Search engine optimization has been touted as the holy grail for organic website growth. It involves not only keywords, but optimization to make the website look better and provide value. In recent times, users wonder if this tool is still effective in 2024.

Does SEO still work as it did in the past?

SEO helped several small businesses to gain footing in their regions without spending a fortune on marketing. Clients could search “SEO for law firms around Houston” and find businesses offering this service within their region. So does this still work?

The simple answer is yes. Some brands believe that food content is enough to attract and keep buying customers. This is not entirely true because as mentioned above, SEO is more than just adding keywords to a piece of content. It encompasses website optimization because no one would wait for one minute for a website to load. Same thing applies to a website with barely legible text.

No matter how you look at it, SEO is still largely relevant in 2024. As it stands, content visibility still depends on SEO.

What has changed?

We cannot deny that some things have indeed changed from a decade ago. In the past, when SEO had not been understood properly, practices like keyword stuffing were popular. Keyword stuffing usually includes adding a bunch of random keywords relating to the business or service you’re trying to promote in an article.

These keywords were placed in a non-logical manner, and many did not make sense. At some point, Google’s search engines pushed search pages to the front page. However, things changed after Google improved its algorithm, and such content was considered unfit for the first page of the search engine.

Now, Google requires high-quality content and grammatically correct keywords. It’s guidelines recommend that keywords are added naturally in the text. Also, the number of keywords required for each text should be proportionate with the number of words in the content. As a rule of thumb, you can only use 2% of the total number of words for keywords.

Also, Google now favors long-tail keywords over short ones.

Will things change in the future?

Google has updated its algorithm for several years and introduced new rules to ensure that it gives value to its readers. This means that there must be new changes to SEO best practices in the future.

For instance, Google began to prioritize websites that are mobile friendly as well as desktop friendly. It also gave priority to websites that offered value to the readers. Despite not being on the first page of the search engine, businesses can still get to benefit locally.

The truth about the matter is that SEO strategies will continue to change. There is no one size fits all solution for SEO. It helps to follow up with the new Google guidelines and focus your efforts on providing value to the customers you already have. It also helps to avoid black hat SEO techniques or other outdated strategies that could set you back.