As we prepare to launch our brand new SEO in 2025 season, we look back on the previous year and ask our panel of experts how SEO has changed for them over the past 12 months.
Joining David Bain for a retrospective of the year will be Filipa Serra Gaspar, Alex Moss, Dani Leitner, Andy Frobisher, and Sukhjinder Singh.
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Transcript
David Bain
What changed an SEO in 2024?
Hello and welcome to the December 2024 edition of the Majestic SEO panel where we’re debating what changed in SEO in 2024.
I’m your host, David Bain, and joining me today are five great guests. So starting off with Filipa.
Filipa Serra Gaspar
Hi everyone. Yeah, I’m Filipa. I’m currently based in Madrid, Spain. I’m an SEO consultant, and you can find me in seolipa.com
David Bain
Lovely. Thanks for joining us, Filipa. And also with this today, is Alex,
Alex Moss
Hi. I’m Alex Moss. I am Principal SEO at Yoast, and as well as that, I’m co founder of FireCask, a small agency based in Manchester that does organic and WordPress development.
David Bain
Thank you very much Alex, and also with us today is Dani.
Dani Leitner
Hi. I’m Dani Leitner. I’m an SEO consultant at DaniLeitner, and you can find me at DaniLeiner.ch.
David Bain
Thank you for joining us Dani, and also with us today is Andy.
Andy Frobisher
Hi, I’m Andy Frobisher. I’m a freelance SEO consultant and you can find me at andyfrobisher.com
David Bain
The fifth guest, and we don’t often have five guests, so the fifth guest today is Sukhjinder
Sukhjinder Singh
Hi. I’m Sukhjinder Singh. I’m a freelance SEO consultant at IDoSEO and I work out of Leicester in the UK.
David Bain
Lovely. Thank you so much for joining us as well. And so the big question of today’s episode is, what changed in SEO in 2024? Let’s go back to the first SEO that I introduced, Filipa. What are your thoughts on this question?
Filipa Serra Gaspar
Well, I would say definitely it is the introduction of AI in the search result. I think that’s like the biggest new thing in SEO in 2024 for sure.
David Bain
Okay, and obviously this doesn’t impact every country. So is this something that only certain SEOs in certain countries need to be aware of, or are you suggesting for every SEO around the world to be aware of this?
Filipa Serra Gaspar
Well, I guess we’re just getting started, right? So I believe it will eventually roll out to all countries and all markets. Like, as you said, it’s still not everywhere. It is on the markets that I’m working in, so it’s definitely something that I’m dealing with right now, and I do believe, yeah, this is just the beginning in 2024 and you know, let’s see what happens in 2025.
David Bain
Absolutely. So let’s get everyone’s opinion on the big thing that is shared by each of the guests. So Andy, shall we get your opinion on what Filipa was sharing there?
Andy Frobisher
Yeah, AI overviews, it feels to me like they are really only just getting started with with AI overviews. It feels like, compared to what was announced in 2023, a slightly watered down version of what everyone was expecting with AI overviews. So I think there’s a lot more to come for 2025 and obviously it isn’t fully rolled out across all the European countries and other countries across the world.
Obviously the US, the UK, is quite prominent now with with AI overviews. And I think another important thing probably to remember is it’s not like speaking to ChatGPT with AI overviews, it’s actually using real information from real websites. It’s using real user content. So you can have your content and your answers up there in the face of it. It’s not creating that content itself, it’s using the knowledge it knows and understands from from the World Wide Web.
David Bain
Is there any particular reason Andy, that you think that it’s not ruled out, as far as perhaps the initially announced. Is it, for example, because maybe the quality of the results aren’t quite there, or is it because Google or other search engines are a little bit concerned about eating into existing business models, or perhaps something else?
Andy Frobisher
There’s probably a couple of those elements. I think that even though they had it under under a Beta, the results weren’t great. Then they rolled it out anyway, and the results are slowly improving.
I think at first, we were getting results for sort of like, Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) type subjects and we weren’t expecting to see results for offering potentially worrying answers and information to some really critical things. But I think as well, you know, yes, there’s the element of, how do we introduce paid into that? You know, how do we make sure that businesses bottom lines aren’t affected and it actually ends up having a positive impact upon businesses, and it’s not killing off businesses, because obviously Google’s main income still comes from ads. So how does it have to work with with ads, in a way? So I think we’re going to see changes around that next year, potentially the year after. I think we’re going to see potentially other visualizations within AI overviews.
When they first announced it, back in 2023 I was expecting to see a lot more social content introduced into it, so maybe we might start to see the repercussions of that. Obviously, we are seeing a lot more forum type content in the SERPs, you know, I would expect them to be wanting to compete with the likes of TikTok and Instagram on the way people search now. They want people to go into that Google ecosystem, you know. So how do they sort of like integrate multi social search results into Google. I think that is something that possibly will, we’ll see in the future.
David Bain
Dani?
Dani Leitner
I wanted to say because, to your question, why it is AI overview is not rolled out entirely. I think the problem is also political in Europe, because there is a lot of going on with the political situation Europe is really thinking about, is this safe? Are people getting lied to and everything? And I think Google just doesn’t want to have another war with Europe, and just says, like, well, we just skip Europe for now, until we are sure. So that’s, I think, the problem, and people in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, where I’m based, can’t use AI overviews without a VPN.
Sukhjinder Singh
Just thinking, then is that where ChatGPT could potentially fill a gap or something, because I’ve just been trying to play with everything again and see how I can see traffic coming into GA4, whatever, through referrals or whatnot, or an increase in direct traffic, if it’s citations, right. I’m just trying to think, how on earth do you attribute and what does the landscape look like? I saw a recent LinkedIn post by Rand Fishkin a week ago where its a non-scientific kind of conclusions about attributing LLMs In general, right? I was just trying to think, how on earth can you apply that and cater to it? And we know, building topical authority, entities, answering questions as precisely as possible, links, all that kind of stuff will help as well, but it’s still kind of up in the air.
And like you said, certain countries that don’t have AI overviews, what are they going to use instead? I just started using ChatGPT as a search engine, because I do really specific types of searches, and I’m quite lazy, so I thought, you can pick up the slack. But I don’t know if anybody else is doing that, like I’ve just seen anecdotally, a few people say, yeah, but I would like to see more solid data on that.
David Bain
Alex?
Alex Moss
Well, mass adoption is the important thing. So at the moment, we’re just in beta testing phase. I remember seeing a talk a few years ago about and someone from Dell was describing technology and the way it advances. And they think, and they said, think of a chess piece with one pebble, and then the next square of the chess piece, it doubles, and then doubles and doubles. And he said, right now, and this was eight years ago. He said he feels like he’s in the between 64 and 128 and right now we’re definitely, I would say between the 128, and 256, if you want to think of analogy of technology, it’s the next, like Andy was leading on to, it’s the next year that’s going to be, I would say, data collection activities for all of these platforms, to really see what the mass market is out and understanding it. 2026 is going to be the really interesting year. That’s when I believe the bigger shift will come in how people discover things.
But going back to what changed in 2024 I would say, an SEOs perception on SEO in the future, and also a client or end users perception of SEOs and their role in in all of this in the future as well, which I think is quite interesting, because I think maybe more recently, not that it’s been devalued, but I would believe that some believe that SEOs aren’t as reliant as they once were. And I think that that’s weird considering the all the updates of Panda and Penguin, where you would actually think that SEO specialists at that point are more in demand, but here it’s actually much harder, and you’ve got agency issues over the last two, three years that have been happening worldwide.
And whilst it devalues our work, I think the mediocrity of SEO may disappear in the next couple of years, and the real creative stuff is going to happen. And I think Black Hat. Yeah, if it wasn’t hard enough now, it’s going to become even, even harder. Brand Marketing and general awareness is going to be way more important. And I think it’s like a technological or probably a psychological coup on search, on the way we discover things now, and that over optimizing isn’t going to be a thing that’s achievable, especially at scale in the future.
David Bain
So, Alex, if it’s doubling each square on the 64th square, how many grains of AI sand will we be seeing?
Alex Moss
Who knows? I mean, at the moment, if you think of lifespan these platforms are still babies. They’re not out of their nappies. They’re not even walking yet. All of these changes, I think, are nothing compared to the actual behavior changes and like I was saying before, attribution is going to be harder to do. And at the moment, we can kind of get some stuff in GA4 now, but watch that go away in the next 12 months, and they make it harder for everyone to attribute things unless, of course, you’re featured within AIO.
I believe next year, it’ll be a bit more of a search console asset, and they’ll take away data from GA4 to say how well ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude or the like are doing, Which, again, is a power Monopoly game, isn’t it? Can I even say monopoly at the moment, I’m not allowed to say, but it’s interesting as well.
David Bain
Dani, what else changed in SEO in 2024?
Dani Leitner
I actually think it’s really funny what Alex said, because this year talking to people, because I’m going to a lot of events, also outside of the SEO bubble. And I really love to hear what people say when I say I’m an SEO consultant. And this year was the year where I heard every time SEO, do we still need that? Because now we have ChatGPT, I think it’s really funny, if you think of it, because I think we will need more SEO. And I mean, we do search engine optimization, not we optimize for Google. And if Google is dead, we are dead, we optimize for any search engine. And if ChatGPT, Perplexity, all of this, they need a search engine. They are searching behind there. They give you results. So that’s actually what we’re doing. Just the platform is changing, but the people don’t get it.
Alex Moss
Maybe our job roles, like the name, the title, is becoming redundant. SEO is becoming redundant, like the cassette and and soon with there’s a lot of talk about SXO, Search Experience Optimization. I sometimes refer some discovery optimization because it it there’s so much more to just search engines now, like now, people consider TikTok a search engine. I personally don’t, as an old school SEO, because my mind is maybe tunnel vision towards the act of the 10 links in a SERP, but TikTok is a SERP. You know, it’s not a page per se. It’s a different way it’s displaying it, but it’s still a method of discovery that’s now used to attribute lots and lots of sales and is legitimate. So again, and I agree with Andy. From what Andy said before, I thought there’d be more social signals in some of this stuff, but they’ve chosen to use Reddit instead.
Sukhjinder Singh
I think the job spec has outgrown that title for the last 10 years, because it is. We’re looking at CRO, we’re looking at content ideation, topical authority, entities and all that. And we’re not just writing titles and metas and, building links and stuff, that’s not all we do as SEOs. I still class myself as an old school SEO but having to learn a shed load of new stuff, reading on the treadmill every day. So it’s like, yeah, we need another title. And at the same time, I like SEO as well. I don’t want to do digital marketing or anything, you know, but that’s a sideline.
Dani Leitner
I don’t want to have marketing in my title either.
David Bain
SEO shouldn’t learn from marketing?
Dani Leitner
I actually don’t like that SEO is in marketing, because I’m coming from an IT place. I’ve been an IT project manager, and I think its SEO, but if you look at marketing, people just think of content, and we do a lot more. And then somebody that comes from marketing and enters SEO is like, well, I can write content, and you’re just like, but do you read code? No, that’s too complicated. I’m just like, then you can’t be an SEO you need to read code. That’s part of our job. And I think that’s why I don’t like it in marketing.
Alex Moss
I don’t think we should even be in a team. I actually think we should be a layer, because inside Yoast, I get involved with product development, but it just so happens that the product is SEO as well. But you get I get involved in product marketing and legal. You know. All of different areas, because, you know, a little bit about everything, after all the years been in this job and you do have to input in different places. But I agree it’s in marketing, because everyone from the outside would believe are an extension of marketing, but I don’t think that. I think we should be inputting in, you know, high level business decisions, because the work that we do online, is the thing that can define the future of the company in the next year or three years or whatever.
Dani Leitner
I think we really need a new word for our profession and a new industry.
Alex Moss
Well, we’ve got, we’ve got a year before David has to change the name of the book.
David Bain
I think everyone’s been threatening for the last 20 years. SEO is dead or no longer going to be relevant. I remember I was doing some SEO training for a long time, and I think I delivered the first training sessions back in like 2007 and I used to do screenshots of blog posts from every single year, and this was going back to maybe 2000 or so saying SEO is dead. So it’s always, it’s always been changing, really, at least.
Dani Leitner
That would be really funny. Everybody’s saying SEO is dead and we just kill it and give it a new name and do the same as always. That would actually be cool. We should do that.
David Bain
Do we have the power? Can we get everyone to change? Yes, okay, so what we’re going for? Organic discovery, optimization?
Dani Leitner
No, don’t put optimization there. I think people are confusing optimization.
Filipa Serra Gaspar
Finding experts?
Alex Moss
I don’t know. Yeah, we’re not leaving until we know a new name.
Dani Leitner
I really like something with positioning, brand positioning or something, but that puts you in a box as well. So I’m not sure.
Alex Moss
You know what we need? Marketers.
Dani Leitner
You see that we are not marketers because we don’t know.
Filipa Serra Gaspar
I like discovery, discoverability. Like to be discovered experts or something like that.
Alex Moss
The word discovery is the most relatable to essentially what we do. And while SEO might be dead, as long as there is something to discover, there will be people like us helping for that person to discover that thing, and therefore SEO can never die in that in that sense.
Filipa Serra Gaspar
And you would never be limited to, like, search engines, right? It would be just like discovering in any type of way.
Dani Leitner
Business discovering.
David Bain
It’s probably up to a big brand to actually take it and run with it, because content marketing didn’t really exist as a common term until, I believe, it was the Content Marketing Institute that started it and really ran with it, and same within by marketing as well. I think that’s associated with HubSpot. So maybe there’s a big brand that needs to create some memorable acronym and run with that as the way to optimize organic discovery in the future.
Alex Moss
It will as it grows, like I used to be, essentially, a social media manager before there was such a role. I was just an SEO and it was just another website that you would need to be in charge of. I remember opening ITV’s Facebook page because I was literally the only person who had a Facebook account, let alone knew what it was, and it’s funny now that 20, years later, however long it’s been, that it’s now a crucial channel for their future, and they still and just like, again, discovery and AI, I feel like it’s the social media. They oh, what’s all this then? And like, we’re going to have to know all these answers. And I believe that some of us do know some of those answers. And it does go back to our inherent SEO abilities, which is again, good because it makes us as specialists valuable in in the future. Still, the White Hat ones anyway.
David Bain
Shall we move on? Andy, what else changed in SEO in 2024?
Andy Frobisher
I was going to mention Google’s updates to spam policies. So they introduced three new spam policies this year. So the expired domain abuse policy, scaled content abuse policy, but probably one that’s been talked about the most, especially on social media, is the site reputation abuse policy, where sites that have really abused their reputation to rank content that really isn’t suited for for what they are. So it could be news sites publishing shopping coupons at scale and things like that. Or, you know, medical sites writing content about casinos and stuff like. I think it’s had a big impact on some very, very big publishers as well. So yeah, I think that’s probably one of the big things for me.
David Bain
So does this mean that brands have to know what they’re about, know what their wheelhouse is, and just focus on that type of content, and if they start writing about content that Google doesn’t think their brand should be writing about, then that could be detrimental to their organic success in the future?
Andy Frobisher
Yeah I think that’s that’s how it will play out. I think at the moment, these are mainly manual actions. There’s no algorithmic change to the site reputation abuse policy, I don’t think it’s been rolled out algorithmically anyway. And these are mainly, I think, coming from either sub domains or sub folders where, where publishers are housing sheer, huge amounts of content relating to things that aren’t really within their channel. I think this goes across lot of the big ones, things like, CNN had big publishing sub folders where they were publishing lots of random stuff at scale, because they knew they could rank for it would get clicks, it would get traffic. They would get ad revenue from that. So it’s things like that. I think what was the most recent one was it Forbes advisor, only last week, the week before that, that entire sub folder, or advisor sub folder, has completely gone from the SERPs.
So it’s things like that, really, that people need to be aware of. And, yeah, you’re right. If you’re wanting to become a publisher, you can’t write about everything. I think Google wants sites that are experts or an authority in one particular area, and focus on that.
Alex Moss
And it needs to be natural. I was thinking if I’m into Lego, for example, I’ve got a website about LEGO, I like building Lego, I write about LEGO, that’s great. And then in my journey, I discover model train sets, and I start writing, is from Google’s perception I’ve got my topical authority on Lego, is this implying that I shouldn’t write about trains now, and that if I do, I have to create another site and just talk about trains and build myself from the top, or maybe I get into Lego now, but I’ve never written about LEGO before. My topical authority will be around being an SEO consultant, but now I’m a Lego guy. So does my site get penalized because now I’m into something else? Does anyone know that?
Andy Frobisher
Is that site reputation abuse, though? I don’t think that is I don’t think your losing reputation there.
Dani Leitner
I think that’s why it’s still manual actions, because Google doesn’t know. How can it identify if it’s site reputation abuse, or if it’s just your small blogger, you have your blog, you write about what’s interesting you, and you’re a person with a lot of interests, and not just one.
Sukhjinder Singh
Then you’re a hobbyist. Because then you’re a guy that has different interests.
Alex Moss
I need to update schema maybe, yeah, so from LEGO to hobbyist, and then Lego is a subset, okay.
David Bain
It’s about how you expand your topical authority, because you can surely write about related topics or semi related topics, and then slowly start to expand what Google perceives you being an expert at. But if you suddenly start writing about how to iron t-shirts when you’re all about how to eat chocolate eggs. I don’t know where these random examples are coming from, but yeah, if there’s, if there’s no related aspect between the content.
Sukhjinder Singh
I’ve seen this recently, with two different e-commerce sites from the same owner, and one is a baby brand, and one is clothes and stuff for adults, and because the baby brand is well established they wanted to house some of the new websites, which is the adult products. They fought against it for a while, and we just kind of had a happy medium of no indexing for now, just to get the traffic and the clicks right back to the brand new adult clothing website. And that was a compromise, and I was really against it, and I’m still not entirely sure. I mean, I’ve given all the disclaimers like, this isn’t 100% solution, just to warn you, but that was where I was really conscious of we’ve got a lane here, it’s doing really well, 15 years of authority, we don’t want to ruin it with a brand new brand that’s a completely different topic.
In that sense, I would, in an ideal world, keep them separate, even if the brand new domain has zero authority, and maybe get some referral links and some content that bridges the gap between the two topics to say, hey, we’ve got a new brand, yada yada, and for your adults, we’ve got these products, and for the kids, you’ve got these. So something like that would work really well, which is what we’ve done as well, but yeah, that’s an instance where I really had to think about that and thought I’ve never done this before, since the new kind of, you know, algorithm changes and stuff like, I wonder if this is going to be a manual action or something.
Dani Leitner
I think now there are manual actions to going against these big brands that are doing this on the big scale, but I think in the future, like I have, for example, my travel blog, which has the topical authority for interrailing, and I write on the blog about hiking, about skiing, which doesn’t have anything to do with travel, and I’m simply not ranking. So it’s not that I’m getting from Google ‘you’re a scam, why do you write about something that we don’t think you’re the expert about?’. It’s more that well, the other stuff might not be ranking.
I mean, that’s not what you want to hear as a business owner selling now adult clothes, and you’re, well, you can do that, but you won’t rank. But that, I think will be like, with everything now, it’s manual actions, it’s penalties, and then it’s well, we just don’t care.
David Bain
Is there a simple way to establish what Google perceive as your topical authority and where your safe spot is?
Sukhjinder Singh
Just building it up, right. So you’ve got your strategy, you’ve got your helpful content, your EEAT checklist, building the entities, and slowly but surely building that topical authority over time, which is a long answer and the hard work, that’s how I see establishing that for each brand. A lot of Digital PR link building as well, perhaps to expedite it a bit, getting more eyes on it and more authority.
Dani Leitner
And if you have a page where you want to know what might be my topic, just look at your best rankings. That’s where you have your topic.
Andy Frobisher
If you can write content and it ranks pretty much straight away, you have the topical authority on that, and that’s, that’s the sweet spot. Once you can rank that straight away, that’s what Google understands you as. And then when you go outside of that, like selling adult clothes on a baby store, it’s going to take a very, very long time, or potentially never, to build up Google to build up that understanding that you’re no longer just a baby clothes store, you’re a clothes store. It could take years to build up that understanding of everything that Google has built up the Knowledge Graph of all its understanding. So, yeah, you were completely right to be cautious there. I would have been cautious because I would have known, from an SEO point of view, how difficult it would have been.
David Bain
Alex, what else changed in SEO in 2024?
Alex Moss
The strategies of small publishers that might have definitely changed over the last year, especially with all the HCU and now core updates, which have decimated some. You’ve got that Web Creator Summit that happened a month or two ago, which I don’t even know why that event happened to be honest with you, I feel like it was a just a PR activity to say, we met 10 people. I think they had to fly themselves out to be told no, you think this was a recovery meeting, and if it was a recovery meeting, then that would have had other ripple effects. Oh, so you’ve selected a handful and given them positive manual action. There’s not negative manual actions just because you’ve had a chat with us. And as well as that, there’s no clear message that really, the team could have given out to small publishers.
So some, I believe, just won’t be able to do. I think some small publishers will have given up already before. What’s the point in trying now? Because you may be able to try and get all of this authority that’s just taken away because of variable changes in three years from now, and literally decimates a business that can, you know, I’ve seen enough of, you know, 20 or more journalists or editors or whatever, get getting fired immediately, like it’s it’s an immediate there is from whatever they’re getting to 98% drop, and there’s been no clear just be helpful. But that then opens questions, what’s helpful? And then Danny, bless him, tried to answer, but then that just brought out even more passion, if I want to call it passion, from people on X which has then made them leave and go to BlueSky to literally hide from the barrage of feedback and it’s happened with big publishers as well. It’s happening here on a manual basis. And again, they’re sending a clear message, like they did with Interflora and BMW back in the day. Don’t do that thing, otherwise you’ll have big repercussions, and they’re doing it right now. But some of the small publishers, I think, have been caught in the line of fire, unfortunately.
David Bain
Is there anything that small publishers can do to future proof their likely business success? Don’t rely on Google alone.
Andy Frobisher
Yeah, don’t just rely on Google and diversify.
Alex Moss
Which is a shame to say, because they have 90% of discovery monopoly. Let’s face it, it’s the majority share, the big lion share, and it’s easier said than done to say, just go to another channel, but that’s what people have to do now, because it might get dispersed in the next one or two or three years. Maybe ChatGPT does fail in terms of really taking a chunk out the monopoly, are they going to get to 25%? I think it’s a bigger challenge than everyone sees it to be, because you’ve got to get people off Google. My parents have taken 20 years just to trust Google in the first place. So now telling them what ChatGPT is, let alone telling them to change, is a generational shift and we’re the ones ahead of it and trying to educate and also contribute towards the help of the future, of how these discovery pages or discovery visuals look like in the future, and it’s nice to be part of that and part of shape how that is, and that’s very nice, but it’s still really challenging for everyone.
David Bain
Is ChatGPT likely to be the Google of AI search, or has another brand like Perplexity got an option?
Dani Leitner
I think the brand that will be the new search in the future is not in our focus at the moment.
Alex Moss
They don’t exist yet. I don’t think there’ll be something which we’ll see in the next two years, and then Google and OpenAI are going to go, oh shit. Why didn’t we think of that? We could have done that if we started that three years ago. And it’ll be really obvious as well. There’ll be a really obvious thing that all of us are missing, that someone’s going to snap in nine months to 12 months from now and realize something that’s going to change everything I would like to think, which is good, because it keeps us all on our toes, not just us, but the platforms Google and OpenAI, all of them are going to because this change, like, like we said with the pebbles, is doubling. It’s only going to get even more dramatic than it is already.
David Bain
I like that prediction because the same thing happened with social networking or with mobile phones, just different ways of consumers interacting with content.
Dani Leitner
I actually can remember when I was in school, and I had a Nokia with the keyboard and then the smartphones came, and I was just like, that will never be going to be the next phone, because you can’t write under your desk blindly, because you don’t feel the how do you call them the keyboard and feel it? Yeah. And I was just like, one year like that, and then I got a smartphone, and I was just like, Well, okay, everyone is getting normal.
Sukhjinder Singh
That’s a good analogy. Yeah, you just couldn’t foresee it and it feels easier to type on that one three letters on one key. And if, oh yeah, I can type is quite easy. And now you got a smartphone, you can, you can swipe and all that, and voice thingy.
Alex Moss
If you’re really good, you can type completely with a Blackberry with the hands. I remember doing being able to do that.
David Bain
If it’s likely that over the next 12 months or so, there’s not going to be a dominant player in AI search. Is it not worthwhile SEOs or other marketers optimizing for AI search and just hanging fire in that at the moment?
Alex Moss
Well no, not hanging fire. I would say that all of them are probably going to have the same ethics and standards that you would when it comes to authority in general. And we’re going to all no one’s going to shift that. It can’t. I don’t think it can be shifted again, not in this generation, and that we’ll all have to still believe, like the Google Webmaster Guidelines from years ago, it’s the same stuff. It’s the same thing, just it’s been elaborated more. The lexicon has been updated to adapt to the technology. Marketing is the same as it was like, in school, and I didn’t even know marketing was a thing. And then I watched Mad Men when I when I was in uni, I was like, Oh, my God, there were agencies around in the 60s and looking at their activity again, exactly the same as what we do now. We’re just working with a different technology. That’s all we’re that’s all it’s going to go towards adapting that technology, but the ethics are going to be the same, like, be concise, be detailed, be helpful. Help people get where they need to go, whether that’s to an answer or buying something. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.
Dani Leitner
Also something we do, like everything we do, is not just for search engines, it’s actually to build a brand like you said before. We actually have a lot to say also about business decisions that some businesses make.
David Bain
Sukhjinder, let’s move on to you. So what else changed about SEO in 2024? You sent me a couple of notes beforehand you were talking about the Google leaks over the last year or so. Is there anything you want to say about that?
Sukhjinder Singh
The obvious one – the Google leaks. I found it actually quite helpful in backing up what I’ve been saying to clients through strategies and training and stuff. So for example, the mentions of authors and EEAT related stuff, search quality rater scores potentially being included in the algos in the ratings. I mean, a lot of clients took convincing to be like, Okay, well, you know, this is why we need to do this helpful content, EEAT stuff and authorship and define entities, because, you know, the search quality raters, I know there’s like, 1000s or whatever and that, but you know, you never know if they’ll visit your site and they’re probably thinking, Oh, we’re still going to dance like no one’s watching. I’m like, well, now you need to dance like you’re on Strictly Come Dancing, right? So it’s likely that they are watching. And if you, if you make a wrong move, you’re going to get a 4 out of 10, right. So make the very basic stuff like making an authorship page and all that.
Sometimes it’s really quite difficult to convince people to kind of change up to template and this, that and the other. So I found the leaks really helpful in backing that up and saying, Oh, look, I can track all the SEOs are talking about it, not just me, and reference everything back to that, even if it’s all, I mean, it’s not in stone, but something happened, you know. So I find it really useful from backing up what I’ve been saying before, and also really insightful in general, on engagement and emphasis on CRO and stuff. And so those other things that I don’t know, if it’s just me, that you struggle to justify changing in a template, you know, like CTA is above the fold, below the fold, making sure things flow properly, supporting content throughout a user journey through to conversion, etc, etc, right? And you can say, Okay, so now you’ve got long clicks and short clicks, and so this is why this stuff is important.
The more this stuff is engaged with, the more it’s probably going to rank higher. So let’s justify putting resource into this, whereas before clients or departments might say, Oh, but we’ve got content writers. Let’s just write better content and then maybe put on the back burner the developer solution of fixing the template. So I found it a good facilitator and something to keep an eye on, and a disheartening thing of, you knew Google’s hiding stuff, but how that all went down was just like, oh, okay, let’s see how this plans out.
David Bain
So, so generally, there are one key takeaway that you’ve actually that you’re going to implement into an SEO strategy in 2025 as a result of the leak?
Sukhjinder Singh
Honestly I’m looking at building topical authority and entities, if I had to choose something, because they’re within your control and I’ve seen them work out really well and also help with traditional search results, AI overviews, and potentially with LLMs as well, at least in terms of defining a topic, answering a question exactly, and trying to appeal to get a citation. So I think it’s that area that I’m going to try.
David Bain
Did anyone else, take anything from the Google leak this year?
Andy Frobisher
I think for me as well, it’s the discovery of of nav boost. So you know, and Google actually last year, admitting through I can’t remember what, what trial it was in Canada where they interviewed previous Google engineers that they actually do use click data to an extent to understand whether a search result should be in a position it should be if over 12 months time, people aren’t interacting with that site and they are heading back into the SERPs, then Google is understanding that and using that as part of its, you know, ranking system. So a lot of people probably didn’t believe that, myself included, and that it was a thing a few people did and had been saying talking about it for a very long time. I know Rand Fishkin was someone that had previously done talks on it.
So for me, understanding that, you know, in the past, SEO has had this reputation of, well, we optimize the site, and we got you the traffic. So job done. And I think it just doubles down now on the fact that our job isn’t just to get the traffic, it’s to make sure that they engage with the website, it’s topically relevant and it meets the right criteria for the search and has the right intent. You know, people trust and understand who they are enough, so there’s all these additional things that we have, all these expertise we play into, around ensuring that they’re they’re trusted, they’re seen as an expert, they have an authority on the subject for Google to kind of go, yes, that is worthy of it. And then we need that click data over 12 months to back that up.
You know, how many times have we seen relatively younger sites take 12, months, two years, three years to get going. And it could be because of nav boost. You know, it could be that there’s user data eventually, that’s coming from Chrome quite often, that is actually giving that little bit of a surety to the reputation that they’re actually good enough and they deserve to be where they want to be.
Alex Moss
It’s also nice to know that nav boost exists because it also shows that there’s maintenance for us to do on sites, and also backs up the fact that we need to look after potential stagnation of content, because if it becomes a problem, it’s a thing that is now potentially being tracked or now proven that it’s a thing and could be used as a ranking signal factor, whatever it’s called and as long as it is, it doesn’t matter if it’s now a thing that you can add to your list as an SEO to say, well, that needs to be It can’t just be ignored. Sometimes things like that are put to the bottom of the list. There’s more important things are done more scale, more profit, get me double everything, but you’re actually ignoring the stuff that can actually harm you in the future. It’s just like house chores, I guess. You know, you’ve got to make sure the piping is all fine, otherwise, there’s going to be a leak somewhere and it’ll ruin everything else.
David Bain
I’m going to ask everyone, what’s one actual take away with SEOs need to change in their behavior because of something that’s happened in 2024. So if you can have a think about that, and then remind the listener about who you are and where people can find you. Filipa, shall we start off with you? What’s one actionable takeaway that SEOs need to take away from the discussion?
Filipa Serra Gaspar
I would say that it’s like we are talking about investing. You know, we have to diversify, like we said before. Maybe our role will even completely change, because it might not only be search engines in the future, it might be so many different channels. So I think we really have to diversify and make sure that people can find our website, discover us through other different ways.
And since I’m talking about diversifying, I think it’s also important that, among many other things, that the content that we create should also be very diverse, meaning that you focus not only on the written content, but also video, images, etc. Try to be as diverse as possible.
David Bain
Where can people find you?
Filipa Serra Gaspar
People can find me at seolipa.com, which is my my website.
David Bain
Thank you so much for joining. Andy, what’s your actionable takeaway that you’d recommend?
Andy Frobisher
Yes, I’m going to go quite specific, really. So following on from the Google leaks one, I think the things that I think is really key is when it comes to link building, it’s the freshness of links. So, you know, in the past, where you used to see links being inserted into old content, possibly from very authoritative sites, Google’s realising that, they’re not stupid. They know that it that it’s old content.
So really focus on fresh links from high authority domains that are applicable to your customers and your audience. I’m a huge advocate of Digital PR, and that’s what Digital PR can do really, really well for brands at the moment – it’s that freshness of links and that building of a brand. So that’s something I would recommend.
David Bain
Thanks, Andy. Where people can find you?
Andy Frobisher
You can find me at andyfrobisher.com.
David Bain
Thanks Andy. Dani, what’s your actionable takeaway?
Dani Leitner
I would recommend we stop using checklists and start building brands, because I think we have been focused on as an industry, really, on having the perfect checklist, the technical checklist, the on page checklist, and everything. And I think this will be dying slowly or fast, I’m not sure, and it will be we need to focus a lot more on building the brand, making a long time strategy, really long time, not just 12 months, like five years, 10 years with the company together, and build this topical authority and go, like Andy said, not just on your own website.
Because I think that’s really important for the future search, and how we will search, if we have these LLMs and everything and whatever will come up in two years and be the new search engine, I think it will not just search from your own website to get information about you and your brand and your services. It will get from everywhere, from every source.
So it’s really important to do this Digital PR, but not just getting links, but bring your brand out there and show also on other platforms. What are you actually doing? What is it you’re good at? What is it that you offer and expand a little bit more, and not just think so much on your blog and the checklist on page.
David Bain
Build your brand, focus on Digital PR, but do it as part of the IT department.
Dani Leitner
Maybe I need to change that, because that’s not IT department. IT department is going down to the celler and program something, and that’s not what we’re doing.
David Bain
Where we where can people find you Dani?
Dani Leitner
People can find me on my website, danileitner.ch.
David Bain
Thanks so much for joining as well. Alex, what’s your takeaway from today?
Alex Moss
Um, diversify your skill set, expand it and experiment with other channels, whether it’s TikTok or Bluesky or Reddit, anything, experiment with it, see how it helps or doesn’t help your brand, and own it as an asset. That’s another thing, and see which one works. Because we all know that what works for TikTok with one brand really doesn’t with another. LinkedIn is great, just try and perfect one of those social or LLM platforms and and see how you can spread, because that’ll only get you more niche, and it will make you understand a lot more in the future. Because sometimes I think I’m a bit old school. I don’t use TikTok because I’m old now. The kids are using it. But I also know and understand, I’m self aware that in the future, it’s really, really important acquisition channel for brands.
David Bain
Alex, where can people find you?
Alex Moss
alex-moss.co.uk, because I couldn’t get anything without a hyphen.
David Bain
You might do in the future?
Alex Moss
A guy called Ian tried to sell me alexmoss.com a few years ago, Ian, I don’t know he was obviously capitalizing. But I’ve got entity issues. There’s a jeweler called Alex Moss who does like Drake and Tyler the Creator’s jewelry. I’m never going to be that guy. He’s way more authoritative than me, so I’ve lost out on the SERP.
Dani Leitner
That why I actually have Dani Leitner, because my name is Daniela, but you have a lot of Daniela Leitner’s in Austria, and all the domains were already taken. I was just like, well, Dani Leitner was available in a lot of countries, so I have everyone now.
David Bain
And Sukhjinder, is it Sukh or Sukhjiner that you’re trying to build for your personal brand?
Sukhjinder Singh
Sukh – I stuck it right at the top of my website idoseo.co.uk, so please call me Sukh. So, yeah, you guys picked all the good ones. You know, I was really having a think about stripping it back to the basics and meeting search intent, and trying to get people through a decent buyer’s journey on a website right.
So getting your awareness, consideration and decision related content, or whatever you want to call it on the pages, on point and tying into what Filipa has said and what Dani said as well about the different types of content, and looking at different areas of optimizations, if you like, so the images and videos and stuff as well. I very rarely see a nice, supported user journey with everything you want to see. I want to see the product look like this, 360 I want to see the reviews there. I want it to load quickly and just stripping it back to basics and making sure you meet the search intent. So from what they search for to what they land on, and they’re happy, and then they progress.
So it’s those little, little wins, you know, right till that long slog to conversion, or whatever conversion means, so, yeah, the search intent and buyers journey.
David Bain
Thank you so much everyone for joining. I’ve been your host, David Bain, and you’ve been listening to the Majestic SEO panel.
If you want to join us live next time, sign up at majestic.com/webinars and of course, join us next week for the launch of SEO in 2025.
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- What Changed in SEO in 2024? - November 27, 2024
- Get onto Bluesky. A Guide for SEOs - November 18, 2024
- October 25th, 2024 – Majestic turns 20! - October 25, 2024