Google makes about 500 to 600 updates to its search engine algorithm annually. Unfortunately, each update could impact your organic search engine rankings. Low rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs) can impact your ability to reach consumers.
With a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, you can generate brand awareness, leads, and sales. You’ll need to keep up with the latest SEO trends for 2022 to improve your rankings, though.
Read on to discover the top trends you need to add to your SEO strategy today.
Page Experience and Core Web Vitals
In order to improve your organic SERP rankings, you’ll need to provide a positive website user experience (UX). Improving your website UX will ensure your site is easy for visitors to navigate and use. The easier your site is to explore, the more likely visitors will linger, increasing your dwell times.
High dwell times can improve your organic SERP rankings.
In order to provide the best possible UX on your website, make sure your site is:
- Fast
- Mobile-optimized
- User-friendly
- Secure
You can run your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test to determine if it meets these standards.
Even a one-second delay in your website’s load times can cause conversions to drop by 20%. Meanwhile, visitors who have a negative experience on your mobile site are 62% less likely to make a future purchase. If your site isn’t fast or mobile-optimized, visitors might leave without exploring additional pages.
As a result, your bounce rate will start to increase. A high bounce rate indicates you’re offering a negative UX. Google might drop your SEO rankings as a result.
To focus on SEO for websites, Google has recently created its Core Web Vitals. The Core Web Vitals list a series of ranking factors that indicate your site offers a positive UX.
Make sure to consider your website’s accessibility as well. You can follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards to get started.
EAT and Long-Form Content
Not many businesses recognize the importance of SEO optimization. SEO can help improve your rankings on search engines like Google. Higher rankings will help people who already have an interest in your business find your brand.
Once they find your website content on SERPs, you can generate:
- Brand awareness and recognition
- Brand credibility and authority
- Website traffic
- Leads and sales
- A higher ROI
Your website content gives you the chance to demonstrate your experience and expertise. In time, you could become an industry thought leader. Recognizing your expertise might make consumers feel more inclined to trust your brand.
Generating brand trust could help encourage consumers to give your business a try, helping you generate leads and sales. Then, you can improve your ROI, allowing your business to grow.
In order to improve your rankings, you’ll need to create high-quality content. When writing blog content, focus on EAT: expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Show consumers they deserve your trust.
To appeal to the latest SEO trends, try writing more long-form content, too. Longer posts can help increase your website dwell times. As people linger on your site longer, your SEO rankings could improve.
SERP Features
Google has also made changes to its search engine result pages. For example, you might notice featured snippets, which appear at the top of each page. Featured snippets can appear as summaries, lists, videos, and other formats.
Google’s Knowledge Graph is getting smarter, allowing you to rank at the top of SERPs. Ranking at the top will allow you to reap the benefits of SEO. You can reach relevant customers to attract them to your site and brand.
The existing SERP features are continuing to expand as Google’s machine learning abilities improve.
To appeal to this trend, consider how you’re formatting your blog content.
For example, you can focus on long-tail keywords that are phrased as questions to appear for voice searches. Many voice search answers also appear as featured snippets.
You can also start optimizing your video content to appear for featured snippets.
Video Optimization
Video content marketing can help you appeal to consumers with engaging, eye-catching content. When adding videos to your blog, make sure to optimize them for SEO. Then, your video content can appear as a featured snippet.
Make sure your video posts include the focus keyword in the title, URL, SEO title, and SEO description. The title and description will appear on SERPS. Appealing titles and descriptions can encourage more people to click on your content.
Then, you can improve your clickthrough rate, which can help your rankings improve.
As part of your video optimization strategy, make sure to add a transcript to your videos as well. Since video posts don’t contain text, Google’s bots might struggle to crawl and index the content. Adding a transcript will help you rank for relevant search queries.
Semantic Search
As Google’s machine learning abilities improve, it’s able to better understand what users expect to find while online. As a result, the algorithm uses past data for contextual meaning-based searches. This process allows it to improve the user’s experience on SERPs.
Google is now able to provide predictive search results based on the consumer’s online behaviors.
To appeal to these searches, make sure to gather both audience and keyword research. Personalize your content to appeal to your ideal customers. Feature secondary keywords within your posts to appear for relevant searches, too.
You don’t have to develop your SEO strategy alone this year. Consider partnering with the team at Direction.com to get started.
Machine Learning
As you work on appealing to these SEO trends, make sure to track new trends as they emerge as well. Google’s machine learning abilities are changing how we create and optimize content.
Try automating your content creation, data analysis, and chatbots to appeal to more users online.
Rank Up: Apply These SEO Trends for 2022
Do you want to experience the benefits of SEO this year? Make sure to add these SEO trends to your existing SEO strategy. Following these trends can help boost your rankings.
Then, you can reach new consumers to generate fresh leads and sales.
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