SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, in simple terms, it is the process of improving your website to enhance its visibility when somebody searches for products or services associated with your business on Google or other search engines.
It is the practice of improving the quantity and quality of traffic to your website with the help of organic search engine results.
SEO is an important component of digital marketing that aims towards making the website more search-friendly and increasing its rankings in organic search results.
SEO is possibly the most consistent and valuable marketing channel which can direct a huge amount of website visits. With the years passing by, we all can see that SEO is becoming highly important.
The last year 2020, was a year filled with lessons and surprises for many. And it has made one thing clear and i.e. how important is the role of SEO in digital marketing.
Several types of research show that the organic search still accounts for around 51% of traffic to B2C and B2B sites.
As Google launches different algorithm updates from time to time, this makes the SEO industry is changeable and unpredictable.
This industry is so expansive that the person may begin feeling like a generation gap if he/she has a break of a year or more.
Several things are happening throughout the world of SEO and you need to be on top of all these to ensure rankings and other things are in your control.
Till, Google unveils all the ranking factors, which will not happen, SEO will remain half data-driven and half speculation.
There is constant innovation in SEO, and staying up to date with the newest developments can be challenging. To accomplish top-ranking SEO results, you need to consider various factors, including traffic, backlinks, and social shares.
Staying informed of what’s happening down the pipeline can help a business plan and prevent potential penalties, or a huge drop in their site’s ranking.
8 Excellent SEO Trends to Drive More Traffic in 2021
SEO will still drive traffic in 2021 and is here to stay, but this doesn’t mean what you know of SEO now will be the same SEO that you will notice over the next few years.
That’s why it’s crucial to stay updated and understand exactly what Google will be throwing at you in 2021 and beyond.
The list defined below provides information on some of the most significant and appropriate search engine optimization trends to follow, which further helps to plan the SEO strategy accordingly:
1) Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are defined as a combination of specific factors that Google evaluates as significant for determining a webpage’s overall user experience.
These are all about how quickly the page loads and how stable it is upon loading so that you will understand what you need to do to minimize site components that reduce performance.
Core Web Vitals will not be the principal signal to rank pages on SERP. Google states that it will also proceed to rank web pages with high-quality content and links.
Core Web Vitals are composed up of three specific page speed and user interaction measurements: first input delay, largest contentful paint, and cumulative layout shift.
LCP, Largest Contentful Paint: The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content or largest image or text block to appear on the screen, corresponding to when the page first started loading. A good grade provides users with the idea that the site loads fast.
FID, or First Input Delay: First input delay (FID) measures the time for the site to respond to the first interaction. When a user first interacts with your site, this could be when they click a link, tap on a button, etc, it is the time, in milliseconds. A good grade provides the user a feeling that a site is quick to respond to input and, hence, responsive.
CLS, or Cumulative Layout Shift: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures the visual stability of your site. It is a measure of the sudden shifting of web elements when the page is being rendered.
This helps quantify how frequently users encounter unexpected layout shifts- a low CLS means that the page is pleasing.
So, you should always make page loading speed a priority.
2) Mobile SEO
Mobile device user experience will be a matter of great focus for all SEO experts in 2021. Mobile SEO is all about giving an excellent experience to visitors of your mobile site.
It’s regarding making your mobile site load instantly and without problems while offering content that meets the users’ search intent. In today’s mobile-first world, it’s incredibly important to have a flawless mobile site.
Billions of people have found the enormous benefits of the smartphone. This has made Mobile SEO more important because it helps you reach your customers in the appropriate place at the right time and provide them with the very best experience.
You need to personalize your website content as per the requirements of your users. Google will ultimately neglect your desktop site and simply focus on your mobile site to decide your rankings.
As Google is dropping desktop-only sites, so site owners should be aware of these changes and should ensure that the mobile versions of their websites should correctly reflect the content/keywords that they need to rank in Google’s algorithms.
Also, Read – 8 Best Social Media Platforms for Business in 2021
3) Voice Search
Voice search optimization is defined as the process of optimizing web pages so that they appear in voice searches.
When you optimize your page for voice search, you need to optimize it in a way that people conduct verbal searches. Voice search optimization provides you the opportunity to have your pages read out loud through a voice search device.
Today all people tend to speak more conversationally than to enter search terms on a laptop or desktop computer, whether they use their voice assistant from a smart home device or on their phone.
As per Google, a tremendous 27% of the whole global population is utilizing voice search on their mobile phones. Furthermore, several reports show that more than half of smartphone users are using voice search technology in 2021.
While optimizing for voice search, it is essential to optimize for long-tail keywords. These are search terms that are longer than your average search query and are usually more specific.
Knowing the purpose of voice searches allows you to structure your website by answering questions that users are actively searching for.
Voice search is expected to continue developing as an SEO trend for years, so it is very important to learn how to optimize your website for voice search.
4) Artificial Intelligence
A developing trend worth considering is the appearance of artificial intelligence (AI) for SEO. Artificial intelligence (AI) has permanently changed search.
Users can get custom search results based on their prior behaviors, their devices, their locations, and numbers of other factors. Today, search engines know what users need.
This technology change is creating consequential transformation in search engine optimization (SEO) as well.
It takes years to understand the search engine algorithms to rank web pages. And then planning strategies accordingly demands a lot of time.
But utilization of machine learning and AI can be a game-changer. It would be much more effective and influential in terms of decoding the algorithms and generating beneficial strategies.
Seamless integration of AI tools within your brand’s SEO strategy can help you get out of tedious manual work.
These tools give excellent ways to maintain and record data, decrease data errors, and recognize trends in their datasets to create better SEO value.
You can use these AI tools as supplements to your existing SEO strategy to improve your results.
5) Video Marketing
Video marketing for SEO is an important tool for improving the website ranking to outrank your online competitors.
Various ranking factors determine where the page will appear in the search engine results pages while optimizing the website for search engines, particularly Google (SERPs).
YouTube is the next most popular search engine after Google with above 1 billion users. Therefore, even if you are not into videos, it’s high time to get started and grow with them.
While appropriate text posts and images on your site can give you a lift in the search rankings, but different types of website videos will provide you an additional edge when it comes to getting your business stand out online.
Videos can have a great potential for increasing your SEO campaign success and producing highly qualified traffic. Video content can provide social shares and substantial backlinks when used accurately.
And customers today are utilizing video resources more than ever to improve their decision of purchasing products and services. Businesses must look to create and optimize video content to fight for the short consideration span of engaged consumers.
So, you should utilize video to drive SEO traffic to your business. You can begin with Instagram TV, Facebook Live, or creating a YouTube channel.
6) Google’s BERT
Google’s BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), which was first announced in 2019, is an algorithm that has an excellent impact on every brand’s SEO strategy.
BERT is not essentially transforming the way Google presents content to users, it’s simply making Google’s algorithms more ‘conversational’ and natural in their approach.
Now, Google’s algorithm can understand the intent of the searcher. In easy words, now Google can understand things like the human brain. BERT works in more than 70 languages and for nearly every query in Google English.
One point to remember here is that Google BERT is not an algorithmic penalty. It’s a division of the Google search engine that assists in filtering out the most appropriate and useful content to users by interpreting search queries and content as humans.
It will simply provide favor to those that show the most outstanding results to users, which is what Google has constantly tried to do.
Strategies like search engine results page (SERP) analysis, keyword research, and keyword-focused content creation should be your priorities to succeed.
7) Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of finding words and phrases that people use in search engines, like Google, YouTube, and Bing.
Keyword research influences every other SEO task that you perform, including discovering content topics, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion.
You need to have some skills and creativity to get these keywords. However, the secret is Google Search Console, it can become your gold mine where you can simply find unique keywords for your business.
You need to understand the intent and find long-tail targeted keywords. While SEO tools are essential to use, and you need to analyze the SERP for that keyword before picking it.
Keyword research helps in optimizing ads, landing pages, Google My Business Listings, blog content, and more. Traffic-generating keywords can further drive sales for your business.
This is the reason why you should do your keyword research with patience and get keywords that can simply rank and generate revenue.
8) Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are bits of information that typically appear at the top of Google’s search results in that rectangular box. They give answers to the search question by extracting relevant content from top-ranking pages.
These snippets are not only useful for the searchers but additionally beneficial for websites.
But, you cannot choose the content that is displayed in a Featured Snippet for any provided search; this task is done by the Google algorithm bots.
The exact process of making your web page in the Featured Snippet isn’t clear. SEO experts and Marketers utilize some strategies that might be helpful.
For instance, to get in the featured results, you need to answer a specific question, and answering in bullet points or well-structured content would be more useful.
These featured snippets are linked with SEO in two ways. Firstly, they are a way to gain more views from organic search results without having to pay for higher Google rankings.
Secondly, these snippets increase the count of searches that don’t require a click, when a Google user does not click on any of the search results.
In Conclusion
The field of SEO is growing rapidly, business owners and promoters need to adapt quickly as per the new industry standards.
They should always keep up with technology advancements and the outcomes of aspects like site pace, backlinks, and schema by dedicating time to the fundamentals of rich content development and copywriting. There is a lot to learn and consider.
SEO is getting more advanced and complicated than before. Gone are the days of simple keywords optimization.
With the above-defined SEO trends, you need to consider everything from image optimization to data science. Implementing these SEO strategies appropriately on your website will help you stay ahead of your competitors. Start today, all the best!
Also, Read – Top 9 Digital Marketing Trends 2021 That Will Save Your Business
