6 Website Marketing Trends to Watch in 2024

Website marketing can be extremely exhausting.

One moment, you think you have all it takes to scale your website and boost its ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). But before you get that thought down, there’s already a new search engine algorithm in place wrecking your master plans.

Algorithms change. Your target audience’s needs change. Trends also come and go.

If you want actual results—traffic and lead generation—from your website, you have to be one step, no, two steps ahead of every change, including trends.

In this article, we will go through the trending website marketing strategies you should watch and proactively implement in 2024.

1. Micro-Moment Targeting

Have you ever wondered about the cost of a mid-sized burger at McDonald's and immediately Googled it? Or have you ever felt hungry and asked Bing for the nearest active restaurants right away?

These are all micro-moments. According to Google, it is an intent-rich moment when someone turns to their device to act on a need—to know, do, go, or buy.

• I-want-to-know moment: When you ask Google for the cost of a mid-sized burger at McDonald’s, you are seeking specific pricing.
• I-want-to-go moment: When you ask Bing for the closest, active restaurants in your location, you are looking for nearby places to visit and satisfy your immediate needs.
• I-want-to-do moment: Looking up a video on YouTube for a quick tutorial on how to fix a leaky faucet.
• I-want-to-buy moment: Searching for the best deals on a new smartphone because you are ready to make a purchase.

So, imagine creating website content on “How much does a mid-sized burger cost at McDonald’s?”. This post is more likely to show up for related queries than a generalistic article on “McDonald's burger prices in 2024.”

That’s because it addresses the searcher’s immediate needs. And search engines like Google are trying to provide their users with instantaneously useful results.

Follow these tips to implement micro-moment targeting:

• Find out your target audience, what they are struggling with, where they go to for answers, and search queries they use when looking for answers.
• Use the queries as titles and create valuable content around them.
• Some queries are the same but have different variations depending on who is asking. Try to cover each query by inserting them as keywords in your articles.

Brands like Nestle have used this method to address their audiences’ needs and reduce customer acquisition costs. Most importantly, micro-targeting is still a relatively primitive approach, and starting early gives you a competitive advantage.

2. Paid Advertising

Paid advertising has long been an effective website marketing alternative to SEO. But that’s not without reason, according to Sergey Taver, Marketing Manager at Precision Watches. 

“SEO is a must for every business with an online presence; however, getting results often takes months. For newer brands that need a steady flow of website traffic and leads or existing brands who need to scale up their ROI within a short period, this is not entirely feasible”, says Sergey.

Coupled with the intense competition to rank via organic strategies, paid advertising is a relatively easy way out if you have the capital.

A statista report projects ad spending on digital marketing to reach $965 billion in 2028, up from $740 billion in 2024 and $243 billion in 2017. That’s a lot of growth, indicating that paid ads will continue to be a go-to strategy to boost website awareness, attract traffic, and generate leads.

To share the pie, Jerry Han, CMO at PrizeRebel, suggests “allocating a sizable percentage of your revenue mainly for sustained or continuous advertising yearly. This could be anywhere from 1 to 10%, depending on your annual revenue. But it’s important not to break the bank.”

When investing in paid advertising, track your ad performance to ensure you’re not losing money, and balance it with your SEO marketing strategies.

3. Visual Marketing

Axel Lavergne, Founder at ReviewFlowz, believes website marketing is not only about drawing in traffic, it’s also about retaining them. And one approach to retention has proven effective over the years: visual marketing.

“We’re in an era where people’s attention span is relatively shorter compared to before. Moreover, no one wants to spend hours reading through cluttered texts on your website when they could go on YouTube to learn the same thing. Even if there’s no other alternative resource, they will still not choose the strings of texts you provide”, he says.

That’s not surprising given that people retain 55% more information when paired with a visual, and our brain processes images 60,000 times faster than it processes texts. A study by Buzzsumo also shows that website articles with images are twice as likely to be shared than those without. Moreso, 91% of consumers prefer visuals to textual content.

Videos are also part of visual marketing. In a survey conducted by Wyzowl, 84% of consumers say watching promotional videos convinced them to purchase a product or service compared to reading related textual content.

“Visual marketing has been in vogue for years, but it’s time for website owners to put in more effort. Invest in infographics and illustrative creatives, embed short videos for each article, create explanatory clips for your product, and show instead of telling”, Thomas Medlin, Co-founder at JumpMD adds.

4. Voice Search Optimization

“Hey Google, benefits of voice search optimization?”

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…Proceeds to roll out dozens of results from Google engine

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Voice search optimization means prepping your website to appear for voice search queries. For Pierce Hogan, Owner at Varied Lands, that’s almost the same as optimizing for typed queries.

“However, how we speak sometimes differs from how we type. The reason is that we try to shorten our words when typing so as to save time and effort. In contrast, when doing a voice search, it’s possible to effortlessly say dozens of words in seconds. So, it’s important to find queries that are likely to be said rather than typed when optimizing for voice search”, Pierce suggests.

Is this trend still relevant in 2024? A big yes!

Thanks to the continuous advancement of AI-powered programs like Siri, Alexa, and Google's search assistant, people find more comfort in talking to their devices than typing.

As of the time of writing this article, over 1 billion voice searches are performed monthly. Perhaps if the Humane AI pin had succeeded, we could have recorded double this figure in months to come.

Regardless, voice search SEO is booming, and it's time to embrace it for search traffic opportunities.

5. Personalized Content

Modern audiences have an entirely selfish but reasonable demand: ‘Focus on me.’ If you want to meet that demand, then you’ve got to personalize your content to the core. This is important as there’s a growing demand by consumers for content that’s completely tailored to their needs

60% of customers agreed to become repeat or loyal to a brand after a personalized shopping experience, and another 76% said they are more likely to purchase from a brand that personalizes. More than 80% say they will share personal data in exchange for deals or offers that fit their needs.

So much euphoria for personalization, right?

We also already know about traditional personalization, which primarily involves using second-person pronouns when writing website content, blog posts, case studies, and all. Even a second grader knows that now.

But if you want better results, go for hyper-personalized content. 

According to Sam Browne, Founder at Findaband, “Hyper-personalization involves collecting granular-level details about your audience, such as their behavior online, the type of content they spend more time on, their format preferences, and so on. To do that, you need to use AI-powered analytic tools like Google, Kissmetrics, or any other sophisticated software.”

Details from your analysis are invaluable for creating blog posts that truly address your audiences’ pain points. If integrated into your paid advertising channel, it will be easier to target the right audience and maximize ad spending.

6. Zero-Click Content Strategy

Zero-click content strategy refers to creating and optimizing your content to provide results directly on search results pages even before readers click through your website. Perfect examples include featured snippets, rich snippets, and knowledge panels.

Now, the question is, if readers get all the information they want on the result page, will they still click through?

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Well, not really; most people will ditch. But there’s a 19% chance of receiving clicks from featured snippets. That means you get 1 click out of every 5 valuable impressions made. In addition, websites that opt out of featured snippets receive 12% less traffic. Left to me, that’s still something compared to not using a snippet at all.

Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, says, “Zero-click strategy won’t give you a thousand clicks and a million traffic in one month, but it can still boost your metrics and increase website awareness. If you keep providing relevant solutions to your audience’s problems, they’ll eventually see you as a go-to resource hub and directly look up your website for information in the future.”

Moreover, it doesn’t affect other website marketing strategies listed here. Win-win.

Wrapping Up

The website marketing train for 2024 is already moving, and it's up to you to hop on before your competitors catch wind of these trends.

Implement unique trends, such as micro-targeting, voice search optimization, and the zero-click strategy, to build your website's awareness, attract traffic, and generate leads.

Use visual marketing and hyper-personalized content to retain new visitors. Lastly, embrace paid advertising for a steady flow of traffic and high-quality leads.