30-second summary:
- SEO is a major supportive strategy to digital marketing for businesses.
- Impact of AI and machine learning (ML) is undeniable for the future of SEO.
- User Experience is taking prominence for a majority of search engines out there.
- Local SEO is important for businesses to get hits from local audiences.
- The Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness aspect is defined by Google as a ranking factor.
- Structured Data can help you deliver rich results for users on SERPs.
- There are more data-backed trends to discover, read on to find out what those are!
Digital marketing has emerged as the most powerful form of marketing in the current era. With more than 4.66 billion internet users as per the 2020 report by Statista.com, there is no doubt an immense potential for businesses to capitalize through online marketing. SEO thus becomes a means to cash-in on this opportunity as the majority of the world’s internet traffic is generated through Search engines. More importantly, Google is the present world leader in search engines, followed by Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu. In light of this information, let’s take a quick look at the SEO trends 2021 that you must know.
According to a recent report by Safari Digital, the number one results on Google’s SERP (search engine result page) enjoy a CTR (click-through-rate) of 34.36%. Furthermore, 61% of marketers consider SEO to be the key to online success.
Moreover, 82% of people who implemented SEO-based strategies found it to be effective, while businesses allocate on average 41% of their marketing strategy budget to invest in SEO.
Top 11 SEO Trends 2021
1. AI to show greater impact
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations Transformers) has been around for a couple of years now, and it seems only recently that we see this technology and the potency it has for the future. Developed and published in 2018 by Google, it is a neural network-based technique for NLP (natural language processing) pre-training. In simpler terms, it can help Google to decipher the context of words in a search query.
Furthermore, 37% of businesses and organizations are already employing AI as per Data Prot’s recent report. With the AI industry projected to earn around $118 billion by 2025, there is no doubt that the technology will leave a lasting impact on SEO.
Through AI powering your business, you would not only be able to create more powerful content but also augment your keyword research, maximize link building opportunities, and optimize all digital platforms.
There are tremendous tools like Keyword Tool and Twin word which use AI to speed up your keyword research.
Along with that, Wordsmith, Articoolo, and WordAI are amongst the best tools that help you create content using artificial intelligence.
2. Build and improve on UX
User experience is the highlight of any purchased product or hired service. Furthermore, according to a recent study by Small Biz Genius, 88% of online shoppers don’t return after having a bad user experience. In fact, 70% of online businesses fail due to bad user experiences, which is why UX testing is crucial. This also means that providing an attractive and efficient UI (user interface) is also important. Some major qualities to create the best user experience include:
- Incredibly fast loading times
- Encouraging users to explore seamlessly
- Providing easy to navigate interface
- Adequate use of white space, fonts, and high-quality images
- Visual aid to guide users and their experiences (a quick video to showcase step by step guide)
- User-friendly URLs and sitemap
- Streamline website design so that it helps users find specific functions
- Terrific user dashboards for registered members & much more
3. Get more from local SEO
When it comes to digital marketing, local SEO has become really important, and local results are some of the most relevant for users who are looking for solutions they can acquire. This has allowed businesses to take advantage of and benefit from local SEO. According to Chat Meter ® “near me” and “tonight/today” searches increased by 900% in the past two years.
In fact, mobile search for “open + now + near me” has grown by 200%. And to top it all off, around 46% of all searches on Google are local.
Here are some tips to start mastering your local SEO:
- Create a Google My Business Account
- Optimize for mobile devices and voice search (more on this later)
- Cash-in on local keywords
- Take advantage of online business directories
- Develop content based on local events, news stories, and location-specific places
4. Implement the E.A.T concept
For SEO, EAT stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. These factors are also mentioned in the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines by Google.
Google mentions that they use third-party Search Quality Raters that are spread out all over the world and highly trained to provide feedback to help them understand which changes make Search more useful. The sub-section 3.2 of the general guidelines under section 3.0 entitled ‘Overall Page Quality Rating’ is where you will find EAT. Here are some tips for you to utilize this concept:
- Produce documents with a professional approach with regards to your industry, market, trade, or niche
- Get links from high authority domains
- Hire experts and deliver content with facts that are relevant and checked for accuracy
- Keep content up to date
- Get reviews
- Flash your credentials
- Get a Wikipedia page
- Demonstrate work that showcases your expertise to Google
5. Learn about structured data
Structure data is becoming increasingly vital, and it allows your content to be better understood by search engines. Google offers you a Structured Data Testing Tool that you can use to familiarize yourself with the concept and start applying structured data for your website and landing pages.
This helps to deliver rich results from your website or landing pages to appear on SERPs.
A rich result undoubtedly gets more limelight and hence more attention from users which means that their CTRs also increase tremendously.
Having rich results from your domains being made available on the user’s screen leaves a lasting impact on them and also help you build authority in the eyes of your niche market’s audience.
6. Obligation: Mobile-friendliness
According to mobile marketing statistics published by Web FX, 52.2% of all website traffic is generated from mobile phones, while 61% of consumers are most likely to purchase from mobile-friendly sites.
Furthermore, it has been observed that over 96% of people use Google when they search on mobile.
I think that stats say a lot more for themselves and with over 3.5 billion smartphone users around the world, it is obvious that you need to get your website friendly for mobile devices. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Prioritize website speed
- Make website responsive
- Keep web designs simple
- Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing tool for further recommendations
7. Play with long-tail keywords
Neil Patel offers you some valid reasons to use long-tail keywords, and he mentions that they account for more than 70% of all web searches.
They can help you outrank the competition, plus they are how people actually make use of search on the internet. Long-tail keywords offer context to your content, and also support better conversion rates with an average long-tail keyword having a 36% conversion rate. Let’s see an example provided by SEMRush.
Here are some tips for finding long-tail keywords:
- Use Google suggestions and variations as a source for long-tail keywords
- Google related searches are also a good source
- Go for questions, specially optimize your content for how-to questions
- You can also mine your analytics and your search query reports for further insights
- Browse for topics on eHow, Wikipedia, and various Q&A sites
8. Search intent takes prominence
According to a study conducted by Ahrefs, optimizing search content led to a 677% increase in organic traffic for one of their core landing pages in just a period of six months. Search intent is the reason behind a person’s query. It related to the thing that they want to learn, find, or make a purchase.
While Google intends to provide the most relevant result to user queries, we already know that BERT and technologies like NLP are already growing and improving themselves with the passage of time. Students opting for assignment writing service already understand this and are making full use of it to make their own queries online. The future of search is therefore going to be highly influenced by user intent or search intent.
9. Terrific quality of content
Content has always been the king, whether it is in written form, animated, or uses video-audio format. Interactive content, as well as the use of infographics, are incredible traffic magnets. According to a post by OptinMonster, 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers, while 86% of B2C marketers consider content marketing their key strategy.
Content marketing is focused on the creation and distribution of consistent, relevant, and valuable content for audiences. Here are some tips for you to follow:
- Stay original and refrain from plagiarism
- Deliver solutions to main points
- Make content reader-friendly and digestible for users
- Include visual aids to support the context of your content
- Provide actionable tips to help resolve user queries
- Keep your headlines strong and your facts accurate from credible sources
- Never shy away from updating your already published content to keep it fresh
10. Video marketing strategy
Videos nowadays are probably the most popular media consumed by online users today. According to video marketing statistics by WordStream, YouTube has over a billion users, and 82% of Twitter users watch video content on Twitter. With 30 million active daily users, more than 1 billion videos are watched on YouTube daily. This is how big the video market is.
To start with your own video marketing strategy, here are some bits of advice:
- Create tutorial or demo videos centered on user intent
- Optimize videos with SEO content
- Include powerful CTAs
- Stay informative for the most part and only slightly selling
- The starting of the video is the most important
- End on a high note
11. Voice search optimization
The DBS Interactive shares their voice search statistics in which they report that 27% of the online population is using voice search on mobile.
Around 111.8 million people in the US which is over a third of the nation’s total population used voice assistance monthly and furthermore over more than half of all smartphone users are already engaged using voice search technology.
To jump on the bandwagon would be the right decision, and here is how you can get started too:
- Voice search keywords are longer and conversational
- These are normally questions – For example, “What are SEO trends for the upcoming year?”
- Local listings and searches take precedence
- Optimize for rich answers and make use of structured data guidelines
- Include FAQs for your product pages and blogs
- Make use of conversational language for content
Conclusion
Every business in the world with an online presence is running after better and more improved SEO tactics to get more traffic and generate more sales.
I hope the aforementioned tips and guidelines will help you get things sorted for your SEO department before you dive into the next year.
In case you want to make an inquiry of your own related to the topic, feel free to leave a mention of your query in the comment section below. All the best for your future endeavors, and Cheers!
Amanda Jerelyn currently works as a Marketing Manager at Dissertation Assistance, a perfect place for students to buy academic writing services from expert dissertation writers UK. During her free time, she likes to practice mindful yoga to keep herself fit and healthy.
The post SEO Trends 2021: What every marketer should know appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
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