2021 SEO Trends

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the method to increase the quantity and quality of the traffic on a website in an organic way. To enhance your digital marketing, it should be your priority to appear on the first page of the search engine result pages. As we know, the Google algorithm now focuses on 3 pillars Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. This has made completion tougher for the business to rank higher than their competitive businesses. Application of SEO doesn’t cost to promote the business. It is a strategic way to place important keywords, text patterns in the content so that they draw the attention of search engine crawlers to your web page. The use of artificial intelligence by the search engine to update their crawlers in such a way that provides more informative and accurate web pages for their searchers has been increased significantly. And since the world has entered the pandemic stage, it has become a top priority for all the business that they appear on the top result on the search engines. Let us look at what is trending SEO for 2021.

1. Voice Search

    Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa have brought the voice search to the next level. They are encouraging people to go for voice search by continuous development with machine learning and automation. It is estimated that about 27% of the searches made are voice search nowadays. The voice searches are long-tailed and specific in nature. Usually, when we need to speak, we tend to provide more details compared to typing. It provides a wide scope to identify your potential target. Since the questions are specific it is easy to convert the user compared to the one searching through keywords. In the coming days, the use of voice search will increase, and it is estimated that over 55% of searches will be voice search by 2022. Since its growing, it will be more in demand in the coming days and has become a necessity in terms of SEO.

2. Long Content

    Even Google has made it clear that their intention for their crawlers will be more dependent on EAT, it is now essential that your content should be accurate and detailed. To be an expert in terms of content analysis by AI, it is better to have long content for your web page. Try to make your content more authentic and useful than the existing contents in the same domain. The reason is very simple, Google doesn’t want to rank a new webpage with all the same content which are already existing and browsed by the people. To make your content unique write precisely with as many details as you can. Search engine prefers the contents that have more relevant and detailed information. Long content also tends to get more share comparatively.

3. Add Videos

    If you have not already understood by now that video is getting more traffic, you should start creating more content with video in it. Video content has a lot of benefit over text content. A text content needs the full attention of the reader and a continuous rhythm to understand the context of the content, on the other hand, video content can be played without that much level of attention and user can listen to the content while doing some light work as well for example cooking, cleaning, etc. Even people who can’t read well are dependent on videos to get the information they need from the internet. With the more advanced internet age, video usage has become more common as well and it will increase with time.

4. Avoid Zero Click Searches

    There are many searches whose result are declared on the search page itself. For example, search time, temperature, currency, share price, etc, to watch the result a searcher need not open any website. The search engine will provide the result and some details about it. It is estimated that about 50% of the searches generate results without any click for the searcher. This is going to be trouble for SEO professionals. However, you can tackle these types of searches in 2 ways-

1. Try to avoid creating content for such topics, or
2. Create longer enough content that search engine can provide just a couple of lines from your content and the user must enter your web page to get more details.

5. Focus on Analytics

    Gone those days when the SEO experts use to focus on the primary keyword and create the content around the same. Now the crawlers are smarter, and they tend to provide the result based on the entire phrase from the search which is more accurate and relevant to the intent of the search. After the world entered the pandemic stage, businesses run more on the internet than in physical location. This has led more people over the internet and now people also don’t want to be spending more time searching. Searchers also try to provide as much detail as they can to get the desired results. So, the research on the keywords for your target audience should be more thorough and extensive. Remember to analyze the SERP for the keywords you have come up with after your research.

6. Automation

    Like any other industry, automation has a huge impact on the SEO industry as well. On one hand, search engines are utilizing a maximum of it to set up algorithms without disclosing it to the public. There are several companies that are now relying on AI and ML to decode the complex algorithm behind the search engines. This is a head to head battle between machines only. The reason is very simple, it takes a pretty long time for SEO professionals to read and understand the behaviour of the search engines and by the time they come up with the solution, the search engines change their algorithm. It is obvious that the computing capacity of machines is more than human efforts. So, it is better to give AI and ML a chance to optimise the SEO for your website. There are companies like Frase, MarketMuse and Hubspot that provides AI-based solution for SEO.

7. Core Web Vitals

    In May 2020, Google announced that the new core web vitals Loading, Interactivity and Visual stability will be used to measure user experience. Google will continue to measure user experience and provide it with a priority on its search results. If two same contents come up with a search, the priority will be given to the web page which will be better as per the user experience metrics. User experience has always been a priority, you won’t see such web pages at the top which have lots of pop-ups unnecessary that can confuse user the moment they land there. Keeping the rich user experience, you need to ensure your layout and content should be attractive for the user as well. Using a secure HTTP site and text with images and audio are some of the best practices for a better UX.

8. Mobile Research

    In an extension to rich UX, you need to understand that more than half of users on the internet are mobile users now. You should ensure that your webpage created should fit the most on mobile compared to computers. If your webpage is mobile-friendly only then it will rank better in terms of those users experiences. To make mobile-friendly content try to create light graphics and avoid using too heavy images that take time to load.

9. Backlinks

    Backlinks are one of the important factors to increase your weight for SEO. Always remember the primary criteria for search engines are based on E-A-T, and the more backlinks you have from trusted websites, your trustworthiness will increase. Also, backlinks play a vital role when you are expanding your business into a new area where the language is also different from your local business location. The more websites trust your content, the better you perform with SEO.

10. Local Authority Over Global

    We have a perception that the internet is global and everything in the world is accessible on it. However, we forget the main concept that no one usage internet to find a restaurant where he is not present or get the details about a certain product to buy from an unknown location. Although the internet is a global tool, the user needs to get their local work done only. This gives preference to local SEO over global SEO. We know that most of the local questions are answered by search engines themselves and they end up as a zero-click search. To avoid this, plan your web page in such a way that you have more detailed information than a zero-click search result snippet. Also, you should have more weightage in terms of back links to your competitors in the same region to out rank in local SEO.

    Ensure to follow these SEO trends and create contents that are aligned with the most important factor E-A-T to drive more traffic to your websites.