If you’re an SEO professional, why not adapt to the top B2B SEO trends in 2024 as a New Year’s resolution? As we dive into SEO trends, we’ll look at overarching strategies, website practices (on-page SEO), and SEO practices initiated from sources external to your website.
There is no formula for reaching the #1 spot on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SEO is a moving target, but you can make headway by heeding these top 20 trends.
Here are our Top 20 B2B SEO Trends for 2024
Overarching 2024 SEO Trends for B2B Websites
Some SEO Trends cut across all categories, rising to the top of the SEO fruit change. If you remember anything from this article, remember the power of E-E-A-T.
1. E-E-A-T (Expertise/Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
E-E-A-T is a core metric for determining the quality of a webpage, one of the most important ranking factors. For Google to consider a webpage to be high-quality, it must express all four characteristics:
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- E for Expertise: The degree of knowledge or skills demonstrated within an article of the content creators.
- E is for Experience: Does the author have personal experience with the webpage topic?
- A for Authoritativeness: Is the content creator or the webpage itself a valued source for the topic of the search?
- T for Trustworthiness: How honest, safe, reliable, and accurate is a specific webpage?
2. Optimizing for the User’s Search Intent
Google’s mission is, simply put, to give users what they want. The challenge for SEO experts is figuring out what users want. Search engine technology is moving ever closer to zeroing in on search intent using analytics, predictive models, and increasingly artificial intelligence (AI).
3. Key AI and Machine Learning
AI and machine learning are driving SEO trends by applying advanced data analytics, identifying patterns and trends, and enabling greater personalization, efficiency, and performance. Businesses worldwide are exploring how they can best integrate AI technology into their 2024 digital marketing strategies. The key is to let AI crunch the numbers while people focus on more strategic areas that rely on human knowledge gained through experience, intuition, and real-life human interaction.
Leveraging Two Categories of SEO: On-Page and Off-Page SEO
The two major areas of SEO are on-page SEO and off-page SEO (also called on-site and off-site SEO). On-page SEO optimizes content and source code on a website, whereas off-page SEO focuses on signals Google gets from elsewhere on the Internet.
We’ll begin with on-page SEO trends B2B businesses should follow in 2024.
On-Page SEO Trends for B2B Companies in 2024
The ultimate goal of on-page SEO practices is to make it as easy as possible for both search engines and users to both search engines and to understand what a webpage is about, identify that page as relevant to a search query, and recognize the page as worthy of high-ranking on a SERP.
4. Mobile-First Websites
According to Statistica, mobile devices account for over half of all organic search engine visits in the United States, leading Google to implement mobile-first indexing as a key factor for UX (user experience) and website ranking.. SEO techniques for mobile-first websites including responsive design, improved loading time, page speed, mobile-friendly content, and seamless navigation.
5. Video Marketing
Over 90% of B2B customers watch videos online, with nearly half watching videos to research products or services. This shift includes going directly to video platforms like YouTube to get information. Also, videos now frequently appear in Google’s zero-click results at the top of the results page. Best practices for optimizing video content are to use SEO-friendly captions, descriptive titles, detailed descriptions, metadata, relevant tags, watch time, and other ranking factors.
6. Transactional Keywords and Content
Transactional keywords guide users to transactional goals throughout the marketing funnel. In addition to sales, transactions can include requesting a demo, downloading content, contacting the business, or signing up for a newsletter. Identifying the best transactional keywords will heighten organic results and drive more traffic to high-value landing pages.
7. Core Vitals and Page Speed
Optimizing for speed has been a ranking factor since 2010. According to Google, Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page. Best practices include compressing images and code, activating browser caching, and testing page speed Google PageSpeed Insights or another tool.
Site Speed Getting You Down?An Easy Guide to Improve your Website Speed (Without a Developer)
8. Accessibility
Google’s algorithm has increased Web accessibility as a ranking factor, helping the 1.3 billion people with a broad range of disabilities to better perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with a website. Best accessibility practices include using:
- Headings, Header Tags, and Title Tags
- Image, Video, and Audio Captioning and/or Transcriptions
- Anchor/link Text
- Structured Data and Schema
- Keyboard Navigation
Learn More about Website Accessibility
9. Schema and Well-Structured Data
SEO best practices now include that web content is well-structured and uses schema markup, a set of tags within the web page code that more fully enables search engines to understand and index content. Schema includes specific tags for organizations, places, people, events, products, creative work, and reviews. You can find out more at schema.org.
10. Visual Search
Visual Search, enabled by advancements in AI and image recognition technology, allows users to conduct searches by uploading images rather than using text queries. As visual search picks up speed, businesses should optimize images with descriptive alt text and structured data to ensure search engines can interpret and present visual content accurately.
What is the purpose of Off-Page SEO?
Now that we’ve looked at on-page SEO trends, we can move onto the equally important off-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO Trends for B2B Companies in 2024
SEO doesn’t stop at your on-page SEO practices. Google takes a myriad of off-page SEO factors into account when ranking web pages. Off-page SEO practices include all the actions you can take beyond your website to optimize its reach. The impact of off-page SEO is as important as your on-page SEO, and a strong combination of the two is how you get to the top.
Here are the top 2024 off-site SEO trends.
11. Local SEO
SEO pros take heed: Mobile searches for “store open near me” grew by over 250% in a recent two-year period. Specific goals of local SEO may include increasing in-store traffic and phone calls, gaining control of trustworthiness and reputation, and building relationships and links. Critical local SEO strategies include both off-page and on-page techniques:
- Google My Profile (GMP) is a free tool that allows you to influence how and where your business appears on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Shopping.
- NAP (name-address-place) citations are listings in business directories, social media profiles, niche local and industry listings, review sites, and other online resources.
- On-Page Local SEO Strategies include optimizing header tags, localizing content, and using local business schema.
Local SEO Made Easy – Tips to Get Your Business Found
12. Diverse Backlinking Strategies
Backlinks continue to be a crucial ranking factor. Something new for SEO pros is that Google prizes backlink diversity across platforms and websites as signals for webpage authority, credibility, and relevance. A diverse link portfolio provides both greater online visibility and a better mix of direct referral traffic.
13. Podcasts
Experts predict that there will be 504.9 million podcast listeners in 2024. Appearing on credible podcasts in or near your agency niche can boost backlinks, website traffic, mentions, and referrals. Google indexes podcast content, and podcasts can help you gain exposure to relevant new audiences, gain standing as an industry expert, and receive backlinks.
14. Guest Posting
An ideal way to boost off-site SEO and build backlinks is guest posting. Find opportunities to write (or co-write) an original article on a credible, authoritative website in or adjacent to your industry niche. When developing a guest-posting strategy, remember that a few good guest postings are more valuable than many low-quality ones.
15. Social Media
Social media signals, while not direct ranking factors, play an increasingly significant role in SEO strategies. By engaging visitors on your social channels and having them share your content, you can climb in organic rankings, increase visibility and authority, get backlinks, score high-quality leads, and learn more about what your audience cares about with social listening and by analyzing user comments.
16. Forum Participation
Forums are online messaging boards where a community of like-minded people can easily communicate about relevant topics in a specific niche. You can find an almost endless supply of B2B forums on LinkedIn, Quora, and similar platforms. Search engines crawl and index forums, making them a great place to post high-quality, pertinent, and original content.
17. In-Person Events
Live events are back! A good content strategy will help land you in non-traditional SERP features at the top of search results, including event carousels, knowledge panels, local packs, and more. We recommend using structured data and Event schema. Also, optimize for off-site SEO on social media, podcasts, the event site, and industry sites.
18. Webinars
When done right, webinars increase your website’s authority and trustworthiness, drive traffic and conversions, promote high-quality backlinks, and attract new visitors through organic search, social media, email marketing, and referrals. Optimize your keyword in your webinar title, description, landing page, and description. Use categories and tags with your webinars, apply the correct schema, and optimize content across multiple channels.
19. Influencer Outreach and Collaboration
SEO benefits multiply with collaborative efforts such as appearing as a podcast guest or co-sponsoring webinars or events, joint promotions, and coordinated backlinking strategies with partners. Sharing optimized content across your respective platforms helps you and your partner each gain more traction and SEO juice.
20. Voice Search for Local Queries
Back to AI and machine learning, natural language processing (NLP) technology is giving computers better ability to interpret, manipulate, and comprehend human language. With the rise of voice search, particularly for local queries, optimize content with natural sounding language and long-tail keywords that align with how people speak when searching on Alexa, Siri, Amazon echo or other device.
Ready for a Change?
There you have it, the top 20 B2B SEO trends for 2024.
As you try to align your website and other SEO activities with Google’s ever-changing search algorithm, take advantage of automations and AI, but remember that there’s no substitute for human knowledge, experience, and expertise.
There’s no need to change your strategy all at once. That can be way too overwhelming. It’s okay to improve your SEO efforts in stages, depending on your resources and budget. You can take a load off your staff and get significant results by hiring a digital Agency like Ladybugz Interactive, known for developing websites and supporting its B2B clients with the newest SEO strategies. Whatever strategies you want to focus on, always look forward and adapt to what’s coming next.
