SEO is also known as search engine optimization is a highly effective route to attract target audiences to your website – if it is used in the right manner.
SEO is continuously evolving and is on top of the latest updates. While performing SEO may be challenging, it is definitely worth every bit of the effort.
About 80% of the users concentrate exclusively on the organic results & avoid paid listings. And some 28% of the searches usually convert into leads.
SEO performance of top-ranking quality needs attention to numerous metrics involving backlinks, traffic, and social shares – just to name a few.
Here in this guide, we will give you some great insights into the most relevant and timely SEO trends that you can anticipate in the year 2021, which would accordingly allow you to prepare for your Search Engine Optimization strategy.
Here are some of the SEO trends you should watch for in the year 2021.
1. Relevant & high-quality content
Google previously confirmed that their Rankbrain AI algorithm is a crucial factor that helps decide where a specific web page ends in the search results.
Rankbrain visualizes the activities of the user with the search listing in an attempt to qualify for quality and relevancy.
For instance, if a particular user clicks on the page, which provides helpful data/info and remains on that page for several minutes, this probably leads to higher ranking as compared to thin pages that are not at all useful or attractive to read and it has a very high bounce rate.
Yes, keywords still are important and you are required to ensure you are including the necessary keywords into the content in hopes of appearing in top searches for that specific keyword.
However, the algorithm of Google now is way too sophisticated at judging when content covers a particular topic comprehensively, instead of just stuffing in a few keywords.
Instead of creating keyword-focused content, you should ensure to create the highest quality content that provides answers as per users’ requirements.
2. Voice search impacts search queries
Owing to the innovations like Apple Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa, the technology of voice search has become exceedingly popular. It is in fact predicted that about 55% of the households would soon have a smart speaker by the year 2022.
For optimizing voice search, considering keywords are crucial. Recognize longer phrases, which users use in their daily conversation. Usually, voice searches tend to be better if it is longer, with phrases that are natural sounding.
3. Mobile-friendliness influence search rankings
Google has implemented an index called mobile-first, which means mobile versions of various sites are taken into consideration to confirm their importance than desktop versions.
As more than half of the searches are conducted via mobile phones, it makes complete sense for Google to take the role of mobile searches into consideration to set search rankings.
In the year 2021, having a mobile-friendly site is important for mostly all the desktop version sites. Responsive design is the gold standard solution prevalent these days.
Also, you can run your website via a mobile usability report on the Google Search Console to know how much improvement can be done.
4. Effective SEO tactic needs inclusion of videos
Videos available online appear to be way forward. For instance, YouTube has over 1 billion users. In case your business is not into creating video content, 2021 is the perfect time to do so.
Are you not convinced? Here is a fact to deepen your thought. As per Cisco, almost all quality videos are projected to exceed all other forms of content in reference to consumption.
But the question arises as to how you can efficiently optimize the video content? Ensure to optimize the name and description of the video channel first.
The description should not be crammed with relevant keywords but must provide an insight, which is user-friendly.
Apart from this, keywords are also essential. For instance, if you are optimizing for your YouTube channel, you may get inspired by the autocomplete feature of the platform.
Begin typing in your YouTube search space, and you will find pops in your search field, which depicts a list of the suggested keywords, that people search for on YouTube.
5. Long-form content
As per findings, long reads of over 3000 words can get 3 times more traffic & 4 times more shares on various social media channels.
Also, they can attain 3.5 times more backlinks as compared to articles of average length, say near to 1200 words.
Focus on long-form content to attain higher search rankings. Also, ensure to put forward quality content as length with zero quality may not fetch you the desired results.
Quality content is crucial as your main focus is to provide shareable content that helps keep the readers engaged.
How can you attain this? Firstly, break your content into numerous sections with H3 and H2 subheadings to ensure more scannability. The subheading is way too crucial for mobile websites.
Secondly, ensure you link the content with relevant and authoritative sources that have solid authority scores.
Lastly, ensure that your content is simple to share. Add in obvious sharing links at the headline and also on your concluding para so that readers can easily share with just a click.
6. UX and site structure
Publishing quality content will not do anything if your website is impossible for the users and the Google site crawlers to easily navigate.
For this purpose, ensure your site is structured around a clear hierarchical structure that concentrates on user experience.
Good user experience indicates that searchers have the likeability to stick around and explore your website for a long time.
It is definitely a positive sign as your site has a huge chance to be rewarded with a good ranking.
By going through the basics, you can make sure about the SEO friendliness of the site structure.
A few of the SEO friendliness tips are short URLs with keywords inserted in them, simple navigation, elimination of the duplicate content pages present on your site, and generation of the site map.
7. Site Speed
Web-users nowadays are impatient. They want data/information as soon as possible. This is generally true for those who are mobile users & voice searchers that continue to fetch answers instantly.
For this particular reason, it is crucial to optimize your website as soon as possible.
Lowering just a few microseconds from your website load time can make a considerable difference to rankings, specifically if that means your website now loads quicker as compared to your competitors.
If your business is looking to refresh its site in 2021, ensure the speed of your website should be on top priority. If not refreshing your site still you can increase the speed of your existing website by compressing the images used on your website.
By using the Google Pagespeed insight tool, you can view how fast your website pages are opening. Also, this tool offers necessary tips that can help to increase the speed of your website.
8. Featured Snippets
More than 10% of all the search results show a featured snippet in listings that demonstrates Google is utilizing this data/info to endow a better experience to the searchers.
Owing to the trend of searches being conducted through mobile devices and users looking for quicker answers, the usage of featured snippets has also increased.
Web pages with featured snippets provide information searchers with the necessary information through search engine result pages without having to go deep into the website to find the answer.
Sanjay Dey