Important SEO Trends in 2021
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an ever-changing strategy in marketing and quite useful if you apply it right and according to new trends. To rank higher and have the best performance, your content needs too many SEO metrics. Google each year brings up new strategies and algorithms to make content visibility easy on the platform.
Here we will talk about such trends and innovations that are important to look into in 2021 for much better SEO performance. With these important 2021 SEO trends, you will be able to rank your content on the top search results and enhance the user experience.
Let’s look at them one by one in detail:
- AI SEO
- Local SEO
- Mobile friendly
- Search intent and user intent
- Core Web vitals
- Voice search queries
- Google EAT Principle
AI SEO
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought impactful changes in our lives and changed the way we interact with the content online. Out of all the search engines, Google’s algorithm has advanced noticeably and come up with new techniques to make ranking on search pages (SERPs) easy.
The major question here is how can you optimize your content according to a smart algorithm? According to experts, user experience is the primary aspect of AI SEO. The factors such as click-through-rate, dwell rate, attractive and captivating content, basically, on-page metrics play a big role.
Local SEO
In digital marketing, local SEO is quite useful and will deem as most important when it comes to targeting local searches in your content. Local results are one of the most useful because it helps people find the services available in the area much easier. It has helped the business to benefit from local SEO and increase their customers.
In recent times, search keywords like ‘open ‘now’ ‘near me’ have grown double in numbers and around 46% of all the searches made on Google are local. To make the most of this 2021 SEO metric, you can tweak some changes in your content to make it rank on local searches. Some tips you can try are, cash-in local keywords, optimize content for voice searches and mobile-friendliness, make content based on popular topics and trends around town, and make a Google My Business Account.
Mobile friendly
Nowadays, nearly 73-80% of internet users access mobile devices for quick information look-up. The numbers are expected to go only higher. Google has introduced the mobile-first indexing algorithm due to this reason in the last two years. The algorithm recognizes the mobile version as the primary and desktop version as secondary thus the better mobile-friendly version website rank higher.
To make your website mobile-friendly you have to make sure that Google is able to crawl and see the loaded content on the website. Moreover, use the same meta tags on the desktop version and mobile version.
Search intent and user intent
Another important 2021 SEO trend to follow is Google’s top priority ‘search intent’ content algorithm. Google has always been aiming for providing the best content to its users and has been incorporating the same idea in improving algorithms, if you want to rank then optimize your content according to search and user intent. Such content increases organic traffic in nearly 6 months and brings triple increases in results.
Google launched an algorithm known as BERT Algorithm which allows the search engine to interpret the user intention behind the search. With the help of this information, it provides the user the relevant information that solves their issue. Therefore, your website content should be able to answer the user’s question very clearly and it will also help in more organic traffic in specific search words.
Core Web vitals
In 2020, Google introduced Core Web Vitals to optimize the digital experiences for users. To understand this concept, you must have a knowledge of basic and technical SEO. In order to improve your content in 2021, you need to understand these core web vital parts. These are the three vital things that Google algorithm analyzes in a website:
- First Input Delay (FID)
It is responsible for measuring the time that any web page takes to become interactive for the user. According to said Google guidelines, a good web page should have less than 100ms.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
It measures the changes in the layout of the visual content of the web page. The visual stability measured by Google quantifies how often users experience the unexpected layout change. According to said Google guidelines, a good web page should have a minimum as possible layout change, <0.1.
- Large Contentful Paint (LCP)
It measures the time your web page takes to load and display the content. According to said Google guidelines, a good web page should take less than 2.5seconds to load main content.
Voice search queries
Since the launch of AI such as ‘Siri’ or ‘Google Assistant’ or ‘Alex’, voice search has been increasing in number and expected to increase in 2021. As most of the searches are made from mobile browsers, voice search queries are becoming more trendy and considered the easy way to quickly lookup information.
To optimize your content for voice searches, look up the keywords related to your niche. Identify shorter and longer phrases that people use in conversation when talking about certain information. Use those longer and natural phrases in your content for a better reach through voice search.
Google EAT Principle
In SEO, E.A.T Principle refers to expertise, authoritative and trustworthy. Google uses the E.A.T principle to determine if the website has quality content and worth ranking on the top. If your website is related to a business niche then this principle is more important to you for better ranking in 2021.
Keep in mind this principle when you write content and optimize it and pay attention to statistics and facts. To have a better ranking in 2021, use the following tips to improve your content.
- Conduct your niche-related search intent research and make content accordingly.
- Update content at intervals.
- Make professional documents regarding your niche.
- Hire or refer to experts who deliver facts and check the authenticity.
- Make a Wikipedia page.
- Demonstrate your expertise work to search engines.
- Link your content to authoritative domains such as ‘.edu’ or ‘.gov’ in the URLs. It shows that your website has fulfilled the EAT principle.
