SEO Trends To Prepare For in 2022
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) professionals are known for their diligence. Google’s algorithm is being steadily modified all the time, meaning that months of hard work can be nullified once the new criteria for rankings are established. For effective search engine optimisation, you need to be prepared for trends upcoming changes in 2022.
So, it’s no surprise that businesses in association with digital marketing companies are often engaged with the most recent SEO trends that appear. Each serious upgrade, such as the Maverick or BERT, brought in new SEO techniques that have had a considerable impact. And updates in 2021 are no exception.
As 2022 draws closer, it’s time to start figuring out what SEO trends you want to be ahead of. Digital marketing experts, marketing agencies and brands alike will be required to get their SEO ready for 2022 more so than ever before. Here, you can explore the most advanced SEO trends that will take effect in 2021 and extend to 2022.
Smartphone-Friendliness for Better Ranking
Smartphone-friendliness has been a pillar of SEO ever since Google formally made it a ranking element in 2015. It’s more crucial than ever that you optimise your content for mobile devices, as Google launched mobile-first indexing in 2019. This indicates that the search engine looks for a mobile-focused version of a site when ranking content, as this is the “primary” version instead of the desktop version. This transformation was not a surprise to many users, as almost around 75% of internet users are expected to utilise the internet completely via mobile devices by 2025.
Google makes it effortless to check how competent your mobile site is with their free smartphone-friendly test. You can also work with Google’s Mobile Usability Report to assess if there are issues with your mobile website and what you should do to fix these problems. Using these tools can be decisive in helping you identify and fix mobile usability issues in your site that could be adversely affecting your SEO. The fact is that internet usage comes more from mobile gadgets, you will need to make sure that your content is optimised with these users in mind.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve and recognise how people interact with content online, AI will also come out to play a leading role in SEO strategy. Especially noticeable is Google’s AI algorithm RankBrain, as this will probably become one of the most notable ranking elements for Google’s search engine results (SERPs) in 2022. Since Google announced RankBrain, many brands have been wondering how this will influence SEO. How can you put forward your content strategy to an AI algorithm?
While Google has not revealed more details on how RankBrain picks up and evaluates content, professionals believe that user experience is one of its fundamental ranking factors. This implies that click-through rate and the time spent by users on a website will be basic factors that RankBrain will use when prioritising content. When revising your SEO strategy, it is then critical that you develop content that’s relevant and useful so that you attract and engage readers.
BERT to MUM
One of the things you expect in 2022 is the modification in Google’s algorithm, where BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) has been there since 2019. This version has benefited Google’s algorithm better in figuring out the relationship between words and the intent behind a search query. It has also helped Google to accommodate voice assistant users.
Anyhow, algorithms will also have improvements. They announced that it would operate into a new AI model for serving users. This AI model is known as the Multitask United Model (MUM). Google said that MUM can now identify the user’s feelings, context, intent, etc, from which it provides relevant answers exclusive to the user’s query. As a brand, you need to learn more about MUM to develop a website or campaign aligned with Google’s recent model in the algorithm.
Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA)
Optimising content for voice search has been one of the highlights this year. You must notice that Google is working to modify its algorithm to please the most recent voice-based technologies. They have revealed LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) during the Google I/O meeting. It’s a machine-learning configuration that can be set to read many words, pay attention to how they associate with one another, and facilitate word prediction.
Effective SEO Needs to Include Video
If you have not done so already, you must establish an SEO strategy that uses videos. The fact is that online video platforms have surged in popularity in the last few years, and you may even have noticed for yourself how many brands have begun to use platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to engage with target clients and increase their reach.
Creating optimised video content should then be an indispensable part of your SEO strategy in the coming year. However, how can you optimise video content? One approach that you can do is to ensure that you optimise your video channel description by adding a user-friendly overview of what your channel is about. Keywords will of course also play a key role in optimising your video content. While you are not required to cram your video descriptions with keywords, a few handy keywords and hashtags can tailor your content to its target audience.
The future of SEO is continuously changing and evolving. We must take advantage of these changes now in order to stay on top and be prepared for what comes next year. So, it’s time for your brand to start thinking about how they can carry out some (or all) of these into the current marketing strategy with Google.
Whether you need help to establish an ethical link-building campaign or increase your mobile usability, don’t get left behind. Start adapting now with the best SEO strategies for 2022 and beyond.
