Here are some important trends to follow to help shape your SEO strategy.
Voice Search
Voice search surpassed tablets in popularity last year, with 43% of online consumers using voice-enabled devices to make purchases. Additionally, 6 in 10 shoppers use voice search to find businesses near them. Therefore, its increasingly important for brands to optimize their online presence.
E-A-T
Expertise. Authoritativeness. Trustworthiness. Known as E-A-T for short, these three elements are key parts of any SEO strategy. Google examines these elements when determining your website’s credibility. While E-A-T “is not a direct ranking factor,” according to the article, brands should still focus on providing well-researched, relevant, timely and valuable content to solidify their expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Featured Snippets
Excerpts of text appearing at the top of search results are considered featured snippets. They are taken automatically from “pages in Google’s index to provide quick answers to users’ search terms,” according to the article. The snippets provide an advantage as “they bypass links to Google’s page one ranking and more importantly, they take organic traffic from competitors on the first page of results and ensure your website continues gaining prominence.” Brands can evaluate key words used and focus on question-based queries.
Videos and images
An increasing amount of internet traffic is coming from video streaming and downloads. Therefore, its crucial brands effectively use the medium as part of their SEO strategy as video increases the amount of time uses spend on a website. This, in turn, helps improve SEO rankings. Visual image search is also evolving. Using relevant alt tags that are rich in key words is also important.
Core Web Vitals
Because Google recently said Core Web Vitals is part of its ranking criteria, brands need to incorporate it into their strategy. A site’s impact on the user experience matters and brands need to examine the responsiveness of their pages, safety and security, and the mobile experience.