“Successful SEO is not about tricking Google. It’s about Partnering with Google to provide the best search results for Google’s users.”
The digital era has come with a lot of force and power to take over the physical market. Digital marketing is undoubtedly the most potent marketing source, with almost 4.66 billion active internet users as per Statista.com.
Since business owners view online marketing as a massive potential to bloom their business, they focus on SEO to cash in maximum internet traffic to their websites.
Eyeball grabbing SEO Statistics:
- 64% of digital marketer’s trust SEO for online success.
- Business peoplewith planned strategies allocate 41% of their budget to SEO.
- 82% of people in business found SEO strategy effective for their business
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improves the quality of a website and ranking the same on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) by considering many factors. Keywords, contents, images, videos, links, etc., all contribute to gaining a higher SEO rank.
Careful, strategic planning and pensive implementation help keep the digital marketers at the top with a high buyer ratio.
There are many ways to increase your organic traffic and gain a good SEO position.
So, let’s discuss some top SEO trends of 2021, which can be adapted to keep your digital business high amongst competitors.
Top 10 SEO Trends for 2021:
1. Core Web Vitals for SEO:
Google keeps on improvising SEO trends for a better user experience, and hence it announced Core Web Vitals.
This update is likely to be rolled out in May 2021.
Google’s Core Web Vitals are:
- Largest Contentful Paint:
This measures the page load speed and shows that the loading time affects SEO.
- First Input Delay:
This measures the duration and receptiveness when the web visitors try to interact with the page initially.
- Cumulative Layout Shift:
This measures the perceptible stability of the content to load on the page.
Since these vitals are added in the Search Console by Google, you can check out your website’s good and weak pages for better improvement.
2. Website Security:
If the website is not secured, users will not feel safe to access the same, and hence SERPs will drop automatically.
Website security is the mandatory requirement of Google. Hence it has made HTTPS (Hyper-text Transfer Protocol Secure) compulsory, which can be achieved by installing an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.
This digital certificate encrypts the browser-server communication and keeps it secured from intruders.
Example: A cheap wildcard SSL certificate installed on the website from a trusted SSL certificate provider will secure your main domain and multiple sub-domains with one certificate.
3. Google’s BERT Algorithm for Intent Hunt:
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), the technique is mainly useful to perceive search queries in the content. The best part is that it is multilingual (operates in 70 languages), including English.
Since the BERT algorithm can also detect the user’s aim by searching the query, the search engine bots have become more friendly. The content on the web page must fulfil the content of the user. In case of dissatisfaction of the same or any mismatch in content and intent, it can lead to a miss in SEO.
BERT-friendly content, which understands and filters the user’s queries and the intent, makes it visible in SEO.
4. Significance of Keyword Research:
Are you aware that SERP is rich in giving search results, and hence almost 50% of the searches as per SEO Stats 2020 are zero-click searches?
Here, Google ensures that its users get the answers to their queries by merely typing the search criteria without making a single click. Many users get their answers even before the entire query is typed. Hence appropriate research in keyword investment may help boost your network traffic.
Tips:
- Long and targeted keywords
- Keywords with Intent
Some keyword research tools like Jaaxy and Google Search Console may help; use them to gain high ranks.
5. Voice Search SEO:
Voice search SEO is becoming more popular, thanks to its ease and convenience compared to regular search. Google indicates that 27% of the worldwide users use mobile voice search, and with the availability of Google’s voice search in more than 100 languages, it’s bingo.
It’s the most convenient in multiple environments and, due to the superb speech recognition mechanism, optimize your content for voice search SEO for better ranks.
Tips:
- Use long-tail keywords
- Focus on phrases
- Use conversation language for specific questions
- Local SEO
- Don’t forget mobile
6. Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm improves and changes the SEO by finding relevant keywords, their accuracy, their intent, competitor surveys, etc. This personalization makes AI all the more desirable.
AI has turned out to be a game-changer by proving its efficiency in decoding algorithms, augmenting human work, creating compelling content, analyzing information, making decisions, optimizing digital infrastructures, etc., and thus freeing SEOs.
Some popular AI-powered keyword analysis tools include Twinword and Keyword Tool, whereas content marketing tools include Clearscope.
7. Video Marketing:
“YouTube” is the first thought when video marketing is sought for. Its popularity makes it the 2nd most popular search engine having more than 1 billion users.
So, get started with videos to grab a place in SEO.
Ways to Optimise Video:
- Select the appropriate video hosting platform
- Insert a video with engaging images
- Use relevant keywords for video description
- Optimize the video keeping your target audience in mind
8. Local SEO:
It’s the dream of every online business to stay on top of local competition. It’s not as simple as it seems because you need to invest in local SEO techniques, research local SEO keywords and content, check out competitive strategies, and understand the functioning of Google for the same.
So, try to seize a place in local SEO before marking your online presence globally.
Example: Rather than using the keyword “Best restaurant”, use a focused keyword like “Best Restaurant in New Jersey”, which would yield better results.
9. Mobile Friendliness:
Responsive design is the key to mobile-friendliness, i.e., your website’s look on big and small devices.
Here is a brief look at the interesting statistics on why mobile SEO is important.
- 70% of the people spend their time on mobile
- 74% of users return to mobile-friendly sites
- 67% of the users buy from mobile-friendly sites
- Google gives precedence to mobile-friendly sites while indexing them
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool allows you to check if the site is mobile-friendly or not, so make your site mobile-friendly and grab your position in SEO.
10. Content Quality:
Poor content without any target audience is going to affect your network traffic negatively.
Qualitative content is termed the king of SEO. Hence SEO expert’s prime focus must be on the site’s content rather than other criteria. Ample sites are showing random content on a particular topic. If you want yours to be on the top, apart from good SEO snippets and relevant keywords, use content that fulfils the EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) principle of Google.
Go for original content, avoid plagiarism, and use accurate facts and figures to stay ahead of the rat race.
Valuable content depending on the target audience, will instantly click positively, gain more backlinks, and show green signals to search engines.
Summing Up:
Gone are the days when only keywords, content, and meta titles mattered. SEO trends are becoming more popular and are regularly changing.
Google is routinely changing its search algorithms, and hence it’s sensible to keep yourself updated with the latest SEO trends to keep your site on the top of the search zone.
Alpha Sheri 
avinashmittal