With more people flocking to the online market, SEO is a much-needed skill for all business owners. Not only does SEO help improve your brand visibility, but by implementing the right strategies, you have a much more effective method of converting your online viewers into clients or customers. If you’re wondering how to get started, here are eleven SEO trends to remember this year.
1. Pay Attention to Local SEO
Many online users are always searching for brands, products, or services in their vicinity. As a result, search engines regularly update their algorithm on local search results, and you should be at the forefront of such searches. A great way to do this is by creating your brand profile on online communities and local directories to keep them up-to-date information.
Additionally, it would be best to focus on improving zero-searches to provide users with quick and useful information on the get-go.
2. Prioritize Data and Analytics
Collecting data and checking the analytics from your online platforms lets you better understand your users and gives direction on how to tailor your content better. Data science helps you understand your buyer’s psychology; i.e., what content they respond to more, what times they are most active, and so on. On the other hand, analytics gives a clear breakdown of how different strategies are playing out; i.e., which images are well optimized, page loading speed, bounce rates, referral sources, etc.
3. Optimize User Experience
Finding ways to improve user experience would always be a needed trend to follow. You should always find new and innovative ways to make your user’s on-site experience practical and enjoyable. Ensure your site’s loading speed, tailor content for your mobile users, and make your website easy to navigate. And most importantly, deliver quality content.
4. Focus on Mobile Optimization
As mentioned above, improving user experience is a necessity, making it a key SEO trend this year. Nowadays, most searches are made on-the-go with mobile and hand-held devices. As a result, besides improving user’s on-site navigation on desktops, you should make sure your content is compatible with mobile devices.
To make sure your site is mobile-friendly, check out how effective it is with Google’s mobile-friendly test, search your report on “mobile usability” on the Google search console, and make the recommended changes to your site.
5. Utilize Voice Search
Voice searches are showing a steady rise in the digital space. And with innovative technologies like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google’s search assistant, they don’t seem to be coming down any time soon. For this reason, you should make sure your brand’s content is compatible with voice searches. You can do this by optimizing your keywords to identify longer phrases that would most likely be on people’s minds when searching for your content.
6. Optimize Content Images
Image optimization is next on our SEO trends list. Visual image search is continuously evolving. Google has since made emphasis on the proper marking and optimization of images. In that regard, if your photos aren’t optimized, you would be doing significant damage to your rankings on SERPs. Three ways to maximize your content images are to:
- Use high-quality images that are relevant to your specific content.
- Label the photo file to make sure it’s relevant to the specific content piece.
- Include alt tags on your images to better classify them on the search engine results, and after which you add such photos to your site map.
7. Strengthen Your Brand Authority
Popular search engines like Google would always make sure to push quality content. To rank high on SERPs, you need to continually deliver relevant, fresh, and proven information on your platforms. Google will continue to grade your content based on the EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) principle, and you should keep that at the top of your mind.
When crafting content, a couple of ways to implement the EAT principle in your content are by creating buyer personas (to better follow up on your consumer journey, conducting search result intent (to have an understanding of what kind of information your users value), and including backup claims to authority links (to improve your EAT grade).
8. Use Long-Form Content
Not only do long-form content pieces create more places for you to include backlinks, but by providing long quality content pieces, you are increasing your grade as regards the EAT principle.
So how exactly do you lengthen your content while maintaining quality? Start by breaking your content into sections. Subheadings are especially important for mobile-site users, and you want to make sure the ones you include are scannable and relevant. Next, to improve validity, you should include authority links in your content pieces. And lastly, to make sure your content gets pushed out by users, your content should consist of shareable links to your work in strategic locations, like the beginning and end of your content piece.
9. Improve Semantically-Related Keywords
Gone are the days of keyword stuffing to improve SERPs. Now more than ever, secondary keywords are just as important as primary keywords; this SEO trend can make your content pieces appear more natural in speech.
Semantic search was created to understand user’s search intent better and deliver relevant information. For instance, when users input “The city of love,” by analyzing the inputted info, search engines can instantly connect your search with several other content pieces that feature that phrase. In line with this, you know that you need to tailor potential keywords and phrases that could be at the top of your searcher’s mind when crafting content pieces.
10. Include Videos to Boost Visibility
Humans are very visual creatures. As a result, video content is fast becoming the most consumed content type in the world. With over 1 billion users, YouTube is the hub for connecting with your target audience.
How can you use this to your advantage? Well, if you don’t have a channel already, start by creating one on the YouTube platform. After this, you should optimize your channel name and description with keywords relevant to your niche. Additionally, it helps to research your competition and include effective methods in your video channel strategies.
11. Aim for Featured Snippets
Google’s featured snippets were introduced in 2017 to provide users with quick information. Getting a featured snippet is a great way to drive traffic to your content and give the searchers answers in a more detailed format.
To create snippets for your content, focus on crafting content types like QnAs, how-to guides, and bullet-point tips in line with your niche. You could also look up the phrase, “people also ask” on Google search for ideas.
Conclusion
There you have it, eleven SEO trends to remember in 2021. As you can see, SEO is a continually evolving practice in the digital space. The most effective way to stay up in search engine rankings is by knowing and implementing strategies that’ll be best for your brand. With these few tips, you’re off to a great start.
