Among various mediums available to promote and market your products, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the most reliable one. If the latest estimations are to be believed, SEO drives over 35 percent of all website visit done online. SEO is growing and continuously evolving.
The way SEO is helping marketers in having massive online visibility, it’s going to stay. There is no doubt about this. ‘SEO is dying’ speculations are a myth. The only thing that has changed is the way we perceived it. Strategies and activities that were once termed integral and key to SEO are now no more relevant. Similarly, what we think is important today in terms of SEO can go obsolete or irrelevant months later.
SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2021
Thus, to grow your online visibility and generate traffic through SEO, stay updated to changing trends of search engine optimization in 2021. You have to understand every aspect of SEO and various ways to align with them.
Let’s look into Major SEO trends for 2021 that will give your campaigns a winning edge.
User-focused Strategy
Gone are the days when keyword-filled content and bulk link acquisition were enough to bring top search rankings. Google bots are now too smart to be tricked by thin content and spam links.
After the 2012 Penguin update that aimed at black hat SEO, Google shifted its focus more on users instead of search. The idea that Google put forward is - What’s good for the user is good for SEO.
With its user-first strategy, Googe wants to offer the best possible user experience to searchers. To rank the websites in SERP, Google looks for those sites that satisfy the user intent and provide the best answers for user queries.
To determine the worth of the sites to be ranked at the top of the SERP, Google ensures that they provide valuable content and offer a seamless user experience.
Search Intent and Conversion
User’s search intent is now the core element Google is focusing on. Technically, search intent is something that the user has in mind while searching for the answers for their queries through Google search.
To understand the user intent, discover the results showing up in the SERP against a particular query. It will give you an idea about how Google is looking at the best and the most relevant results that match the user’s intent.
Upon observing the search results, you will be able to create content that matches the query and aligns with the user’s search intent. Google algorithm is smart enough to detect searcher’s intent in a search query and rank those posts on top that are offering the best answers.
If you can understand searchers’ needs, you will have an edge. The goal here is to get more organic traffic and leads for the business. Massive traffic without potential conversions is utter waste.
Page Experience and Core web Vitals
Page experience algorithm and Core Web Vitals that Google announced last year became important ranking signals starting May 2021. With this algorithm in place, site speed will be a ranking factor. The Core Web Vitals are designed to focus on the following key metrics:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- The metric measures the speed at which a page’s main content is loaded. It should be loaded in under 2.5 seconds.
- First Input Delay (FID)
- This is the speed at which users interact with a page after landing on it. This needs to occur within 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- This metric measures how frequently users experience unexpected layout shifts. This needs to be less than 0.1.
Google has already stated that websites should meet the above three Core Web Vitals benchmarks to qualify for the ranking signal boost. Faster websites will be labeled with badges in the SERP. You can identify and fix your website’s core web vitals right from the Google Search console.
Content Depth
It’s true that content quality matters over content length. A content piece of 2000+ words can garner more engagement than five text pieces of 900 words each. Google measures content quality based on EAT — or Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.
Content that complies with these three gets the ranking boost. Both Google and users want to provide readers best quality content that shows authority and your subject matter expertise in the niche.
If a user wants to learn everything about a certain topic, he doesn’t want to hop on to multiple sites to get that information. To capture your inquisitive audience, create long-form content covering comprehensive information with links to other related and relevant content.
Local Search
Local SEO has been the most popular way to drive more traffic and attract local buyers in recent years. And it’s going to stay. Google started showing featured snippets and zero-click searches on search engine result pages.
For online businesses targeting local customers, the ‘local pack’ offers an opportunity to showcase their business to their potential customers.
To get the best out of local SEO optimize your website content for local search queries and submit your business listings to online business directories. Create content based on local events, news stories, and location-specific places.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.