Each year, Google makes hundreds of changes to its search algorithm. Each of those changes has an impact on your website’s visibility. But how can you possibly keep up with them all?
New business websites launch every day. With an insane amount of competition for a global audience, staying on top of the latest SEO trends is more important than ever. In addition, you need to keep your website visible in the search engines and compliant.
What are the top SEO trends ?
AI and BERT
For the last few years, artificial intelligence has evolved within the realm of SEO. RankBrain, the machine-based algorithm Google uses to produce highly relevant search results to its users, shows how important AI will be to SEO in the years to come.
A clear example of how AI has progressed is BERT which Google announced late in 2019. Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding (BERT) functions as Google’s network-based method of processing natural language. It’s redefined how people search and its algorithm was a huge step forward in the realm of search.
BERT uses one in ten searches to provide Google with a greater understanding of how language is utilized. It also helps discern the context of the individual words in various searches.
Can you optimize for either BERT or RankBrain? No.
Voice search
As many as 20% of all searches on mobile devices were voice search queries. Those who search the traditional way tend to type as they speak. And most searches today are still specific and long-tail. Users want to get an accurate answer in fewer attempts.
Most voice queries are for local searches, so optimizing your website for local SEO is great to tap into this. Bullet lists also boost your chances of voice query ranking.
Featured snippets
When featured snippets were deployed in 2017, the way SEO experts targeted keywords changed in a big way. Its use prompts Google to provide more information on search results pages. When you target for featured snippets, you’re able to take up more space on the SERPs.
As Google gets more crafty with ads, click-through rates continue to rise for ads and decline for organic searches. The impact is more pronounced for those who rely mostly on mobile optimization.
By targeting organic featured snippet results, you can still tap into organic space. You need to know which keywords give your best results and give them and any related terms priority in your SEO campaigns.
Influencer marketing
As many as 17% of businesses spent more than half of their marketing funds on influencers. Influencer marketing is particularly popular in beauty, e-commerce, fashion, lifestyle, and travel.
With an online marketplace saturated in ads, authentic information about products or services is valuable to today’s consumers. They are far more likely to trust an influencer reviewer than an ad today.
Influencers have a lot to offer in the way of online marketing efforts. They can boost your company’s visibility, traffic, and content reach. But you have to do it right to get those results. It would be best if you still met the needs of your target audience.
Any influencers you collaborate with should be within your niche so there’s a greater likelihood that they interact with your audience already.
Video is vital
According to Forrester Research, video is fifty times more likely to rank on the first page of a SERP than a web page with text. Given its popularity on Google, 62% of universal searches on Google include video. That makes video an important consideration for your online marketing efforts.
Embedding videos on your website can boost your traffic so long as you optimize it properly, so Google understands what the videos are about. They can be videos to support existing content, tutorials, or more. You may not rank on the first page of results right away, if at all, but you’ll enjoy a boost in visibility.
Long-form amazing content
There’s no getting around it. Original, quality content is still vital to your SEO efforts.
We know users online have short attention spans. But lengthy articles boost the amount of time spent on your website if the content has real value for your audience. Such content also helps your company build authority and increases your ranking in Google’s search engine.
The average length of blog posts that rank in the top 10 of a search is a minimum of 2,000 words. But within that content, you must have answered a user question along with other questions tied to common search queries.
Mobile search continues to grow
As many as 87% of users on the internet are using a mobile device these days. Google saw the trend coming, noting that 40% of all internet transactions are now on mobile. So they rolled out mobile-first indexing in July 2019 to help this along.
If you haven’t heeded the warnings by now and optimized for mobile, you’ll want to take care of this right away. If you’ve optimized for voice, you’re optimized for mobile too.
When it comes to SEO, the landscape is constantly changing and shifting. So it’s important to keep up with the latest trends and devise a long-term strategy for your online marketing efforts so you can stay competitive and generate new leads.
