The year ahead is marked in advance as the year of the struggle to recover the world economy. Each sector will wage its own battles and strive to make up for lost profits. In the world of digital marketing many companies will face different challenges. Still, their recovery will depend solely on themselves and how well they adapt to predicted changes.
As for SEO companies, they can be safe to some point. The demand for quality content optimization won’t drop. In fact, the opposite will happen. While many different strategies can improve rankings on browsers, none have the same effect as a well-laid SEO.
If you run an SEO agency, these facts might comfort you a bit. But that doesn’t mean you should lay back and relax. Given that SEO trends shift from year to year, it is necessary to follow them. The market is turbulent, as user and search engine requirements can change in a matter of days.
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Google has gained a reputation as the world’s best browser by continually improving the algorithms it uses to rank. Thus, it ‘troubles’ SEO companies that are trying to put their clients in the best possible positions in search engines. That will continue in 2021 because some trends are already apparent.
Focus Is On Content
From day one, the quality of the content found on the Internet is paramount. While they adapt the clients’ websites to the search engine requirements, many SEO companies forget that this content is actually meant for people. In the fight against keywords, links, and other optimization parameters, the content’s quality became slightly neglected. That should never happen.
Writing short articles stuffed with keywords is a way how many try to trick search engines. But with stricter requirements for ranking, it’s clear that this technique no longer gives results. If you do that kind of SEO, you are not doing a favor to your clients. Google despises stuffing and much more appreciates the natural way of writing. Any article should be adapted to people, not machines.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that keywords fall into oblivion. They will still serve you to rank clients’ websites on different browsers. But you need to use them wisely, especially now when Google is paying more attention to semantic search. It means that the algorithms are so advanced that they assume users’ intent when searching for something using certain keywords.
Make Users Happy
While this trend has never actually been overcome, a pleasant user experience seems to have become more important than ever. Making people feel good once they reach websites you optimized will always be of the utmost importance.
Search engines now rely on user-centric metrics. These do statistics of what online users do and get when they visit some site. The time of loading the page, staying on it, etc., is observed. That is why one of the focuses of SEO companies should be making user-friendly websites. Also, they have to provide engaging content that is continuously updated and adapted to user requirements.
It seems that, faster than ever, Google finds and ‘punishes’ bad sites. These pages don’t have updated content, copy other websites, and provide many unnatural backlinks to their web location. In this way, they try to deceive search engines and gain better positions. Google considers it a scam, so do everything the opposite way.
High Quality Website
Search engines want quality sites on the first page. As long as there is a need to optimize online content, well-designed websites will be needed. These are websites with quality, updated content that provide many answers to various problems that plague their visitors. It is necessary to pay attention to technicalities, such as page errors, poor layout, incorrect links, etc.
Google uses an algorithm to track whether visitors are scrolling your site and to what extent. The big difference is the quality content that makes them reach the end of the site or footer. Primarily, these are quality, easy-to-read texts, followed by audio-visual and interactive content.
The significance of a good web page for any business can never be underestimated. You should design and optimize any website to provide a superior user experience. Think of fast loading and optimization for mobile and tablets, as these will be hot trends in 2021.
The Internet is considered to be one of the most effective marketing and advertising platforms. It can help anyone reach a broader audience. And to be recognized in the online world, you could use PRO SEO services, as everyone needs a well-optimized website.
If you can do that for your clients, good. But if that’s not something you’re good at or don’t have a team of web designers, your client can always hire another reputable web design company with affordable rates and work experience.
Give Preference To Video Content
Depending on the niche in which your clients work, you may be required to optimize their video content. If the websites you are working on are dealing with something that attracts millennials, keep in mind they prefer video content rather than reading. So, uploading videos should be imperative for most businesses.
Quality video content can attract users if it’s dynamic and keeps attention. To reach more people with your videos, you need to optimize them for search users. To do this, use the appropriate keywords in the description and title. That guarantees that the video will reach the largest number of people who are interested in the topic.
Locally Oriented SEO
Almost half of all searches on search engines are geographically determined (local SEO). The authority of local companies and their websites will be a critical factor in the ranking in the years ahead. Authority is a metric that search engines calculate by combining the website’s popularity and user engagement (reviews, contacts, social media monitoring, etc.).
That’s why SEO companies advise their clients to turn to local SEO and get the authority to rank among the top results. As more businesses become aware of the importance of making their brand noticed within the area where they work, they should invest in SEO practices that target local searches.
Another change in the SEO world was Google’s introduction of the My Business category. This tool was designed to help owners present their companies in a more traditional, ‘brands-centric’ way. It’s not the business account but a medium to boost your business’s visibility to local users.
The rise of social media happened exponentially in the past few months, and that trend is unstoppable. That’s why search engines favor these platforms. As new media appear once in a while, engaging there can make you visible to users searching locally. As more and more people rely on social media for recommendations, search engines notice that. At some point, they reward that engagement.
Rely On Voice Search
The smartphones that people use every day are already designed to do many things. The ease of operation of these devices was, among other things, the driving force behind the idea of using voice for an online search.
This concept is becoming increasingly popular because it’s based on natural language. People post search queries the same way they speak. Most of these are very specific because users want a precise answer. And when they want an exact answer or result, people use longer phrases in their search.
Most of these users are probably in the phase of making a final decision about the thing they look for on search engines. They have a better chance of conversion than someone using shorter and more general queries. They are still in a need-aware phase, and they’ll need some time to act.
Over time, search engines will learn phases used in searches, behavior patterns, and users’ affinities. By paying attention to semantics, search engines provide better results and user experience. In order for voice search to give good results, SEO experts need to find the best long-tail keywords for queries that will lead users to the client’s website.
Optimized Mobile Version Of Website
Today, more than half of all voice searches come from mobile users. Predictions show that the number will be even higher in the future. Good optimization of the content for either mobile versions or voice search (or both) is a must. All browsers rank sites according to the mobile version’s quality, so this is something that shouldn’t be neglected.
The popularity of so-called virtual assistants also supports this. By using AI, these apps strive for the same ideas as Voice search – to make it closer to everyday speech. Virtual assistants don’t imply that only the search criteria are closer to natural speech, but also the results.
Current and predicted trends can sometimes be a bit hard to understand at first. Still, it’s important to remember that there is a lot of activity going on in the SEO world. Keeping up with the SEO challenges and changes is the least you can do to make your company competitive. If you aren’t careful, you could easily lose pace and never get back to the market race.
PS. If you are into this kind of geeky SEO stuff have a look at our other SEO articles.
[Main Photo by Ali Pazani from Pexels, Man: Photo by Vlad Chețan from Pexels]
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.