Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are the most effective ways of attracting potential customers to your website. But here’s the thing- we must use it in the right way. According to surveys, there are an estimated 3.5B searches on search engines (mostly google) each day. But while only 0.78% of searchers click on results from the second page of the search engine, the #1 result in Google’s organic search result gets an average CTR of 31.7% approximately.
We already know that to rank higher or simply maintain rankings of your site, you need to keep modifying your SEO strategies and techniques following Google— as its algorithm evolves day by day. Here is a breakdown of the most significant SEO trends to understand and prioritize the strategies for 2021 to gain more traffic.
The main emphasis was on keyword optimization earlier. Companies were more concerned with consolidating keywords into their promotion instead of focusing on the exactness of the details mentioned on the website. Or can say that rather than focusing on the details associated with those keywords, it was more about including and integrating keywords.
Now, search engines have become smarter, focusing on maintaining the user’s experience and delivering search results that provide the best possible results to searchers. Besides, earlier, the BERT update was released by Google, which confers that searches are better understood than they have ever been.
Thus, simply incorporating and optimizing keywords into the promotion or campaign is not sufficient. It is necessary to have useful knowledge that corresponds to and builds on certain keywords.
The landing pages and content should be tailored as per the target audience and their search intent giving them the perfect user experience. It is critical to match user search intention. User search intention is essential for all SEO campaigns for the following four reasons:
Recently, Google announced three new metrics, called Core Web Vitals for measuring the user experience of any site: Loading, Interactivity, and Visual Stability. All three metrics are related to just one thing, and that is the page speed of the site: how fast does the page load, how soon does the site get interactive, and how stable is it while loading.
These three remarkable page speed and user engagement and experience metrics make up Core Web Vitals:
These three metrics play an essential role in determining a visitor’s overall experience while visiting a website. As a result, websites that have a better user interface gain more traffic and in turn, make more money.
Core Web Vitals will be among the best Google ranking factors for 2021, meaning you will have to give close attention to them to get a higher ranking. For example, if there are two web pages with equally relevant content, then user experience metrics will play a major differentiating factor and will help search engine bots to decide which one should be ranked higher.
Mobile optimization is essential not only for improving SERP rankings but also for capturing or gaining more traffic. The mobile version of a website would have a major effect on the site's ranking as most users prefer to access websites via their mobile devices.
Mobile marketing statistics are among the most important SEO trends affecting the online marketplace. Mobile’s growth continues to rise, providing businesses, web development agencies, and advertisers with a huge opportunity to attract potential consumers using it.
Maintaining or improving the SERP ranking also needs mobile optimization. The time a site takes for the website to load, its font size, design, mobile app, and how well the content is customized in it contribute a major part to its ranking. Furthermore, a mobile-friendly website will complement the overall strategy and help with remarketing. Thus, regulating the SEO strategies for the mobile-first segment makes perfect sense.
Designing websites with mobile-friendly components makes them more accessible. However, it is necessary to assure that the website is easy to navigate and that users who reach it via mobile have a better experience by using custom page designs. Mobile users who experience torpid and cumbersome websites are likely to leave and never return to it. It’s no wonder that this SEO Trend will continue after 2021.
With a feature in the Google Search Console, Google has also made it simple to check how well the website loads on mobile devices. By simply entering the web site's URL, Google will notify you if the website is mobile-friendly according to its latest algorithm.
While voice search started as a small idea, it has evolved to become one of the most talked-about and used topics in the search industry. This is because it provides automation. The simplicity with which users can search using their voice is unparalleled, and they can not get ample of it.
Voice search started with mobile phones and soon expanded to smart speakers and voice assistants around the world. Today, a change can be witnessed in voice search, with almost every generation enthusiastically embracing this technology. Some of the most important voice search statistics can be thought to put up the efforts in voice search features.
Marketers and SEO specialists need to make it a practice to optimize their content for voice search in the age of voice search, where the game can only get tougher in the coming days. This practice will help you improve your voice search rankings and expand the organic scope of your site.
Earlier, many people thought that it doesn’t matter how the website works or what kind of experience it provides because users can’t see it. But today, Voice search devices rely on search results to provide answers to users. Web pages are pulled from the top of the search results by voice search devices, so there is a requirement for optimization to appear at the top. There are very few chances for a website to appear in voice search if it is not optimized for SEO.
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Since great content plays a crucial role in SEO and ranking of your site, authentic content is essential for businesses in more than just branding. Simply put, this is unique plagiarism-free content that has not already been published somewhere else.
Think like, would you buy a T-shirt with the same color and design that you already have? No! The same thing follows here. There is a lot (thousands of web pages) of similar content on the same topics indexed on Search Engines. If you were to create or produce a piece of content very similar to existing content already ranking on the web, why would the search engine rank your piece above the original piece? Why would users bother to look past the top-ranked results? That’s why your content must be authentic, relevant, and add value to your brand voice and language.
Good material ideas to work with to produce unique content include case studies, experiments, customer testimonials, company milestones, and more. Not only will this make for authentic content that search engines like, but the content will establish you as a trusted brand in the eyes of search engines and your audience.
In terms of SEO, EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness, respectively. These factors are also discussed in the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines by Google.
Google states that they use third-party Search Quality Raters that are scattered out all over the world and highly trained to provide feedback to help them know which changes make Search more useful.
Here are some tips for you to utilize regarding this concept:
Google's BERT algorithm (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) applies machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to completely understand searches and what users are looking for. It runs in more than 70 languages and for almost every query in Google English.
With Google's BERT update, the Google search engine bots or crawlers have become much more "conversational," so now, Google's algorithm can now interpret the intent of the searcher. In simple words, now Google can get things like the human brain.
What this also means is that websites that have content-intent mismatches will be negatively affected. No matter how detailed or high-quality that long-form content is, if it is not satisfying the visitor's intent then BERT will ignore yours and prefer another content piece that meets the intent for the given query.
One thing to note is that Google BERT is not an algorithmic punishment. It’s a part of the Google search engine that helps to filter out the most relevant & useful content to users by interpreting search queries and content as humans. So it will not de-rank or penalize sites. It will just give admiration to those that show the best results to users, which is what Google has always strived to do.
If your content is not giving what a user is looking for, then your content is not BERT-friendly and you won’t rank for that keyword for a longer time. That’s why publishing valuable content that meets the user's intent can help you.
Search intent is exactly what the searcher is searching for when they type a particular keyword into a Google search. Sometimes they are looking for an answer to a question, a list of options, a how-to tutorial or want to buy a product and read reviews. There are a lot of purposes that users bring to the Google search bar, so it’s important to make sure your content and the keyword intent match their needs.
For example, if someone is searching the “SEO” keyword on Google, it means the user wants to know about SEO. But if a user is searching the “SEO services” keyword that means he/she is seeking out someone for "SEO services." So here, the keyword “SEO" is an informational keyword while “SEO services” is a commercial keyword.
But some keywords could be multi-intent keywords like “SEO expert”. Maybe the searcher is looking for an SEO expert to hire or wants to be an SEO expert.
You must always search for a keyword on Google before starting working on content for it! This approach will help you understand the intent of a keyword so that you can be sure it will work before taking the time to create the content.
The content that gives a lot of information and knowledge on a particular subject is known as long-form content. The minimum word count suggested for long-form content should be between 700 and 2,000 words. Although, the upper limit varies depending on many aspects, such as the scope, focus topic, expected goals, and target audience.
Search engines mainly focus on the context of the content. Long articles can simply present more context for the focus topic by probing deeper into it and linking it to various similar topics and demonstrating how these two are linked with each other. Furthermore, search engines prefer large or deep content over short or concentrated content. Google’s algorithm will not only rank short content but can also penalize it.
As per studies, long-form content is described as anything between a short anecdote (word count less than 7,500) and a novelette (under 17,500 words) in length.
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Just like most industries, AI is also changing the SEO and marketing industry. The reason behind this influence of AI is the personalization that AI provides. And here's a fact: Google uses AI to provide visitors with the results they are looking for.
But how can AI help with your SEO tactics?
It takes years to understand the search engine algorithms used to rank web pages. And then creating plans accordingly takes a lot of time. While SEO experts can help with such strategies, using AI and machine learning can be a game-changer. It would be much more effective and powerful in terms of decoding the algorithms and creating favorable strategies for organic growth.
There are various companies like HubSpot, Frase, and MarketMuse that are providing AI-based solutions that can help businesses with their SEO efforts and in the coming years, such tools can become a major SEO trend in the industry.
One of the best SEO trends of 2021 is to include video content in your strategy. Video marketing can make your customers stay tuned with the content it displays. The best video content includes a storyline of the incidence and situations that can be linked to your searchers.
Videos are one such medium that can help you in presenting your products in action to your visitors. Although a video is not the cheapest form of content out there, it is more engaging with a high ROI.
As per studies, 83% of enterprises believe that video gives them a good ROI.
Videos give you the power of producing versatile content which helps the marketer to paint a real picture of the product in their prospects’ minds. Users also love videos because they are easy to digest and saves their time by not having to read long-form content.
Likewise, here are some of the most powerful SEO practices that will help you to identify the top SEO trends of 2021 (which you might unintentionally miss out on).
All businesses in the world with an online presence are running after better and more improved SEO tactics and strategies to get more traffic and generate more sales.
Hope the aforementioned tips and guidelines will help you get things sorted for the SEO of your site
