SEO Trends in 2024: How to Promote Your Company on Google (and other search engines)

Let’s talk about the most relevant SEO trends for 2024 and how they can help your B2B business. We’ll also provide tips on effective optimization of your online presence.

At Smartiee Agency, we always stay updated on the latest trends and implement proven marketing strategies in B2B. In this article, we’ll discuss the important pillars for SEO promotion.

Why is SEO so important?

From our experience, SEO consistently proves to be the most effective long-term strategy for attracting customers in the B2B space. For instance, one of our clients who invested in both SEO and paid advertising saw 10 times more leads from the SEO channel than from paid ads. This illustrates the power of a well-executed SEO strategy and underscores the need for a thoughtful, long-term approach to search engine optimization.

Tips and Tricks:

• Leverage evergreen content: SEO thrives on content that remains relevant over time. Create blog posts, guides, or case studies that offer long-lasting value.

• Build authority with backlinks: Invest in a backlink strategy to build credibility. High-quality backlinks from reputable sources help improve your site's ranking over time.

• Analyze competitors: Regularly audit your competitors' SEO strategies. Identify gaps in your own strategy and look for opportunities to outperform them with better content or targeted keywords.

• Optimize for search intent: Ensure that your content addresses different types of search intent (informational, transactional, navigational). This increases your chances of capturing a broader range of B2B prospects.

• Regular SEO audits: SEO isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. Regularly audit your website’s SEO performance to update keywords, check for broken links, and ensure on-page SEO elements are optimized.

Content quality and E-E-A-T algorithms

Google continues to prioritize content that meets the E-E-A-T criteria (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). This means search engines favor content produced by experts with specialized knowledge. Websites with a strong reputation and high-quality content gain a competitive advantage in search rankings.

At our agency, we assist clients in creating premium website content, including blogs, articles, and multimedia assets. For example, we recently worked with a Portugal-based legal firm specializing in business and personal emigration. Our comprehensive content campaign included informative articles and visually appealing infographics, which were strategically placed on the client’s website and shared across various media outlets. These materials not only made the website more engaging and helpful for users but also increased retention by answering key questions and establishing credibility right from the start.

Google's E-E-A-T algorithm

Tips and Tricks:

• Use original research and case studies: Incorporating data-driven insights, case studies, or client testimonials strengthens your content’s authoritativeness. Users and Google alike value original, credible data.

• Optimize author bios: Showcase the expertise of the individuals creating the content by adding detailed author bios that highlight qualifications, certifications, and relevant experience.

• Keep content up to date: Regularly review and update older content to ensure it remains accurate and relevant. Updated content signals to Google that your site is maintaining high standards.

• Incorporate multimedia elements: Infographics, videos, and interactive tools not only make content more engaging but can also enhance the perception of expertise and trustworthiness.

• Leverage user-generated content: Encouraging client reviews, testimonials, and contributions from industry experts can improve the trustworthiness of your site in the eyes of users and search engines alike.

AI-Powered Content Discovery

Google’s AI-driven algorithms are becoming increasingly sophisticated, allowing them to understand the context behind user queries and deliver more accurate, relevant answers. This means it’s crucial to incorporate real-world examples and practical knowledge into your content. We often receive content drafts from clients that are too generic, and we recommend enriching them with examples from their own experience—especially those that address common customer questions.

To stay ahead, focus on creating content that directly answers your audience’s needs. Incorporate formats that are optimized for emerging technologies, such as voice search. FAQ sections, for example, are perfect for both answering common queries and improving voice search visibility.

Additionally, adopt a semantic approach to SEO. Beyond just using basic keywords, build out a comprehensive keyword matrix that includes synonyms, variations, and related topics. This not only improves search rankings but also ensures your content stays relevant and engaging for a wider range of searches.

Tips and Tricks:

• Optimize for voice search: People use more conversational language when searching via voice. Try to include natural-sounding phrases and questions in your content to match this trend.

• Use AI-driven tools for content: many SEO tools help analyze your content’s relevance and optimize it for both user intent and search algorithms.

• Enrich with structured data: Implement schema markup (structured data) to help Google better understand and display your content in rich snippets, improving visibility in search results.

• Topic clusters for depth: Organize your content into topic clusters, where a central pillar page covers a broad topic, supported by more detailed content pieces linked internally. This helps improve your site’s authority on specific subjects.

• Leverage AI for content generation: While AI-generated content can’t replace human expertise, it can help you scale content production. Use it for initial drafts or repetitive content tasks, then enhance with expert knowledge.

The Rise of Zero-Click Searches

More than 65% of Google searches now result in zero clicks, meaning users find the information they need directly in the search results without visiting any website. This shift makes it essential to optimize your content to capture featured snippets and other search features, ensuring that your answers are visible at the top of search results.

When we collaborate with a new company and create a website, our first step is to build a comprehensive keyword matrix with around 700 relevant search queries. This matrix helps us strategically position the content and optimize SEO titles, meta descriptions, and keywords for maximum visibility. The process is straightforward, as many CMS platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and others provide user-friendly interfaces for editing SEO elements.

Focusing on strategies to capture zero-click search results will help your content remain competitive in an environment where users increasingly find what they need without visiting websites.

Tips and Tricks:

• Optimize for featured snippets: Aim to answer user queries concisely and clearly, using paragraph, list, or table formats that are most likely to be pulled into a featured snippet.

• Use structured data: Implement schema markup to help search engines understand your content better, making it more likely to appear in rich results like featured snippets, FAQs, and Knowledge Graphs.

• Target long-tail keywords: These are more specific and often easier to rank for, increasing the chances of your content appearing in zero-click results.

• Create FAQ sections: FAQs address common questions users search for. Having a well-organized FAQ page increases the likelihood of being featured in snippets, especially in voice search.

• Monitor and adapt: Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to track which keywords are leading to zero-click searches and adjust your content strategy accordingly.

• Use bullet points and headings: Structuring content with headings and bullet points makes it easier for Google to extract information for snippets.

Core Web Vitals updates

Core Web Vitals continue to play a crucial role in SEO performance. To ensure your website meets these key metrics, focus on the following:

• Loading Speed: Ensure the main content loads within 2.5 seconds.

• Interactivity: Reduce the time to the first user interaction (First Input Delay) to less than 100 milliseconds.

• Visual Stability: Avoid unexpected layout shifts by keeping your page layout stable as it loads.

To assess how well your site performs, use Google PageSpeed Insights. Simply enter your site’s URL to receive personalized recommendations on how to improve your Core Web Vitals.

How to improve your website’s performance

If your site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, it's crucial to take steps to boost its performance. Here are some recommendations:

• Reduce Image Sizes: Optimize images by adjusting widths—100 to 1200 pixels for desktop, and 300 to 800 pixels for mobile. Use modern image formats like WebP, which reduce file size without compromising quality.

• Use Caching: Caching stores frequently accessed data, which significantly improves load times for repeat visitors by reducing server requests.

• Remove Unnecessary Plugins: If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, audit your plugins regularly. Deactivate or remove redundant plugins that slow down your site. Custom code is often more efficient and lightweight than multiple plugins.

• Optimize Your Code: Minify JavaScript and CSS files, reducing the amount of data that needs to be loaded. Implement lazy loading for images and media files that aren't needed immediately, particularly on mobile devices, to improve initial load times.

• Consider Switching Hosting Providers: Hosting providers can have a significant impact on performance. So consider reliable, fast hosting services, and watch out for negative feedback for slow speeds and poor customer support.

  By implementing these steps, you’ll significantly improve your Core Web Vitals, which will not only boost your SEO rankings but also enhance the overall user experience on your site.

Tips and Tricks:

• Preload important resources: Use resource preloading techniques to prioritize critical content like fonts, above-the-fold images, or CSS. This can reduce perceived load times.

• Enable Gzip compression: Enabling server-side compression like Gzip reduces the size of your files, speeding up the delivery of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

• Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN can improve load times by serving your content from servers that are geographically closer to the user.

• Audit third-party scripts: External scripts (e.g., ads, analytics) can slow down your site. Evaluate if these scripts are necessary and consider async loading to prevent them from blocking the page render.

• Enable HTTP/2 or HTTP/3: If your hosting provider supports it, upgrade to HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 protocols, which offer better performance due to multiplexing and faster data transfer.

Analysis with PageSpeed Insights

Indexing and AI in search engines

Google continues to refine its indexing capabilities using AI technologies. The Google MUM (Multitask Unified Model) is particularly advanced, capable of processing a variety of data types—text, images, videos—across multiple languages to enhance search results and provide more nuanced answers.

To maximize visibility, create content that covers all facets of a topic. For example, if you’re writing about travel to Portugal, go beyond basic travel tips by exploring related subjects like local culture, laws, and customs. This broader, well-rounded content approach makes your page more relevant to a wider audience, increasing your chances of ranking highly in search engines.

Leverage modern AI tools like GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), OpenAI, Jasper, and Copy.ai to generate content efficiently. These tools can draft content based on specific topics and context, giving you a strong foundation. However, human editing is essential to ensure that the content meets high standards of quality and accuracy.

By August 2024, ChatGPT had over 121 million users, with 58% using it specifically for content creation. This highlights the growing reliance on AI for scalable content generation.

For ongoing content optimization, platforms like Surfer SEO and Clearscope are invaluable. These tools use AI to analyze your content and provide actionable recommendations to improve its relevance, keyword targeting, and overall quality.

Tips and Tricks:

• Diversify your content types: Take advantage of Google’s MUM model by creating content that includes various formats, such as images, videos, and infographics. This can help your content perform better in both standard and rich search results.

• Focus on user intent: AI-driven indexing is increasingly based on understanding the intent behind user queries. Make sure your content addresses specific user needs, whether informational, navigational, or transactional.

• Use AI to identify content gaps: Tools like MarketMuse and Frase can help you discover missing topics or questions that your audience is searching for, allowing you to address those gaps and increase your site's relevance.

• Long-form content for comprehensive coverage: AI models like MUM favor detailed, in-depth content that covers a topic from multiple angles. Writing longer, authoritative articles will increase your chances of ranking for more search queries.

• Optimize for visual and voice search: As AI models improve, there’s growing emphasis on image-based and voice search. Ensure your content is structured to be easily interpreted by voice search assistants and include alt tags for images to improve visibility in image search results.

• Test and refine AI-generated content: While AI tools are helpful for content generation, always review, edit, and enhance AI-generated content with expert insights to ensure accuracy, readability, and alignment with your brand voice.

By combining AI-driven content generation with human oversight and strategy, you'll improve your chances of achieving better search engine rankings while addressing the evolving needs of users across multiple formats and channels.

ChatGPT for content

Voice search and image-based search

As voice search continues to grow in popularity, it's essential to tailor your content to how people naturally speak when using voice assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. Incorporate conversational phrases and natural language into your text, and make sure to include FAQ sections that directly answer common questions. This format is especially effective for voice search, as it often pulls responses directly from structured content like FAQs.

Including FAQs not only helps in voice search rankings but also improves overall user experience by addressing key queries upfront. Structuring your content around specific questions and answers increases the likelihood that your content will be featured in voice search results.

For image-based search, ensure that every image on your site is optimized with:

• Correct file names: Use descriptive file names that reflect the content of the image (e.g., "modern-office-design.jpg" instead of "IMG1234.jpg").

• Alt tags: Write detailed and relevant alt tags for each image. These tags help search engines understand the content of your images and improve accessibility.

• Image descriptions: Adding descriptions and captions to your images not only enhances SEO but also provides context for users, increasing engagement and the chances of your images appearing in Google Image Search results.

By optimizing for both voice and image-based searches, you'll increase your site's visibility and provide a more comprehensive search experience for users.

Video content and its impact on SEO

In 2024, video is projected to represent more than 80% of all internet traffic, making it one of the most important content types for SEO. Integrating video into your SEO strategy is essential not only to engage users but also to improve your rankings in search engine results. Well-optimized video content can help capture a larger share of organic traffic and keep users on your site longer, which are both positive signals for SEO.

To ensure your videos contribute effectively to your SEO efforts, it’s crucial to optimize video metadata—including titles, descriptions, and tags—so that search engines can understand and index your video content. Equally important is providing transcriptions and closed captions, which improve accessibility and allow search engines to crawl the full content of your video, making it easier to rank for relevant keywords.

Local SEO and Google My Business

If your company has a physical office, optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) profile is crucial for local SEO. An updated and well-maintained GMB profile allows potential customers to find your business easily and provides important details like business hours, services, and contact information. Make sure to:

• Regularly update company details such as business hours, address, and services.

• Actively respond to customer reviews—both positive and negative. Engaging with reviews shows that you value customer feedback and helps build trust with potential clients.

Even if you work from a home office, it’s still important to create and maintain a GMB profile. This helps local users find you when searching for relevant services, increasing your visibility in local search results.

Starting this year, Google has implemented a new identity verification requirement for GMB registration. To verify your business, you'll need to record a short video in your office or home office showing that you're a real person located at the provided address. This video is not made public and is used only for verification purposes, enhancing the credibility of your GMB profile.

Optimizing your Google My Business profile is a vital step in local SEO, and ensuring your business information is accurate, consistent, and engaging will help attract more local customers and improve your search visibility.

Tips and Tricks:

• Complete every section of your GMB profile: Ensure your profile is 100% complete, including business hours, services, website links, and photos. Profiles with more information are more likely to rank higher in local searches.

• Add photos regularly: Businesses with more photos typically get more clicks and engagement. Include high-quality images of your office, products, and staff to make your listing more appealing.

• Use Google Posts: Take advantage of the "Posts" feature in GMB to share updates, promotions, or new offerings. Google Posts help keep your listing fresh and encourage more interaction with your business.

• Leverage the Q&A section: Customers often ask questions directly on your GMB listing. Be proactive by responding quickly or even pre-populating common questions with helpful answers.

• Track performance with GMB Insights: Use the Google My Business Insights tool to see how users find and interact with your business listing. Analyze this data to improve your local SEO strategy.

Google My Business profile example by Smartiee

Conclusion

The SEO algorithms of 2024 demand a holistic and adaptive approach. Success now hinges on more than just keywords; it's about delivering high-quality content, creating a seamless user experience, and staying ahead of emerging search technologies like voice and AI-based search. To thrive in this environment, businesses must integrate both technical and strategic SEO elements. Mind that SEO is not a one-time effort but a continuous process of refinement and adaptation to new trends and algorithm changes.

At Smartiee Agency, we specialize in crafting tailored SEO strategies that align with these evolving requirements. We offer a combination of onpage and offpage SEO services, along with content creation, technical audits, and ongoing monitoring. With our expertise, we help businesses maximize visibility, drive organic traffic, and ultimately achieve long-term success in the digital space.