SEO Trends to look out for in 2021
Today, we all know how important and effective SEO is to attract consumers to your online platform. But as time flies, old trends gradually sink into oblivion. SEO-related activities are continuously being updated, but surprisingly, some businesses are not in a hurry to give it a priority. It will become difficult for businesses to surpass their competitors if they do not adapt to upcoming trends.
Recently, the SEO landscape began to change in many profound ways with the introduction of new technology such as AI, voice assistance, rise in mobile experiences, and also Google trends and other search engines. As you can see, far from dead, SEO is becoming more competitive, technical, and nuanced.
To get businesses head started for the new year, we’ve summed up the top SEO trends that will help you boost your traffic and rank your website.
E.A.T Concept
The BERT update has been rolled out and most websites have started seeing a negative impact. With BERT, Google mainly focuses on the quality of the content along with the relevant keywords and user intent. Google checks the overall reputation of the website through the EAT factor. EAT is an abbreviation for Expertise, Authority & Trustworthiness. These are controversial topics today in the SEO community. Google wants its users to receive only relevant and fresh data. This specific algorithm focuses on detecting and punishing websites that may cause harm to users with its content. Google identifies the right entities to mark the webpage accurately and with the help of AI and the ever-growing knowledge graph, Google will be able to measure the EAT with more confidence. To ensure your EAT works best, introduce yourself properly on the about page, gather positive reviews on your internet platforms, get backlinks from an authoritative source.
Get a SEO audit done today by experts at Newlit Technologies to understand where your business can grow digitally.
Local SEO
Research states that around 80% of local searches that are performed through mobile devices convert into sales. Local SEO helps you put your business in front of the customer at the exact moment they are searching for any product or service. Google constantly keeps on updating its algorithms regarding local SEO and how the results are being shown on the search engine platform. Businesses in the local league cannot ignore their local optimization anymore if they want their users to know about their presence. With Google My Business, you will be able to analyze your performance, learn about and track your local competitors, and work with reviews that the audience may leave on Google.
Also, Google My Business keeps adding new features to its list. With these, businesses can now publish posts, answer questions, offer reservations, and also set up messaging from their listings. Every business needs to optimize its GMB listing, explore its various features, and keep a close eye on the reviews.
Don't forget to ensure your Local SEO is up to the mark.
Optimizing Voice Search
Voice search provides us information at any moment, anywhere. With the prominence of AI and chatbots, voice search is going to be the latest entry in the upcoming SEO trends. Due to the increasing number of mobile users, voice search will be showing massive growth in the coming years. The best way you can optimize your content for voice search is to organize it according to your audience’s most likely spoken queries and languages. Start some paragraphs for your blogs with questions like what, why, how, when, and so on.
Make sure you draft content thinking about the niches where voice search could be used the most. Also, one needs to keep in mind that the long-tail keywords play an important role in voice search. As most of the voice searches are carried out through mobile devices, the mobile optimization for your website is more important than ever before. Businesses must know that their website speed is also essential for voice search and all other types of search. If your website isn’t able to provide a quick result to the searcher’s query, you may not be worthy of the Google Assistant’s attention.
If you feel your website is losing out on the voice search you can quickly get your website audit done with Newlit Technologies.
Voice search is going to play a huge role in the future - don't ignore optimizing for it!
Structure Your Data
As we all know, structured data is not a new trend. We’ve been hearing about it for years. But one can’t ignore its growing importance as it's yet not a widely adopted SEO tactic. The central theme of SEO in coming years would be based on how people search for their requirements on the search engine. Structured data will help Google break down the data to determine the context, intent, meaning, and then provide the best and relevant results to its users. The most immediate application for structured data businesses can use is Snippets, which are extremely important if you want to rank. Featured snippets appear in a block without users having to click on a specific website. When the content of your website appears on featured snippets, it not only increases the website's credibility but creates brand awareness. Moreover, these featured snippets help businesses compete against their competitors.
An example of Snippets.
Quality Content with Video Marketing Strategy
Quality content has always helped websites rank their popularity for a long time and remain in first place. The better content you build, the more people will notice you. As the emphasis on quality content continues to grow, it is now time to adopt robust content marketing strategies in 2021 SEO trends.
Here are few tips for content marketing that can help your website and SEO ranking:
Create a buyer persona
Conduct search intent research
Build content in a format that users actually want
Lastly, hire strong content and copywriters.
But that’s not where it ends. Video marketing is also a part of your content creation. Video has gained a lot of prominence. Consumers these days would rather prefer to watch quick videos than read a long article. With a shift in preferences towards video both for people and SERP, it's time for businesses to plan and create effective video content for their product and optimize these videos to improve their search engine visibility, generate website traffic and increase conversation ratio.
Don't forget!
Zero Search Result
Zero search result is when you search for something and Google provides you with an answer right at the top of the search results, so you do not have to search or click through to anywhere else. This one-stop-shop search result will be immensely popularized and has already accounted for more than 50% of Google searches today. Many businesses find it a roadblock as it eliminates the need for users to click through the website links. But companies can optimize their webpages for a zero-click result to help their website rank and increase the organic traffic to their webpage.
So, What Now?
With the above mentioned SEO trends, businesses must regularly update their relevant content, optimize their Google My Business, improve their website speed and user experience. This will enable the website’s intended goal of SEO to bring in traffic and boost conversation rate.
As SEO trends keep on changing every year, your website also needs to be updated to stay on the same page. If you are not up to date with the latest trends, Google may drop down your website quickly. Understanding SEO factors and Google algorithms are necessary in this digital world to stay ahead of your competitors over online platforms. Irrespective of the type of industry your business belongs to, you should always work on improving its online presence.
Sometimes, however, being ahead requires time and resource investment, which many businesses today simply may not have. Let our experts work with you to identify the problem areas and make your online presence a strong one! Get in touch today for an in-depth free consultation and quote today.