In this day and age of digital transformation, it has become essential for businesses to have an online presence. With more than 4.5 billion internet users today, digital marketing is one of the most valuable and result-driven communication approaches that provide them with an opportunity to grow their businesses exponentially. However, digital marketing is huge and has a lot more to offer than you think. So, let’s start with the basics - SEO.
Since a majority of the world’s internet traffic is generated through search engines, Search Engine Optimization(SEO) serves as a tool that helps businesses rank websites rank higher in search engines, attract potential customers and eventually increase sales. Google takes a number of factors into account to determine which pages rank higher in SERPs.
Diving in, here are 7 SEO trends that will help you with it:
UX and SEO will work wonders together
Consumers today are tech-savvy and want instant answers when searching for anything online. The quality of their experience plays an important role in determining your success online. It is important to keep in mind that a good user experience can improve your search engine rankings and in turn, make your page stand out from others. User experience includes the ease with which they access your products or services on your website
To ensure a smoother user experience, make sure your website is fast and free of full-screen pop-up advertisements. Invest in good keyword research and formulate headings accordingly. Use only one h1 ( HTML based tag for headings) tag on a page so that it becomes easier for users and crawlers to identify the primary focus of that page.
Quality Content will impact search rankings
Quality content is critical in order to improve rankings, traffic, and organic search visibility of one’s webpage.
Search engine giant Google has about 5.6 billion searches every day and provides its users with the most relevant webpages. They are ranked on the basis of EAT principle: expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, which determine if the webpages have useful quality content. This principle is extremely useful for businesses that fall under the “your life, your money” category. To ensure quality content, marketers can create buyer personas, conduct search intent research and use this information to create relevant content.
Search Intent will drive queries on search engines
Search engines today have become conversational and can identify the ‘intent’ behind a search any user makes.
The invention of voice assistant software like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana has paved the way for an increased number of voice searches. People tend to use more natural-sounding phrases while making a search. Search intent indicates the same. Hence, it has become important to identify phrases that people make in their everyday conversations and inculcate them in your webpages. Check your ‘SERP reliability’ and take cues from top-ranking pages and search results to optimize your website.
Featured snippets and no-click searches will be valued
Featured snippets are a great way to get on the first page of SERPs (search engine result pages). A featured snippet is a small box that appears before the actual search results (aka, zero position) and answers the query in brief. It could either be a definition or a snippet of the information on the webpage.
It eliminates the need for the user to click on different websites to find the answer to their query and provides all the relevant information in no time.
In order to feature on the snippets, ensure that creating content on your web pages specifically answers questions in-depth. Algorithms find pages that seem to best answer that user’s question. Think about the following phrases while writing content for your website:
- How to
- How does
- What is
- How do
Google My Business will increase local ranking:
Local businesses can use 'Google My Business' to boost their online presence. 'Google My Business' provides a listing of businesses in your vicinity, giving details about the kind of goods and services they provide. These listings show up on Google search engine and paps providing users with information about local businesses.
Once the business is listed, marketers need to ensure that:
- Contact details are filled in and are regularly updated.
- A specific category is chosen for their business.
- Good quality images are uploaded.
Visual Optimization will become imperative to appear on initial SERPs:
New innovations and updates in search engines have made it possible for people to make a visual search. Google lens is one such tool that uses image recognition to answer any queries. It has thus become imperative to optimize images on one’s webpages. It helps Google crawl and identifies them better.
Another feature that Google search offers is a video carousel on the SERPs. This is because in today’s world people tend to engage more with videos and are more likely to click on them.
Mobile-friendly web pages will increase traffic:
People today are extremely dependent on their mobile phones and use them for quick searches online. This is exactly the reason why marketers have to ensure that their webpage is mobile-friendly and that people are able to access it easily. One can use tools like Google’s mobile-friendly test to check the effectiveness of their mobile site. Make it easy for Google to crawl your website through URLs and increase your ranking on SERPs.
In conclusion, all SEO tools are meant to improve the user’s experience online and provide them with better results in an instant. Use these trends to boost your online experience to ensure a better return on your business.
Maddie Amrutkar is founder & CEO of Glad U Came
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