Google changed a lot in 2023, and it is hard to know which changes deserve your time this year. Here is my short answer on SEO priorities for 2024: make content that shows real experience, get ready for INP before March, plan for AI answers in search without panicking, and fix your measurement before old Universal Analytics data disappears.
Below I explain each priority, why it matters this year, and what I would do first. At the end there is a simple 90-day plan you can copy.
My SEO Priorities for 2024 at a Glance
I sort SEO work by two questions. How many pages does it touch? And is there a date I cannot move? Here is how that looks for most small and medium sites right now.
| Priority | Why it matters now | Date to know |
|---|---|---|
| People-first content with real experience | Four core updates and a helpful content update in 2023 all pushed in this direction | Ongoing |
| INP readiness | INP replaces FID as a Core Web Vital | March 2024 |
| Planning for SGE | Google’s AI answers are now tested in more than 120 new countries and territories | Still an opt-in experiment |
| Measurement clean-up | Google has said Universal Analytics data will be deleted | From 1 July 2024 |
| Technical basics | Several Search Console tools changed or were retired | Check monthly |
| Brand and channel spread | Search is happening in more places than ten blue links | Ongoing |
If you run a local business, put your Google Business Profile near the top of this list. For a shop or service area business, it can bring more calls than the website itself.
What 2023 Taught Us About Google
2023 was a busy year. Google ran four confirmed core updates (March, August, October and November), a helpful content update in September, a spam update in October and a reviews update in November. Three core updates landed in about three months at the end of the year.
The message across all of them was the same. Google keeps getting better at rewarding pages that help people and holding back pages made mainly to rank. If you want a reminder of what I suggested a year ago, my SEO priorities for 2023 are still a good base. This year builds on them.
The other big shift was AI. Google tested AI answers in search, Bard got a new model in Gemini, and many sites started publishing AI text at scale. That makes real, first-hand content more valuable, not less.
1. Make Content That Shows Real Experience
This is still my number one priority. Google’s helpful content system looks at a site as a whole. If a large part of your site is thin or written only for search engines, it can pull down your good pages too.
When I review a site, the first thing I ask is simple: could a competitor have written this page without ever using the product, visiting the place or doing the job? If yes, the page is at risk.
What the September 2023 Helpful Content Update Changed
The September 2023 update came with changes to Google’s guidance, and three of them matter for your 2024 plans. I cover them in more detail in my post on the September 2023 helpful content update.
- “Written by people” became “created for people”. Google is less focused on who or what wrote the words, and more on whether the page helps the reader.
- Faking freshness is called out. Google’s self-assessment questions now ask if you change page dates without real changes, or add and remove lots of content only to seem fresh.
- Third-party content counts. Google said content hosted on your site by others, such as on a subdomain, can be included in its site-wide signals if it is unhelpful.
How to Show Experience on the Page
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) is not one ranking score. It is a way to think about what makes content trustworthy. In practice, experience shows up in small, concrete details.
- Your own photos and screenshots instead of stock images.
- Specific steps, settings, prices or measurements that only someone who did the task would know.
- Honest downsides, not just benefits.
- A clear author name, a short bio and a link to more about that person.
- A date that changes only when the content really changes.
A practical example: a page titled “Best Running Shoes for Flat Feet” that only lists features from brand websites is weak. The same page with notes on how each shoe felt after real use, sizing advice and who should skip each shoe is far stronger.
Use AI as a Helper, Not a Writer
Google has said it rewards helpful content however it is produced, but using automation mainly to manipulate rankings breaks its spam policies. My rule is simple. AI can help with outlines, summaries and first drafts, but a person who knows the topic must edit, fact-check and add what only they know.
If your team plans to publish a lot of AI text in 2024, write down this rule before they start. It is much harder to clean up hundreds of weak pages later.
Watch Content You Host for Others
Some sites rent out a section or subdomain for coupon pages, product reviews or guest posts that have nothing to do with their main topic. Given the September 2023 guidance, I would review any such section now. If it does not fit your site’s purpose or you do not control its quality, think hard about keeping it.
2. Get Ready for INP Before March 2024
Google announced in May 2023 that Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital in March 2024. This is the one technical change this year with a clear date.
What INP Measures
FID only measured the delay before the browser started to handle the first click or tap. INP looks at how quickly the page responds to clicks, taps and key presses across the whole visit, and reports one of the slowest.
That is a much stricter test. A page can pass FID easily and still feel slow when someone opens a menu, adds to cart or filters a list.
According to Google’s web.dev announcement, a good INP is 200 milliseconds or less, and anything over 500 milliseconds is poor. Field data (real user data from Chrome) is what counts here, not a single lab test.
How to Check and Improve INP
- Run your key templates, such as the home page, a category page and an article, through PageSpeed Insights. Look at the INP number in the real user data section at the top.
- Note which templates are over 200 milliseconds. Pages built on the same template usually share the same problem, so fix the template, not single pages.
- Find the slow interactions. In Chrome DevTools, record a session while you click menus, buttons and forms, then look for long tasks (scripts that block the page for more than 50 milliseconds).
- Cut or delay heavy third-party scripts. Chat widgets, tag managers loaded with old tags, and some ad and review scripts are the usual causes I see.
- Ask your developer to break up long JavaScript tasks and give visual feedback quickly after a click, even if the full action takes longer.
- Recheck after 28 days, because field data in these reports is based on a rolling 28-day window.
Keep this in proportion. Page experience matters, but Google has said good content can still rank with average page experience. Fix pages that fail for real users, and do not chase a perfect score.
3. Plan for Search Generative Experience Without Panicking
Search Generative Experience, or SGE, is Google’s test of AI-written answers at the top of results. It is still an opt-in experiment in Search Labs. On 8 November 2023, Google expanded it to more than 120 new countries and territories and added Spanish, Portuguese, Korean and Indonesian.
Nobody outside Google knows if or when SGE will become the normal search experience. So I would not rebuild a strategy around it yet. But I would start preparing, because the direction is clear. My first look at SGE in Search Labs explains how the answers look and where links appear.
Which Pages Are Most Exposed
From what I have seen in Search Labs, SGE is most likely to fully answer short, factual questions. Think “how many grams in a cup of flour” or “what is a 301 redirect”. These pages already lose clicks to featured snippets.
Pages that are harder to replace include:
- Detailed comparisons with real testing and opinions.
- Tools, calculators and templates people need to use.
- Local businesses, where people still want to call, book or visit.
- Brands people search for by name.
Look at your top pages by clicks in Search Console. If most of them answer simple facts, that is a risk worth planning for this year.
Decide Your AI Crawler Policy
In September 2023, Google introduced Google-Extended, a robots.txt token (a name you can block in your robots.txt file) that lets you stop your content from being used to improve Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs. It does not affect how Google Search crawls or ranks your site.
Many sites also chose to block OpenAI’s GPTBot. Whether you block these crawlers is a business choice, not an SEO one. I explain the trade-offs in my post on Google-Extended. Whatever you decide, make it a deliberate decision rather than a default.
4. Fix Your Measurement Before UA Data Disappears
Standard Universal Analytics properties stopped processing new data on 1 July 2023. Universal Analytics 360 properties stop on 1 July 2024. Google has also said that from 1 July 2024, all users will lose access to the Universal Analytics interface and API, and the data will be deleted.
If you have not exported your old reports, put this on your list for the first quarter. Year-on-year comparisons are hard to rebuild once the data is gone.
What I Would Check in GA4
- Export key Universal Analytics reports: organic sessions by landing page, conversions by channel, and monthly totals going back as far as you have.
- Confirm your GA4 key events (conversions) match what the business actually cares about, such as leads, sales or calls.
- Set data retention to 14 months, the longest option in standard GA4. The default is two months.
- Link GA4 to Search Console so you can see organic queries and landing pages together.
- Filter out internal traffic and check that cross-domain tracking works if you send users to a separate checkout or booking site.
Privacy Changes to Keep an Eye On
Two more changes affect data this year. Chrome started restricting third-party cookies for 1% of users on 4 January 2024, and Google plans to phase them out for everyone in the second half of 2024, subject to UK competition concerns being addressed.
Also, Google has said advertisers who serve users in the European Economic Area need consent mode v2 in place by March 2024 to keep some ads measurement and personalisation features. If you run Google Ads in Europe, talk to whoever manages your cookie banner now.
5. Keep Technical Basics Clean
Technical SEO is rarely the most exciting priority, but it affects every page you have. Several tools changed at the end of 2023, so your monthly checks may need updating.
- Mobile Usability report retired. Google removed the Mobile Usability report and the Mobile-Friendly Test in December 2023. Lighthouse in Chrome is my usual replacement for quick mobile checks.
- robots.txt report. In November 2023, Search Console added a robots.txt report and announced the old robots.txt tester would go. The new report shows which robots.txt files Google found and any errors.
- Rich results. In August 2023, Google limited FAQ rich results mainly to well-known government and health sites, and it has since stopped showing How-to rich results. You do not need to rush to remove the markup, but do not plan new work around these features.
- Mobile-first indexing. Google has said the move to mobile-first indexing is basically complete. If your mobile pages hide content that your desktop pages show, Google may never see it.
My habit is a 30-minute monthly check: the Page indexing report, Core Web Vitals, manual actions, and a quick look at crawl stats for sudden drops. Most serious problems show up there first.
6. Grow Your Brand Beyond Google’s Blue Links
People now search in more places: YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon and AI chat tools. Google has also been showing more forum and discussion content, and in 2023 it added a Perspectives feature for first-hand views from people.
For 2024, I would pick one channel outside your website where your customers already spend time, and show up there regularly. A short video for each of your top guides is a simple start.
This also helps your SEO indirectly. A brand people know and search for by name is more resilient when an update or a new search feature changes how clicks flow.
What I Would Spend Less Time on This Year
Priorities only work if something else gets less attention. These are the tasks I would cut back in 2024:
- Chasing a 100 PageSpeed score. Pass Core Web Vitals for real users and move on.
- Keyword density and exact-match tweaks. Cover the topic fully and naturally instead.
- Buying links. Google’s spam systems are good at ignoring them, and the risk is not worth it.
- Bulk AI articles on topics you have no experience with. They fit exactly the pattern Google’s systems target.
- Reacting to every update in the first week. Wait until a core update has finished rolling out before drawing conclusions.
A 90-Day Plan for Your SEO Priorities in 2024
If you only have a few hours a week, here is the order I would follow from January to March.
- Weeks 1–2: Export and set up data. Export your Universal Analytics reports, check GA4 key events, set 14-month retention and link Search Console.
- Weeks 3–4: Check INP. Run PageSpeed Insights on your main templates and note the INP field data. Send the worst INP issues to your developer.
- Weeks 5–7: Audit content. List your pages with 12 months of clicks. Mark each one to keep, improve, merge with a 301 redirect, or remove.
- Weeks 8–10: Add experience. Update your top 10–20 pages with first-hand details, original images and clear author information.
- Week 11: Make AI decisions. Write your AI content rule for the team and decide your robots.txt policy for AI crawlers.
- Week 12: Review and repeat. Compare Search Console clicks and impressions to the same period last year, and set your plan for the next quarter.
Where to Start With SEO Priorities for 2024
The SEO priorities for 2024 come down to a few clear moves. Make content that shows real experience, get INP in shape before March, plan for AI answers calmly, save your old analytics data, and keep your technical checks simple and regular.
If you only do one thing this week, export your Universal Analytics data and check INP for your main page templates. Those two tasks have real dates attached, and everything else can follow in the order above.
