Some search engine optimisation (SEO) trends are important to take advantage of. This can achieve better results in Google and potentially boost traffic too. Other trends should either be ignored, or you should wait to see if they make a genuine difference before implementation. Here are four SEO trends that website owners should not overlook.
What you can expect in this article:
1. Don’t Ignore Voice Search
One of the strategies you shouldn’t overlook, which will increase web traffic and sales, is voice search. While thought originally only to favour a younger audience, with over 30% of millennials using voice searches, it’s catching on with mature adults too. Optimizing website content to capture voice search traffic is a nice little way to increase sales and traffic to your website. Sprinkling in a few “near me” phrases in relevant places gives Google the chance to provide your answer to a voice search. SOAP Media, a Google Partner, guides clients on how they can apply this approach within their content for better results.
2. Video Gains a Foothold in SERPs
In addition to more YouTube videos appearing at the top of the Search engine results pages (SERPs), Google introduced a fully-featured Key Moments enhancement to search results in 2021 too. Videos are now broken down into linked timestamps where, it’s believed, pertinent information to the search query can be found. This provides searchers with the option to consume part of the highlighted video rather than to read an article.
For site owners with a channel on YouTube, it’s important to add timestamps to videos. While Google can attempt to figure this out for themselves, including relevant timestamps and notations via clip markup helps videos to rank better.
3. Speed Matters
A recent focus on the Core Web Vitals highlighted the need to pay special attention to speed. While site loading times may seem to be more of a technical issue, not an SEO one, a poorly performing website affects everything. This is because, when a page takes too long to load, the searcher hits the back button, and the visitor is lost. When Google sees this, they reduce the ranking position to reflect the dissatisfaction of the searcher, even if the content on the page was superior to other offerings.
By working steadily to fix site performance issues and bottlenecks, it’ll do much to reduce loading times and receive higher scores on the Core Web Vitals too. Switching to a virtual private server instead of shared hosting is a low-cost move that provides an instant performance boost. Using the free Cloudflare DNS service also cuts down on delays.
4. Schema is Becoming More Important
Schema is a type of coded markup that communicates information to search engines in a structured manner. Rather than a search engine trying to figure it out, the schema submission on the page provides greater clarity about specific information. For instance, this might include review information, “how-to” answers, recipes, or something else. When using a CMS like WordPress, some of these can be automated through free plugins. In other cases, adding the code to a webpage directly increases its value.
The above four SEO trends will help to provide better rankings, more traffic, and eventual sales too. Implementing them provides a series of easy wins.
