Looking to increase your search engine rankings on Google and other top search engines? Need to reach Page 1 with your business website or blog? Take a look at these 16 top new trends to improve your business’s SEO, and give a crucial boost to your digital marketing strategy.
User Intent Is Key
Search engines, and particularly Google, are no longer using exact keyword-matching in their approaches to render search result rankings. As Frédéric Dubut (Bing’s Senior Program Manager) told the Search Engine Journal, “You can expect search engines to shift even further from keywords to intent in 2022.” Google's Public Search Liaison Danny Sullivan has also made similar comments.
User intent is now key, and search engine crawlers are becoming even more sophisticated in their context-driven algorithms. The same SEO advice applies on Bing, Yahoo, AOL, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Baidu, YouTube, and all other top search engines.
Semantic Search
Semantic search is how Google is analyzing the context of user searches and queries. It focuses on compiling search results that will possibly answer the user’s question. So going back to that point about user intent—it’s important to optimize your pages with relevant content that focuses on answering questions, rather than building them around exact keyword matching.
E-A-T Beats The Competition
Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Otherwise known as E-A-T, it’s a strategy that is currently dominating SEO. It’s also a strategy that helps structure your content with specific topics to write about, giving it purpose, and an aim towards professionalism and educational value beyond the goal of promoting your business.
Journalistic Style Content
The shift toward topic-driven content is also borrowing from a more journalistic style of writing. This means covering topics that, again, are relevant, such as new events and milestones within your business and new trends and happenings within your industry. To help keep your content strategy on track, it could even be beneficial to create an editorial content calendar that plans out what content will be developed, and when it will reach the public.
High-Quality Content
People are less likely to read and engage with your content if it’s written poorly, is structured in a way that doesn’t make sense, or is too formal or technical. Google is also able to recognize when copy is hard to read, and that will certainly impact your rankings.
More and more, it’s becoming crucial for your content to be of the highest quality possible. It should be written by someone who understands the depth of research and the nuance needed to create relevant and persuasive copy. Basically, you need someone (or a team) who knows how to write. And not only this, but by a writer who can capture the tone and style of your company’s voice, and have the spirit of your mission statement in every piece.
Consider Content Length
Alongside quality, you need to consider quantity in developing your content strategy for SEO. Content with a higher word count tends to generate more user traffic. Why?
Because the more exhaustively you are able to answer a user’s questions about a given topic, the less likely they are going to leave your webpage for a different source of information. Blog posts and articles should aim for a word count range of 800 to 2,000 words to help drive your SEO. Bigger is usually better when it comes to content length and Google rank.
Video Content Is King
Users like video content. It’s considered an excellent source of information for digital content, and Google crawlers similarly like to optimize for it. This is because 6 out of 10 people now prefer to watch videos online rather than watch TV, especially on YouTube.
You can support your web content with video, not only to increase user traffic, but to benefit your SEO. Give context to video content with written content to tell search engine crawlers what the video is about, and how it’s relevant to your business.
Context Is Queen With BERT Update
The Google BERT Algorithm update helped Google to learn the nuances what all sentences mean, especially in reference to context. Now it makes even more of a difference that you are using updated references, native language terms, and correct spelling among other factors. It's not just about simple keywords any longer!
Technical SEO & Responsive Web Design
People want to have great digital experiences. So, the user’s experience in navigating your website will also impact your SEO rankings. Your web developer will have to incorporate the technical aspects of SEO, UX design (user experience design), and responsive web design when forming the structure of your website. This takes webpage loading speed into account, and site speed in general.
UX design for your website makes the user experience a priority, so that they have smooth, engaging, and continuous activity with your website.
Make It Mobile Friendly
Mobile UX for users engaging online through smartphones is just as important as your UX design for desktop users. At least 51% of mobile users find new companies and products by searching online from their smartphone. This means that over half of mobile users are shopping and conducting searches from their smartphones, and how easily they’re able to engage with your website will determine if they come back for more.
Utilize SEO Data Tools
Utilizing powerful and reliable SEO data tools will help give you new insights on how your website is performing, what pages and articles are getting the most user traffic, and provide tips on how your SEO strategy can be improved. You can even check on how your competitors are doing with data tools like SEMRush, and do complete SEO audits with one simple click.
Quality Backlinks That Fit The Brand
One of the most important cornerstones of Google’s ranking tactics is evaluating the quantity and quality of your website’s backlinks. When credible and authoritative sources link back to your website, your brand’s digital credibility and authority also increases. But these links can’t just come from anywhere. Reputable sources that are relevant to your brand in some way will have the most mileage in helping your SEO.
Voice Engine Optimization (VEO)
Voice search from mobile and voice assistant devices are rapidly making their mark on search result rankings, which is why you need to start optimizing for voice-based searches. In the United States alone, about 111 million people use voice assisted devices.
Optimizing for voice search also uses the question-answer approach, incorporating long-tail keywords that answer what, where, and how-questions, like “best coffee shops near me.” In this way, strengthening your local SEO with place-based content for optimization will also help your VEO strategy.
Featured Snippets Get The Click
Now users can get the answers to the questions they’re looking for from Google’s featured snippets. They don’t even have to click on your webpage, which can make gaining user traffic even more difficult. That’s why you need to optimize for featured snippets by conducting a bit of research:
Go back to user intent. What questions are users asking in relation to your industry? See what answers Google is providing to those questions. When you structure your content with headings and subheadings (H3s and H2s), make sure the information is concise and easy to read. This will give you the best chance of Google snagging that content for a featured snippet.
Influencer Marketing
You can increase your backlinks, encourage positive engagement and social media shares, empower your marketing strategy overall by collaborating with “influencers” in your industry. Creating videos that feature a partner or influencer, guest articles and blogs, and other collaborative content fosters a relationship between your businesses that can only serve to build your credibility and authority.
Customer Experience Impacting Search Rankings
The top small business SEO trends and strategies going into 2022 showed a common theme. The heart of good digital marketing is focusing on both the user experience online, and the user’s needs—therefore, the customer experience. Excellent customer service never goes out of style, no matter the packaging.
That said, remember these tips about customer care online:
• Remember to answer your customer reviews – (good and bad)
• Be professional – (don’t argue with customers online)
• Be transparent – (own up to mistakes)
• Don’t talk down to your customers – (be respectful)
• Look for ways to improve – (be dynamic, not stagnant)
An improved digital customer experience ensures that your optimized content gains more visibility, a great reputation, and higher rankings. CX Grows SEO!
SEO Like A Pro
Looking to level up your company's search engine optimization success? Take your SEO to the next level in 2022 with the smart suggestions above!
