Search engine optimization is one of the most important marketing fields. The ways in which SEO works are often mysterious, and they are susceptible to change from one year to the next. However, some principles are always worth applying.
SEO is also becoming more competitive from one year to the next as more websites emerge and more SEO agencies enter the market. To navigate this field, it’s important that you keep up with the trends, experiment, and always play the long game.
This article aims to explore the importance of SEO and some of the trends that are considered to grow in the upcoming year. While there’s nothing that can guarantee success in search engine rankings, following some trends can significantly help you stand out.
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What has changed in SEO?
In the early days of the internet, you didn’t have to do more than have a website in order for it to rank. Of course, this was because there weren’t many competitors and even websites. As the internet expanded, we’ve seen the rise of methods such as keyword stuffing and link-building.
Nowadays, a good SEO strategy needs to incorporate a number of different methods if you want your website to rank. Here’s a short list:
- Avoiding plagiarism: One of the most frowned upon actions is plagiarizing articles. This can lead to terrible penalties from Google.
- Building relevant links: You should build high-quality links from reputable websites. Spamming links from click farms can have a negative impact on your domain rating and domain authority (Whichever you prefer).
- Having a good UI/UX: Some Google updates directly talk about the importance of UI and UX. Furthermore, good design makes your website seem more professional, leading to increased engagement and a lowered bounce rate.
- Delivering content regularly: Many SEO experts recommend that you publish content regularly. This signalizes to the crawlers that your website is “Alive”. More content also leads to a higher likelihood that you’ll cover more keywords in your niche.
You probably now understand that SEO doesn’t include methods that you must do but also the ones that you shouldn’t. Sometimes, a good strategy can become counterproductive after an update.
For example, keyword stuffing was relevant at one point, yet nowadays, it can lead to your website being penalized. Nowadays, it’s also important to leverage geospatial data and include content that’s relevant to your region.
Benefits of good SEO strategy
Implementing the right SEO trends can lead to a number of different benefits. First and foremost, your website will rank higher on search engines, leading to higher visibility and more visitors. This can directly impact your number of sales and conversions.
Because of the rules made by companies such as Google, you’ll have to take care of your UI/UX as well. So a good SEO strategy should also include creating a website that’s appeasing visitors.
From my own experience, I’ve done link-building for a SaaS management platform, and many partners have refused to build links because of our poor visual identity. Once we took care of that, many of them changed their minds and wanted to feature us on their website.
So a good UI/UX design will help you attract more link-building opportunities, better customer engagement, and better ranking. Good search engine ranking can also help you build authority and credibility.
Many people visit the first serps because they believe they provide the best information. Furthermore, if a potential partner does research on your website and sees almost no backlinks, they can see your business as careless or even as a potential scam.
Key upcoming SEO trends
Many SEO trends emerge because of new technology or Google updates. For example, Google’s update on authoritative content has led many businesses to invest in top-notch writers in order to improve their rankings.
On the other hand, we have AI, which revolutionized how we create, digest, and deliver content to visitors.
Of course, there are a lot more trends besides the ones mentioned here, but you should consider and try different approaches that have worked for others.
1. High-quality content
Good content is always important for SEO. It’s one of the most important aspects of a good SEO strategy for years. This is why it will never stop being a trend. However, some changes in the algorithms are made to which you should adhere.
For example, it’s important to adhere to Google’s E-E-A-T, which explains how authoritative content that is written by experienced experts is preferred by the algorithm. This is why you should seek good writers who know what they’re talking about.
The content should also address the user intent and provide actionable insights to the reader. If someone searches for a recipe, they don’t want your story about how it’s your husband’s favorite dish, they want to get to the process as soon as possible.
2. Up-to-date content
What’s interesting is that many SEO experts are now talking about the importance of updating your old content. This can sometimes be even more important than releasing new content.
By updating old content, you’re ensuring that it’s still relevant.
Old content can sometimes be outdated in terms of information. This can lead to a higher bounce rate and poor ranking. Furthermore, it can give the reader a sense that your website isn’t authoritative enough if they recognize incorrect or outdated information.
Of course, you can also audit your past content, delete poorly written articles, and publish new ones by better writers. Sometimes good articles are poorly ranked because of other factors. You can use SEO tools to include more keywords and restructure them, which can lead to better performance.
3. Artificial intelligence
There are different opinions on AI when it comes to SEO. Some experts swear by it’s power to create and publish relatively good content quickly. There are also specialized article generators that are even better than ChatGPT.
However, we’ve already seen one update from Google that penalized a number of websites that had AI-generated content. While you shouldn’t completely rely on AI for SEO, it can help you with creating topic ideas, rewriting poor sentences, or giving you ideas for keywords.
Regardless of people’s opinions on AI, it’s there to stay, and it’s important to explore what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO.
4. Backlinks
Backlinks remain critical for SEO, signaling credibility and authority to search engines. As mentioned, the quality of the backlinks is always more important than their quantity. In the long run, you should always seek backlinks from authoritative websites in the niche.
Instead of building 10 backlinks from so-called link farms, try to find a good blog that will allow you to publish a high-quality article. To find good websites, you should do a competitor backlink analysis, allowing you to identify gaps in your backlink portfolio.
5. Visual search
There are many industries that are visually driven, such as e-commerce. Let’s say you’re searching for boots, and you can’t find a website that provides you with what you want. Once you look for image results, you’ll likely click on a website that has the best-looking image.
Visual search also requires you to write good alt-text for the images, which will help you with image rankings. The quality of the images, as mentioned, is also valued by visitors and search engines.
However, slow websites are also penalized. Which is why it’s important to compress your images and be careful with the amount of images you’re publishing. While many people have better internet nowadays, it’s still a relevant ranking factor.
You should also incorporate an image schema markup. Leveraging SEO services can help optimize your website’s visual search performance. For businesses in specialized niches, such dentist, roofing or HVAC companies, working with an agency or professionals experienced in HVAC SEO services or with relevant experience in your services can significantly improve rankings and drive targeted traffic.
6. Google isn’t the only important search engine
Remember that Google isn’t the only search engine. You should also explore your rankings on DuckDuckGo and Bing. See what are top results on other search engines and do your research in order to find the best strategy.
Keep up with the SEO trends to stand out among the competition
As I’ve mentioned, there isn’t a tool, trend, or strategy that can make a fresh website without backlinks skyrocket in traffic. However, there’s a lot that you can do, even for free, to make your website reach new audiences.
Follow these trends, but not religiously, as some of them can become outdated with a new update or tool released. However, they can certainly serve as guidelines that could allow you to develop a better SEO strategy.
Like in many other fields, SEO values quality over quantity and expects that your returns will sometimes take time and effort.
James is the head of marketing at Tamoco
