Change is constant, and this is reflected in the ever-changing algorithms of Google regarding SEO strategies. Google issues updates to ensure a better experience for its users. Digital marketers must reevaluate the SEO trends to rank better.
Therefore, staying current in your marketing efforts is essential as the best approaches, trends, and practices evolve. However, some proven SEO practices will consistently be implemented as these are fixed.
So, in this article, we’ll focus on the query “What are the best SEO strategies?” listing 18 top techniques to drive traffic and conversions to your website in 2024. SEO experts can follow these super strategies for better engagement on their websites.
What are the Best SEO Strategies in 2024 to Rank Higher?
Providing valuable content and high-quality web pages must be in the strategy of every digital marketer and content creator in 2024. Google has always emphasized these practices, but now its algorithms are strong enough to detect what content follows these standards.
Let’s review these SEO practices to ensure better rankings and generate conversions:
1. A.I. in SEO
The advent of ChatGPT took the world by storm, and now several A.I. apps can generate AI-created content. But AI-created content tends to be unauthentic, error-ridden, and shallow. Therefore, innovative content by human writers will always have a clear SEO advantage over Artificial Intelligence.
Here are the five major advantages of manual content that make it distinctive :
- Authentic approach: Human-written content resonates with the target audience as it is accurate.
- Personal tone: Manual content allows the reader to relate to the viewpoint through the layers of story-telling and personal touch expressed by the writer.
- Creative pull: Non-AI-generated content involves a versatile and creative expression. It refines creativity and helps both the writer and reader view the subject from a unique angle.
- Emotional association: Content without AI builds an emotional connection between the reader and the manual material. It breeds loyalty, authority, and trust in the user’s mind.
- Uniqueness: The writer explores diverse and innovative ideas by creating content without AI. It sparks revolutionary ideas in the reader and makes the writer stand out.
2. Mobile-Friendliness of Your Website
One of the top SEO strategies is the mobile-friendliness of your website, which brings more engagement. The number of users using mobile devices to access websites is massive.
So, please take the Google mobile-friendly test initially. It will allow you to develop your website according to the demand of mobile users.
3. Core Web Vitals – One of the Top SEO Strategies
Core Web Vitals refers to a website’s page loading speed and visual interactivity. Google recently focused on user-friendly features; therefore, core web vitals and Page Speed Insights have become a significant SEO strategy.
You can improve your website’s loading speed by ensuring:
- Compressed images
- Lazy-load the images
- Use C.D.N.s
- Avoid heavy WordPress themes
- Avoid excessive plug-ins and third-party tools
4. Avoid Duplicate Content
Google has no tolerance policy for duplicate content. So, it would be best to avoid duplicity in ranking your web pages on the search engine pages. Remember that your entire website should be 100 % unique. It includes meta titles, description tags, categorizations, etc.
Here are a few ways to avoid duplicate content:
- Create Original Content: Develop unique and useful content that offers a fresh perspective. It ensures that it isn’t duplicated from other sources.
- Use Canonical Tags: Employ canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a web page. It prevents search engines from indexing similar or identical content separately.
- Proper Citation and Referencing: When quoting external sources, ensure proper citation and referencing. It must acknowledge the original authors and avoid plagiarism.
- Implement 301 Redirects: Redirect duplicate pages to the original content using 301 redirects. It prevents search engines from penalizing your website for duplicate content.
- Utilize Meta Tags: Leverage meta tags, such as “no index” and “nofollow,” to instruct search engines not to index specific pages or follow certain links. It prevents duplicate content issues from affecting your site’s SEO.
5. Long Content
Long-form content helps in boosting your SEO, promising more traffic and engagement to your website. Above all, long-form articles make you get more backlinks than short-form ones.
Make sure to include relevant topics in your content and avoid irrelevant content to make it bulky. It will maintain the quality of the content.
6. Image Optimization
Images have always played an essential role in SEO strategy. These ensure better rankings for image searches. It also allows us to add additional keywords and semantic terms into our content through the alt text feature.
Always make sure to add high-quality and suitable images related to the content. It will help your audience relate to the specific topic explored on your particular website.
7. Better Focus on User Intent
User intent is also one of the most important SEO trends for 2024. Your content must answer their queries and satisfy them. The role of a content creator is to format content related to their needs.
A better focus on user intent will drive more organic traffic and help build trust with your desired audience.
Here are five main features of having a better focus on user intent:
- Deep Keyword Research: Conduct comprehensive keyword research to understand user search queries and intent. It enables the creation of content that precisely addresses user needs.
- User-Friendly Interface: Design an intuitive and user-friendly interface that facilitates easy navigation. It enables users to quickly find the information or products they seek.
- High-Quality Content: Develop informative, engaging, and relevant content that caters to user queries. It ensures it fulfills their informational or transactional intent.
- Enhanced Personalization: Implement personalized user experiences based on demographics, preferences, and past behavior. Thus, it must match specific user intent.
- Performance Tracking and Analysis: Regularly monitor and analyze user behavior, interactions, and feedback to gain insights into user intent. It enables continuous platform optimization to better serve user needs.
8. Omnichannel Digital Campaigns
Today, users are on multiple social media platforms all at once. People will only pay attention to your page if you apply an omnichannel strategy by sticking to the branding.
It would help to have a well-defined, united, and streamlined stance in your digital marketing campaigns. It will create a consistent brand image in the minds of the users.
9. Format Videos for Google Search
Nowadays, Videos are the most popular form of content. Therefore, you must embed your videos into your blog posts after optimizing them.
Ensure videos are well-optimized for SEO by adding tags, titles, and descriptions. It will be great as these videos will improve your dwell time and bounce rates.
10. Develop Topical Authority
The users search for answers from experienced experts who know their relevant niche. Here, topical authority becomes crucial.
It will not only help build the trust of your users, but Google will rank your website on the first pages. Thus, it is also an essential trend for your SEO campaign in 2024.
Here are five essential features of developing topical authority:
- Expertly Crafted Content
- Thorough Research
- Relevance to Specific Niches
- Regular and Timely Updates
- High-Quality Backlink Integration
11. The New’ E’ in E.E.A.T.
Google’s most famous E.A.T. acronym (Expertise, Authority, Trust) has gotten the latest E which means Experience. Google will now consider the creator’s Experience when assessing the quality of content.
For example, if an SEO specialist writes about the latest SEO trends, Google will rank his content because he has first-hand Experience in the niche.
12. SEO Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis has always been a smart move to build an SEO campaign, and it will get even more convenient in 2023 due to various SEO tools, especially Semrush.
While analyzing competitors, you can find the competitor’s content, Domain Authority, keywords, backlinks, and much more. It will help you see what forms of content will rank in a particular niche.
13. Influencer SEO Strategies
Influencers are those people who have a massive number of followers on social media. You can reach a broader audience if an influencer agrees to promote your content.
It will guarantee that your R.O.I. will be huge. Today, 89% of marketers believe influencer marketing is the top strategy.
14. Use Internal Links
Using internal links is one of the crucial SEO strategies that can attract your users deeper into your website. It will enhance user engagement, which ultimately leads to an increase in S.E.R.P. rankings.
Always use natural anchor text that entices users to click on the next page. Avoid using general anchor texts such as “click here.”
Here are five major benefits of internal linking:
- Enhanced Website Navigation: Internal links facilitate easy navigation. It enables users to explore and discover relevant content within your website seamlessly.
- Improved User Experience: Internal linking helps users find additional information and resources, enhancing their overall browsing experience and increasing the likelihood of them staying longer on your site.
- Distributed Page Authority: Strategic internal linking spreads page authority throughout your website, boosting the ranking potential of various pages and improving overall search engine visibility.
- Encourages Site Crawling: By providing internal links, you guide search engine crawlers through your site’s architecture, helping them discover and index more of your web pages, which can improve your site’s overall visibility in search results.
- Increased Conversion Opportunities: Well-placed internal links can direct users to relevant product pages or conversion points, increasing the likelihood of conversions and driving overall business goals.
15. Diversify your Backlink Profile
Diversifying your backlink profile means using as many links as possible from various websites. A study by Ahrefs explores that an incredible 90.63 percent of content fails to get any Google traffic because they have zero referring domains.
To diversify links, try to get links from directories and other resources. Ask the websites that are naturally suitable to your brand to link to you or vice versa. Moreover, get the backlinks through competitor’s analysis to target those websites and link back to you.
16. Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Instead of stuffing your content with keywords, use them judiciously. Keyword stuffing results in your page getting flagged as spammy by the crawl bots of Google. Thus, it leaves a negative impact on ranking.
Aim for 0.5-2.5% of keyword density to avoid it. It applies to both the focused keyword and keywords on the topic.
Here are five dangers of keyword stuffing:
- Poor User Experience
- Reduced Readability
- Search Engine Penalties
- Decreased Credibility
- Irrelevant Traffic
17. Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization happens when two or more site pages focus on the same primary keyword. To avoid it, you should generate a more extensive post that covers both titles as H2. It is called pillar content.
Use long-tail keywords in place of general terms. It would help if you also focused on complete research on relevant keywords related to your brand. These SEO techniques will help you avoid keyword cannibalization.
18. Avoid Spammy Link Building
Indeed, backlinks are still a prime ranking factor for Google, but the quality of those backlinks is now more crucial than ever. According to the algorithm update released in 2021, Google devalues terrible links.
To eliminate spammy backlinks, you must run an audit to determine what backlinks your site receives. Contact the website owner and ask him to remove undesirable links.
Final Thoughts
One thing remains constant regarding Google’s SEO: producing relevant, original, high-quality content. The proclamation is faithful “Content is King.”
But these proven strategies and the latest trends discussed above will help you rank higher on the S.E.R.P. If you need clarification regarding SEO strategies, please contact us.
