quantity‘.

Quality, because Google will give preference to human-created content with human input, opinion and experience. It calls it „human effort“ in its documentation.

Quantity, because if you write 1 article about how to make ‚green curry‘ there are probably already 1,000 such texts and Google won’t be interested in this one, your unique one… However, if you describe the entire Thai cuisine, the perspective changes. 

Of the more advanced stuff, I’ll mention serious microsemantics, reranking with AI models of chunks of content and regenerating them with other models, RAG, information gain and many, many more things for the hardcore like me 🙂

 

 

Dominik Fajferek

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

A recap of 2023 cannot exist without pointing out the confusion surrounding the introduction of AI in the form of chat (current name Copilot) to the search engine Bing. Microsoft stirred up a lot in the market, but in the end only sped up the introduction to Google – SGE (Search Generative Experience) and the public unveiling of Gemini (a multimodal AI model). In addition to all the AI madness, 2023 was about continuous algorithm updates. Google released 10 major ranking changes.

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

The year 2024 could be the date of the introduction of SGE to Google, which will influence search results a lot. Every SEO will want their site to show up in the block of recommended and quoted by AI. The video format may be even more important. I’m thinking in particular of the ‚vertical video‘ option, which is linked to the introduction of web stories (Google Web Stories) more widely.

 

What new trends do you notice in linking and what strategies are currently effective in building quality links?

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about Parasite SEO, which is the use of strong domains for placing sponsored publications on them, among other things. It’s an interesting tactic, especially when used in the same topic cluster. I think the biggest current challenge is picking a site – one that coincides thematically and is strong enough to convey the power of the linked site.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimisation and SEO performance in the coming year?

From Google’s side an important task will be to further verify the usefulness of the text. And from the side of any tools – Google’s algorithm analysis. 

I hope that all SEO content editors supported by artificial intelligence will be a bit smarter and one of the most important parameters will not be the length of the text, but its usability for the end user. 

There has been a lot of talk lately about AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), or strong/general artificial intelligence. This is the hypothetical creation that will come closest to surpassing the human mind. In my opinion, it is rather too early to introduce this potential solution into everyday products such as search engines.

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

User intent is constantly changing with the reality around them. Surely the basis of any strategy will be to adapt to change and continually test appropriate actions. The currency of the 21st century is data – it is around data that value is and will be built.

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

The next year is again about focusing even more on the user’s need and providing the best possible answer to the question they are looking for. It is our job to create such good content and such an optimised site that we stand out in all the clutter of content created by AI. We should be experts in our field – both at site level and, of course, in the content itself.

 

Natalia Witczyk

 

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

The event that I consider most important has not generated much noise in the industry, and in my opinion deserves it. It is the US antitrust trial against Google. The trial began in September 2023 and is the largest antitrust trial of this century. We won’t be able to fully assess it until it’s over and a full verdict is reached (and that’s in May 2024), but we already know a lot more about Google today, thanks to internal documents, statistics and emails that have been released.

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

I believe that some version of SGE will appear in Europe in 2024, but most likely not the SGE that Google is testing at the moment. My prediction is an SGE in Europe in a truncated version and for fewer phrases – to meet the demands of EU legislators. This in turn would mean that international SEO would become much more important globally, because who else is going to keep up with the knowledge of SERPs in all countries.

 

What new trends do you notice in linking and what strategies are currently effective in building quality links?

Good quality links are getting more and more expensive and harder to find. Personally, I’m moving more and more towards the perception of linkbuilding as a PR and brand activity, and less and less about SEO. Which does not mean that a good PR campaign won’t have effects for SEO. I’m more concerned with the way we think about links – I think it has moved very far away from the SEO professional and should be a task for the wider marketing or PR team.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimisation and SEO performance in the coming year?

The SERP as we know it today will be completely reshuffled. Data such as rankings and CTR will take on a new context. There is a chance that Google will lose some global market share, especially if their next AI products are on the low side. The question is whether any search engine other than Bing can emerge as a serious competitor. Personally, I’m rooting for Brave Search, which is implementing AI efficiently and in a good way, and I think Brave has a chance to kill some market share – although I admit this is a far-fetched prediction, and maybe even a professional dream. 🙂

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

There has been talk recently that Gen Z is more likely to choose TikTok over Google. Even a (questionable) study conducted on the subject is quoted. While I am far from calling TikTok a search engine, I imagine the new generation is getting used to a different kind of UX and more visual results, especially when searches are about free time activities or culinary. I think traditional Google, B2B, will not undergo such a revolution. And Google lifestyle, which competes with TikTok, will undergo a total makeover. That is, back to your question – search intent will greatly affect the look and UX of SERPs – much more so than before.

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

Research, data analysis, testing – the usual thing, only this next year even better, more precisely and taking more time. Black hat is (slowly) going away, especially when it comes to links. And if content is written by AI, then only with a well thought-out creation process, in collaboration with an individual who is a Subject Matter Expert. In an ocean of a million words generated per minute, only unique quality will break through. We are in for an interesting year.

 

Marco Giordano

 

 

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

The impact of HCU and the latest core updates is the #1 thing for me, followed by the Discover bug since I mostly deal with content websites/publishers. This has been one of the most radical changes in SEO and the quality of SERPs has worsened.

Some may say Custom GPTs and AI but in the end, scraping and low-quality websites have always existed, that’s why I won’t rate ChatGPT 4.0 as the #1 change. 

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

It’s hard to say with all the new abrupt changes and the buzz around Generative AI. 

The change I expect the most is about content evaluation. The last HCU hasn’t been optimal in terms of SERPs, if you ask me. Google Discover and News are currently offering subpar results (including spam/malicious pages) and I think Google will have to tackle this. 

Speaking of SGE, I expect they keep improving it and release it in more countries. All of these will probably affect your strategy, especially if you rely on content to get traffic. 

This doesn’t mean you should completely rework your existing strategy but take into account that posting content for the sake of ranking is outlived.

 

What new trends do you notice in linking and what strategies are currently effective in building quality links?

I didn’t notice many changes as linkbuilding is not my primary focus, so I would say that in my experience the basics still work. 

Relationship building is still the best way to consistently get links you can “trust”  instead of buying the usual ones from newspapers.  You may see a lot of people using tricks to get easy nofollow links that everyone can replicate. 

In practical terms, you still want hard-to-get links that your competitors can’t replicate and being able to keep them over time.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimisation and SEO performance in the coming year? 

For sure the improvement of Gen AI in terms of natural language will be a major player in how we will create content.

Right now, you can easily tell that AI quality isn’t remotely close to a good writer, and not only in terms of knowledge. Compared to some years ago, AI already improved in terms of syntax and logic but it’s still not capable of writing peak content.  In the next year, we could see Gen AI being able to write more complex texts but not on the same level as a human. Still, this helps us SEOs because we can save time that we would spend on writing repetitive texts or descriptions.  AI has already been a gamechanger, especially for automation but I don’t think 2024 will be the year of AI reaching a human level in writing.

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

Gen Z is already using TikTok extensively and even I tend to use more YouTube or Instagram for some specific information. While I doubt that there are 1:1 replacements for Google, it’s important to consider multiple channels and stop relying on SEO alone. 

This has always been the case but the last 6 months in SEO have shown once again that diversification is crucial. 

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

It’s hard to say considering how radical the last updates have been. From a business perspective, adopt a holistic view and distribute/repurpose your content across multiple channels. 

There is no reason to wait for an article to rank when you can promote it in advance and rack up some traffic. 

Content Management and Operations will most likely become more popular as companies realize that employing writers doesn’t lead to anything without organization. So I really recommend companies to start distribution and repurposing content while still keeping SEO into account. 

The quality criteria should be the same, the only critical difference is in how you expect people to consume your content. 

 

 

Gerry White

 

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

This normally can’t be answered without saying AI & Chat GPT, whether for the creation of content or the responses within search engines – the impact of AI is incredible and seems to be the only topic of the day, but one thing that has been a little more overlooked is the rise of visual search – we can increasingly search using a photo of something, asking for the top in a different colour, finding where to buy a whisky by just a quick photo of the label, Google knows this, which means high quality unique photos of products and services, that Google can see is increasingly important, in e-commerce (especially fashion), local SEO and for Google Business Profiles this is critical to stand out a little further than the competition.

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

2023 has changed so fast, with the key search engines barely able to keep up, mainly the speed at which AI content, with a little human help is indistinguishable from

One thing that has been rising that took Google by surprise is the impact of TikTok, the first alternative search engine (hotly debated if we can call it a search engine) but it is certainly a key part of peoples research journey for restaurants, tourist locations fashion and more, the power of influencers on everything from coffee hardware (or bean choice) critically now searches on Google Mobile include more short videos than ever, if you want to be in front of potential audiences using all available content formats will be more important in 2024 longer videos can be cut into shorter clips, when taking photos create video snippets, this same content can be used across so many platforms to answer queries driving brand and hopefully clicks.

 

What new trends do you notice in linking and what strategies are currently effective in building quality links?

Link building in 2023 didn’t really evolve, what had been done in 2020, 2021, 2022 was pretty much the same, that said there were some excellent examples of how it could be done better, we are seeing increasingly built for links networks appearing with low quality content made from ai generated content appearing in far too many places, the key to building great links is building something worth linking to, free high quality tools and assets, ‘ultimate’ guides that really are a step beyond poor produced AI created content, data analysis pieces done well will also still win provided they tell an actual story, typically with shareable assets.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimisation and SEO performance in the coming year?

Content creation is already established as being one of the biggest uses of AI, not just for written text, but also for imagery and even video, but what will be next will be analysis, reviewing the data and opportunities, tools that spot issues are the bread and butter of every digital marketers day, but AI can help with prioritisation, create tickets and provide detailed solutions for all platforms, applying an understanding of what would have a positive impact. The tools might even start to implement the fixes for us, we just need to figure out how to manage the human element.  

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

We went past the next year will be the year of mobile trend, to the point where we now have the internet is everywhere, when I am in a shop before i buy something, I check it out, I second screen while watching a movie to find out what other movies the actor was also in, we plan our lives in the cloud, sharing this with Google, Microsoft and other companies to make traveling and planning increasingly easy, the next rise we haven’t seen is how we use cameras, a minority reports style view of the world through camera lenses adding in additional information, first in our phone screens but soon in smart glasses, AI mixed with AR will mean that we can see something, find out the reviews of it, get it delivered cheaper all by pointing a mobile phone at it.  Personally I am not convinced that voice will rise in 2024, it has been highly disappointing so far, however the ability that Chat GPT has given us to make it conversational rather than clunky might mean it creeps in to more of our routines.

This all means your website / product / service data will need to be platform independent, portable, fast and visual. Schema markup won’t be going away so ensure everything is connected, and Google will of course still be relying on data from places such as feeds and Google Business Profiles to make sure everything is correct

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

Sometimes thinking about positions and search results isn’t the best way forwards, thinking about the users journeys and the sites they will see along this is more interesting, it is almost like we are going back to traditional PR and learning about the touch points that people use to make a decision about a tool, a product, a service and videos are often a core part of this. When I am investigating something like a new phone, I quickly look at a handful of models and use comparison websites and review sites to make a decision on which model it is, I might search for a couple of key features, but I will often search for phrases such as ‘model+review’. One thing that people have been doing recently is adding reddit to search results to find out a deeper view in a relatively uncensored area so make sure your profiles are complete and joined up. If it is local intent take advantage of how different search results are for these queries and make sure you have populated Google Business Profiles and social profiles, including adding in all the relevant imagery!

 

 

Dan Taylor

 

 

 

The most important event in the SEO industry in 2023 – what was it and how do you rate it?

Several individual events warrant their own individual write-up and inclusion, but I feel August through to now, the end of December, was a significant period in the SEO timeline that will be looked back on.

As Google prepares for the new AI-epoch of Search, we’ll look back at the updates, especially the Helpful Content Update, and understand the shift that Google is making. I feel they made updates in this period that they would have otherwise made over 2-3 year periods, but making them over a 2-3 month period isn’t something we’re used to so we saw the impact more, due to how potent and condensed they were.

 

What changes in search engine algorithms do you predict for 2024 and how will they affect SEO strategies?

In my opinion, Google will pay more attention to e-commerce, and this is were we will see some of the most significant impacts from the SGE. 

Competing with other marketplaces, such as Amazon, the ability for shoppers to generate fake product images and then shop using them, I think, will be a game-changer in any niche were aesthetics is important and a contributing factor to the buyer decision-making process.

The shift in metrics we track need to become more business focused (they have needed to be for a while), and focus more on brand visibility, lead generation, and positive brand interactions rather than just top-level rankings and traffic.

 

What new developments in artificial intelligence do you expect to impact content optimization and SEO performance in the coming year? 

Focusing on creating and promoting content that is real and made by experts is very important. This is because more and more content is now being made by AI. When real experts write content, people trust it more. They know these experts understand the topic well because of their experience. This makes the content better and more useful.

Having real people write also makes the content different from what AI creates. The internet has a lot of AI content which might not have new ideas or personal stories. Content from real authors is special because it has their own thoughts and experiences.

Search engines like Google are looking for high-quality, trustworthy content. They prefer content made by people who know a lot about the subject. This helps the content to show up higher in search results.

 

What changes in the way users search can we expect and how will they affect the way the search engine works?

The current emphasis on Google in the search industry doesn’t wholly appreciate or acknowledge the vast amount of useful data beyond it. Search extends beyond Google, with platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Reddit increasingly becoming go-to sources for information and inspiration.

Brands must determine an appropriate combination of search marketing platforms that align with their unique business objectives and adopt a more user-centric search strategy.

It’s not about how these alternate platforms will “take” searches away from Google, but how they influence and interact. We’ve also talked about how multiple channels can contribute to a lead/sale, but now we need to be acutely aware of how multi-modal search journeys can impact the user journey and our brand/product/service discovery.

 

What steps in 2024 are worth taking in your SEO and CM efforts to gain the highest possible positions in search results?

• Focus on creating and promoting content that is authentic and expert-driven. Respond to the increasing prevalence of AI-generated content by emphasizing human insights and expertise in your content strategy.
• Shift your focus from traditional SEO metrics like rankings to more relevant measures such as conversion rates, lead generation, and brand visibility. Adjust your SEO strategies to align with these evolving metrics.
• Focus on establishing a strong and holistic online presence for your brand. This approach should extend beyond just your website to encompass various digital platforms, enhancing your brand’s overall visibility and reputation.
• Embrace multi-modal search and multi-search platform user journeys. Explore and utilize alternative platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Reddit for search marketing. Adapt your strategies to leverage the unique audiences and content formats of these platforms.
  

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