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What Are the Benefits of SEO? (And How to Get Started)

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What Are the Benefits of SEO? (And How to Get Started)

If you are a business owner, you may have heard about how vital search engine optimization (SEO) is. But how can it help fast-track your business’s growth, get more customers, and make a difference to your bottom line?

In more simple terms: Why do SEO? 

1. It increases your organic share of voice

There are an estimated 3.5 billion searches on Google each day. To tap into this audience, you’ll need to do SEO. 

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One of the key benefits of SEO is increasing your organic share of voice (SOV). More organic SOV means more traffic, leads, and revenue for your business.

It also means more market share in your industry. We can see from the graph below that there is a strong relationship between SOV and market share

Relationship between SOV and market share graph

At Ahrefs, we calculate organic SOV by dividing the traffic to the site by the total search traffic for all keywords.

In other words, if you only track one keyword and the top 10 positions are occupied by pages of your website, your SOV is 100%.

So how can you measure organic SOV?

We first need to create a new project in Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker and add our keywords for the website we want to track.

How to add keywords in Ahrefs' Rank Tracker, via Ahrefs' Rank Tracker

Once you have added a new project and added your keywords, you can go to the dashboard and check your SOV.

It should look something like this:

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SOV screenshot, via Ahrefs' Rank Tracker

If you click through the SOV on the dashboard, you can look at your competitor’s SOV compared to your SOV.

SOV vs. competitors screenshot, via Ahrefs' Rank Tracker

If no competitors are showing in your dashboard, you can change that by: 

  • Going into Settings.
  • Clicking on the Competitors tab.
  • Clicking on + Add competitor.

Enter your competitors manually or press the + to add them from the list below that shows the keyword intersection.

Adding competitors via settings menu, via Ahrefs' Rank Tracker

Once you are happy, click the Save button and return to the dashboard. You should now be able to compare your competitor’s SOV against your website’s SOV. 

Recommendation

Check out Michal Pecánek’s article on SOV to get a detailed guide on how to measure SOV.

2. It’s less intrusive than other types of marketing

Intrusive marketing is annoying.

It may seem obvious. But when our lives are full of adverts, cold calls, and emails from random people trying to sell you their products all the time, it’s very advantageous to be an inbound marketing channel

Intrusive outreach example, via Linkedin.com
An intrusive marketing example sent to me from LinkedIn.

SEO targets people who are actively searching for your services or products. 

Because of this, it’s excellent at converting—all you need to do is focus on what they are searching for.

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You can find what your customers are searching for using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Enter a relevant topic and go to the Matching terms report. Here, you’ll see many topics your customers are searching for, which you can target.

Matching terms report example, via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

You can search, discover, and analyze keywords using our very own Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

SEO is not just for Christmas.

In all, 45.6% of SEOs say SEO takes about three to six months. It may seem like a long time for the channel to work, but SEO is a long-term marketing channel where growth typically compounds over time. In other words, if you put the time and effort into SEO, the results will likely be well worth it. 

Looking at Ahrefs’ organic traffic graph, most of our rapid growth occurred in the last year or so when our traffic started to compound. 

Ahrefs.com organic traffic performance

Google’s algorithm updates mean that your website’s traffic will fluctuate. But as you can see from the graph, it’s a positive trend in the long term.

Over time, you should be able to rely on SEO to bring in a constant stream of traffic to your site. 

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When we asked ~4,300 SEOs how long SEO takes, they gave a variety of responses. But only 16.2% of SEOs said that SEO takes between one and three months.

Pie chart showing percentage breakdown of SEOs responses to how long SEO takes

I agree with the majority of SEOs here. But I would add a qualifier—that it depends on the type of website you are working on.

For example, if you set up a brand-new website, it will have little to no authority. This is because it will have no links pointing to it and will probably have minimal content on the site. 

These elements are just some indicators or ways in which Google judges your website’s authority and decides which top results should be on its SERPs.

Recommendation

If you are improving the SEO of a website that’s been around for a few years, then the SEO will likely take effect faster. This is based on my experience, but you may get different results with your website.

Unlike paying for PPC, organic search traffic is free. 

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If Ahrefs used PPC to pay for its organic traffic, Ahrefs’ Site Explorer estimates it would cost an eye-watering $2.3 million per month or $27.6 million per year.

Monetary value of Ahrefs' organic traffic, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

You can see from this example why improving SEO and increasing your organic traffic can be a highly valuable investment for your business.

Getting started with SEO doesn’t always mean you have to spend a lot, either. If you are willing to learn about SEO basics, you can do a lot of the work yourself to bring costs down.

Recommendation

When it comes to tools, you don’t have to spend a lot when you are starting out. You can use Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for auditing your site and our free SEO tools to optimize it further.

It’s always on—24/7

Unlike paid marketing, SEO is always on. It continues to work for you while you are asleep. 

You’ll get more overall value from SEO than other marketing channels. It doesn’t cost any extra to have it running all the time.

Another benefit is that once your website is established with good rankings, SEO will maintain them over time and drive consistent traffic to your website. 

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The only thing that can stop this is if there is a serious technical issue with your site or you have fallen foul of Google’s search guidelines

Reduce your dependency on PPC 

It’s easy for a business to rely on pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, but it can be expensive to maintain this marketing strategy. 

SEO can help you change this.

Once you have some important keywords ranking number #1 on Google, you can consider turning off some of your PPC marketing, which could result in significant savings for your business.

5. It improves user experience

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Many people have high expectations for websites these days. They expect them to be clear, intuitive, and lightning-fast. 

When websites don’t work as people expect, they get frustrated. And if they have a bad experience, this can create a negative perception of the brand. 

To do well in SEO, you’ll need to provide your visitors with the best possible user experience. 

But how can you optimize for user experience in SEO?

SEOs typically divide user experience issues into three categories: 

  • Site speed
  • Core Web Vitals
  • On-site optimization

Let’s take a closer look.

Site speed

Site speed is one of the most critical factors for your visitors. If your website is slow to use, visitors will likely leave your site and probably not return.

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A few years ago, Google tested 900,000 websites worldwide. It reported that 53% of people would leave a website if it took three seconds or more to load.

To test your site speed, you can use a tool like webpagespeedtest.org. Let’s take a look at Ahrefs speed metrics using this tool.

Ahrefs' speed performance

We can see above that the speed index is under three seconds for Ahrefs. If your website loads in more than three seconds, then you may want to consider speeding up your website. 

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are Google’s quality signals it introduced to quantify the user experience of your website. 

They are:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – For load performance.
  • First Input Delay (FID) – For visual stability.
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – For interactivity.

Here’s what Google classifies as good and bad scores for these metrics.

Good Needs improvement Poor
LCP <=2.5s <=4s >4s
FID <=100ms <=300ms >300ms
CLS <=0.1 <=0.25 >0.25

Defining metrics for user experience is a benefit, as website owners can know exactly how their websites perform against Google’s expectations. 

Monitoring Core Web Vitals and site performance may sound technical, but you can keep an eye on them using Ahrefs’ Site Audit

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For example, here’s a screenshot from the Performance dashboard highlighting two issues with CLS and LCP. 

Pages with poor CLS and poor LCP, via Ahrefs' Site Audit

As you can see from the above, Site Audit automatically identifies all low-performing pages for you.

On-page optimization

On-page optimization is another area of SEO that can help benefit your website. With on-page optimization, SEOs critically examine your website and audit it for any issues that may impact the user experience.

A good example of on-page optimization is adding subheadings, or heading tags, to your articles. Adding subheadings makes your content easier to read by establishing a visual hierarchy.

Subheadings improve readability by creating visual hierarchy

On-page optimization is less quantifiable than Core Web Vitals, but spending time on it will pay dividends for your website in the long run.

Ahrefs’ Site Audit can monitor headings, image alt text, internal linking, and other on-page optimization factors.

Here’s an example of a scheduled report you can get for heading optimization opportunities.

Heading optimization opportunities, via Ahrefs' Site Audit

You can use this report to identify many improvement opportunities for your website.

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6. It puts your store online

If your business has a physical store, you can add it to a Google Business Profile for free.

Google My Business local listing example for Google San Francisco

Adding your business to Google’s business listings means you will appear on Google Maps when someone searches for your business or related keywords.

It’s a great way to highlight your business locally. For some businesses focused on local trade, this listing can be one of their most crucial organic search assets.

It also gives you a helpful way to communicate your business hours and opening times to your customers—something they will appreciate.

By having a solid organic presence and utilizing tools such as Google Business Profile, you can be sure that your online business will pick up sales even when you can’t open your physical store. 

So how do you set up your own Google Business Profile listing?

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Setting up a Google Business Profile is straightforward and a three-step process.

  1. Claim your business profile 
  2. Add your business hours and details 
  3. Manage your profile, share any business updates, and respond to customer reviews

Once you have done this, you can monitor your business profile’s performance with the built-in analytics.

GMB analytics, via Google My Business

Using a Google Business Profile allows you to discover how people are searching for your website and helps you to understand how your business connects with customers online.

Building trust with customers is just as important online as it is offline. You wouldn’t buy something from a physical shop if the shop was run-down and the service was poor. 

The same applies to websites.

Your website should be fully operational and perform well in search engines. It should be secure and provide a great user experience to your customers. 

Having good SEO on your website shows you’re an authority in your industry. It shows you have the information and expertise customers are looking for.

It also means searchers will click on your website in the results because it is more prominent than your competitors—you will get the customers, and they won’t. 

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The bottom line here is that by improving your website’s SEO, more visitors will trust your brand, which will drive more traffic and sales.

Learn more

Now you know the key benefits of SEO, you may want to start learning about it in more detail.

I’ve collected some helpful resources below to help you get started, so you can learn about SEO and start to reap the benefits:

Got more questions? Ping me on Twitter. 🙂



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How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign

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How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign

It’s too easy to break your SEO during a website redesign. Here’s a foretaste of what can go wrong:

  • Loss of rankings and traffic.
  • Loses of link equity.
  • Broken pages.
  • Sluggish page loading.
  • Bad mobile experience.
  • Broken internal links.
  • Duplicate content.

For example, this site deleted about 15% of organic pages (yellow line) during the redesign, which resulted in an almost 50% organic traffic loss (orange line). Interestingly, even the growth of referring domains (blue line) afterward didn’t help it recover the traffic.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to avoid these and other common issues – just six simple rules to follow.

Easily overlooked but could save the day. A backup ensures you can restore the original site if anything goes wrong.

Ask the site’s developer to be prepared for this fallback strategy. All they will need to do then is redirect the domain to the folder with the old site, and the changes will take effect almost instantly. Make sure they don’t overwrite any current databases, too.

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It won’t hurt to make a backup yourself, too. See if your hosting provider has a backup tool or use a plugin like Updraft if you’re using WordPress or a similar CMS.

Testing your site for Core Web Vitals (CWV) and mobile friendliness before it goes live is the best way to ensure that your new site will comply with Google’s page experience guidelines.

The thing is, a website redesign can seriously affect site speed, stability, responsiveness, and mobile experience. Some design flaws will be quite easy to spot, such as excessive use of animations or layout not scaling properly on mobile devices, but not others, like unoptimized code.

Ask your site developer to run mobile friendliness and CWV tests on template pages as soon as they are ready (no need to test every single page) and ask for the report. For example, they should be able to run Google Lighthouse on a password-protected website.

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An SEO audit uncovers SEO issues on your site. And if you do it pre-and post-launch, you will easily spot any potential new problems caused by the redesign, especially those that really matter, such as:

  • Unwanted noindex pages.
  • Sites accessible both as http and https.
  • Broken pages.

So before the new site goes, click on New crawl in Site Audit and then again right after it goes live.

Starting a new crawl in Site Audit.Starting a new crawl in Site Audit.

Then after the crawl, go to the All issues report and look at the Change column – new errors found between crawls will be colored red (fixed errors will be green) .

Change column in All issues report. Change column in All issues report.

You might want to give some issues higher priority than others. See our take on the most impactful technical SEO issues.

Tip

You can access the history of site audits by clicking on the project’s name in Site Audit.

How to access crawl history in Site Audit (1).How to access crawl history in Site Audit (1).
How to access crawl history in Site Audit (2).How to access crawl history in Site Audit (2).

By URL structure, I mean the way web addresses are organized and formatted. For example, these would be considered URL structure changes:

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  • ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/blog/
  • ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/resources/blog
  • ahrefs.com/blog to blog.ahrefs.com
  • ahrefs.com/site-audit to ahrefs.com/site-audit-tool

Altering that structure in an uncontrolled process can lead to:

  • Broken redirects: redirects leading to non-existing or inaccessible pages.
  • Broken backlinks: external links pointing to deleted or moved pages on your site.
  • Broken internal links: internal site links that don’t work, hindering site navigation and content discoverability.
  • Orphan pages: pages not linked from your site, making them hard for users and search engines to find.

Naturally, you should keep the old URL structure unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. In this case, you will need to put some redirects in place. On top of that, make sure to submit a sitemap via Google Search Console to help Google reflect changes on your site faster.

Tip

Google also advises submitting a new sitemap if you’re adding many pages in one go. You may want to do that if that’s the case in your redesign project.

Redesigns often include some kind of content pruning or simply arbitrary deleting of older content. But whatever you do, it’s crucial that you keep the pages that are already ranking high.

Traffic is one reason, but since these pages are already ranking, chances are they’ve got some backlinks you risk losing.

To make sure you’re not cutting out the good stuff, use two reports in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer: Top pages and Best by links.

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Top pages report is a list of all the pages on your site ranking in the top 100, appended with SEO data and sorted by traffic by default. So, just one click on your left-hand side, and you’ll see a list of your best “traffic generators”.

Top pages report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.Top pages report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.

The Best by links report follows the same logic, but the focus is on links (both external and internal) and it shows all crawled pages on your site (not only the ones ranking in top 100).

Best by links report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.Best by links report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.

You can also plug in any page in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and see whether it can be cut without any damage to the site’s organic performance.

Looking up single page organic performance in Site Explorer. Looking up single page organic performance in Site Explorer.

Recommendation

If part of the redesign is an inventory cleanup, you can still get traffic to products you don’t offer anymore if you create an “archive” page and link to a place where visitors can find more similar products. E-commerce sites and hardware brands do that regularly.

Example of an archive page. Example of an archive page.

This way, you can still rank for related terms, and the user experience is better than simply redirecting old products to new products.

Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where the new design imposes significant changes to your top-ranking pages, take extra caution when altering these elements:

Final thoughts

While an overall site redesign might sound like a good moment to introduce some SEO, you need to think about the traffic and backlink equity the site has already earned. If you change too much in one go, you won’t know what worked and why, and maybe more importantly, what didn’t work and how to fix it.

Truth is, SEO is always about experimentation. You can have a well-educated guess, but you can never really know what will happen.

Want to share your SEO story here? Let me know on X or LinkedIn.

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There’s No Such Thing as “Accurate” Search Volume

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There’s No Such Thing as “Accurate” Search Volume

I often post my favorite new Ahrefs features on X. And last time I announced our newest addition to Keywords Explorer, someone replied with this:

Which was not the first time I saw us being criticized for the accuracy of our search volume metric.

But here’s the kicker…

There’s NO SUCH THING as an accurate search volume:

  • The volumes in Google Keyword Planner aren’t accurate.
  • The “Impressions” in GSC aren’t accurate either.
  • And the metric itself is just an average of the past data.

I already published a pretty detailed article about the search volume metric back in 2021. But I don’t think too many people have read it.

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

André Gide

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So let me address this topic from a whole new angle.

First of all, what do SEOs even mean when they ask for search volumes to be “accurate?”

Well, the less experienced folks just want the metrics in third-party tools to match what they see in Google Keyword Planner (GKP).

But the more experienced ones already know all Google Keyword Planner’s Dirty Secrets:

  • The numbers are rounded annual averages.
  • Those averages are then assigned to “volume buckets.”
  • Keywords with similar meaning are often grouped together and their search volume summed up.

In other words, the search volume numbers that you see in GKP are very imprecise. And once SEOs learn that, they no longer use GKP as their baseline of accuracy.

They use GSC.

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Ok. So the numbers in GKP are rounded and bucketed and clustered together and all that. But Google Search Console (GSC) shows you the actual impressions for a given keyword, right?

Well, did you know that a simple rank-tracking tool can easily pollute your GSC impressions?

Think of how many different “robots” might be scraping the search results for a given keyword, and therefore giving you a fairly inaccurate impression of its real (human-driven) search volume.

And besides, in order to see the actual monthly search volume your page has to be ranking at the top 10 for thirty days straight. And it should rank nationwide, just in case the search results might differ based on the location.

On top of that, I’m sure GSC is no different from any other analytics tool in the sense that it might have certain discrepancies in “counting” those impressions. I mean, go compare the “Clicks” you see reported by GSC with your server log files. I bet the numbers won’t match.

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How much time do you think would pass between you selecting a certain keyword to rank for and actually having your page rank at the top of Google for it?

According to our old research, it could be anywhere from two months to a year for a newly published page to get to the top. Don’t you think the monthly search volume of a given keyword will change by then?

That’s actually the exact reason why we’ve added search volume forecasting to our Keywords Explorer tool. It uses past data to project what would likely happen to search volume in the next 12 months:

Is it accurate? No.

But does it help to streamline your keyword research and make better decisions? Absolutely.

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Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that there was an SEO tool which would give you a highly precise search volume for any keyword. What would you use it for? Would you be able to accurately predict your search traffic from that keyword?

No!

You can’t know for sure at which position your page will end up ranking. Today it’s #3, tomorrow it’s #5, the day after is #1. Rankings are volatile and you rarely retain a given position for a long enough period of time.

And even if you did: you can’t get precise data on the click-through rate (CTR) of each position in Google. Each SERP is unique, and Google keeps rolling out more and more SERP features that steal clicks away. So even if you knew precisely the search volume of a keyword and the exact position where your page would sit… you still would not be able to calculate the accurate amount of search traffic that you’ll get.

And finally…

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Pages don’t rank for a single keyword! Seven years ago we published a study showing that a typical page that ranks at the top of Google for some keyword would actually rank for about a thousand more related keywords.

So what’s the point of trying to gauge your clicks from a single keyword, when you’ll end up ranking for a thousand of them all at the same time?

And the takeaway from all this is…

Here at Ahrefs we spend a tremendous amount of time, effort and resources to make sure our keyword database is in good shape, both in terms of its coverage of existing search queries, and the SEO metrics we give you for each of these keywords.

None of our SEO metrics are “accurate” though. Not search volume, nor keyword difficulty, nor traffic potential, you name it.

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But none of them can be.

They’re designed to be “directionally accurate.” They give you an overall idea of the search demand of a given keyword and if it’s a lot higher (or lower) compared to some other keywords which you are considering.

You can’t use those metrics for doing any precise calculations.

But hundreds of thousands of SEO professionals around the world are using these exact metrics to guide their SEO strategies and they get precisely the results that they expect to get.



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5 Key Enterprise SEO Trends For 2024

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5 Key Enterprise SEO Trends For 2024

SEO has undergone many transitions and disruptions in a short time.

Enterprise SEO has been at the center of some fundamental transformations over the past year.

Adapting to the ever-changing needs and demands of consumers, integrating AI into search engines, and the influx of new generative AI SEO and content tools have forced organizations to adapt and evolve their marketing strategies.

In this article, I will delve deeper into five key enterprise SEO trends for 2024 with tips to help you keep pace with change and prepare for future success accordingly.

What Is Enterprise SEO?

Enterprise SEO is typically associated with implementing SEO strategies within large-scale organizations.

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It predominantly applies to sizable brands with multiple departments and complex infrastructures. This can include large – and multiple – websites that offer a diverse array of products and services.

One of the key differences between standard SEO and enterprise SEO is the need for the workflow management of stakeholders, strategic planning, and ensuring strategies align with an organization’s broader – and, in many cases, multiple – objectives.

How Enterprise SEO Has Changed

In 2024, enterprise SEO trends will be shaped by technological advancements, changing user behaviors, and the evolving search landscape.

It’s no secret that the way search engines utilize generative AI to create new user experiences is changing how enterprises look at, and understand, what is happening in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This includes shifting from pure keyword research leveraging data-led insights to understanding conversational intent that triggers search results.

Whether you are searching via traditional results or in Google SGE labs, results now contain more sources and multiple content formats. As a result, enterprises must become more innovative and proactive in their SEO and content marketing approaches.

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The great thing to see is that the role of SEO is growing and expanding in this new AI era.

Image from author, February 2024SEO and AI becoming priority in 2024

5 Essential Enterprise SEO Trends To Watch In 2024

1. Understanding Market Shift And Ever-Evolving Consumer Preferences

SEO is such a dynamic and intense discipline that, for the majority, it can be a ‘heads down,’ laser-focused, task-by-task approach.

However, especially when we look at enterprise SEO and large-scale projects, it is essential to take a step back and ensure you have a pulse on what is happening at a macro level.

For enterprise SEO experts, it is crucial to stay on top of the latest trends and developments in consumer behavior, especially during economic shifts. These shifts can significantly impact how businesses align their more extensive SEO and content strategies to match business objectives.

For example, the pandemic saw rapid shifts in shopping preferences for products related to staying at home.

In any era-changing economic conditions, the importance of SEO reaches an all-time high due to its cost efficiencies and compounding returns, such as branding and data-driven insights into products and all major digital strategies such as paid search, email, and social.

  • Market conditions can force organizations to prioritize specific competitor strategies.
  • Search algorithm updates may prioritize credibility and authoritative sources, which means content should be optimized accordingly. I will share more on this later in this article.
  • Economic changes can also accelerate the use of new technologies, requiring businesses to be flexible and adaptable, and exercise caution in adoption.

Enterprise SEO pros must liaise with key management stakeholders monthly to ensure their strategies align with key business priorities to avoid going down unproductive pathways.

You must use data analytics effectively to understand target audiences and what is changing.

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As enterprise SEO is a multi-stakeholder discipline, insights must be fed into organizational strategies to create more holistic, not just channel-agnostic, individualized experiences.

These can range from lead magnets that take the form of tailored marketing communications to customized product content and campaigns.

2. Using Generative AI For SEO And Content: Managing Risk Vs. Reward

According to Bloomberg Intelligence, by 2032, generative AI will be worth $1.3 trillion. Additionally, Gartner research shows that SEO and content marketing are two of the highest areas of increased investment.

5 Key Enterprise SEO And AI Trends For 20245 Key Enterprise SEO And AI Trends For 2024

Numbers vary depending on the source, but if you drill down, well over 2,000 generative content AI tools are flooding the market. No doubt you hear about a new one in the news every week!

The challenge for enterprise SEO pros who want to boost content productivity and performance lies in balancing the risk versus reward of using these tools.

Risk: Some of the content generative tools focus on velocity over quality. This is challenging for the consumer and search engines and limits the chance of your brand being discovered in a sea of nonsense.

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This is because they are based on single-source, low-quality data sources that are not trained to understand your audience’s needs and wants. They have no understanding of what works in content & SEO.

For brands, this means the content can get buried below irrelevant, low-quality spam-like articles. Over time, I expect Google to solve this.

In addition, as a result, we are seeing more and more government and organization institutions building ethical AI and content creation guidelines and standards related to data use, regulation, and governance.

Always remember the risks.

  • Generative AI has severe limitations and liabilities, including the tendency to “hallucinate” by fabricating information when it doesn’t have an answer.
  • It can state misinformation so convincingly a reader new to the topic may believe it to be fact.
  • It lacks creativity and produces output that tends to be generic and formulaic.
  • The content produced is only as good as the input (prompts) and oversight (editorial process) –garbage in, garbage out.

Reward: On the flip side, if correctly used, generative AI tools can help improve content productivity and scale content for SEO campaigns.

  • Help give valuable insights and inspiration: The cornerstone of successful campaign development is the strategic generation of ideas. Marketers can create compelling content by using generative AI to uncover popular search terms, monitor social media trends, and discover unique angles and ideas.
  • Accelerate content production creation efficiency: Generative AI can also help segment audiences based on demographics, preferences, and behaviors, enabling you to tailor personalization strategies and unique experiences. It can also assist in timely (short-from) email marketing and crafting specific messages for each key target audience.
  • Scale productivity and performance: For enterprise SEO pros who use platforms rather than multiple tools with disparate data sources, AI-generated content can be created in one platform that also helps you streamline workflows. Due to built-in privacy considerations and guardrails, platform-specific generative AI tools are likely safer to use. They can create content based on your existing assets and utilize high-fidelity and secure data based on search and content patterns. These are helpful for efficient content discovery and distribution, allowing you to focus on strategy and creation.

Recommendations from all-in-one platforms also act as a content and SEO best practice assistant.

3. Preparing For Search Generative Experiences: Your Content And Your Brand

The transition to Search Generative Experiences (SGE) marks the most substantial transformation in the history of search engines – and a seismic shift that will impact all industries, affecting every company and marketer globally.

SGE represents a paradigm shift in SEO, moving beyond traditional keyword-based tactics to embrace the power of generative AI.

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5 Key Enterprise SEO And AI Trends For 20245 Key Enterprise SEO And AI Trends For 2024

As AI emerges and becomes almost a “mediator” between a company’s content and its users, one search can produce results that would have previously taken five separate searches.

Take retail shopping as an instance: AI will start to recommend a complete shopping experience that gives consumers an experience that contains many channels and sources and multiple forms of media.

For consumers, this promises deeper and more interactive experiences, leading to increased engagement and time spent on Google.

For brands, it means higher value clicks once a consumer is ready to visit your website.

I have been monitoring this (at BrightEdge) for a long time. I see experiments in critical areas that you should keep an eye on! For example:

  • Testing of over 22 new content formats in SGE results.
  • There are many warnings in the healthcare and YMVL industries, as Google is exercising caution.
  • New visual content formats are used in industries such as e-commerce.
  • More reviews are being added to results in areas like entertainment.
  • There is a big focus on places (local) being integrated into results.

To help SEJ readers and the whole community, you can view for free (ungated) the data behind all these findings and a step-by-step guide to understanding this Ultimate Guide to SGE.

Note: This is still in Google Labs and has not been rolled yet. However, from the above, I firmly predict this is a matter of when, where, and how it will proceed.

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4. Understanding And Adapting To New Search Behaviours: Data And Conversational Intent

Utilizing data to grasp user behavior and the underlying intent in conversations will be crucial for SEO success in both traditional and AI-driven search results.

Search is becoming conversational, and marketers must focus on user intent, advancing their understanding of their audience from simple keyword optimization to grasping conversational intent and extended phrases.

For users, this translates into more captivating and immersive experiences, leading to increased time spent on Google. This optimizes their search, guiding them swiftly to the most pertinent websites that cater to their unique needs.

For marketers, navigating your search presence becomes more intricate yet more fruitful. Anticipate reduced but higher-quality web traffic. Identifying key searches that activate various types of results is essential.

Clicks will carry greater monetary value due to enhanced conversion rates. This is because consumers are more ready to act after being informed and influenced by prior interactions and data from Google.

Marketers need to guarantee that their content strategy not only answers the specific query but also considers the broader context in which the query is made. This will help ensure targeted and effective engagement with users.

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However, the core fundamentals of technical and website SEO remain the same. They will become more critical as marketers shift to optimizing their sites for higher-value traffic and clicks.

  • Ensure your site is fast and responsive, it is structured, and the content is optimized for human readers. It should be structured to answer their questions in the most engaging and user-friendly way.
  • Ensure your content assets are primed for conversion with clear CTAs.

Focusing on contextual signals will be vital for content marketers who want to maximize performance.

For example, schema markup, E-E-A-T, and HCU (even though not regarded as ranking factors) are vital, so search engines and users send signals so they can understand the context behind your site and content.

  • Leverage data to decode user behavior and the intent behind conversations, using this insight as a catalyst for generative AI outcomes.
  • Develop and refine various content types, such as videos and images, to enhance engagement.
  • Coordinate marketing efforts across paid media, social platforms, and public relations to create a unified content campaign strategy.
  • Concentrate on tracking metrics like traffic and converting high-quality down-funnel traffic as consumers spend more time on Google before making informed decisions and visiting your website.

And, as I know, you are now thinking. Yes, SGE could mean slightly less but more qualified traffic.

5. Managing Omnichannel Marketing: Managing SEO And Multiple Marketing Disinclines

SEO has long shifted from being a siloed channel, but enterprises must make changes now as consumers and search engine demands drive the need for even closer collaboration.

Given that the SERPs and AI-generated SGE results encompass a variety of media types and formats – including social media, reviews, and news sources – content marketers will need to get closer than ever to their SEO, digital branding, design, social media, and PR teams.

Google search for [food delivery near me]Screenshot for search for [food delivery near me], Google, February 2024Google search for [food delivery near me]

Consumers are no longer consuming media in silos, and that means marketers cannot operate SEO and digital marketing in silos. More than managing PPC and SEO campaigns with a bit of social media will be required in 2024.

This is especially true as AI-powered results contain multiple formats and sources. Whether you are a big brand or not, whoever provides the best experience will win in 2024 – so expect some curveballs from your competition.

This means the relationships between people, processes, and technology must change.

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Make sure you are aligning your teams and managing workflows across:

  • Design – Images and video.
  • Branding and PR – Messaging and company reputation.
  • Content – From text to design to social.
  • SEO – PPC and Website teams.
  • Customer Service teams – For reviews.
  • Sales teams for advice on down-funnel CTAs on your site.

For enterprise SEO pros, platforms are the only way you can do this.

Key Takeaways For Enterprise SEO Success In 2024

SEO today is going to be different than SEO tomorrow. SEO tomorrow will be different than the search in March.

Search and AI todayImage from author, February 2024Search and AI today

Change is the core constant we all share in this industry. Time has shown us that those who keep up with trends and adapt quickly survive and thrive.

As SEO advances alongside AI, keep a core focus on monitoring consumer behavior.

Never forget many of the core principles of SEO still apply, but be ready to help your organization become more agile so your success in enterprise SEO and AI is guaranteed.

In 2024, regardless of the search source, once a consumer clicks, brands that give them the best experience win.

More resources:

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Featured Image: Sutthiphong Chandaeng/Shutterstock

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