SEO has been helping countless businesses attract the right audience to their products and drive traffic to their websites and online platforms. However, just like anything on the internet, SEO is always changing and evolving.
Due to this ever-changing nature, many businesses struggle to cope with all the latest changes, newest trends, and updates. Even though many companies discard paid listings, it’s worth the effort. According to some stats, many users pay attention only to the organic search results and overlook ads. Thus, businesses must examine the best opportunities in both PPC and SEO. Only a balanced combination of the two can reassure the best results. As reported by Forbes, organic results tend to increase in importance due to emerging privacy concerns.
If you want to take your SEO game to the next level, you need to understand how the most critical metrics work, such as backlinks, traffic, clicks, just to name a few. So, we will mention the most relevant SEO trends to keep an eye on in 2021.
1. AI-powered SEO
AI is already present in everything we do, helping improve every aspect of our daily lives. It’s also completely altering the way internet users react to online content. For example, your SEO efforts depend on Google’s algorithm. Known as RankBrain, this algorithm is in charge of the main Google ranking factors that drive SERPs results.
RankBrain has an immense ability to learn and constantly improve itself. The more time passes, the smarter and more effective RankBrain becomes. Because of that, AI is one of the top SEO trends to keep an eye on. Many businesses are already interested in the best ways to optimize their SEO for RankBrain.
According to SEO experts, the primary determinant is user experience. Therefore, businesses need to attract and engage consumers with the most relevant, well-organized, and valuable content for the ultimate on-page SEO results.
2. Voice search technology will help improve search queries
Voice search technology has made progress in the last couple of years, bringing new techs like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant to the online world. Even though this technology is still improving, it’s already immensely popular among internet users.
Since your SEO will depend on this technology at some point, the best way to optimize for it is to identify the right keywords and phrases that your consumers use in everyday conversations; the more natural-sounding and longer the phrasing, the better the results. Thus, you will need to do some research before improving this aspect.
3. Mobile-friendly search rankings
Consumers carry their smartphones everywhere. No matter what site you run, it must be suitable for mobile users. For instance, a website should have its mobile version, or be incredibly optimized to serve such clients.
Since 2019, the Google search engine’s primary focus is on the mobile versions of business websites. Mobile versions are the primary versions ever since. By 2025, more than 70% of internet users will use mobile devices to access the internet.
Therefore, modern businesses will have to pay special attention to two vital metrics to see how effective their mobile sites are – mobile usability (Google Search Console) and a mobile-friendly test that Google offers for free.
4. Improving SERPs with long-form content
Some of the latest reports related to content marketing suggest that the best way to get more shares and traffic is to provide long articles of 3,000 words and more. Compared to average length articles of 900-1200 words, long reads achieve almost four times more backlinks.
If you want to achieve higher search rankings, you’ll have to shift your focus to long-form content. However, having 3,000-plus words isn’t enough on its own; you still have to maintain quality, readability, usefulness, etc. The main goal is to provide content that is useful to your readers and shareable information to increase their engagement.
5. Video content will become part of every SEO strategy
Online video is one of the most popular forms of content on the internet. Video platforms such as YouTube gather billions of users. According to some predictions, video is expected to surpass all other forms of content when it comes to consumption.
After all, do you prefer reading three paragraphs of texts, or would you rather watch a video discussing the same topic? The chances are that you would always pick video content. It helps you get information quickly, without having to scan through texts for relevant keywords.
To make sure you optimize your video content in the right way, pay special attention to your video channel description and name, as well as keywords. Each platform has unique requirements when it comes to keyword optimization. So, it’s crucial to understand them.
6. Data science will become vital to achieving higher rankings
Data science and analytics play a crucial role on the internet-driven world. Aside from allowing businesses to understand their consumers, data science also allows them to create targeted messages and visualize campaigns.
Data analytics allow businesses to check bounce rates, response errors, redirects, indexing, page loading times, and identify referral sources and verify which URLs are getting crawled. More importantly, data science and analytics help businesses identify unusual traffic sources that can hurt their SEO credibility, such as potential spam sites, and pinpoint web pages that they don’t want crawlers indexing.
Data science can also help discover the best ways to improve your SEO strategies, such as using a VPN to uplift your rankings. Top-rated VPN providers such as Atlas VPN can help a business. For instance, you can target a location outside of your country. Thus, you will be able to review the current results users receive in any region you desire. Additionally, a VPN helps preserve the data employees exchange, especially if they work remotely.
Conclusion
SEO is becoming more complex with time, and the more it changes, the harder it gets to stay on top of the latest trends. However, things can get a bit easier if you keep an eye on the latest, most important metrics. You can quickly get ahead of your SEO strategy by using the right SEO tools to help you gather the latest information to improve your efforts.
