Upcoming Digital Marketing Trends to Expect in 2024
By David on January 26, 2024 in Internet Marketing
Between Google core and algorithm updates as well as the increased marketing efforts of your competitors, business and law firm marketing strategies rarely stay stagnant. It’s critical to keep an eye on marketing news – in addition to simply perusing the efforts of your competitors – in order to ensure that your marketing campaign doesn’t become obsolete.
To help you stay relevant, PaperStreet’s internet marketing team created the following guide to the marketing trends we expect to see in 2024 and beyond. We outline what shifts we witnessed in past years and predict what will cause the most significant impacts on digital marketing.
Generative AI in Google Search: The Search Generative Experience
The Change: In May 2023, Google announced its Search Generative Experience (SGE), which integrates AI into its search engine results. Since then, the SGE has been open to user testing with constant improvements being made. If you haven’t joined already, these latest updates might make you reconsider your decision.
The Impact: With generative AI in Google search, users can: ask more complex and descriptive questions that language models will better comprehend; understand a topic faster with better links to explore further resources; get fast help with starting a task like writing content or creating images directly in search, and be more efficient with the ability to ask follow-up questions in a conversational manner or try any offered next steps from the AI chat.
What to Expect: In the future, there will most likely be more AI infusion into all aspects of internet search and life in general. We eventually think the SGE will be folded directly into Google’s normal search engine and not a separate entity. Also, based on news from November 2023, the platform continues to expand support for additional countries (now available in 120) and languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Indonesian. It was previously only available for English speakers.
ChatGPT and Other LLMs (Large Language Models)
The Change: ChatGPT and other AI language models took the world by storm in 2023, creating a huge buzz in the media. Most people were immediately looking into ways to sign up for the new tool to find out how to further leverage a new AI application.
The Impact: From an SEO & marketing perspective, ChatGPT helps make us much more efficient at our jobs and solve problems faster. From keyword research, to helping debug or write code, to generating content ideas and outlines, this tool can be extremely useful in a variety of ways. However, on the downside, society has feared that the evolution of AI could eventually replace certain job markets.
What to Expect: We have already seen the positive impact that ChatGPT and other LLMs can have on job efficiency and problem-solving abilities, especially in the marketing and tech industry. We only expect ChatGPT and LLMs to further improve their capabilities with more accurate information and a better understanding of user prompts.
Update to Core Web Vitals Metrics
The Change: Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vitals metric starting in March 2024. Google made references to an upcoming change for about a year but in March 2023 this announcement became official.
The Impact: If you aren’t already aware, Google uses Core Web Vitals metrics that relate to website load speed and user experience benchmarks as an additional ranking factor in their algorithm. Google felt FID was not an impactful measurement and therefore it has been replaced with INP. This new metric uses data from the Event Timing API. The purpose is to assess the responsiveness of a webpage and monitor any delays based on user interactions with the page.
What to Expect: Although the SEO community deems Core Web Vitals to be less important than other metrics like quality content and backlinks, it is still technically a ranking factor. As a result, we expect SEO agencies (including PaperStreet) to heavily monitor the reporting of the new metric for each website. Then research and take the proper steps to improve the website’s INP to satisfy Google’s benchmark requirements.
Google Analytics 4 – The New Standard for Reporting
The Change: Google Analytics 4 is now the default website analytics tracking platform as of July 2023 for Google products. Older versions of Google Analytics have officially stopped collecting new data and only show historical data.
The Impact: Better and more accurate data collection and reporting. The older version of Google Analytics relied solely on cookies to collect data which is now becoming obsolete based on further efforts to protect user privacy. The upside to the latest version of Google Analytics is it uses an event-based data model to provide user data and predictions. It no longer relies exclusively on cookies.
What to Expect: Google Analytics 4 does have a sharp learning curve compared to older versions. Nevertheless, it is supposed to be more intuitive and will include expanded predictive data insights, further integration with Google Ads, cross-device data measurement abilities between website and app, and more granular data controls.
Continual Google Algorithm Updates
The Change: Google was once again very active in 2023, updating their algorithm on numerous occasions. Nine official times to be exact, with four core algorithm updates. Overall, this was one less than compared to the previous two years. This list from Google reflects all the dates and changes throughout the year.
The Impact: Google released four core updates in March, August, October, and November. It was unusual that the last three updates were launched so closely together. This caused an abundance of search ranking volatility from August through November. The focus was typically on combating spam and trying to cut back on low-quality content, links, and reviews. There was also a “helpful content” update that rewarded sites with quality content. Along with more emphasis on expecting high-quality content for sites that review products.
What to Expect: We anticipate that Google will continue to improve their algorithms and find new ways to review for quality. Each year we can expect 3-4 core algorithm updates along with other smaller focused updates. Now more than ever, it is important to find ways to make your site stand out from the competition without resorting to lower quality spam tactics.
Let PaperStreet Help Your Marketing Stay Current
It’s one thing to be mindful of the upcoming digital marketing trends, it’s another to implement the proper techniques. Let our experienced internet marketing team help you stay competitive. Reach out to us today to get started.
