Contrary to popular belief, proper search engine optimization requires more than getting the little green smiley face in Yoast. There are dozens of ways to positively impact your SEO, and it’s prudent that every business pays attention to them.
Search algorithms constantly alter the way they evaluate and prioritize content. Since user behavior is constantly changing, this also means these algorithms are pivoting what they care about with content providers—i.e., your brand.
To that end, it’s prudent to pay close attention to how users are consuming information. In turn, you ought to adapt your digital strategy to satisfy consumer patterns and behaviors. Below are five tips to help you navigate these changes and keep your SEO efforts at the top of their game in 2024.
1. Create Content Clusters
Content clusters involve grouping your content around a central pillar page with multiple subpages. This structure helps search engines understand the breadth and depth of your content broken down by topic. In covering a specific topic comprehensively, you’re telling search engines your site is a resource worth pointing to when users submit a query.
For example, if your pillar page is about digital marketing your subpages might cover SEO, social media, content marketing, and email campaigns. Linking these pages together creates a robust internal linking structure and keeps visitors engaged for longer.
You can start by categorizing the topics of your existing content and finding ways to connect as many subjects as possible. From there, you can form a trajectory for new content to fit into appropriate clusters.
2. Leverage AI-Driven Content
There’s no arguing that artificial Intelligence has changed practically every industry in the world, SEO being no exception. For content creation applications, AI allows marketers to produce decent-quality content quickly.
As of writing this, there already exists a myriad of AI tools out there to help quicken the content creation process. However, it is still necessary to have a human in the loop to optimize the content. That need is further propelled by Google’s most recent attempts to control spammy, AI-infused content popping up everywhere.
Nevertheless, AI tools are highly competent at analyzing huge swaths of data to find trending topics, user intent and even content gaps. These indicators will help you know where to focus your SEO efforts to create personalized and relevant content that resonates with your audience.
For example, AI can help with topic ideation, content outlines, and even full articles. This can speed up the content creation process and ensure consistency and accuracy in the way content is produced.
The biggest takeaway here is that AI only renders poor-quality results if you handle it with poor care or laziness. Take the time to learn what it needs to produce quality content, and you’ll have much more success with it.
3. Build Up Your Brand’s EAT
The EAT principle — expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness — is a key part of Google’s algorithm. Expertise is about deep knowledge and understanding of your topic. Authoritativeness is about being a recognized authority, often through backlinks from other reputable sites. Trustworthiness is about the overall credibility of your site, including accurate information and transparent policies.
To reach optimal EAT, you need to make sure your content is well-researched and authored by subject matter experts. One way search engines measure the credibility of your brand’s content is the details surrounding the actual content itself.
Include author bios, cite credible sources, and update content regularly to establish your site as a trusted, up-to-date authority. This will not only improve your SEO but also build an audience that values the content you produce.
4. Apply Schema Markup Wisely
Schema markup is a form of microdata that helps search engines understand your content’s context and meaning. Think of it like shorthand information meant to inform search engines with vital information they will use to evaluate your content.
Configuring schema markup can enhance your search results by showing rich snippets like star ratings or product prices. When this information is provided to search engines, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation. This makes the algorithm more confident in its decision to show your content over other brands. The results are enhanced listings that can increase click-through rates by giving users more information upfront.
To use schema markup effectively, identify the types most relevant to your content, such as articles, catalogs, services, events, and topics of that ilk.
Implementing schema markup requires a basic understanding of HTML, but there are tons of great tools and plugins that can simplify the process. Using schema markup correctly will improve your visibility in search results and also improve the user experience by giving them detailed and accurate information.
5. Optimize Voice Search SEO
With the rise of Alexa, Siri, and Cortana, voice search is becoming more popular each year. This means you need to optimize your content for it. Voice searches are more conversational and longer than typed queries. For this reason, you should begin including longer-tail keywords and natural language phrases in your content.
Focus on answering common questions in your industry, as voice search is often around specific questions.
A helpful exercise to try out is using voice search yourself to try and answer key questions about your vertical. This can help you identify competitor content gaps. From there, you can build content around those phrases.
Staying Ahead of SEO in 2024
This is only scratching the surface, but it’s a good starting point. If you prioritize these five areas of SEO in your marketing strategy, you’ll be further ahead than most.
Remember that SEO is never a one-and-done activity. It’s an ongoing process that needs to be continually scrutinized and updated to be relevant. Stay up to date with how consumers want to consume information and apply that behavior to your SEO efforts.