As a business, your SEO strategies should aim toward bringing more customers into your marketing funnel. The process to do that can be divided into five phases:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) helps websites gain higher rankings across different search engines. But like everything else, the algorithms that drive search results keep changing all the time. So, those who used to get more clicks through backlinks in the past may see that things don’t work the same way anymore. Know this, Google does not and will not reveal the ranking factors ever. So, SEO is always going to be half-data driven, and half-speculation. If you are already gearing up your marketing strategy, you should know the trends that would drive the way SEO will work for you in 2023 and beyond: Online Shopping is Becoming More Important than Ever Before It’s estimated that close to two billion people shop for all kinds of products and services online. Online shopping is on the rise like never before and it is only going to become more popular in the future. Google is already focused on creating a better and more advanced shopping experience for all. We already have a Google tool called Shopping Graph, which enables sellers to see what users search for, and buyers to see what they want in an organised manner. This means SEO experts need to create keyword-rich product listings going forward to be seen by their target audience. How you use these keywords and your strategy will determine the relevancy of your listing whenever a search query related to your product is made online. Voice Search Queries are on the Rise Google launched LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) specifically to understand the different spoken languages better. It’s LaMDA that helps Google focus more on understanding voice-based queries and deliver appropriate results more efficiently. Digital assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant have already significantly increased the number of voice-based searches over the past years. So, SEO experts need to begin emphasising more on optimising their strategies around voice search. They could use their own voice tools to capture the conversational keywords as queries in different languages and accents, and then deliver concise and more relevant results in the same language and format. Video Marketing has Become Essential Video platforms like YouTube and TikTok have proved how videos play an important role in influencing people’s decisions. A gripping video makes people stay on your website for a longer period, which in turn, helps boost your SEO rankings. According to a 2017 Forbes report, video content has a 1200% more likelihood to be shared than links or text content combined! This is also probably why YouTube is already the second-largest search engine in the world, next only to Google. EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) Reinforcement Google has now and then emphasised a lot as to why it’s important for you to amplify your EAT signals. The search engines need to assess how much your website is worth on the three parameters of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, before they assign a page rank to it. You can prove this worth by using customer testimonials, expertise, badges, social proof, links to authoritative websites, and so on. Further, you must back your data with substantial facts and statistics, each of which could be linked to authoritative websites that end with .gov or .edu. Your badges, awards and recognitions, and customer reviews listed on your website would take care of the rest. Image Optimisation Needs to be Taken More Seriously Google’s guidelines have always been crystal clear when it comes to image optimisation best practices. Unfortunately, not many have paid heed to the same seriously to date. Many still believe that images are more used for aesthetic purposes and nothing more. This is where they go wrong. You could rectify this by doing an image audit first, followed by working towards boosting your image optimisation score up. Featured Snippets have Evolved and Become Crucial for Marketing Success If you think that anything a Google search result page shows is just random, think again. The first answer you see in the expanded format of what you searched for, is what’s known as a featured snippet. These were primarily designed for mobile users since a snippet covers most of the screen. But, of late, they have evolved much further. From a marketing perspective, these snippets provide short answers to users’ queries, enabling them to make a purchase decision. But, to get there are have a snippet of your answer shown there, you need to present a short yet well-written answer for long-tailed keywords. Your answer needn’t be a paragraph only. It could be a table, a listicle, or even a single sentence. Semantically Related Keywords are Channelling More Traffic to Websites Do you really think that a search result must only have details for the keyword searched for? It may have been so before. But it doesn’t work so anymore. For instance, if you want to cook a dish, you will also find details related to the different ingredients used in that dish useful. Semantically related keywords are nothing but keywords that cover all the aspects related to the primary keyword. A website today needs these semantic keywords to support its own set of core keywords. Using these helps the search engine showcase more optimal results, which can help more related traffic to your page or website. Artificial Intelligence-Driven SEO Artificial intelligence (AI) has many applications. Google too has found its use helpful in making its algorithms smarter and more productive while indexing. AI helps search engines understand not just a user’s language but also determine the intent behind a search. AI could also help run chatbots for customer service, as well as run campaigns for email automation, while also improving interactions over time. It can further help personalise your content and website aspects to make everything more impactful. Responsiveness on Mobile Platform is Key to Driving More Traffic to a Website According to a report by Google, more than 60% of internet searches are today made through mobile phones. This is also why Google has already adopted the mobile-first indexing strategy as a key factor for ranking search results. What this means is you will be able to gain a higher search engine ranking if your page or website is optimised for mobile devices too. This will ease website navigation across devices and enable people to stay on your website for longer. The website’s faster load speed will also play a major role here. As of September 2022, there are almost 2 billion websites on the internet. So, any business that’s trying to break into the top 10 or even the top 20 of search engine rankings needs to beat its competition from these many websites. By any means, that isn’t going to be easy! You need to be on top of your SEO game if you want to make a mark and get right up there. So, brace yourself for the upcoming SEO transitions in 2023 with all these ongoing and upcoming trends that will change the way you and even Google look at search engine rankings forever.
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AuthorSuzanne Wall is the Marketing Director of Alchemy Interactive Limited in London. Categories |