A Full 2024 SEO Strategy – 7 Important Things To Focus On

Did you have a tough 2023 SEO year? Trust me, you’re not the only one.

I’ve seen so many websites that have been hit with updates from Google, left and right.

That’s why your New Year resolution should be to create a solid SEO strategy.

Here is my SEO strategy for 2024.

1. UX To Increase Engagement Rate

UX is one of the points I’ll focus on a lot, and I have a firm goal set to increase my average engagement rate from 49% to 60%.

It came out in the Google Antitrust trial in 2023 that Google uses User behavior signals as a ranking factor.

As you can see in the image below, Google takes your input when you’re visiting a website to teach the algorithm whether it was a successful visit or not.

That means the more people engage with your website, the better you rank.

So, how will I improve my UX?

That’s the beauty of it: it takes less than you think, but it takes a lot of experimenting.

What works for me might not work for you, but it might spark some ideas for your website.

I’ll focus on the following:

• FAQ Boxes that need to be opened
• Author boxes that build E-E-A-T you can expand
• Small text sections you can expand to see more
• Listicle articles with better navigation and filtering options
• A floating table of contents on a mobile

All these increase my website experience and will most likely do the same to yours.

Remember to measure your engagement rate in Google Analytics before and after your changes to see whether the impact is positive or negative.

2. Internal Links To Improve Search Engine Crawling

With UX improvements comes internal link building as well. I haven’t been good enough at this in 2023, and it’s about to change.

2024 will be the year I’ll strictly interlink my content to increase user behavior and make it easier for search engines to understand what content is related to each other.

This will unarguably increase organic traffic if you maintain high-quality content and match search intent.

You can automate this using AI, a plugin like Linksy, or you can do it manually by going through your blog posts individually.

Whatever solution you go with will benefit your website and content strategy.

Focusing on internal link-building forces you to think in clusters, making it easier to interlink your content and ensuring you achieve topical authority. I’ll get back to this later.

Remember to use relevant anchor texts, but don’t over-optimize; it’ll hurt you because Google will penalize you.

A good rule of thumb is to have at least 10 internal links pointing to each of your blog posts.

3. Backlinks To Increase Domain Authority

It’s not only internal links I’ll focus on; I’ll also focus on backlinks like I did last year.

Backlinks have shown me that it’s much easier to rank for content and rank faster once you’ve built authority.

This strategy takes a lot of time, effort, and money. So be sure once you start, you’re ready to invest in the long run.

You should always try to build a couple of links per month, whether you hire an expert to do it or do it yourself.

I’ll primarily focus a bit on HARO links but primarily on relevant niche backlinks, as they seem to bring the most value to my domain.

Even though Google has stated backlinks are no longer a top 3 ranking factor, they are still incredibly important when writing content for SEO.

Yes, you have to write for people and not search engine algorithms, but you still need to have them in mind so you have schemas, a strong backlink profile, interlinked content, and much more.

It all matters when you’re focused on driving organic traffic from search engines.

4. Diversify Traffic Streams By Building a Brand

Another big task is to diversify your traffic streams.

In 2024, it’ll be too dangerous if you solely depend on organic traffic from Google and Bing. You have to build multiple traffic streams for your valuable content.

I drive traffic from Google, YouTube, and through my SEO newsletter. 2024 will be the year when I start to focus on driving traffic from social media.

As Facebook fits my niche, I’ll primarily focus on that, but for some of my test websites, I’ll also try to drive Pinterest traffic.

I’ve seen websites thrive purely on Pinterest traffic, so it’s definitely worth it.

Not only does diversifying make your website more resistant to Google core updates, but it also strengthens your signals to Google, as Google can see you drive traffic from other sources.

If you’re going to target Pinterest, I can really recommend following Tony Hill on Twitter for Pinterest tips. He is driving millions of clicks from Pinterest to his websites.

5. Opinionated Content To Beat AI Content

We can’t avoid it; AI content is everywhere, and I also manage test websites with AI-generated content. You have to stay on top of what’s happening in the industry.

That said, I’ll change my content strategy a bit in 2024 and focus primarily on high-quality content that requires an opinion.

You see, questions like how many legs does a horse have? is something an AI can answer, and with SGE on the horizon, I don’t see much traffic from searches like that.

However, AI can’t answer questions where an opinion matters.

It’s content that takes much more time to write, but it’ll be worth it in the end if you want visibility in the search engine.

Even long-tail keywords formed as questions sometimes require an opinion, so don’t worry about how many long-tail keywords you can target; there are a ton.

6. Topical Authority To Drive More Organic Traffic

As mentioned earlier, topical authority is something I’ll continue to focus on in 2024 for my valuable content.

It makes your life so much easier as you can easily interlink your content while showing Google you have authority within a cluster you cover fully.

So, whatever search query you’re targeting, always ensure you cover the related search queries, too. This is how you achieve topical authority within a niche.

Start one cluster at a time, and work your way up.

You can use Google Search Console to see your target group search behavior and see what keywords you’re missing to cover.

Sometimes, it’s relevant keywords you can incorporate into your existing content to improve your search engine rankings.

Other times, you have to create new helpful content if the target keywords are too different from your content.

This is a huge part of a successful SEO strategy, and you need to plan before you start working, even though it’s not always the most fun thing to do.

7. Content Update System To Stay Relevant

Lastly, I’ll have to improve my existing helpful content and ensure it stays relevant.

I’m working on a content update system I’ll share, so remember to stay tuned for this.

When I optimize my outdated content, I analyze and optimize on more than 20 points to ensure it covers all relevant keywords, has schema markup, and follows search intent and user intent.

There is so much in it, and I can’t wait to get it in a system that works for me.

It’s an underrated task, but you can often generate a higher search volume for a keyword by updating your existing content rather than creating new content.

Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to find content you need to optimize.

There can be multiple reasons why: maybe your CTR has decreased, your amount of traffic, or you’re not hitting user intent.

All this is what I’ll cover so you can continue your successful SEO strategy.

Wrap-Up

2023 was a wild year with many Google Core updates in a short period, and I’m sure it’ll continue in 2024.

Addressing AI-generated content, schema markup, content freshness, your link profile, and much more is super important.

Content is still king, and no SEO is still not dead, even though everyone likes to say to.

Keep grinding and do what’s working for you. And keep testing as well, and you will learn much more than you can imagine.

If you want to follow along in my SEO tests, then follow me on Twitter.

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