SEO Trends for 2024

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights on what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix Center. I'm joined by she who can see through the ether that is the future. She has her own crystal ball. She is Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, internet people. Hello people who are listening on various different podcasts, channels, and things. Also shout-out to everybody who tagged us on their Spotify wrap thing. It's like, "Wow, it's amazing." I'm going into the past. I'm looking in the past. But in the future, in the future, if you keep listening, we'll be on your Spotify wrap in the future. That's my prediction.

Mordy Oberstein:

Can I tell you, so I don't use Spotify for music so much, which is weird, right? I default to YouTube because I want to be able... My wife has a premium account for Spotify. I'm like, "Why am I paying for this twice? She has one, but I don't have her phone. I'll just use YouTube." I use Google Podcasts for my podcast. I'm like that weird dude who uses Google Podcasts. So the amount of hours I spend on Spotify is very limited. So my unwrap was so bizarre. My number one band was The Doors, which I like The Doors. I'm a big Jim Morrison fan.

Crystal Carter:

That's strange.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I am strange. So it works out great, but it's only because I got into a kick for like a week or two and was really listening to them, and that was the reason why my unwrap had The Doors.

Crystal Carter:

People are strange, when they're strange listening to podcasts or listening to The Doors on Spotify. There we go.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Let's break on through here to the other side. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also get a replay of all of our SEO product development in 2023 with sneak peeks at 2024. So for that, head over to wix.com/learn/webinars and look for our session covering our SEO product drops in 2023.

As this week, we look ahead to 2024. And our SEO prediction drops for 2024. Will 2024 be the year of voice search? Will SEO die in 2024? Will SGE be the end of all traffic in 2024? No, no, and no. But you will hear some intriguing insights into where SEO is headed for myself. Crystal Carter, yes, you'll get that. You will also hear from SEO voices such as Chima Mmeje, Parth Suba, Celeste Gonzalez, Kenichi Suzuki and Rohan Ayyar.

Yes, you will. Will they be sharing their outlook on SEO in 2024? Yes, they will. Also, big changes are coming to the algorithm in 2024. Yes. How do we know that? You have to wait and see. Was that clickbait? Yeah. Yes, that was clickbait. Will there be some snappy news today? Yes. There'll be some snappy news. We'll go through a follow of the week where you could follow more social media awesomeness and social media for SEO. Yes. We will do that also. I can't stop this format, by the way. I'm like, I'm stuck in a rut. Get me out of this. Say something.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, okay. Breathe. So pull out those magic eight balls or set those tarot cards or grab that witchy board. I don't don't know how to pronounce that or whatever, because we're not all lucky enough to have our own crystal ball. As episode number 68 of the SERP's Up podcast does what every other SEO blog, podcast, and newsletter has probably done already at this point, I'm just saying predict the future of SEO in 2024. How original.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's one of those things though that we all try, but we're all thinking about it. We're all trying to plan ahead and trying to think about what's going to be the new trend and what's going to be happening in all of those different spaces. But the thing that I find most interesting is that generally speaking, if you're going to predict the future, you also have to look at the past and you also have to look at what's happening now. You cannot know where you're going.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's so philosophical.

Crystal Carter:

You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's why I'm completely lost.

Crystal Carter:

So I think that it's important to look at the trends that are happening now or have happened in the last year, and to see how those might evolve in the next year. When people ask me about what's going to be the trend for next year, that's what I always look at.

Mordy Oberstein:

I like the predictions. I don't like calling them predictions. I like looking at SEO kind of like directionally where... It's like an election. You know who's going to win. Where all the momentum is at? That's my very scientific way of like, "Yeah, I think that's what's going to happen." But there are certain directions, certain momentum, certain, mm! Where's the inertia going? And I like looking at SEO from that point of view. So stopping at the end of the year looking at 2024, it's just a good moment in time to focus on those kinds of things.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of times, particularly if you're looking at an SEO, you can see things like... I'll give you an inside scoop into how I do this whenever people ask me is I always look at the things that Google announced. Google will tell you which things they announced and they'll tell you which things they're working on and they'll tell you which things that they're going there. But you also look at the things that people are talking about. So for instance, one of the things that I've noticed is I think that we had in the last year, and we've seen a lot of things around AI and stuff, I think that we've got through the first fire sale, the first gold rush as it were of AI stuff.

And I think that in the next year we're going to stop seeing parlor tricks and start seeing actual sophisticated, interesting iterations of that in the next while. I think that's my prediction in the next very short while.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm going to stop you right there and call the police because you stole my prediction.

Crystal Carter:

To be fair, to be fair, we're both working at Wix and Wix is doing this as well. We've been working in Wix as a team, has been working in AI since 2016. We had the ADI, Artificial Design Intelligence tool come out, and in the last year we've spent a lot more time opening up AI accessibility across our products in a more sophisticated way, and for users to access as well in a more sophisticated. And in a more like this is AI sort of way. Because that's the other thing. A lot of things were AI and nobody said they were AI. So for instance, we had-

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, really none of it's AI. It's all large language models and machine learning, but whatever. But yes, yes, I understand your point.

Crystal Carter:

People are just calling it magic now. They're like, "Oh, it's just magic. Check out our AI magic." And it's like things don't happen by magic.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, no. We do. Everything happens by magic.

Crystal Carter:

It's not magic.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're ruining my entire outlook, my whole world hinged on the reality is magic.

Crystal Carter:

I predict I'm going to steal all of Mordy's predictions. That's what I predict.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay. You see this, by the way, what's happened in Bing, right? Bing went all in on their AI chat experience on the SERP, and for better or for worse, or unfortunately, they didn't see any increase in market share because of that. People didn't go to Bing and start using Bing as a search engine because they added the AI to it, which is ironic because when Bing did that, Google went, "Oh, no, Bing is going to beat us. That cannot happen." They went code red, red alert. Everyone go crazy, AI chat and search.

But in the end, it didn't really do anything for Bing, and now Google went all in on it. And I think what's going to happen is it's also going to cool down for Google at the same time. So SGE which went from this big old box is already a much smaller, less noticeable thing on the SERP, and I think the whole thing is going to kind of cool off. It will be there. It will be a part of the experience on the SERP, but it will be not the dominant experience on the SERP.

I think Google's going to get back to where it was before all the AI madness, which is improving the algorithm, implementing things like MUM, which is a whole separate conversation into the algorithm to try to refine the parsing of the results and offer different opportunities for you to explore different subtopics in a way better way, which by the way, SGE might be a part of that. I think it would be a part of that. I think it naturally lends itself to that. And Google does use MUM as part of that they've said, but I think it's going to be one small step for users and one giant leap for SEOs to realize that the web is fundamentally changed and Google's going to get back to dealing with the web fundamentally changing and I think SGE doesn't have a lot to do with that necessarily.

Crystal Carter:

I think one of the things that's been tricky about generative search, both on Bing, on Bard and also on Google, is that there's a delay. There's a delay that doesn't happen with featured snippets, which are also powered by machine learning, which are also powered by AI, which also used those technologies. What was I looking up? If I was like looking up how to lose that last five pounds, I've been going to the gym…

Mordy Oberstein:

When you find out, tell me.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So I was looking at how to lose the last five pounds, and there's featured snippets for that. Right? So there's featured snippets that show up instantaneously. I don't have to wait for something to go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then to reenter my question and for them not to understand my question and all of that sort of stuff, whereas I just get the featured snippets straight away.

So I think that that instant answer is what people want. And I think that what we might see in terms of the evolution of SGE is that, again, it gets more sophisticated and more integrated. So it might be that it shows up on the side. At the moment, for instance, we have disambiguation boxes that are things to know or how this works or common issues. It might be that you generate some content on the side there or maybe it might work like people also ask where it's like a dropdown that gives you more of a summary.

But we have a lot of instant answers that you can get from the SERP. And a lot of times, because they're not even always pulling through the meta description, they're very often pulling through an extract from the text in the description. A lot of times you can scan the SERP to get an idea of whether or not the answer is out there for the thing that you need. So a lot of times I find that it's quicker to go to the SERP than to the SGE at the moment.

Mordy Oberstein:

Personally, I think it'll be a first step if anything. And I think fundamentally, you're never going to get away from the philosophical, existential, psychological need that people want to touch and connect with a person. My example that I'll use is imagine I wrote a piece of content and AI wrote a piece of content. It's the exact same thing. And I said to you, which would rather... It's the exact same thing. Would you rather read the AI generated content or would you rather read the exact same thing than I wrote it myself? I think most people, and I'm speculating would say, "I'd rather read the one that you wrote because I feel more connected to a person than I do a machine. I identify with the person."

I don't identify with the machine and I don't think SGE or whatever it's going to be or whatever it is, is going to get rid of that fundamental need that people have to connect. And it's very hard to connect with the SGE. People are going to want to touch the source of the material. However, we have a ton to get to because we have one, two, three, four, five guests today. We have five guests today. We're predicting their future of SEO, and a lot of them is going to focus on AI. So why don't we kick it off first and foremost with Parth Suba who runs #SEOTalk on Twitter, who's a fabulous SEO, and let's take his take on the future of SEO in 2024. Here's Parth.

Parth Suba:
Hello, everyone. This is Parth Suba, an SEO specialist with a passion for scaling organic traffic and a strong track record in the digital marketing community. I do SEO when I'm awake while I play chess in the night. So all of my strategies, which I play on the chessboard also helps me in my SEO career. So as we look towards 2024, the SEO landscape continues to evolve at an incredible pace. The area which I think we'll see a huge rise is AI and SEO tools powered by artificial intelligence will provide more sophisticated data analysis, helping us to understand user intent and behavior in unprecedented ways.

This will allow for more targeted and effective SEO strategies. Furthermore, I believe we'll see a shift towards more sustainable and ethical SEO practices, which I refer to as branded SEO practices. As users become more conscious of their digital footprint, brands that prioritize eco-friendly and socially responsible SEO tactics will stand out. Lastly, I expect local SEO to become even more critical as the world recovers from the pandemic. Local businesses will be looking to strengthen their online presence to attract nearby customers.

This means more opportunities for localized content and geo-targeted strategies. So to conclude, the future of SEO in 2024 will be marked by advances in technology, a greater focus on user experience and the need for more ethical practices. As SEO specialists, we must stay ahead of these trends to ensure our strategies remain effective and relevant. Thank you, Wix for having me on the podcast.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Parth, for that. You can follow Parth over on X or Twitter whatever X @parthsuba77. That's P-A-R-T-H-S-U-B-A 77. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. I started with that on purpose, by the way. That wasn't an accident. I knew we're going to get into AI with the predictions, but I wanted to focus on the data analysis part of AI and what that means for SEO, and I think it's a great point.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think he's absolutely right. I think that we should see more of that coming forward. And in fact, you mentioned our 2024 Wix predictions, and one of the things that they're planning to do is give more AI ideation in the analytics and in the SEO data that we're having our tools. I find that AI is incredibly useful for organizing, sorting, and saving you time with cleaning up data. So I think that using that more in the next little while would be super useful.

Mordy Oberstein:

I would love to see more content written about how to use AI technology to do those more efficient SEO task kind of thing than about creating content. But I don't predict that's going to...

Mordy Oberstein:

... Tasks kind of thing, than about creating content.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't predict that's going to happen, by the way.

Crystal Carter:

I don't predict that. Additionally, one of the other things that he mentioned was local, and I agree Google is leaning more and more into local all the time, and I think that people really underestimate the importance of Google Business Profile, the importance of the local segmentation in terms of search, and I think that it doesn't just affect bricks and mortar businesses. I think we should also be thinking about that in terms of where people are searching and how that affects your discoverability and things like that. So, I also think that local will continue to be a driving force in SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

So if you want more predictions around SEO in 2024 around AI, we have one of our... I think I'll go on a limb and say our personal favorite people in the whole SEO world, Kenichi Suzuki, SEO blogger, Google product expert, search advocate.

Crystal Carter:

And Avril Lavigne fan.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is he really? I love Avril Lavigne, that’s so nostalgic-

Crystal Carter:

He came in an Avril Lavigne tour shirt. He saw her in Tokyo-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's awesome.

Crystal Carter:

He's super nice. His whole team is super nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm with you.

Crystal Carter:

Is that an Avril Lavigne quote?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's not.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know that one. I know Sk8er Boi. See you later, boy.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a great song. I like that. Anyway, here's Kenichi about AI, SGE, and a doubling down of some good old E-E-A-T.

Kenichi Suzuki:

Predicting SEO in 2024 is tough since Google keeps evolving quickly. However, bringing AI into search will likely be critical. Specifically such generative experience or SGE could completely change how people use search engines. Rather than wanting search results, users may prefer SGE to directly answer their questions. This could drastically reduce such traffic as people get used to SGE's instant answers. Google is also supposedly developing Gemini a next-gen AI search. While Gemini's details are unclear, its impact on search could be bigger than SGE's. I think the best strategy is to focus on creating helpful, high quality content, and improving E-E-A-T. Google will reward those efforts. Building brand awareness is also wise. If you rank number one for your brand terms, innovations like SGE or Gemini can't divert that traffic. My view is that useful content and solid E-E-A-T are what matter most. If we provide that, Google's system will continue to send searches our way.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Kenichi. I really appreciate you. You could follow Kenichi over on X at S-U-Z-U-K-I-K, link in the show notes. Loving the fact you talk about E-E-A-T and the doubling down of E-E-A-T. I think that one of the things that the whole AI conversation does is kind of bring those kind of larger branding quality content consumption preferences into refocus. If you asked me personally, I would say the biggest thing that the whole AI innovation thing has done from an SEO and content point of view is not the impact of more AI content or a content ranking, or not ranking that's been written by AI or the conversation within the SEO industry that AI has stimulated.

Crystal Carter:

If everyone is using AI, if everyone has the ability to use AI to create content, if everyone has the ability to create some content, the thing that makes a difference is the brand and the trust behind the brand, the trust behind the people who are writing or even curating the content for instance. So, if you are known to be person of quality, if you are known to be a brand with quality content, then even if you are creating with AI, maybe people will trust you to make sure that whatever you're creating is of substance and is checked and is verified and is all of that sort of stuff.

So absolutely, those brand points are really, really important, and also you talked about people wanting to be able to touch and feel the content or have an interaction with the content. If people trust you and people connect with you, then they know that if they get stuck on something that they can come back to you. Nobody wants to be stuck in a... Like I had a customer service thing and I was talking to a chatbot and I needed something that the chatbot couldn't help me with, and they were like, "That's all, goodbye." And I was like, "No, I need a human. I need a human."

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes.

Crystal Carter:

So, there needs to be a human at the other end of the content. And if they trust you, your brand, then they know that that's the case.

Mordy Oberstein:

I have a ton to say about this, which I will in next week's episode around why SEO should watch content trends carefully, a little plug for that. Well, before we mentioned local SEO and AI, that's why Celeste Gonzalez over from one of our favorite folks in the SEO industry, the RicketyRoo folks, RicketyRoo. Shout out to Blake, to Melissa, to Kim.

Crystal Carter:

Amanda.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a lot of great SEO folks and beyond over the RicketyRoo SEO agency, check them out. Anyway, here's Celeste Gonzalez about SGE and local SEO. Take it away, Celeste.

Celeste Gonzalez:

Google's search generative experience is going to change up part of local SEO. So since SGE can act like a chat box, we will see longer and more specific queries. This is especially important for local businesses. So, when I search for something like best chocolate chip cookies in LA, I get some Google Business Profiles, a map, and links to directories like Yelp for best cookies in LA, and SGE allows me to prompt further and input a follow-up query like best cookies in LA for delivery. And again, I'll get more GBPs, Yelp, other directories, and a chance to follow up another time. While SGE is still experimental, it takes up a lot of real estate in SERPs and I think this is going to impact the local pack and change at least how it exists today. So, it could even eliminate it from SERPs for certain queries with local intent, SGE is already showing GBPs to users.

It doesn't make the most sense to have an equally large SERP feature like the local pack taking up more space. So, we might see it show up way smaller than before or with completely new features to help distinguish it. Barry Schwartz had shared a newer local pack design where it's now featuring menus with photos and reviews. So, we're already seeing new things going on with the local pack, and I think with SGE rolling out, we'll see more changes in the future.

Overall, it looks like Google Business Profile optimization and Barnacle SEO are going to be more important and local. We're going to have to now focus on brand visibility a lot more. So just this past year, businesses are now allowed to control their social media links on their GBPs and you can input your TikTok link, LinkedIn link, Twitter, all of that. So, this shows that a brand social media presence carries some weight and there has to be a certain degree of importance to it. At the very least, this is going to help Google connect the dots and understand who that brand is. So, establishing and enhancing a brand's reputation will continue to play a significant role in 2024, and I think part of that will be maintaining an active presence on social media.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wow, there's so much to jump into. Thank you so much, Celeste, for that. You can follow Celeste over at CelestexLili, that's C-E-L-E-S-T-E-X-L-I-L-I, of course link in the show notes. First off, I just want to say something, this is the year of brand. This is the year of brand. You heard it here first. Also-

Crystal Carter:

It's Mordy's favorite thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love brand marketing. I'm so happy, like the convergence. There's so many conversation about brand marketing in SEO. I'm here for it, it's where I live. By the way, I've always said this, for the last, I don't know, two minutes, but no, I've said this in the past, name me another box on the SERP that didn't always present organic links, but was very influential for your business. It'd be the local pack. Sometimes they do show link, but not always, depending on the query and the type of business and whatever it is, or if there is a link to the business to begin with.

Some businesses are just on Facebook, which is weird. Anyway, local for SGE to me makes the most sense. Where do you want to have the conversation? What are some great pizza places in New York City? And it lists three places and they say, "Well wait, wait, wait, which offers gluten-free pizza?" And then it lists more places. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, but which one also has, I don't know, the best french fries? And then you can keep refining and refining that way, so I love SGE for local.

Crystal Carter:

I think that SGE for local, I think it's for some of those niche queries because what I've been in SGE's and LLM-based search works, well, it's for a long query. If you're like, "I need to find a place where somebody who's gluten-free and somebody who only eats french fries," sometimes you have people who are like, "I only eat nuggets. That's all I eat." You're like, "Okay, all right."

Mordy Oberstein:

They're my kids.

Crystal Carter:

Right, exactly, so sometimes that happens. You're like, "I need to find a place where we can do this and this and this and this and that and this and this. Does that exist in the Bronx? And they'll be like, "Yes, no." So, that I think is important. I think it's important to think about those. I think the other thing she mentioned about multi-channel, about social and stuff like that, I think that's really important.

What we've seen in a lot of experiments with the SGE over the course of the year since it's been around is that people are able to see that it's able to respond pretty quickly to social updates, for instance. So, it might be that Google hasn't necessarily crawled the site in a week, but they maybe have seen the post on Facebook or on Twitter or whatever that says, "Yay, we just started selling gluten-free pizza," et cetera. So, I think that it's important to think about multiple channels. So, omnichannel and making sure that you're on all channels is really, really important, and you can use multiple tools to help you do that, automations and NSG and things... Sorry, and ChatGPT, et cetera as well, but I agree with her on the omnichannel and on the local, and thinking about SGE as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Let's have a look at the implications of AI in the SEO world on budgets and monetary decisions.

Crystal Carter:

Talk about money.

Mordy Oberstein:

On the one hand, the most unsexy thing in the world to talk about, but also the most important thing to talk about. For real

Mordy Oberstein:

Here's senior content marketing manager over at Moz, Chima Mmeje, on her predictions for SEO in 2024 as it relates to budgets and AI and everything. Take it away, Chima.

Chima Mmeje:

I think it's going to require a lot of creativity and innovation on the part of marketers because already we're seeing decision makers asking for us to explain why we are spending money. And the only way to justify this course is to show results and tie it to the bottom line. I think we're also going to see increased AI adoption to close budget gaps and here's why. I think that as we're seeing more job cuts, as AI becomes more personalized, it's going to be used to close the inefficiency gap resulting from fewer people working on more projects. So, what can marketing teams do? Identify areas of your marketing that will benefit most from AI, like automating routine tasks, predictive analytics, and enhancing customer insights. Integrate AI with content creation. I've been an advocate for this from day one. We can use AI to write content. You just have to make sure that AI is not replacing human expertise.

And you should have a training budget to teach your teams, not just writers, your entire marketing team, how to use AI to do their job more efficiently. And then finally, I think we're going to see more hyper-personalization as content becomes more saturated. So, that means that we are going to be seeing highly personalized content that are targeted towards even more niche audiences as a way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. So, what you can do is that you can use AI again to analyze data, identify unique customer preferences, and then create content targeted towards solving those niche problems.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wow, there's a lot to chew on there. Thank you so much, Chima. You can follow Chima over at C-H-I-M-A-M-M-E-J-E over on X. link of course in the show notes. I love the stuff that she's doing over at Moz. Of course, check that out. Of course, the FCDC, she runs that as well, so please check that out as well. Link in the show notes. I think that AI budgets is like sports teams. I'm going to do a sports analogy.

I think marketing and SEO in general are very much like sports team and their budgets, especially teams or in sports where you have a salary cap. You only have X amount of money you're allowed to spend each year, and if you don't manage that budget well, you can absolutely ruin your franchise for years to come. It happens all the time. If you don't set your budget up right and you're in a position now where you have real problems with your budget and the production that you want to do when you're going to try to use AI as a way of solving your budget crisis, I think that I'm going to go out... It's a hot take. I think that is a potential win for your competitors who don't have that problem. Follow me here.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm getting a look like, "You're out of your mind, Mordy." If I manage my budget well and I don't have to rely on AI, I can use AI as I see fit from a quality point of view, and I don't have to use AI to supplement budgetary problems, then I can ensure that I'm efficient and I'm also producing quality at the same time. If I have to use the AI to fill budget gaps, I'm going to inevitably end up in a situation where, yes, I'll be more efficient, but I might-

Mordy Oberstein:

... end up in a situation where yes, I'll be more efficient, but no, I might not have the control over the quality that I really want to have at the end of the day. Hot take.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. So, to counter your sports analogy, the thing about a sports team is that you can't get a robot to kick a ball on your sports team. You couldn't say, "Oh, I'll just have a robot kick all the balls into the hole," or whatever. The hole? Into the net.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sure.

Crystal Carter:

Sports hole. So, there's that. But I agree with you that it shouldn't be AI or not. It shouldn't be that you don't have a choice but to use AI. It should be that you manage your budget well, so that the AI supports what you're doing, rather than is the only thing that you have to rely on.

And I agree with Chima that people should be thinking about how they're integrating it into their marketing mix and into their marketing workflows, and how they can save time. Because I think that that is the thing I've heard people say recently, is you won't be replaced by AI, you'll be replaced by a marketer using AI. And we had this in our conversation with Kim Garst. People who are super organized already are really well placed. People who have their budgets sorted already are really well placed to apply this technology because they already have their selves together. They're already organized.

Just like when you're doing any kind of automation, if you are already organized and you know your workflow back to front, then it's easy to figure out which things you can automate and which things you can use to help you get scalability and things like that.

Mordy Oberstein:

So, one more for you. One last SEO prediction for 2024 for you, and it's going to go beyond AI. I saved the non-AI for last. That's just me. Anyway, here's Rohan Ayyer, who is fabulous SEO, speaks at conferences all over the world, so here's Rohan on his SEO take for the first half of 2024, and it's got nothing to do with AI. Take it away, Rohan.

Rohan Ayyar:

So, my SEO prediction is going to be a bit of a dampener for you all. 2023 was all about AI. ChatGPT hit the SEO scene late in 2022. The impact took even Google by surprise, if I may say so. It forced them to hustle and make hasty changes to, A, the SERPS for which they introduced SGE, and B, the algorithm for which they ran quite a few iterations of ETSU and core updates.

In fact, Google has had six updates in the last four months that they've officially announced. That's a first in itself. Other than that, they clarified what are ranking systems and signals and updates, and they also updated the search raters quality guidelines recently after almost a year. So, my take is that SEOs will be, or need to be, in more of a reactive mode for at least the first half of 2024, if not more.

We need to closely monitor the changes in the SERPs, how search results are displayed, and what new features and bells and whistles are introduced, and so on. Well, we do track this already, but we have to do more of that and find ways of increasing visibility more than focusing on getting ranked itself.

It appears to me, Google themselves are not clear on the way forward, as in how to best format the search results for their users. So, SEOs will have to wait until the dust settles. For once, you need to be chasing the Google results, if not the Google algorithm.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Rohan. You can follow Rohan over on Twitter at Searchrook. That's S-E-A-R-C-H-R-O-O-K. We'll link to that in the show notes. I told you, we're saving the non-AI for last. That's an interesting take of waiting to see what the heck happened, because so much is changing, which that is definitely true. There's a lot that's going on. We'll get to that in just a few minutes. Google's announce about notes and community stuff and forums and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. So, it kind of makes sense to see, take a step back and pay attention to what's happening. Wait for the dust to settle just a bit. I hear that.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I feel like it's a really honest answer. I feel like it's a really honest answer that we are going to have to be a little bit more reactive. Because you changed your Twitter handle to Buckleup, and I think that that's... And that's quoting Danny Sullivan, or whatever. We're working in a really dynamic time in search. There's a lot of big changes that... SEOs are seeing more big changes than we've seen in years, and I think that we are going to have to be very nimble, plan to replan, and plan to be able to respond to some of those changes. I think Rohan's absolutely on the money with that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice job, Rohan. Pick up yourself. Also, pick up all of our contributors who contributed with their predictions to our show this week. Make sure you follow all of them, as I mentioned, on social media.

Now, you mentioned Buckleup, you mentioned Danny Sullivan, so let's buckle up. Because at Brighton SEO, I wasn't there. I left already. But at Brighton SEO, Crystal was there. She's pointing to herself. She was there. She can verify. Danny brought up the idea of the algorithm and so many changes that are coming, and I think that there are going to be a ton of changes coming to the algorithm. So, let's dive in with a little segment where we take a directional look at Google that we call Going, Going, Google.

Speaker 1:

And it's going, going, Google. It's out of here.

Mordy Oberstein:

So, for the record, Danny said you don't have to buckle up, so I blame Barry.

Crystal Carter:

Barry wasn't there, either.

Mordy Oberstein:

So, it's not only Barry's fault, because people were saying Danny said to buckle up because so many changes are coming.

Crystal Carter:

So, the talk was really interesting, because he was talking about changes, but he was also pointing about the fact... Which also, can I just say it was a great talk. One of the other things he was saying was he was responding to that Burge article about the content goblins, which he took a bit of a hit on, and I thought he really responded to it like a boss, really, basically. And I think that Danny, really, he was very witty and very funny about it, and all of that sort of stuff.

But he was really talking about it like there are changes coming, but also we are seeing stuff that Google's always done. So, he was saying, people are saying, "Oh, Google measures clicks," but we've always paid attention to user interactivity. That's always something that we've paid attention to. And he did a Q and A that was really valuable as well. So, I have a thread on my Twitter account, we can link it in there, that shows a lot of the screenshots from the session as well. But yeah, it was a great session.

Mordy Oberstein:

And so, what basically you're saying is, we are going... we meaning Google... are going to be making a lot of changes. But if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you don't have to buckle up. So, I think SEO should buckle up, then. Is that salty?

Crystal Carter:

No, because I think there's a lot of people who rely on gimmicks and tricks and tips and things, and I think that the idea... And tips are fine, or whatever, but I think one of the things he talked about was that they'll say things like, "You should think about user experience and expertise." And we'll think very specifically. He says, what will you hear? Specific, specific, specific. "We should have links to an author page, and about page, and a thing like that." And he's like, "No. What are you doing?"

Mordy Oberstein:

We spoke about that with Lily for our EAT episode. Don't checklist-atize EAT. It's a concept. It's a very abstract concept, so you can't make a checklist out of it.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And he literally said, he has a slide that says, "Beware one-weird-trick SEO, where it says, "How to gain rankings with this one weird trick." Beware of that." And there was somebody who recently shared... They called it the SEO Heist, I think it was.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh my Lord.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And they were like, "Look at this great thing I did." And then they immediately saw a traffic drop, and somebody else posted, "Don't embarrass Google online."

Mordy Oberstein:

His book posted. Like, oop, that didn't last long.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So, I think that those sorts of tricks... If you are somebody who's not in SEO all the time, and you're somebody who's a business owner and you're trying to grow your SEO, you hear somebody who's like, "This one weird trick will make you do the thing." It's the same as somebody who says, "You can get rich quick with this one thing." Like, guy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You mean, if we took-

Crystal Carter:

Exactly.

Mordy Oberstein:

Tell me.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly, exactly, exactly. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The secret about SEO is that you just have to keep going and keep working at it. It's just something you have to work at. And one weird trick is not going to do the job. Sometimes there's a technical thing where you're like, "Oh, hey, if you do this, you might see a traffic boost."

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. But that's very different than-

Crystal Carter:

Right. That's something that you-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a fix.

Crystal Carter:

Right. That's a fix that you might see a boost. That's an optimization that you might see a boost. It's not going to solve all your problems. It's not going to give you clear skin. It's not going to make you lose weight and all that sort of stuff. It's not going to do all of that stuff for you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is there something that will?

Crystal Carter:

No. Drinking more water. I don't know what to tell you.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's water? Drink more water. Okay, I'll go do that.

Crystal Carter:

It's always the answer is drink more water.

Mordy Oberstein:

To borrow a sports reference, the '90s Yankees, who won four championships in five years, they had a very famous manager named Joe Torre, and he would call up the catcher, Jorge Posada, and say, "Jorge, what do we do?"

He would go, "Grind it." And they won, not because they fancy hit so many home runs, but because they grinded it.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

And SEO is a grind. You have to grind it. And I think what's going to happen is, more increasingly, the grind is going to get more grindier. Google's already... and they said they would... that needs talking about. I think they have a lot of things planned. I just get my SEO sense, my spider sense is tingling. They're at a point where they're going to be able to do a lot more than we think they're able to do, and I think a lot of the things like the reviews update going real time-

Crystal Carter:

Helpful content being constantly rolling?

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. All of those kind of things kind of point to Google being at the point where it's going to be able to make a leap in what it's able to do. And when they're able to make a leap, things change dramastically. Drastically and dramatically together, dramastically.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

And you've already seen this in the announcements, the things like Notes. The things like, hey, we want to put more firsthand knowledge on the SERPs, and whether or not the way that they're executing that right now is good or bad. I think Notes is a disaster, or whatever, but forget that. Look at it directionally what they're trying to do. Those are very, very drastic things, and that's going to creep into the algorithm itself at a certain point.

Crystal Carter:

And I think we're seeing it in how frequent the algorithms are running, and how frequently they're running over one another. That's confident. That is confidence right there.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's very, very, very big confidence.

Crystal Carter:

The fact that they're running experiments, running calibrations or whatever in tandem, at the same time, you have to be very confident in your systems in order to do that. One of the slides that he shared at Brighton said, "Our systems will keep evolving toward the goal of improving satisfaction in all sorts of ways." And that, I think, is really important to think about. People think that SEO is just about ranking, just about keywords, just about this, this, about that. It's not. And he said also during the talk, "We are following the users. Your SEO-"

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh my God.

Crystal Carter:

"Your tech SEO, your content, your images, your videos should all be adding value for users. And Google is sending traffic to your page because they think it adds value to users. They get lots of signals that say that this is valuable, because we know that users who are interested in this query like videos. We know that users who are interested in this query like images. Your page has images and videos and text, and the text makes sense." Right?

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, and you can't just edit image into video. It's not going to cut it.

Crystal Carter:

No. But the information that you've given us, and you've also given us more information to understand your text. So, you can add structured data, you can add your site maps, you can make sure that it's formatted in the right feed, that it does all of those sorts of things. But all of those things, everything you do, should be pointing towards demonstrating the value that the content is made. You're not just writing this piece of content for no reason. You're not just publishing this page for no reason. They have billions of pages, and they don't have time for useless content.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. By the way, that's a bigger thing. There's some studies that came out. I think Kevin Indig and then Cyrus Shepard covered this, where they're showing the size of the index. It's not as big as you think it is, and it's going to get increasingly smaller in my opinion. By the way, you saw, I think, Barry Schwartz recently covered... by the time of this recording, I say recently covered... that they're starting to stop showing cache. Which I saw this last week myself. Some results did have it, and some didn't. To me, that's money. You're storing all these cached pages? Why? There's a lot of resources. We don't need to do this anymore.

Crystal Carter:

And I think also, along with that storage thing, a lot of people have been saying that a lot of the storage stuff has to do with... Index streamlining has to do with them bringing up more space for ads. I've heard a lot of people say that, in terms of machine learning and things.

But I think also, I think it's important to think about, at Google IO, they showed some of their supercomputers or whatever. Those need a lot more computing power. All these algorithms, they need a lot of power in order to run and in order to be as sophisticated as they are as well.

So, I think it's also important to remember that Google has a lot of legacy tools that have helped them to manage the index in the past, and now that they have more sophisticated tools, they might be clean in-house. They might not need-

Mordy Oberstein:

For sure.

Crystal Carter:

... the same tools in the same way, because they have better tools now. Let's say you get an electric car. Maybe you don't need your old petrol car anymore. It got you from A to B to begin with. Sure, great. But maybe your electric car does better for you now, so maybe you don't need that anymore, and you don't need the gas can, either.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, come on. That image, like walking down the highway with the gas can.

Crystal Carter:

I'm not walking down any highways. I'm calling for help.

Mordy Oberstein:

Triple-A.

Mordy Oberstein:

The gas can.

Crystal Carter:

I'm not walking down any highways. I'm calling for help.

Mordy Oberstein:

Triple A.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, come and get me please.

Mordy Oberstein:

Like no shame. I've never changed a tire in my life, and I never will.

Crystal Carter:

I changed a tire in front of my house.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't like changing tire. I tried.

Crystal Carter:

No, my dad... I literally reversed and hit something or something and then the tire went flat and my dad was like, well, you got to fix that tire.

Mordy Oberstein:

By the way, swinging back around to your point about content, which is why, as I mentioned before, we're going to be talking about emerging content trends and SEO, I believe it's next week on this very very podcast, and it's also why I think you need to start thinking about content trends in a less generic way. For example, real quick, people say, oh, people are looking for content from people, not from brands. So you need to have a video of actual people or quotes from actual people in your content. Yeah, that's one way to look at that, but if you zoom out and abstract what that's basically telling you, is that people want more conversational content and you don't need to have a video of an influencer doing that. You could just be more conversational in your entire tone.

So you need to start thinking about what those content trends actually mean conceptually, and not just the generic hangups of, well, if things are more conversational, I need an influencer now. Think about it and apply the concept. Don't just do the tactic. You know who was conceptual and doesn't do just tactics? Barry. I don't know if that's true or not.

Crystal Carter:

Also, can we shout out to Barry for 20 years of SEO Roundtable?

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh yeah, that's right. So as the date of this recording, actually yesterday, it was the 20th anniversary of SEOroundtable.com, which I will not lie, the first site I go to other than like Gmail, which doesn't count as a website, when I sit down to work is SEOroundtable.com. That's not a plug. I'm not being paid to say that. That's the God's honest truth.

Crystal Carter:

It's also the last website that Mordy looks at before he goes to bed. He puts it on an auto thing and then it just-

Mordy Oberstein:

I like to have a text reader like read Barry.

Crystal Carter:

Just read him to sleep.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but in the voice of, I don't know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I like hearing Barry and Arnold's voice. Is that weird?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. It's just making me think about Kindergarten Cop though.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, great movie. Also, the last thing I like to see at the end of every day is the random image that Barry shares in his image of the day post. Here's a cake from Google in Ireland in 2023.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. The best one though was the one of Daniel Weisberg with the shofar?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah,  I sent that to Barry.

Crystal Carter:

It's like really cool.

Mordy Oberstein:

I found that.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

I found that.

Crystal Carter:

Awesome.

Mordy Oberstein:

That was me.

Crystal Carter:

It's a good one.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Anyway, here's snappy news. Here's some Barry Schwartz for you. It's the snappy news.

Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Despite it being the holiday season, it being a little bit light on the news, we have two for you this week. First up, from surgeon and journals, Roger Monte, Google on knowing if best SEO was applied. So John Mueller of Google was doing a recorded Q and A session and somebody asked him literally question, "How to know if my SEO is perfect? Are there any tools, apps, or websites available for it?" To which John replied back, just quote again, "Sorry to disappoint, but your SEO is not perfect. In fact, no, SEO is perfect. The internet search engines and how users search is always changing, so SEO will evolve over time as well. This includes both technical elements like structured data as well as considerations around quality. Just because you can't do perfect, SEO shouldn't discourage you, though."

I wanted to cover because I thought it was a good message. There's no such thing as I've optimized my site completely. That doesn't exist. It's on a continuum, on a spectrum, and you just keep plugging away and keep trying to do more and more and more and trying to improve your pages and your website overall as much as you possibly can in all sorts of ways. But there is no end to SEO. SEO is infinite.

Article number two from he who is the great Barry Schwartz in the sky. As reported on search engine round table, Google New Year's Eve search algorithm update. This came obviously on December 30th, which I guess is not really New Year's Eve, Barry. That would be December 31st. Anyway, it should be updated Google's New Year's Eve Eve search algorithm update. But it is interesting, Barry is showing you the charts from the SEO weather tools like the Semrush sensor and certain metrics, this tool and AccuRanker and so forth, and what you can see, just like right before Christmas, there is a big spike in ranking fluctuations again, right before New Year's, which by the time you're hearing this, this is already after New Year's. But it is interesting to see two spikes coming across a week or so apart. It's not an official algorithm update. It might be some reversals going back to the December 2023 core update. I would imagine so.

If you look at the trend graphs, you'll see that the last spike before these two holiday ranked spikes, ring volatility spikes was actually back at the end of the December 2023 core update. Of course, always check your rankings and don't freak out because things reverse, especially when they are not official Google algorithm updates. So take things in stride, be patient and look at the longer overall trends, and that is this week's snappy news.

Again, thank you Barry for your service. Thank you for your service.

Crystal Carter:

For all 20 years of your service.

Mordy Oberstein:

All 20 years, and for putting up with people like me in the industry.

Crystal Carter:

Literally an archive. I've done stuff on featured snippets before and I literally just went through SEO roundtable and like-

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the encyclopedia of SEO. It's the history of SEO.

Crystal Carter:

It can be like, "How did feature snippets look like in 2017?" He's like right here. What did they do like this? It's right there. What do the image carousels look like? He's like, it's right there. It's amazing.

Mordy Oberstein:

And he knows. He has an index in... They need to put his brain in the ether.

Crystal Carter:

He's a good dude.

Mordy Oberstein:

He's a good dude. Anyway, you know who's also another good dude and who also has a lot of predictions around SEO? Garrett Sussman. Oh, sorry, I ruined it. Crystal ball Crystal, what is your crystal ball telling you, Crystal crystal ball?

Crystal Carter:

I think you might say Garrett Sussman.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm seeing an S and long hair and a beard.

Crystal Carter:

I'm seeing someone who does a weekly video on SEO and is a nice person who also shares the SEO predictions, like wrong SEO predictions. Is that what he calls them?

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll take Garrett Sussman four hundred. It's Garrett Sussman. If you could follow Garrett over on Twitter at Garrett Sussman, that's G-A-R-R-E-T-T S-U-S-S-M-A-N. He, every year out of all, he does many, many things. He got a podcast called Rankable. He does the SEO News weekly, but every year he does this great predictions roundup, where you get some crazy predictions mixing with some actual predictions, and it's a lot of fun.

Crystal Carter:

So much fun.

Mordy Oberstein:

We'll link to it in the show notes.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

So thank you, Garrett.

Crystal Carter:

It's a good time. He's a great follow as well because he does his SEO roundup as well, his video roundup and the thread every week, and it's super useful. We find some great resources there. He also runs the podcast as well, Rankable podcast. If you're going to listen to another podcast, then I highly recommend that one.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, but not SEO Rant, or Edge of the Web?

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, okay.

Crystal Carter:

I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I do. I recommend those as well, but Rankable podcast is great, so do check that one out as well. But yeah, Garrett such, yeah, he's good people. Go check out what Garrett's doing.

Mordy Oberstein:

He's good people.

Crystal Carter:

And the team at IPL rank are fantastic as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, just a good follow, because he does tweet a lot and he does ask questions. He's really conversational, really... What's the word I'm looking for? He's really accessible. You can really talk to him on Twitter, so it's a great follow. So please do that. And also, that's it. So now you can unfasten your seatbelt. You don't have to buckle up anymore.

Crystal Carter:

I see in the future, silence.

Mordy Oberstein:

I see, in the future, lunch. We always record before lunch.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool. They tell you not to go to the supermarket when you're hungry, but apparently it's fine to record a podcast.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, I always do that. It's the worst. I'm the worst. I'll be, "Oh, we need this." And I won't even eat it because it's not on my diet, but like, no, we need it in the house. I feel better just having it. But now my kids eat cookies for breakfast.

So this morning... Okay, so my kids wake up, one of my, he wakes up real early, like 5:45, way before I'm even thinking about waking up, and he comes down, sits at my office here, watches TV. Inevitably my wife's already gone for work. I come here, I find him sitting here. I'm like, did you eat breakfast? And he's like, yeah. And he does. He eats breakfast, but today I saw a big jar of cookies and I'm like, you know what, judges, it counts. Whatever. I'm not fighting with you. You ate breakfast. Good for you. I give up.

Crystal Carter:

It's fine. It's done now. Get in the car. Let's go.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's done. Get dressed, go to school. Just keep this train wreck moving. Well, anyway, thanks for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, as I said before, emerging content trends and its value for SEOs. Bum bum bum bum. Look for wherever you consumer your podcast, or on the Wix SEO learning hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. If you're looking to learn a little more about SEO, check out all of the great content and the webinars over on the Wix SEO learning hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO.