Do you agree that SEO experts are resilient? Well, Google changes its algorithms very frequently and months-long efforts of SEO specialists go useless. Again, they have to put in the same efforts for good rankings and other factors.
As a result, every industry expert is obsessed with the latest trends and updates in SEO. Because with each major trend or update, their entire SEO practices change. For instance, Maverick and BERT update brought some new SEO practices.
Most of the people still ask, Is SEO relevant for my organization or brand? Or, Is it still beneficial in 2021 and 2022? The answer is YES! With time, SEO has become more sophisticated, user experience based, and of course, even harder to rank on Google. Nevertheless, it is here to stay!
If you too are obsessed with SEO, you must take a deep dive into 5 major SEO trends that will surely benefit you the next year.
1. Passage Ranking
What’s the most sought-after goal of any SEO practitioner? To rank their website on number 1 for any search query on the search engine, right? But with the “Zero-rank” position and increasing snippets vying for the first position, it has become harder for the SEO experts to rank.
Luckily, Google has come up with a solution, which will help SEO experts to be present on the top search page. It is with ‘Passage Ranking,’ that allows you to rank for a specific excerpt or a passage from the entire page.
Google now searches for the most relevant answer for the query asked with the help of titles and headings understanding. Your SEO strategy for passage ranking must include titles and headings to rank for a passage!
2. Optimize Videos for Key Moments
You must have seen some recent changes in video marketing on Google. There are key moments from your videos once you post them. Well, it is because of the new structured data that automatically creates key moments from your videos.
Of course, it is not new for SEO experts but what you must know is that new structured data types (Clip Markup and Seek Markup) allow you to create key moments yourself with timestamps and labels.
Earlier, video marketing used to be one of the major SEO strategies for increased engagement and better impressions/conversions. Now, it has become vital for ranking that will positively impact your SEO strategy.
3. Core Web Vitals
We all know that SEO is significantly dependent on on-site optimization and link building activities. However, there are a lot of other things that matter apart from these two activities. One of the major ranking factors is page experience.
What is page experience? Well, it is “a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.” Google has changed its algorithm for page experience, and now the update has been launched.
One of the key elements of the new update is CORE WEB VITALS. Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure a page’s load speed from a user perspective.
· Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the loading performance of a website, and as per Google, it should be under 2.5 seconds after a page starts to load.
· Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS) measure the visual stability of a website, and Google recommends it should be less than 0.1.
· First Input Delay (FID) measures the interactivity of a website, and Google recommends it should be less than 100 milliseconds.
In today’s user experience-centric world, it is essential to optimize your website to earn the core web vital scores and rank on the first page.
4. Shopping Graph
Online shopping has become a necessity, especially in corona times. Google’s online shopping platform existed for a long-time but was not as popular as Amazon and Shopify.
Recently, Google announced the launch of ‘Shopping Graph,’ which is an AI-based model that constantly understands the different sets of sellers, products, brands, reviews, inventory and product data received from brands/retailers directly.
Basically, it works in real-time, which is beneficial for people to explore and shop for the available products. After Google’s partnership with Shopify, there is an increase in 70% size of the product catalog and an 80% increase in platform merchants.
Therefore, it sums up quite well that Google has finally taken the Shopping issue seriously.
5. LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)
We all have heard a lot about Voice Search and yeah, the benefits of optimization. Now, for even voice-based technologies, Google is transforming its algorithms. Google wants to talk to you!
LaMDA, as the name suggests, is a machine-learning model designed for dialogue, built on Google’s own neural network architecture. LaMDA wants to have a conversation with its users and provide results on the basis of questions and queries. No wonder, this AI model can come up with more advanced algorithms that use conversational queries to find the right page for the user.
So, start optimizing your website as per the latest voice-search algorithms and rank on the first page.
SEO is now becoming more AI-based, and the results that we’ll see in the next year will change the game totally. User Experience matters a lot and if marketers are only running after the technical qualities of SEO, they will not be able to succeed.
Make your SEO game stronger than ever with the above-mentioned five trends!