The time flies. And the Top SEO Trends that were once popular, perhaps now gradually sink into oblivion. The SEO Trends list is updated and new items are added every year as users' needs and evolution of search algorithms.
Today we want to discuss with you the factors that will be decisive for today. Some of them are always on the rise, but that doesn't mean that people have necessarily applied these trends to their businesses.
Whether for lack of knowledge or time, in most cases, the important thing is that we have prepared an article for you with the main SEO trends for 2021, good reading!
Content is still of great importance.
High quality content has become a decisive factor in your website's popularity for a long time. Furthermore, this is a criterion that still ranks first. The better the content you create, the more people notice you and come back to enjoying your writing. Your work becomes appreciated.
Google doesn't like poorly written text and will put it down very quickly if you don't meet users' needs. Or fail to create a pleasant user experience on your website.
Remember the following line and keep it in mind as you work on your next copy; high quality is a must, cheating means you'll be cheating on your ratings.
If you thought for a second that you can write short articles and optimize them with tons of keywords and exaggerate all the rules that way, then I have to say: this technique is too old and outdated to even mention.
Now the quality of your article is more important than the amount of keywords used. A natural way to write with a moderate amount of keywords will now be your formula for success. Start your keyword selection without delay.
Use the keyword research feature and get top-notch word perspectives. Then analyze them for key metrics.
Use Page Speed Insights and Google Analytics Tools
Massive waves of traffic are great. You've done a great job of attracting multiple audiences to your site if you have a huge number of viewers. However, do you really need it?
Chasing the amount of traffic, we often forget the quality of it. Let's imagine you have millions of people visiting your site each month.
If you run a blog and your goal is to have more readers. If you want more buyers, how many of them will click the “Buy Now? In this case, be careful not to attract only readers, but not buyers.
Stop useless traffic missions and target real targets and audiences. With the right goals, you can create a solid SEO strategy; choose the right platforms for promotion depending on your target audience and products; Choose the right keywords for your articles to draw convertible attention to your products and build a beneficial offer for your future customers that they can't resist.
Google Analytics will help you analyze incoming traffic in terms of completed goals and where people came from.
And we cannot, of course, fail to emphasize that one of the means is to make your website have many visitors and they feel engaged in the browsing experience, a fundamental strategy can be adopted.
Optimize your website with Google Page Speed Insights Google's general site quality analysis tool will help you understand how long your site takes on average to open on different devices, how much code used in it like CSS and Javascript are optimized according to best practices and much more.
Understand if your score is good, average or bad and where you or an expert can optimize your site.
Prove your authority: EAT
O EAT concept means Expertise, Authority and Confidence and it embodies the idea of a webmaster (or a copywriter) being a real, proven professional in a niche they work in, and producing publicly open content that is unlikely to negatively affect people's well-being. Google may look for evidence of qualifications, diploma and/or certificates.
Why will the EAT be important?
Google says it wants users to receive only relevant, fresh and proven data. If your words can harm users in the algorithm's opinion, Google will take that and leave your site to the deeper layers of the SERP ocean.
Protect yourself and try to prove you know what you're writing about. Unproven data can be a catastrophe for a website's rankings. Bad comments may not be long in coming if you write something that others quickly understand is false.
Eventually, users may no longer visit your site because they can't be sure you're real. Google will notice this and your rankings will drop faster. There are specific algorithm updates focused on detecting and punishing websites that can harm users. Google also considers “damage” to come from politically debatable content.
Tips that help strengthen EAT factors
- Introduce yourself correctly: The “About” page is always the best place to list all your accomplishments and write about who you are and why people can use your knowledge without any fear.
- Gather positive reviews on other Internet platforms: Your website isn't the only place where people can learn about you and your work. There are many websites where people can share their opinion about different services. Give people the best knowledge that you won't feel ashamed or guilty.
- Backlink to sources: People don't trust links these days. To be more precise, people don't trust unknown or suspicious sources and, consequently, they won't trust you. If you get a backlink from an extremely low authority or irrelevant domain – delete it, if you're going to link to a suspicious domain – check it out and, if anything, don't link it to it at all. Find another one with high authority on the Internet.
You can check the quality of your backlinks with the Backlink Quality Check Tool and then clean your backlink profile if there are suspicious signals using the tool Google Disavow to request that such links no longer be taken into account, do so with all spam and low quality links.
Enter the local SEO
Local SEO has been done less so this year as many people are at home. However, this is no reason to give up. Despite what is happening in the world, Google is constantly updating its algorithm about local search and how the results are displayed in SERPs, implementing new methods of filtering data and setting specific restrictions and opportunities for different types of companies.
If you're in the on-premises scenario, you can no longer put off your on-premises optimization if you want users to know about its existence. This is relevant so far, as you can adapt your business to people's ongoing needs.
With Google My Business you can analyze your performance, learn and track your local competitors, and work with reviews that people leave on Google Maps.
Adjust Your Business to Varied Circumstances
Even if you run a bricks-and-mortar business, what quarantine has taught us is that, in the name of retooling and saving your business, you can always extend your offering with new options. People prefer online if there is an opportunity to choose. It's not the easiest task. However, if you want to survive adversity, you will definitely find a solution. And for that, there are several options you can use as a rainy day backup plan.
Delivery
If your field of activity is food and drink, it's easier to keep up with this change. You will function as usual, but the way you serve customers will be different. Develop a flexible, clean and affordable system for delivering food and drink to people, and they will definitely use it.
It's great to introduce this system in advance so people will get used to it sooner. If tough times come, they'll know you've got everything you need to make their lives comfortable. This works well for SEO.
You'll embrace those layers of your audience that often depend on delivery. Therefore, you will use more valuable keywords and build a reputation as a multi-tasking business.
You can cooperate with delivery services in the cities where your business operates. This cooperation can be used for marketing goals: advertising on your partner's website or social media – maybe even with discounts that people love – all of which will bring more conversions and traffic.
pick up on the spot
On-site pick-up service is common for food and beverage restaurants. However, who says you can't use it for other types of products? How do you implement this way of serving customers?
Do a little work on your website. Create a page that will be entirely dedicated to shopping in this mode and offer an opportunity to pay for things online. Site visitors order a product, pay online, go to a special space in your store, pick up merchandise.
Some companies may have some difficulties in adapting to this feature. However, if you want to save your business – who cares? If a customer wants to specify something with a worker, he or she can agree on everything using messages, phone calls, emails.
Online Consultations
People prefer to work more and more on the internet as it helps them to save precious time. Companies that are concerned with Law, Financial Planning and Real Estate can implement this system immediately. This will be comfortable for both customers who cannot pay for any reason.
It will help your workers because there will be no attachment to the office or a specific location. You can broaden your customer base and Internet popularity by placing targeted keywords in online queries on your website.
It will be more difficult for home businesses to adapt to the online regime. But why not? It's comfortable in terms of saving time and serving more customers.
How do you fit into the situation?
Create a page for “Inquiries/Instructions/Online Services”. There you can list your experts and create their profiles, listing their skills, years of experience, etc. and point out how they can help people without coming into your house.
How will this improve SEO? There are two aspects you will improve in terms of on-page and local SEO:
- There will be a greater variety of new keywords on your site that will focus on online services;
- You will be able to get more favorable reviews of your services, as it is assumed that you will help more people.
- Video/Photo Tours: This is a great idea for companies that show objects to their customers: like real estate and furniture stores. Modern technologies like 3D photography have taken the world by surprise. You can use this to better extend your business to the online community.
There are several options for implementing this:
Online Galleries: Here we mean 3D galleries where a customer can walk through the goods like between exhibitions in a real gallery;
If a 3D gallery is too much for you, you can use comfortable and cheap (high quality!) video calling. That is, during which you will be able to show any product to your customers in detail. Whether it's a simple chair, a three-story house, or software viewed via screenshare;
Photos will save you a lot of time. However, you will have to capture every detail. If, during the video call, you can show everything in real time, during a photo shoot, you will have to write a lot and take a lot of pictures. Prepare for it.
A great user experience (UX)
In addition to the high-quality content, which has been in the spotlight since Google began filtering search results – a long time ago, there's one more point you have to get your attention. THE UX (user experience) it will be one of the most discussed topics throughout 2021 and beyond.
The way people browse, investigate and feel on your site has become one of the biggest issues in SEO. Especially since people started using mobile devices more than desktops.
The necessity of optimize websites for mobile devices entered the life of every webmaster. This is important for Google too. If the user experience on your site is still like this, then you know what to do in early 2021.
SEO: Mobile Search
We are living in the era of new technologies and their constant improvement. People of all ages try to follow new trends, and therefore, master them as quickly as possible. You should be on the same path. Mobile search is gaining more popularity day by day.
Users will appreciate your hard work if you organize your content so it's easy to find and access via mobile search. Getting your site strictly optimized for desktops is the worst idea ever. A great desktop look is definitely cool. However, Google itself warned that mobile optimization is a must with its first mobile indexing update.
Voice search
Voice search gives us information at any time: while we're on our way, we either can't type, or we don't have a lot of free time. It's a matter of convenience. So give us so much humor by working on your content to optimize it for a possible voice search of one of your articles, which can be given in response to a spoken request.
The best way to optimize your content for voice search is to organize it according to people's most likely spoken queries.
Since voice search is predominantly performed on mobile devices, mobile optimization of your website is more important than ever.
The speed of your website is essential for voice search as well as other types of searches. If you're not able to provide quick results for a searcher query, then you still don't deserve Google Assistant's attention.
Start working on your video marketing strategy
Videos are everywhere. People want them everywhere. Because they're interesting, fun, multi-directional and available on any device. That's why this kind of content can help you go viral.
The first thing that probably comes to your mind is YouTube. This is understandable. YouTube is still lagging behind Google, plus it's one of the most important zones for promotion. However, don't aim for it solely because YouTube is a highly competitive place for a newcomer. You will risk wasting a lot of effort as well as time if your business is just on the rise.
There are many platforms you can use to achieve your business goals. So, broaden your field of operation in terms of video format and add “Social Media Marketing” to your SEO strategy.
Increase your brand awareness
Influencers can have millions of followers and those followers can become your customers. Social media bloggers have always been sought out among product vendors because they are associated with trust. The more trust your brand ambassador has, the more sales you'll generate.
Today, bloggers are having even more success than ever because circumstances have kicked us to Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Where you can market blog posts much more.
But beware, partnerships with influencers require you to collect some data about aspects such as an influencer's audience. A level of engagement and trust, past partnerships and feedback about that person. Do not choose any Influencers because of the number of followers.
Prefer even those with fewer followers but a higher level of engagement and stronger relationships with your audience. Such collaboration will fit perfectly with your brand and could bring in significantly higher profits.
Security of user's personal data
People have become more aware of their Internet security. Private data must remain private by all means, but also on all websites. Security is even more necessary if your website is about selling or reselling merchandise. That is, users leave data about their bank accounts and cards there.
If you want to be trusted by them, spend some time as well as money on a hosting system that provides your site with all the security certificates that users appreciate.
An “Unsafe” status for your website is a quick way to see your rankings drop. Google considers your site's security status while building search result lists. This is a ranking factor that appears in the top 10 of the most important factors. So, protect your users' personal data, and for that, Google will protect your rankings more faithfully.
Conclusion on SEO trends for 2021
Trends in SEO change day by day. We don't know what will be in the future and, respectively, what changes we will go through. However, we have to adapt to any circumstances and adapt our business models to them to win any race in the niche.
With Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look as well as a modern layout for your website. In other words, our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies and brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium and small, all projects are important to us.
