By Alex Whyles, Head of SEO, Visualsoft.

It’s that time of year again where most people are reflective of what’s happened but also optimistic about what’s to come. Digital marketing & SEO in particular is no different, even to the point where there will be those who will  have ditched the gym pass by the end of January to either not bother or find a less exertive way of getting fit. 

The mis-use of AI

On that note I expect that the use or rather mis-use of AI will likely cause Google and website issues in 2024 & beyond. Why am  I predicting this? Because the overall level of content that we have seen being produced is of low quality. The  general focus for this content is heavy on one term with people expecting an in-depth, E.A.T (expert, authoritative, and trusted) piece of work based on a command such as “Write me an article based on car insurance” or such without spending the time to inform AI what the structure needs to be, how related questions within the main subject matter link to other content to create entities, depth of knowledge & experience being demonstrated via insight & overall brand personality means that it’s spam in other words. So I would get those pencils sharpened and be prepared for rewrites from people who are wondering why their site isn’t doing well and has low engagement.

The biggest change next year and one  that has been in progress for a while now, is SGE (Search Generative Experience). This is not so much as a change of the way in which Google gathers, processes and returns information, but how it actually displays it. 

(Google has been registering patents around language models for a long time in order to make the SERPs more ecommerce led & intuitive what what is being asked)

We are likely to see the search results pages become more dynamic with information being pulled (and credited) from multiple sources; the key one to this will be the upgrade to Google Merchant Centre / Google Shopping as they will become more apparent within results. From an SEO perspective, it’ll be absolutely worth seeing what product descriptions are being used as well as enabling organic features. The key part to all of this (and the above) is that Google will still need & still credit content  and information. The better and more nuanced content will always likely satisfy search queries more, something that can’t yet be replicated by AI (or lazy humans). Hence, the old adage continues; develop unique & compelling content that your visitors will like (obviously, make sure it’s indexable & well structured). 

Oh, likely SEO will be declared ‘dead’ again.