7 Crucial Tips For Ecommerce SEO in 2024

Google is constantly evolving and changing, making SEO a field where you must be on the ball all the time. Luckily, in this article, I’ll outline what I feel Google is looking to introduce in 2024 and what you should do to make the most of the predictions. While some things are already hinted at (pretty strongly), others are a little harder to figure out.

Page Interactions as a Ranking Factor

This might already be the case (in fact, there is lots of evidence to suggest it is); with the introduction of INP (Interaction to Next Paint), Google’s bots are going to follow on-page interactions to understand better content that may be hidden until it’s interacted with. By encouraging developers to speed up page interactions, there is a strong chance that bots will follow more on-page interactions within the crawl budgetA crawl budget is how often the search engine crawls your website and how much time they spend on your site. so they can find all hidden content or features that add UX value.

This may also solve the age-old question of whether bots value ‘hidden’ content. By following user interactions, bots would be able to ‘give value’ to hidden accordions, but only if users actually expand it. Let’s say you have an accordion of 10 FAQs at the bottom of the page – only the FAQs that users open would add SEO value. In turn, this would encourage content creators to only create on-page content that is helpful – coming full circle to Helpful Content Updates.

Similarly, pages with no interactions (especially if they contain features that could be clicked) could be demoted as a prime signal that there is no helpful content.

Top Tip: Speed up your page interactions and omit them (or simplify the layout) if they add no value or do not get used.

NofollowThe nofollow attribute is an HTML tag that tells search engine crawlers not to follow a link. Link Percentages

Ahrefs and Semrush have made it more apparent when websites have a high percentage of dofollow linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. – something that is evidently on their radars. As Ahrefs and Semrush track many websites, any new features they present are often good indicators of where they see volatility across the board.

Top Tip: Building nofollow links in addition to dofollow links to build a healthy percentage footprint could be something to look at if you’ve been suffering after Google’s Link Spam updates.

More Helpful Content Updates

Because many optimised websites have grown rapidly over the last two years (thanks to AI content writing), Google may start to look for E-E-A-T signals directly within content to ensure that it’s not purely AI-written.

Let’s say a website owner has used AI to write 400 glossary pages to cover all topics related to their niche, but the content is 100% AI-written. This website might pick up traffic for searches like “What is {term}”. However, competitors will quickly write similar content using AI tools. Due to this, thousands of pages are now being crawled by bots that are nothing more than simple AI-written glossaries.

To understand which to rank first, Google may continue to use E-E-A-T signals around the author (or website as a whole) and Domain Authority but also look at how personalised the content is so that it can differentiate the ‘best’ content from AI-written content. The “Experience” element of E-E-A-T will likely add the most SEO value here.

Top Tip: We advise all website owners to review their content and ensure it’s personalised to the point where it simply can’t be easily written by AI. Add experience, case studies, reviews and opinions, and make it current.

Top 3 or No Few Clicks

Ten years ago, being in the top 10 was ‘ok’, but features in the SERP are getting bigger and more ad spaces are consuming the above-the-fold content. This is not likely to slow down in 2024, especially if ‘inline’ chat panels/SGE make more of an appearance. SEOs need to start thinking about being in the top 3 to gain any meaningful organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page..

AI SEO

If you ask AI, “Where is the best place to get a coffee in London?” you’ll typically get a list of suggestions for each region (Central, North, South, East and West) with one of two suggestions for each location. These suggestions do not directly correlate to the top ranking results in organic search (well, not always) – so the recommendations are based on a completely different set of algorithms OR a sub-set of algorithms that the SERP uses (such as map listings and review data).

If chat/SGE features become more prominent in the SERP (which they are predicted to be), spending SEO time improving your digital footprint will add a LOT of value.

Top Tip: Make sure you spend time submitting to awards, winning places in listicles and collecting great customer reviews. By doing so, your ranking positions in the SERP will also likely improve.

Non-AI SEO / “Human First” SEO

Because AI can generate so much content so quickly, generating content that is NOT AI should form part of a solid SEO strategy.

For example, photos of your team, offices, products and work will add value to an SEO campaign, as AI can not recreate these. This media will also play into E-E-A-T as it helps to show your business exists in the real world.

Compound SEO, Content and Link Quality

These two statements are true now and, to a large degree, always have been true:

1. The more long-tail keywords you rank for, the better your primary keywords will rank.
2. The more sites you get links from that rank for associated keywords, the better your primary keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. will rank.

But in 2024, they will carry additional meaning as Google tries to ‘clean up’ the internet with more Link Spam and Helpful Content updates.

If your website ranks for many long-tail searches, it’s a good indicator that your content is helpful. Similarly, if the websites you get links from rank for associated keywords, they are helpful, too. Links from these sources carry more SEO weight.

Top Tip: With the above in mind, working on a Compound SEO strategy – where you chase long-tail keywords first and then work backwards to primary keywords – could be an approach to consider now more than before, especially in competitive markets.

Conclusion

E-E-A-T, Helpful Content and Link Spam updates are now all intertwined as Google fights against mass volumes of AI content and link spam that may also be generated from AI.

In 2024, we recommend:

• Focus on E-E-A-T more than ever:
  • Add content to your website to show that you are real and have experience in the field.
  • Build content off-site to show that you are credible (see our HARO link-building service).
  • Collect reviews.
  • Get included in listicles.
  • Focus on improving how much ‘owned content’ you have online that is helpful, hosted on external domains and links back to your website.
• Build Links that:
  • Are placed on websites that do not appear to have been hit by penalties or suffer from Helpful Content Updates.
  • Are contextually accurate to the point where machine learningMachine Learning is the branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. can understand the page’s relevance to your website.
  • Help to position you as an expert in your field.
• Write Helpful Content and Remove Unhelpful Content:
  • Explore pages within your website with few or no impressions and consider what to do with them.
  • Add new content that can genuinely help customers in your niche.

We wish you the best of luck with your SEO campaigns, and if you need support, we’re here to help.

Have a great 2024!