SEO in 2022. Strategies, trends and mistakes

SEO is an important part of digital marketing. More than half of all website traffic comes from organic search results. SEO focuses on making your website easier to find in order to improve its ranking in organic search results. While certain features are always considered important processes, certain SEO trends come and go.

Let’s take a look at the major SEO trends in 2022 and consider what strategies will continue to play an important role in 2022.

Improving the page speed

Page speed is both the present and the future of SEO.

As more and more users access the internet on the go, businesses need to keep their websites running fast. This is why Google has launched Core Web Vitals, one of the newest ranking factors.

Thanks to the Core Web Vitals, Google analyzes:

• How long does it take to load the largest element on your website

• How many elements on the page moves while loading

• How long it takes for elements on the page to respond to clicks

In general, Google checks how much time people are taking to interact with your content. When you reach your site, how quickly users can access the information they need to answer their question.

Page speed will continue to play a key role as a ranking factor, so control should be performed as often as possible.

This allows you to find and deploy updates on a regular basis — and avoid being overwhelmed by what needs to be fixed.

The quality of content is still the most important

Yes, Google is still interested in quality and original content. Creating and posting high-quality content should always be your top priority on your site ranking at the top of search engines. High-quality content has always been one of the main pillars of SEO trends.

There has been a lot of change in the creation and merging of high-quality content since most search engines have changed their algorithms. Google has unique content quality guidelines that you should always follow if you want your site to be at the top.

Here are some tips to follow when creating high-quality content for your site:

• Accuracy – you should always try to provide information that resonates with your target audience. You want to make sure that the content you post on your site is accurate, precise, and relevant to your audience.
• Readability – create content that is easy to read and understand. It is important to use a simple language, carefully select words, and make sure that the information you provide is verifiable.
• FAQ – when you think about the content, you should always focus on some of the common questions most users may have about your brand or product. Create a FAQ page on your site and answer some of the questions people ask about your business.
• Blog – develop a content marketing strategy that includes blogging. You can have at least two items published per month on your calendar. Create high-quality content that you can share with your customers.

Include some internal links

Always attach a few internal links to the relevant content. Google indexes each page and wants to see that you are connecting to more articles around the article you write.

Connect with intention and remember to search, especially when selecting anchor text. This means that instead of using expressions such as “Read this article”, you use the anchor text that uses the main keyword on which the article is based. This will give you more information about where the link goes.

Google does not provide the number of external or internal links to be included, but generally use this along the length of the content. The most important thing is to make sure that all internal links are correct.

There are no rigid limitations on the number to include, but if you combine with a lot of irrelevant content, this is distracting for the reader and confusing search engines.

Prepare your link-building plan

As a company, you should always focus on high quality links. Linking is one way to increase your site’s traffic and gain authority.

The primary aim of linking is to have other sites that link to your site. When you choose to build links to improve your visibility on the Internet, you should also focus on quality and relevant content.

Make sure you post only content that others can use as a reference. When other sites use your content, they are more likely to refer to or link to your site. You can also ask some of the authorities in your industry to link to one or two of your articles or website.

Optimize all images

You want your pages to load as quickly as possible, so make sure you optimize your images to make them as small as possible.

Optimization services, can help reduce media file sizes, but most CMS systems also offer some optimization features that allow you to edit directly in the post.

The easiest way to avoid having to reduce multiple image sizes later is to use best practice in developing images to make them look as small as possible.

This is because Google considers the user experience in its search ranking algorithm, and if your page loads slowly, but the competition page that contains the same information loads quickly, especially on mobile devices, Google will first share the faster page with users.

SEO mistakes

Poor quality content. The length of the content on the page is related to the SERP rankings, and more words result in higher rankings. Remember not to overdo it the other way, so that the user does not run away from the page. It is worth populating the page with interesting content for the user.

Duplicate content. Google looks very badly at content that is repeated from other pages. Your Page should be original.

You have not secured the HTTPS website. Google has stated that HTTPS sites will be preferred over HTTP sites where two sites look similar in other ranking factors.

There are no optimized images on the page. Make sure your pictures are optimized for size (px) and size (kB).

Your website speed is too slow. Many users leave the site after it takes too long to load.

Your bounce rate is too high. Search engines have one job to make sure they are providing users with the most valuable answers to their queries. If users run away from your site right away, then Google considers your site uninteresting for them.

SEO trends

Guessing the user’s thoughts

The following points refer to how best you can guess your intentions when you search for a query. Both voice and written.

Algorithms. Goodbye BERT, Hello MUM

With BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers) running in 2019, Google’s algorithm became more capable of understanding the relationship between words and search query intention.

BERT was something new that allowed Google to support voice assistant users. People haven’t written any more queries, they just said them right away. Google had to adjust its algorithm accordingly using NLP and AI technology.

But BERT is just the beginning. At Google’s 2021 conference, the company announced a new model for voice translation and support for its users; they called it a MUM (Multitask Unified Model).

MUM is an artificial intelligence model that can understand the feelings, context, abstractions, and user intent that provide the right answers that are unique to the user’s query. With the MUM, users will not have to ask multiple queries until they find the correct keyword to provide them with the desired response. Instead, Google will provide them with the requested results using one conversation query.

Since August 2021, MUM has been still in the test phase. However, we should expect it to start working soon. As long as this does not happen, we cannot be sure of its strength and effectiveness; we do not know how it will affect your search results.

But if it is to be similar to BERT, we can imagine even stronger emphasis on authority signals (EAT) and a response-focused approach to content.

Focus on your search intent

The next SEO trend is focused on your intention to search for a user. This trend has been popular for years and is still valid in 2022. Creating pages that focus on search engine user intent is critical to success in SEO in 2022, helping you position yourself in search results. People search for specific information. If your page does not contain the information you need, you will not be well placed in your search results. If you want to fulfill your search intent, look at what is already in the ranking for your page’s key password.

Voice search will affect queries

Thanks to innovations like voice assistants, voice search technology has come a long way. Because technology has become better, it has also become more popular.

To optimize your voice search, consider your keywords. Identify the longer phrases people use in their daily conversations. Voice search handles longer, more natural-sounding phrases. When people write, they tend to shorten.

Content on the site

The next trends are related to the quality and length of content.

Jump to long content

To ensure that you attract and engage readers who visit your site, you need to follow a content strategy. Longer content has been shown to generate more traffic and provide more content than short content. Focusing on creating high-quality long content can significantly improve search rankings. However, for longer-term content to be successful, it must be able to keep readers engaged.

To keep involvement of readers, it is important to divide the content into multiple sections using H2 and H3, as this will make scanning easier. The aim is to make it easier for readers to view content, especially on mobile devices, because large text pieces can be perceived as intimidating for many readers and can overwhelm a small screen. You should also ensure that your content is easy to share to further improve SEO. Include clear links to share at the beginning and end of the content so that readers can share it with a single click.

Content that complies with the Google eat policy will rank higher

Google has repeated that the quality of the content is critical to success in the ranking. Refer to the EAT principle: expertise, authoritarianism and trust. These factors help determine if the website contains useful high-quality content. This principle is particularly important in business niches that are included in the label “your money, your Life” (YMYL).

Remember About EAT when you create content. Having authoritative links to you is another way to prove that you meet the EAT criteria.

User Experience and User Usability

Trends in 2022 will also be linked to user experience in terms of speed and page clarity. The User Experience and User Usability will have to be taken into account even more.

Ensure a positive user experience

You need to focus on your positive experience. As more and more people shop online, it’s essential that your site provides the best possible experience. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people have been safe, shopping online and delivering products to their homes. More and more consumers are switching to online shopping to get what they need. To prepare for this trend, you need to make sure that your site provides a positive user experience for your audience.

Mobile friendliness is key to Google rankings

Mobile-friendly is the foundation of SEO since Google officially ranked this in 2015. However, it is more critical than ever to optimize content for mobile devices because Google has implemented mobile-optimized indexing in 2019. This means that when you rank content, the search engine primarily looks at the mobile version of the site, not the computer version.

Luckily, Google makes it easy to check the effectiveness of your mobile site with a free test for mobile devices. Using tools can be critical to finding and troubleshooting mobile usability issues on your site that may have a negative impact on SEO. The fact is that as more and more people use the Internet through mobile devices, you need to make sure that your content is optimized for these users.

SEO continues to play a key role in the content ranking, but it is constantly evolving and becoming more complex. Keeping up with the current trends will require you to do more than just stuffing your content with keywords. You need to create high-quality content that will be well positioned in Google algorithms. If you feel overwhelmed by the latest SEO trends, contact Greenlogic for advice on how to optimize your content for SEO.