How to be a top SEO in 2024 and beyond according to JP Garbaccio

Like any performance channel, SEO is a discipline that moves fast. 

We caught up with seasoned SEO specialist,  JP Garbaccio to pick his brains on what he thinks that SEOs needing to be considering in the next 12 months if they are to future proof themselves.

Quality Comms in an age of misinformation

The magpie effect of AI is clear. SEOs and developers are loving it, business owners and c-suite are enjoying it in equal measures – but each will be using it slightly differently and will be pretty sure that their way is the right way.

 JP told me about a situation just this month where he had a conversation with a developer who had been using AI in order to fulfil SEO requirements, purely because he read an article that was published in 2022 that had said it was totally fine to do so. Since then, we have seen sites wiped off the face of the earth – including some of JP’s very own test sites.

The challenge: But how are we going to convince a dev or CEO that is using AI that they are potentially playing with fire? They want to reduce costs and increase efficiency right?

The solution: clearer, more professional communication and a strong ability to manage expectations more than your average bedroom SEO. SEOs will need to become better at diplomacy and being able to educate clients on the fact that you can actually misuse AI in your organic strategies.

Cross-channel strategies will be vital for lowering CAC and improving LTV

Search ad costs are soaring, costs per click are rising, and conversions are dropping. An increase in the number of people who ‘browse’ an ad without buying, will inevitably lead to higher acquisition costs in the long-run. 

The solution: marketers and business owners need to start lowering customer acquisition cost and increasing lifetime value. How?  By paying closer attention to CRO – this is where the benefit will be, not simply acquiring traffic at all cost.

SEOs need to start thinking commercially.

Although any SEO agency worth its salt will have adopted this approach a long time ago, it’s not unheard of for SEO suppliers to use traffic as a KPI, and for clients to accept that, only to then complain that the bottom line hasn’t been improved over time.

SEOs need to start optimising workflows cleverly with AI 

To get ahead, SEOs should be looking into AI tools, or certainly educate themselves better on the prompts and prompt engineering that can make their lives that little bit easier. JP himself has built numerous tools, including one that enables him to write meta information in a matter of minutes.

We also discussed the stark reality that experienced copywriters may face in the coming months. If an AI generator can produce 15,000 of passable content in minutes, then how can businesses reconcile the cost of a high-quality copywriter in their minds?

Read and execute basic scripts in python, linux and AppScript.

You’ll need some literacy to get your foot in the door and would struggle if the plan was to jump straight into Chat GPT in order to ask it to write you scripts in Python or linux.

 But if you understand the code and can put it together to a certain level, then you’ll be able to build tools that’ll help with efficiency as mentioned, but beyond that, these skills and understanding would also enable you to better understand site servers and server architecture, which will future proof you against a new wave of SEOs that are already using these languages on a daily basis.

Influence SERP features using technical SEO

Although not a new notion by any stretch, we’re now in a time when quality imagery is everything – particularly for eCommerce brands. SEOs should now more than ever be doubling down on things such as schema and structured data in order to gain more free listings and to make use of the opportunity to capture more eyeballs with these assets.