For many years, the goal of SEO has been to get your website or ad to appear at the top of Google's search engines and 2022 will be no different. Within digital marketing trends in 2022, the main objective will be the same, but to be at the top of searches with zero clicks. Like this? Zero-click searches refer to “zero position on Google”, i.e. for the snippets featured on Google pages, and this is where digital marketing and SEO trends in 2022 give the highest priority.
Position zero works differently from the other results: first, it is separate from the other results and is located in a small part of the top of the page. When users find the relevant information for their search on Google, before clicking on a link on a website, the most important thing is that it directly displays the relevant information waiting to answer the user's questions without having to click on anything. Hence the name “zero position in Google”.
green marketing
Just like the inclusive digital marketing trend, in 2021 we are even more concerned about the environment than ever before. This is how the concept of green marketing was born. Consumers want to make sure that the brands they give their money to are just as concerned about the state of the planet as they are. Keep in mind that 81% of consumers believe companies should help improve the environment, according to a global survey. This explains the rise of sustainable and environmentally friendly brands, especially among younger consumers.
interactive marketing
While not exactly new as a digital marketing strategy, publishing interactive content has recently been recognized as a best practice, which is why we've included it in our list of 2022 digital marketing trends.
Interactive marketing not only helps to attract the audience but also improves the user experience. The content can include quizzes, open-ended questions, surveys, contests, giveaways, widgets, etc., and do wonders for your brand. More brands are now focusing on Twitch and other live streaming platforms. On Twitch, you can interact with people and really understand the strength of the product/service. If you are active with the streams schedule then it is an easy way to get Twitch followers.
At the very least, it will increase the time users interact with your networks, which could improve your position in Google's search results and algorithms. But this goes far beyond the “green products” market, as all brands have something to gain by adopting green and sustainable practices. So the key is to communicate your commitment to the planet through your brand and your content, and if you're a startup, you can still make environmentalism a core element of your brand identity.
There are many ways to do this depending on your brand style, such as placing a prominent banner on your website, talking about it repeatedly on social media, etc. You can even go for more subtle methods like offering reusable bags in your brand colors or conveying environmental messages through your brand's visual identity.
Have you ever wondered why certain sites are higher than others? Or why is your site not as high as your competitor's?
A lot of this has to do with Google's algorithm. It analyzes over 200 ranking factors when determining where to rank a website. As you already know, these ranking factors are not easy to understand, which makes it difficult for you to figure out how to tweak your site to maximize your rankings.
How Google determines where to rank your site
Now that you have a sense of some of the ranking factors that Google considers, let's dive into some more detail.
click rate
Part of Google's algorithm looks at a click through rate. It calculates it as a percentage, reflecting the number of clicks you get out of the total number of people searching for that particular phrase that you rank for.
The higher the percentage, the more attractive your listing is compared to the competition. And if your click-through rate is higher than everyone else's, Google will slowly start moving you up the search engine results page as this algorithm factor tells you that searchers prefer your listing.
However, looking at the click-through rate is not enough as people can create misleading title tags and meta descriptions to boost their results. Therefore, Google also looks at your bounce rate.
It measures the number of people who leave your page by pressing the back button to return to the search listing page. If Google sends 1.000 people to one of your web pages and each of those 1.000 people hits the back button within a few seconds, that tells Google that your web page is not relevant.
Many of the websites that are ranking well on Google that don't appear to be optimized have a high click-through rate and a low bounce rate. And it helps to maintain your rankings.
Age
One of the big factors that make some websites rank well is their age. So most of the places that occupy the top are at least a few years old.
Of course, most of these older sites have more backlinks and content as they have been for longer, but not all of them.
If you take a new site, create tons of relevant links, as well as add high-quality content, you still won't get as much search traffic as older sites.
There's not much you can do here other than just giving him time. The older your site gets, the more search traffic you'll generally get, assuming you're continually trying to improve it.
Backlinks
Google doesn't just look at the sheer number of backlinks a site has — it also looks at relevance and authority.
Many of these non-optimized sites that are ranking well have some high quality backlinks pointing to the right internal pages. For example, if you only have a few links — but they come from .edu and .gov extensions — your site will rank extremely well.
In addition to having the right backlinks, these sites also have spot-on anchor text for those links. Most SEOs think you need rich anchor text links to rank well, but the reality is, you don't.
Google is able to look at the webpage that is linking to you and analyze the text around the link as well as the text on the page. It helps Google determine if the link is relevant to your site and what you should potentially rank for.
Monitor your link profile
Links pointing to your site can make or break it.
Recent research suggests that “high quality backlinks make up 30% of your overall page score on Google”.
It is very important to keep track of which websites are linking to you. Low quality, irrelevant or spammy sites could be the end of your dreams.
Content quality
Since its Panda update, Google has been able to determine the quality of content on websites. For example, it can determine if a site is too thin or has duplicate content, allowing for much better analysis of content quality than before.
Many of these older, well-ranked sites have very high quality content. You may not think so, but Google does. Because?
Because Google doesn't just look at the content on a website. It looks at content on a website and compares it to others within that space. So if you have higher quality content than all your competitors, you are much more likely to outperform them in the long run.
Internal links to appear on Google in 2022
The biggest mistake I see websites making right now is that they tend to forget to use internal links, in which you link one of your web pages to another.
Don't expect immediate results when you start adding internal links. It usually takes more than 3 months for the links to start working. And you can't just go into your old pages and posts and push tons of internal links. You need to do this slowly, over time, and add internal links to new pages as well.
Website speed will make you appear on Google in 2022
Don't you hate it when websites load slowly? I know you do. To make matters worse, have you ever gone back to sites that load slowly? Chances are not!
For that same reason, in April 2010, Google started taking load time into account when ranking websites. It wasn't because you wouldn't go back to those sites that load slowly, it was because they saw a trend that indicated you would decrease your Google usage when Google showed you slow sites. And if you use Google less and start using other search engines, Google would make less money from your ads.
So how do you speed up your site? Here are some tips to improve site speed:
- Content Delivery Network – Your hosting company should have this feature. Call them to have them activated. It puts your website on servers all over the world so your website loads faster.
- Fast server – choose the best website hosting provider. That makes a difference in the world when it comes to site speed.
- Clean your code – hiring a good developer is worth it as they will make your code cleaner. Messy code usually means a slower website.
- A quick way to get started is with a Google Speed Test that will give you tips to improve your website speed.
Social proof will also make you appear on Google in 2022
There has been a recent debate about whether or not social actions impact rankings. Whether they do or not, more social actions means more traffic. And the more people visit your site, the greater the chance that someone will naturally connect with you. And more links mean higher rankings.
For that reason, you should try to get more social proof.
Get active on relevant niche platforms
Another strategy to quickly gain traction is to sign up to “niche platforms”, which are basically websites geared towards a specific industry.
Consistently create high-quality visual content. Consistently distributing high-quality content in all the right mediums will help your SEO on many levels, including building visual content.
These not only help you connect with your audience in a memorable way, but also considerably streamline your brand's signal building efforts.
That's because visual content tends to get a lot of shares and has the potential to go viral.
In fact, “content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images”.
Infographics, in particular, are a great medium to use.
To further maximize your impact, use branded anchor text (where your brand is included in the hyperlink) when linking back to your site.
Just make sure it looks natural — not like you're deliberately trying to brand your hyperlinks.
User experience is a way to make your website appear on Google in 2022
At the end of the day, Google is interested in one thing: providing its users with the best experience possible.
If your website offers a great user experience, you must be in good shape.
No matter what Google throws at you, there should be a level of stability, and your rankings are unlikely to see a dramatic drop. At least try to deliver this:
- fast loading pages
- mobility
- intuitive navigation
- clean interface
- no disruptive popups
- Webspam and blackhat practices
Conclusion on what to do to appear on Google in 2022
The key to getting more search traffic is not just building more links or adding more content. It's also about understanding the Google algorithm. And if you want to take it a level deeper, it really comes down to understanding people, as Google's goal is always to do what's best for its users.
So if you want to maximize your search rankings, your best bet is to do what's best for your users. Of course, in the short term your rankings may not go up as fast as you would like, but in the long term you should do just fine.
Brands as well as their marketing teams have a lot of things they need to count on these days. They need to count their number of likes, followers, retweets, comments, shares, tags, mentions, etc.
With over 20 social media platforms available at your disposal just for marketing, it can be hard to take the time to keep track of your Google rankings on top of that. After all, hasn't social networks changed the way people search for information? Maybe we've reached that stage where these channels can replace Google?
Google is still the most popular website in the world and receives over 86 billion total monthly visits. To put that in perspective, Facebook only receives 20 billion total monthly visits, while Instagram and Amazon attract just over 4 billion, respectively. In fact, for the last decade Google has held the top spot as the most popular website.
So yes, in 2022 you should still be concerned about how you rank on Google.
However, even though Google has been such a powerful force in our lives for the last 10 years at least, the top echelon at Google is still one of the biggest challenges. First, it's competitive. Second, you need to find out how Google's algorithm works.
To help you crack the code on how you can rank higher on Google, we at Colors Agency we design SEO strategies, but also brand positioning for large, medium and small multinational companies, all projects are important to us!
