Future of SEO in 2022: SEO Trends to Know
SEO is constantly evolving, and to be successful with your SEO strategies, you need to stay on top of the latest trends in order to ensure your content strategies are effective. Search Engine Optimization is extremely critical to attract consumers to your online platform. If you are still relying on SEO strategies and tactics that you’ve used for years, it’s probably time to evolve to better understand the environment today.
Many of the older strategies aren’t as effective in the landscape of SEO today, and some of these strategies can even negatively impact SEO. This is why it is imperative that you continue to adapt to the future SEO trends. To ensure that you will be able to make the most significant impact in 2022, here are the future SEO trends.
Shift to Long-Form Content
In order to create relevant content and a strong digital content strategy that captivates website visitors, you will need to shift to a long-form content strategy. Long-form content has proven to be the most popular, drawing in the most traffic and shares compared to short-term content. Long-form content is about 3000 words or even more. By moving your focus to developing quality, long-form content can greatly improve your search rankings. Long-form content does, however, need to keep the reader engaged to be successful, which is a lot more challenging with more words.
So how are you supposed to keep readers engaged? To accomplish this, it is very important to break your content up into sub-sections, utilizing H2 and H3 subheadings that make your content easily skimmable and scannable. You want to eliminate big chunks of text that is usually pretty intimidating for readers to look at, especially if readers are viewing your blogs on a small screen. The goal is to basically make your readers browse through the article. It should also be very easy to share with a clear call-to-action which will improve your SEO even further. To do this, include sharing links that are easy to follow with a click of a button.
Accomplishing this task isn’t easy, and many companies tend to hire a high-quality content writing service to develop this long-form style content.
Refining page speed
Page speed is one of the biggest factors in successful SEO and determines core web vitals. More and more users are using the Internet on their smartphones or laptops. Therefore, it has become very important that businesses provide a fast and seamless website experience. Google recently launched its Core Web Vitals as its newest ranking factors. This new technology analyzes how long it takes for the largest element to load, how long it takes for elements on the page to respond to clicks, and how many elements move on the page while it loads.
Google is basically looking at how long it takes for users to start interacting with your business’s content once they land on the site. Since page speed will be a prominent factor in site rankings, it is essential to audit your page speed often. By consistently checking your page speed, you will be able to implement any needed updates and avoid feeling overwhelmed if your page speed is dragging your content down.
Artificial Intelligence Will Play a Bigger Role in SEO
Artificial intelligence, otherwise known as AI, is continuing to change how users interact with content online. Because of this, artificial intelligence will play a large role in how to create relevant content strategies and future SEO trends. AI will begin to dictate how content is ranked in the future. A prime example of this is Google’s AI algorithm that is called RankBrain, which is set to become the most important ranking factor in Google’s search engine results pages in 2022. This new release from Google left many wondering how their SEO would be affected. What is the best way to cater your SEO strategy to work with this new artificial intelligence algorithm?
Google hasn’t shared a lot of details yet on how RankBrain exactly works, but it seems that user experience is one of the most defining factors in ranking content. The amount of time visitors spend on your website and the click-through rate will be telltale signs of how RankBrain will prioritize your content. This means that it is critical that you develop extremely well organized and helpful content for your users so that they are left captivated and engaged, and therefore the click-through rate and time spent on your website will increase.
Mobile-Friendliness is Critical
Now more than ever, it is very important to make sure your content is mobile-friendly. According to Google, it is a large ranking factor and has been since 2015. Today, it is best to optimize your content for mobile devices as it is the most prominent way of looking at content online for users. Google even rolled out mobile-first indexing back in 2019, which basically means that the search engine prioritizes the mobile version of a website when it ranks the content in order. The primary version is the mobile version over the desktop version, as it is estimated that 75% of internet users access the internet solely through mobile devices.
Google makes it very easy to figure out if your mobile site is effective with its free mobile friendly test. This test will help you figure out what issues you should fix with your mobile site, which will help you rank higher. Tools like these are extremely helpful in fixing mobile user issues that could be negatively impacting your SEO. You need to ensure that your mobile content is optimized to be successful in creating a mobile friendly site.
Future SEO Trends Should Include Video
Video is so prominent in effective SEO. Online video platforms have become increasingly popular over the last couple of years and will continue to become more and more popular. If you haven’t already, you should develop an SEO strategy that incorporates some kind of video aspect. Many businesses have already begun using platforms like TikTok and YouTube to involve consumers and users. Voice search has even become a popular way of searching for content online, and appealing to these future SEO trends will give you success in your SEO strategy.
By developing optimized video content, you can have a successful and effective SEO strategy moving forward. To optimize your content, you can focus on the video channel description by adding an overview that is user-friendly to your video content. Don’t necessarily cram your video descriptions with a bunch of words, but a few user specific keywords or even hashtags can help push your content to its intended audience.
First-party data hub with SEO traffic
Companies like Google are beginning to retire the third-party cookies, which means that it is crucial for businesses to build out their first-party data hubs. By building out first-party data hubs, your company will be able to obtain and create tailored marketing initiatives to drive company revenue without relying on cookies. Search will play a significant role in building the data hubs as your business can create its online presence through search engine optimization. Then, you can utilize those attracted users and turn them into leads using email newsletters, remarketing techniques, and other digital marketing initiatives.
With cookies coming to an end, it is essential not to wait to develop your first-party data hub, as it will play a massive role in the success of your SEO strategy.
Fulfilling Google’s EAT Principle
Google continuously emphasizes that content quality is crucial for successful ranking, and this won’t change for future SEO trends. Many are still left wondering what exactly quality content means and how to achieve it. The easiest way to improve the quality of your content to match SEO strategy is to follow the EAT principle, which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. According to Google, these factors determine a web page’s quality, and businesses need to be aware of how to utilize these effectively while developing their content.
The biggest thing you can think of while creating quality content is thinking about the user. Who is the user, and what are they looking for? What is the user search intent? Who would most likely be your target audience? This will help you better understand what kind of content you should be creating to appeal to your target audience’s values. By fully understanding exactly what your target consumer is looking for, you will develop content that is intriguing to your readers and will encourage more clicks. Don’t forget to also focus on the trustworthiness aspect of your content by backing up your facts with reputable sources.
Successful SEO in 2022
By following these future SEO trends, you will be set up to have a successful search engine optimization strategy. Ensuring that your content is thoughtful and beneficial to the user while creating a seamless and simple user experience will bring you more traffic in 2022.
Important SEO tips and tricks
Understanding SEO services is crucial for maintaining a strong online presence and drawing consistent traffic to your business website. If you are looking to increase brand awareness, the first step is to understand that thousands of people are looking for content just like yours every day, and the way that you can help them find it is through SEO strategy. Many people overlook SEO strategies because they think that by putting their content online, it will be noticed. But you are competing with tons of businesses, and to really stand out from the crowd, you have to know how to optimize your content.
It takes quite a bit of research and experimentation to stay on top of your SEO strategy as it is constantly evolving with new best practices, but there are many helpful tools, tips, and tricks to guide you through the process. If your SEO is done right and combined with other technical and marketing strategies, it can help your business succeed with strong rankings and front page landings on Google search. In fact, did you know that the front page of Google search receives 95% of all web traffic? It’s crucial to keep your SEO intact and on strategy for a successful business.
Using SEO strategy and getting a better grasp on how it works can totally change your ranking on Google. Some of the tips below will help you improve your online strategy and master the art that is SEO.
Create Commanding Content
Develop content that is relevant and useful for your target audience that is even better than the content that is already out there for a specific set of keywords. A lot of the time, this means writing commanding or authoritative content in a long-form that comes from a reliable source and can compete with professional publications.
To write valuable and engaging content for your target audience, you have to have a solid understanding of who your target audience really is. To do this, take time to understand your target consumer and their persona. What is your target audience’s demographic, psychographic, and even geographic location? What do they like to do, or where do they live? Once you have an understanding of who this consumer is, you will be able to understand what they will most likely be searching for and can form your content around their search.
Develop a Varied Content Marketing Strategy
There is no specific one-of-a-kind trick that will keep your site in the top position since Google uses multiple factors when ranking their websites. By creating relevant content that is varied, it will help your audience find it quickly. It is also great if the original content has links to your social media content and the other way around. Many people find content through social media these days. It is best practice to intertwine your different marketing channels with inbound links. The more opportunities there are that lead to your website directly, the better. Make sure you are looking for keywords and topics that are currently trending to increase your chance of being found amongst the many other websites out there.
Don’t forget to audit
Auditing your competition is crucial to make sure you are optimizing and creating relevant content. The search engine rankings for a website change based on about three things. The most important is the site’s own optimization. Once you nail this, the second component is the site’s positioning compared to its competitors’ positioning. Lastly, the searcher’s intent makes up the third component to decide website ranking. With this being said, if you can figure out how to improve the website besides your competitors, making it more relevant in the consumer’s mind, you will move up in the search rankings. This is where understanding your consumer better than your competitors comes in.
Spend time on long-form content
Long-form content with an average of about 1,800 words makes up the majority of content on the first page of Google for any keyword. Comprehensive long-form content is the quickest and most tangible fix to improve your SEO. It can be done through FAQ or specific headers that include targeted key terms throughout a website.
Create readable content
While this may seem painfully obvious that you should create content that is appropriate and relevant to your audience with the correct keywords, many overlook this and just pile on content that they deem will be popular. If the content is not filled with clear and concise writing that makes sense for the viewer, no one will see it. Don’t get caught up with super technical requirements, but it is important to have strong readability, not just a keyword-focused page. The content should be interesting and very relevant to your brand. Don’t mislead consumers with clickbait headers, and make sure that your keywords are used properly.
Pillar articles
Google can get confused on what to prioritize when there is a lot of content. Pillar articles are very detailed articles depicting how to do something. These can help Google figure out what you are talking about. Also, if you include a table of contents at the beginning of the articles that link back to different parts of the post, Google will favor this and rank your content higher among the rest.
Elaborate meta descriptions and titles
You should try to maximize the character limit for meta descriptions and tags using qualifiers or even adding the current year of the article. Common successful qualifiers include words like “shocking” or “important” that will draw a reader in. The more robust your title and meta description is, the more likely it has a chance to rank in a higher spot on the first page if you nailed the rest of the SEO strategy. The goal is to make the search engine algorithm and your consumers view your content as relevant.
Knowing your market
SEO is not a standard technique and never will be. It all depends on your audience and market and will differ widely between different markets. You should think about all the different kinds of content Google serves, whether it be carousel cards, answer boxes, or local results, and optimize to each kind of result. Always put yourself in the customer’s shoes. How will they search for it?
Niche Optimization
Extensive keyword research against your competitors will open your eyes to the missing search terms on your site. To do this successfully, it is essential to be critical and realistic. This should act as a gut check to make sure you have good content and relevant meta tags to the specific search terms. If you notice keywords or terms that do not rank well, build pages with excellent content to optimize those words.
Don’t forget user experience
While SEO factors like keywords and tracked links are still very important in ranking, Google is now emphasizing user experience more and more. So what does this mean? Does your website have a high-speed loading page? What about an appealing design? Is it mobile-friendly for your customers? By focusing on UX, you will have happy visitors and a strong SEO as an added bonus.
SEO strategy is crucial
SEO won’t go away. In fact, the higher you rank on Google, the more traffic you bring to your website, and the more business you bring in. It is so important to have a strategy behind your SEO. Without knowledge of how SEO works, you can not see success in your website ranking for a long time, but you can hit that first page by tweaking a few things and doing some research. These days, it is so crucial to spend time on your SEO, and by following the tips in this article, you will be set up for success.