There is no doubt that SEO has helped transform a lot of businesses all over the globe. The innovation that happens in the SEO industry is definitely immense and will continue to thrive. However, there will be some setbacks that might occur because of these innovations.
Keeping up with the trends is the most common among them. Once the SEO guy fails to implement the right approach to their strategies, it is expected that the results will be not that significant.
So it is important to know the current trends to avoid wasting too much of your effort. Always take note that people concentrates on the organic results rather than the paid listing. This entails that people who make money are the ones who has better SEO efficiency and mostly can keep up with the trends.
To give you an idea of the various SEO trends that you can encounter, here are some examples:
Artificial Intelligence
People nowadays have more interactive usage of online content because of the various elements that was added to it. Artificial intelligence in SEO becomes more significant than ever producing better algorithms. It is the one responsible for better content suggestions on various social media sites.
RankBrain is an example of the previous algorithm used by no other than Google, the largest search engine company. It was developed by Greg Corrado who is a senior computer scientist of Google. This algorithm is made to impress by having the ability to learn things automatically. However, the information is already limited to the already given data for retrieval.
It only entails that RankBrain will still have lots of room for improvement. Although people will not usually know what is inside an algorithm, being watchful about it would be a helpful approach to keep up with the trends.
The bottom line is that artificial intelligence mostly gets its data from the user interaction. The most common examples are the following:
- The sites that the user is visiting
- How long did the user visited the site
- The back links shared by the website owners and users
Voice Search
Right now, searching on Google and other search engine sites are not totally limited to text but as well as voice recognition too. It all started with the different voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri. Its popularity paves way for more gadgets to come out of the market such as smart speakers.
Keywords are also a big factor when we are talking about voice searching. You must figure out the common phrases that are used in interacting with other people. Go for natural-sounding key phrases as they tend to be more popular. They are usually shortened phrases as they can be easily spoken.
Mobile-Friendly
There is no doubt that a lot of percentage of internet users nowadays rely on the use of smartphones. They can actually function just like a regular computer as the majority of the apps that you can find on a computer are also found in a smartphone.
Having said so, you must be able to have a site that is perfectly viewable on all platforms. This will result in an increase in traffic which in return give more profit to your business. Moreover, see to it to put similar meta robots tags on both platforms for better efficiency.
EAT Principle
The EAT principle is getting a fair share of popularity nowadays in the SEO industry. This principle means expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. By knowing the usefulness of the content of the site, its visibility will be more prevalent.
Hence, website owners must be more particular with their niches. Every time you will post something, it is important to know if that post is relevant to your niche. By doing so, you are increasing the chances of search engines finding your site. The best thing to do is to research first prior to posting and know your market before starting a site. One trick that you can consider is link your posts to reputable sites.
Go For Long Articles
It might be challenging to create long form articles. However, its benefits will always outnumber the effort that you will have to make. Moreover, long articles get more shares compared to their counterparts. As a result, there will be more traffic that will enter your site.
Right now, the most ideal word count runs from 3000 or more words. However, the usual word count that we are encountering on the web is just 900 to 1,200 words only. It only entails that long-form articles provide more engagement to the readers.
Heading Placements
When we are talking about articles, headings are typically a requirement. They organize chunks of
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How do you achieve this? First, break up your content into sections with H2 and H3 subheadings to make it more scannable. Subheadings are especially important for mobile sites. Second, ensure that you link to relevant, authoritative sources with a solid authority score. Finally, ensure your content is easy to share. Include obvious sharing links at the headline and again at the conclusion so that readers can share with a quick click.
Our SEO Content Template Tool can help optimize your content for search. Enter the query you want to rank for, and you’ll get recommendations on content length, semantically related keywords to include, and a closer look at the top-ranking pages.
SEMrush SEO Content Template screenshot
6. Featured Snippets Will Become More Prominent
Don’t panic. You won’t have to generate long-term content exclusively if you want to climb the Google rankings. Featured snippets, which were rolled out in 2017, are a sort of shortcut to gaining prominence in Google — and they’re very brief. Sometimes, when you type something into Google, you may notice a box at the top of the SERPs, above the actual results. That’s a snippet.
Featured Snippet example screenshot
Scoring a featured snippet is a great way to get on that coveted first page of results. What’s more, snippets steal significant traffic from competitors.
Featured snippets show a chunk of information, often structured as a Q&A or brief bullet-point, how-to guide. There are also rich snippets, including images, star-based reviews, product prices, and similar bits of information. To create snippets, focus on question-based queries and relevant keywords. You can use the Google search function “ people also ask” for inspiration.
7. Predictive Search Is Set to Improve
Google Discover was launched in 2017, unleashing a new kind of search — one that doesn’t even require a user query. Discover is another one of Google’s AI-driven tools. The content recommendation tool identifies user behavioral patterns over time and gradually learns these habits. With this information, Discover can identify the most accurate content most likely to interest the user.
Google Discover already claims more than 800 million active users. To appear, you don’t have to do anything special. If Google indexes your page, it will be included. Content is ranked based on algorithms inspecting content quality, and user interest. Although Google has communicated no precise factors, it seems that location history, browsing history, app usage, calendars, search history, and home and work locations are all relevant.
8. An Effective SEO Strategy Will Need to Include Video
Online video seems to be the way forward. YouTube has more than 1 billion users. If you aren’t creating video content, now is the time to get started. Not convinced? Here’s food for thought: According to Cisco, video is projected to surpass all other content forms in terms of consumption.
How can you optimize that video content, though? Make sure to optimize your video channel name and description. The description shouldn’t just be crammed with keywords but provide a user-friendly overview of what your channel is about.
Beyond this, keywords are crucial. For example, if you’re optimizing for YouTube, you can get inspired by the platform’s auto-complete feature. Start typing in your video’s topic and see what pops up in the search field, which is essentially a list of suggested keywords, telling you precisely what people on YouTube are searching for.
9. Image Optimization Will Play a Larger Role in Search
Visual image search has evolved drastically. It used to be that people could just look at images. In the future, people will be able to use images to purchase products, obtain information, and more. Google has long insisted on the proper marking and optimization of images, so it makes sense that this is part of their long-term plan.
If the images on your website aren’t optimized, take care of it now. Use high-quality, relevant images, and make sure to customize the file name, labeling the photo file so that it’s relevant to the content on the corresponding page. Use alt tags, which crawlers use to classify images. Finally, add images to your site map, where they are even easier to crawl. You can check out other posts where we discuss image SEO for more tips, too.
10. There Will Be More Importance Placed on Semantically Related Keywords
SEO professionals used to focus on primary keywords as if they had blinders on. Now, we know secondary keywords are just as important. Semantic search and intent optimization will gain further prominence in the future. Google isn’t just looking at strings of words anymore. It’s analyzing query context and trying to discern a user’s search intent, meaning that the more relevant information provided — via logically related primary and secondary keywords — the better.
We offer a comprehensive keyword tool to identify semantically related keywords and keyword difficulty to prioritize which queries you want to target first.
SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool screenshot
To truly address the semantic search, create content designed to answer a question that your target audience would pose. Optimize content for topic clusters instead of focusing solely on keywords. Finally, use structured data when logical. Most importantly, don’t write for bots but people.
11. Local Search Listings Will Play a Larger Role in SEO Strategies
When people think of the internet, they often think of its global nature. The fact is, most people use search engines to find localized goods and services. They might be hunting for a neighborhood restaurant, for example. Local SEO is important — and it’s evolving. This evolution is in part because of the rise of zero-click searches — which some SEO marketers are dubbing the new normal.
In a zero-click search, the user’s query is answered via the SERP itself. They thus don’t click on any of the ranking results. One reason for the rise in zero-click searches is the increase of featured snippets. Many zero-click searches are local searches that show the results on the SERP in what’s been dubbed a “local pack.”
How do you get your business into that local pack? Start by creating a Google My Business page. Having a strong backlink profile is also important. You can check what kinds of backlinks your competitors get for inspiration and target those yourself.
12. Data and Analytics Should Become Your Priority If You Want to Remain Ahead in Rankings
Data science lets you understand buyers, visualize campaigns, and create targeted messages. Analytics can help you verify which URLs are getting crawled, identify referral sources, check page loading times, indexing, redirects, response errors, bounce rates, and more. You can also use data science to identify pages that you do not want crawlers indexing and pinpoint unusual traffic sources, such as potential spam sites (which will hurt your EAT credibility).
How do you capture all of this information? There are many SEO industry analysis tools out there. The SEMrush SEO Toolkit gives you the technology you need to tackle everything, from rank tracking to competitive research, on-page SEO, technical SEO, link building, and more. Staying on top of these details lets you see where you are succeeding and, just as importantly, failing. This method lets you address problems and continuously improve your web presence.