The search engine optimization industry continues to change and evolve rapidly. New trends emerge, giving rise to new best practices. Other trends fall out of favour as marketers figure out which strategies are effective and which are not.
However, that does not mean that all of the changes are minor or unimportant. Some major shifts in how people use the internet and search engines have occurred in recent years, with implications for SEO marketers everywhere.
If you’re looking at ways to keep your SEO strategy relevant now and into the future, we’ve got you covered. In this post, we’ll be going over some of the top SEO trends that marketers need to know about right now if they want to stay ahead of the game moving forward.
The top SEO trends of 2022
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Understand Your Site's Core Web Vitals.
Example of Core Web Vitals Report in Google Search Console
The first thing that SEO marketers should focus on is understanding their site’s core web vitals. What are web vitals? They’re the key components that are necessary for a site to be successful in the SERPs.
These include things like the load speed of your site, its security, its domain authority, the amount of content on your pages, your site’s relevance to the topics that you’re targeting, and more.
Google’s algorithms are getting smarter every year, and what was once enough to rank well might not be enough in just a few short years.
If you’re serious about optimizing your site, then you need to stay up to date with the latest trends and developments in the industry. You need to know how to check your site’s vitals, and how to improve them where necessary. That way, you’ll be prepared for any changes that come about.
If you don’t know how to improve your site’s vitals, then you’re at risk of dropping in the SERPs, even if you’re currently ranking high.
Google’s BERT.
Another important SEO trend to keep an eye on is Google’s BERT. BERT is an acronym that stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, and it’s a machine learning algorithm.
The goal of this algorithm is to more accurately understand search queries and their intent and then to use that information to better rank results.
This algorithm was released in late 2018 but has already had a major impact on SEO, and it’s expected to impact SEO even more in the next few years.
For one thing, BERT’s release has sparked the return of long-tail keyword phrases, which were previously out of favour in the SEO industry.
Long-tail keyword phrases are those that are two or three (or more) words long. They’re often very specific and highly targeted, which makes them great for SEO.
They’re also a lot easier for Google to understand and rank well. BERT’s release showed marketers that Google is still evolving, which means that SEO practices that were once effective may no longer be enough to keep a website ranking.
Keyword research.
For many years one of the top SEO trends was to use keyword tools, but those days are behind us.
While keyword tools were once used by marketers to find new keyword phrases and topics to target, they are no longer an effective strategy.
Instead, marketers should now be focusing on researching topics that their potential customers are already searching for and then writing content to satisfy those needs.
But how do you do that? Well, the first step is to identify which topics you want to write about. Then, you have to conduct some research to find out what people are searching for in relation to your topic.
From there, you can come up with a list of long-tail keywords that you can target in your content. It’s essential to target keywords that are relevant to the topic you’re covering.
This way, you’ll draw in readers who are actively searching for the information that you have to offer.
Original content
One of the best SEO trends for any website is original content. It’s important to remember that Google’s goal is to provide the best search results possible for its users.
To do that, it needs to know what each website is about, what topics they cover, and how reliable they are.
One of the best ways to show Google that your site is trustworthy and useful is by providing original content. When you publish blog posts, articles, guides, etc. that are written by you or someone on your team, you’re proving that your website has value and is worthy of being ranked high in the SERPs.
The more quality content you publish, the better. But even if you’re busy, you can hire a content marketing company to help you out.
Voice search
Voice search has been around for a few years now, but it’s expected to become even more important in the coming years.
With this type of search, people speak queries into their mobile devices, and those devices then provide information or direct them to websites.
Voice search is expected to increase in popularity in the years ahead because it’s easier than typing and more accurate than speaking.
It’s expected to become the preferred method of search for many people, which means that SEO marketers need to understand how to optimize for it.
For starters, you need to ensure that your site’s content is written so that it’s easily understood when it’s spoken. You also need to include plenty of keywords in your content so that it gets noticed when people are searching verbally.
How Voice Search Optimization Works | 5 Voice Search SEO Tips
Another major shift in the SEO industry is the emergence of artificial intelligence. This is a field of technology that has been growing in popularity in recent years, and it’s expected to have a big impact on SEO in the future.
Artificial Intelligence(AI) is a type of technology that is meant to mimic human thought. It’s currently mainly used in customer service, but it’s expected to become increasingly prevalent in SEO too.
In fact, some SEO firms are already using AI to optimize their client websites. For SEO marketers, this trend means that it’s more important than ever to ensure that your content is high quality.
With AI in the picture, Google’s algorithm will be looking for websites that provide valuable information to their readers, which means that spammy content may be penalized more harshly than it has in the past.
Video Marketing
Another major SEO trend that marketers have been focusing on in recent years is video marketing. Video marketing has always been an effective strategy, but it’s become more important than ever as people spend more and more time online.
People are spending more time than ever on the internet, and video is a great way to capture their attention and keep them engaged. With SEO, it can be difficult to rank videos on your website, but it’s possible.
To do so, you first need to make videos and then optimize them for SEO like you would with other types of content.
From there, you can share your videos across various platforms to help them go viral and bring in more traffic to your website.
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are snippets of content that appear at the top of Google search engine results pages.
They can be for almost any search term and are a great way to drive traffic to your website.
To get your content featured in this way, you need to make it as relevant to the search term as possible.
If your content is the most relevant, then it’s likely to be chosen as a featured snippet.
To make your content more relevant, use long-tail keywords, create enticing headlines, and try to include lots of useful information in your content.
Influencer SEO
Another major SEO trend that marketers have been taking advantage of in recent years is influencer SEO.
When you work with relevant influencers and get them to promote your content, you can drive lots of traffic to your website quickly.
To do this, you first need to find relevant influencers who are interested in your content. From there, reach out to them and ask if they would be willing to share your content with their followers.
Many influencers will be happy to promote your content for a small fee, which is another SEO trend that many marketers have been taking advantage of.
Authentic first-hand experience with a specific topic (the new “E” in EEAT)
In December 2022, Google has introduced an expansion to its renowned EAT principle, which stands for Expertise, Authority, Trust. The new addition to this acronym is “Experience.” Google has now incorporated the evaluation of the author or creator’s experience as a crucial factor in determining the quality of content.
So, what does “experience” precisely entail? Google emphasizes the significance of content creators possessing firsthand, real-world experience related to the subject matter they discuss.
To illustrate, let’s consider the scenario of being the founder of a Digital Adertising agency. In this case, you can confidently and authoritatively address upcoming Online Ad trends in 2023, drawing from your practical experience in the field. However, if you were to create content for a health website discussing common causes of heart disease, the content’s quality would be compromised as you lack medical expertise and experience in healthcare.
Authority is also a big part of EAT because Google wants to show users authoritative content when they search for something.
This means that if you want someone searches for something like “best shoes ever”, it wants to give them an article from BuzzFeed or some other large brand instead of showing them low-quality content from smaller sites that lack any authority or trustworthiness.
What does this mean for you? It means that you need to focus on creating content that helps your customers reach their goals.
Write about topics related to your business that will help people solve their problems or meet their needs — not just sell products or services!
Conclusion
SEO trends are constantly evolving, and the search engine landscape is always changing. To be successful in SEO, you need to stay on top of these trends and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Implement these SEO trends to drive traffic in 2022
- Core Web Vitals
- Google’s BERT
- Keyword research
- Original content
- Voice search
- Artificial intelligence
- Video marketing
- Featured snippets
- Influencer SEO
- EAT & Branded SEO
Content is King
As long as the internet exists, content will be the most important part of SEO. If you have unique, original content that answers questions that people have, then you’ll be able to generate organic traffic.
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