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With 2024 upon us, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) continues to change, bringing with it both opportunities and challenges for businesses. To keep your digital marketing relevant, it’ll be important to stay informed on the various changes that are taking place. Here are some key trends and shifts we’ve observed so far this year.

Voice Search Optimization

Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and Apple’s Siri becoming more popular means their ability to easily perform voice searches is working to increase the ratio of voice searches to text searches on search engines. Consequently, optimizing for voice search is no longer optional. It’s essential to incorporate long-tail keywords and conversational phrases into your SEO strategy to match the natural language patterns used in voice searches.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and SEO

Google’s AI algorithm, RankBrain, has a significant influence on search rankings. It evaluates user behavior such as click-through rates (CTR) and dwell time to decide the relevancy of web pages. Maintaining a high RankBrain score is key to staying in the top percentage of search rankings, so creating engaging content with the aim of keeping eyes on your page for as long as possible is more important now than ever.

Mobile-First Indexing

Google’s shift to mobile-first indexing is now the norm. It’s critical to ensure your website is mobile-friendly – not just in design but also in speed and user experience. A mobile-optimized site will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals are a set of factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads. With stronger Core Web Vitals scores, Google will index pages higher.

Local SEO

With the rise of “near me” searches, local SEO has gained importance. Businesses need to optimize for local search by maintaining up-to-date Google Business Profile listings and encouraging customer reviews.

SEO in 2024 is only growing in complexity. While many of the deciding factors are similar to previous years, these factors have grown in depth, requiring deeper investigation and deliberate attention to ensure all your bases are covered.