The new year is about to come, bringing new ideas, technologies, trends, and much more. The field of search engine marketing will also experience some trends and changes.
By 2023, some trends were observed in SEM emerging that will continue to have even more importance in 2024.
Keeping them in mind, in this article, we will try to get an idea about the future of search engine marketing and the trends and strategies that may work out in 2024.
Let’s start!
Emergence of Artificial Intelligence
AI is everywhere, so in search engine marketing. In fact, AI in SEM is becoming a trend that is continuously growing. Several AI technologies, like generative AI, automated AI, speech recognition, and more, are changing the way businesses market on search engines.
Simply put, Google PPC ads, a part of SEM, rely on machine learning algorithms to filter out the most relevant user for a specific product or business, making marketing intent-based.
The most recent one, the automated bidding method for PPC by Google, gives advertisers the option that instead of manually setting budgets, they can optimise automated bids based on real-time data to get the most out of their efforts and money.
Moreover, generative AI like ChatGPT or Google Bard helps create and optimise ad copies effectively and quickly.
All these things point towards the importance of AI trends in search engine marketing, making it incumbent on you to come up with marketing strategies accordingly.
More focus on Local SEO
With the new Generative AI in SERPs by Google, Local SEO is becoming extremely popular. “Google not showing AI-generated results for local search queries, and instead, those Local SEO listings”- is not the only aspect of Local SEO becoming an SEM trend. Another factor is the trust of people in local area products.
According to a survey, 46% of the total online queries have local interest.
Moreover, according to Google, mobile searches that included the phrase “near me” grew 136% year over year.
The factors combined present Local SEO to you as an effective strategy in the ever-changing landscape of search engine marketing.
Zero-click searches & featured snippets.
Zero-click searches are when a user tries to get information without having to click on any website link. That sounds convenient! Google featured snippets show any piece of content in a highly structured and effective manner right on the search engine results page.
As people easily get information, saving time, they prefer more zero-click searches. In this scenario, optimising any page of information in a way that appears in featured snippet form is becoming even more popular.
According to Spartktoro’s study, in 2020, 64.82% of Google searches resulted in zero clicks.
Rise of voice searches
People are now searching for things using the microphone feature. As this number is continuously growing, the obligation on businesses to optimise websites to appear for these types of queries is also increasing.
Basically, when users try to search for things using voice, the nature of the query is usually conversational. In this scenario, structuring or optimising any piece of content in a conversational tone becomes important.
This can be done through-
Using Longtails Keywords
For e.g., instead of using the keyword website design, you can consider a conversational alternative like the best website design company in India.
Considering FAQ pages
As voice searches are usually in question form, if you add FAQs related to your service or product, they are more likely to appear in the SERPs.
Registering for Local Listing
Usually, the intent of voice queries is to search for things available in local areas. So listing your business for Local SEO and optimising for local queries is important. For instance, in place of using keywords like a digital marketing company, you can consider a digital marketing company in Moradabad.
Mobile responsiveness is becoming even more important.
The trend of optimising websites for mobile users is not new. Google, since 2016, has been saying so. But what’s new is Google’s recent announcement. It said that now, the mobile bot crawler will mostly be used to index sites rather than desktop bots.
The reason is obviously that the number of people accessing websites through mobile devices is increasing.
Hearing this, not neglecting the importance of mobile responsiveness during a website design process is what you need to focus on.
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