Wondering what the SEO landscape will look like in 2021? Read on as these tips are vital if you are going to rank on Google.
Zero Clicks, snippets, Voice, video, user experience, authority it’s all changing when it comes to how Google ranks your website. These tips are gold, you can thank us later!
Everyone knows SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a fast-moving industry. Google is continually introducing new technologies and updating old ones to improve the quality of its search results.
1.Zero Click Searches are raising very rapidly.
For terms like currency conversion, time zones word definitions and “How to do…”question, nobody’s clicking through.
That’s because many new SERP features (Like paid ads, media elements, featured snippets) have taken over the top positions and are now make clicking on certain types of search results unnecessary.
A zero-click SERP is one where the answer is displayed directly at the top of a Google search result. The search intent of the user is satisfied without having to click any actual search result links.
Today, 34.4 Percent of all desktop searches result in no click. On mobile, 62.5 percent of users never click on search results.
Nothing you can do will change the percentage of zero-click searches, but you should keep them in mind during Keyword Research. If you’re considering a keyword and most of the searches get no clicks, it might not be the best target.
For example, if we check the click distribution for “what does SEO stand for” in Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer, an estimated 71% of searches result in no clicks.
It doesn’t mean that we cannot get the traffic if we don’t target first keyword. There are other benefits to showing up in the search results, like:
Increased brand awareness- Because your domain name and favicon shows in the SERP.
Improved brand perception- If Google consistently pulls helpful answers from your pages, searchers may start associating your brand with being helpful.
Reaching more people- Not everything is about traffic. If you work for a non-profit or have a hobby site, reaching more people could be a worthwhile SEO KPI.
2. Voice Search Will Impact Search Queries
Thanks to innovations like Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa, voice search technology has come a long way. As technology has gotten better, it’s also gotten more popular. In fact, the percentage of households predicted to own a smart speaker by 2022 is 55%.
Voice search optimization is the process of optimizing your pages to appear in voice searches. When you optimize for voice search, you optimize for the way people conduct verbal searches. The owning of smart speaker and smartphone increases voice search usage. By having more than one voice assistant on hand, users are more likely to perform various searches and tasks throughout the day, increasing reliance on their voice assistants.
The technology that Google is using is RainBrains, BERT and Knowledge graph. But these are very complex technology. But there are a few simple ways to optimize for Voice search:
- Get a Google My Business profile – Answers to questions directly related to your business, like directions and opening times, are usually pulled from here.
- Make sure your page loads fast – Voice search results load 52% faster than the average page. We know that page speed is important ranking factor in organic search.
- Get more backlinks – Backlinks help with rankings, Google is more likely to pull voice search results from high-ranking pages. So provide more backlinks to your pages.
- Be succinct (Short) – The average voice search result is 29 words. So provide explanation in brief manner.
3. The SEO Benefits of Long Form Content
According to our State of Content Marketing Report, long reads of 3,000-plus words get three times more traffic and four times more shares. They also achieve 3.5 times more backlinks than articles of the average length of 901 to 1,200 words.
Start focusing on long-form content to achieve higher search rankings. That said, your content must maintain quality. The aim is to provide users with shareable information that keeps them engaged.
Howdy achieve this, There are 3 ways to achieve it-
First, separate your content into sections with H2 and H3 subheadings to make it more scannable. Subheadings are especially important for mobile sites.
Second, ensure that you link to relevant, authoritative sources with a solid authority score. Authority Score is our compound domain score that grades the overall quality of a website. The higher the score, the more assumed weight a domain’s or webpage’s backlinks could have.
Third, ensure your content is easy to share. Include various sharing links at the headline and again at the conclusion so that readers can share with few click.
The below graph is from Hubspot that show the relation between content length in words and backlinks.
4. Mobile Friendliness Will Impact Search Ranking
In 2019, Google rolled out mobile-first indexing, meaning the search engine looks primarily at the mobile version of a website, considering this the “primary” version instead of the desktop version. This change makes sense, given that nearly 73% of internet users will access the internet solely via mobile devices by 2025. Check how effective your mobile site is with Google’s free mobile-friendly test. Next, take a peek at the “mobile usability” report in Google Search Console.
Google Rolled out its update called “Mobile Friendly update”
If you have an m‑dot or complex website, you need to check that there are no critical differences between your desktop and mobile site. To check that, crawl your website using a desktop user-agent using Site Audit in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, then repeat the process with a mobile user-agent. You’ll see any differences between the two crawls as ‘changes.’
5. Video Content is Effective SEO Strategy
Google Cares About Video, Which Means We Need to Care About It, Too. Google doesn’t just look at the text on a particular page. It also scans for other types of media to see precisely what you have to offer. If your sites have a mixture of not only text but also quality visuals like animation, images and video, that means your pages are informative thus giving it gives a boost to your SEO efforts.
Google also pays close attention to how long people are staying on your site once they finally arrive. If you have a large amount of incoming traffic, but those people all leave after just a few seconds, it stands to reason that your content isn’t very good and they’re going elsewhere for the answers they need. Video keeps people on your site longer.
By depending heavily on video to increase the amount of time someone spends on your page, you significantly improve your bounce rate, which helps search engines like Google and Bing boost your article to the top of their rankings!
Shoppers are twice as likely to make a purchase after viewing something like a product video than they are without engaging that content.
Conclusion
SEO is not Complex things, but it does take a lot of work and dedication to providing the best content, graphics and user experience to the public. SEO helps to optimize the website to get the more traffic and engage more user.
