SEO is a dynamic industry. With so many advancements and changes made at a frequent pace, SEO marketers are always in the surge to make the most as per latest SEO guidelines.
Being an SEO marketer, I can understand the pain of other SEO marketers to keep up to that pace and adapt the new guidelines as soon as they are announced.
This brought me to peep into the future trends of SEO. To make things easier and more adaptable for others, here are few SEO trends which are expected to make a mark in the future.
I have listed these trends based on Google predictions, algorithm updates, and search trends and hope that having good knowledge about them will help you stay ahead of the ever-changing and dynamic SEO industry
Introduction of One of the Most Vital Ranking Factor from Google – RankBrain
Though RankBrain has been in existence for some time, Google has recently announced it as one of the vital factors for ranking. For this reason, it is highly popular sometime.
What Google RankBrain Means?
RankBrain is artificial intelligence and machine-learning engine from Google that categorizes search results. It uses AI technology to process and understand search queries and relationship between various words and then computes them into an authentic mathematical equation.
After tweaking the algorithms, it then offers assumption based results. If the produced results are deemed better by the behavior metrics then it stays, otherwise, it is rolled back to the previous algorithm.
The instant, small tweaks, and advanced functionality have brought RankBrain so much grip from Google.
How RankBrain Works?
The two core functions served by RankBrain are:
Understanding relationship and queries between different terms, keywords, and languages
Measuring user’s search intent with metrics of behavior
Google tries to match queries to specific words or factors mentioned on a page. It uses anchor text, keywords, and in links to serve the best results.
But this made SEO marketers to fill content with genuine keywords, which made things confusing.
Presently, RankBrain infers what you exactly mean with the query, just like a human. It takes the keyword, comprehends the search intent behind it, and then displays a webpage related to that topic. Also, using the behavior metrics, it identifies how people interact with search results and determine the relevancy of the results with search intent.
UI/UX Will Keep Enjoying SEO Traction:
While RankBrain has just started, UX signals and behavior metrics are slightly powerful metrics for Google. You need to maintain high quality and relevancy of your content to gain higher rankings on the first page.
Google aims to offer the finest experience for the users and you too should aim for it. A great site design including rich content and focused around the aspects of the user can make a huge difference. You need to follow the best practices in order to improve the experience of the users.
Some best practices to design content for SEO and UX
Provide Simple Choices:
Users will more likely take the desired action on your website when you offer them simple and distinct choices. With a clear call to actions or CTAs, you can guide the users to view more pages on your website. This eventually indicates a rich user experience.
Cognitive Fluency:
Cognitive fluency in psychological terms implies difficulty or ease associated with accomplishing a mental task. It is human behavior to pick a procedure that involves the minimum of brainpower and energy. Hence, users will quickly shift to a site that offers them easily what they are looking for.
For this reason, Google gives preference to websites with the least loading time. If users are pleased visiting your site, they will prefer to stay longer. Contrary to this, if users leave your website quickly, then Google will consider your website inappropriate to the users.
In this situation, websites with minimalist design and simple navigations play a key role. Your website must have enough white space to present content in a way that is easy for the users to read and understand.
The Natural Language and Conversational Perspective Will Rule the Content Industry
Well definitely, you do not have to throw away your unique writing style, but make sure you need to have an engaging perspective. You need to write in a way you are talking to someone. Even if your content does not include specific long-tail words or keywords, if it is written from the conversational perspective and in a natural, friendly tone, then it will be able to make up to the mark.
For efficient writing, you first have to comprehend the change taking place in users search intent. With Amazon Echo, Google Assistant, and more, voice search is ruling the market. Some of such searches are made on the row and users expect an instant answer.
You don’t have to optimize every bit for searches based on voice, but you must practice writing genuinely and worrying less about the keyword and more about the topic and relevancy of the page. Ultimately, your writing must focus on three core aspects:
- Dwell Time
- Keywords
- User Satisfaction
In addition to this, just remember, stuffing keyword is no more practiced and any sort of unnatural usage of keywords is now overlooked by Google. The present scenario is more about thoroughly cutting out the point and offering appropriate data to the user.
Optimizing for Mobiles:
Mobile-first indexing has already been announced officially. With mobile accounting for 68% of online usage, the mobile-first index will enhance mobile experience and therefore forms a strong basis for SERP rankings and crawl bots.
You don’t have to do much in order to mobile-index your website as per the practices of SEO. If you don’t have a mobile-optimized website, then create a responsive website first.
A website designed for desktop and mobile must not experience any problems of indexing. There is a problem only with non-responsive websites.
The next step after the responsive design is structured data such as Schema. This will give your website higher SEO value as it will help search engine to know better about you. The Schema must be followed by usability and mobile issues. For this, you can log into Google search console and look for mobile usability tab for any issues.
Fix all kinds of usability errors. By following these steps you can create a site ready for the mobile-first indexing.
User Experience is the Topmost Priority:
Each Google algorithm is focused on enhancing the user experience. If you love your users, Google will also prefer your website. It is a known fact that Google will rank a website that takes care of the user’s requirement first.
Whenever a user searches on Google, then it is looking for something special and a unique answer. Besides offering rich information, the content must also be readable and engaging to the user. The best way to develop engagement is by having an understanding of what the user is looking for. Hence, if you are able to present your audience the information they are looking for, then this is the most effective way of serving them.
AMP is a Vital Ranking Factor:
AMP, also known as Accelerated Mobile pages is an open-source tool that intends to create the web a better place for all. Its focus is on creating ads and websites that are constantly beautiful, faster, and high-performing across multiple distribution platforms and devices.
A deeper aspect to consider is that people searching from mobile do not settle for visually attractive websites. Speed is a crucial factor in determining the website’s performance.
If still, you don’t consider AMP to be noteworthy enough then end up staying behind others to a degree that it becomes problematic for you to survive.
AI will Rule the Search:
The search industry almost lost its mind with the announcement of RankBrain. Even today there is not much known about RankBrain other than this that it is one of the ranking factors.
Over time, the machines will learn patterns and comprehend content, results will become more accurate. As technology advances and the machinery becoming more proficient to comprehend the content well, dependency on AI for search will increase. It is predicted that soon it would be ‘machine age.’
Though the era is still to arrive completely, what we can perform at most is create high-quality content that is not stuffed with keywords and invaluable information. A regular user would prefer content that is user-friendly, readable text, and information that is valuable and meaningful.
Backlinks are Still a Priority:
Backlinks still rule and will go strong. Just like RankBrain, backlinks are equally important for a website ranking.
Links have always been the support of the Google search engine and have evolved high over time. Things that used to be quantity earlier have now become a game of quality with Google offering more preference to good quality links.
But it is not just about links of high-quality only. Google presently uses relevancy as an important way to judge backlinks.
For instance, if you are working in the automobile industry and you obtain the link from Pantone, which is one of the most reputed names in auto design industry it would not do too much for your site. Google will consider it as a link of high-quality, but it would better prefer obtaining a link from Nissan or Ford, an organization belonging to your industry.
Backlinks are important to Google as it is one of the convenient ways for Google to identify the authority of a site. If a reliable website links to your website, Google can consider the information as trustworthy or not. For this, it uses the key metric – Domain Authority.
It is a metric from Moz made of numerous data facts, ultimately providing a score of 1-100 on the reliability of a website. With a higher backlink’s domain authority, it is possible to give your website a big boost and rank high in SERPs.
Furthermore, the Domain Authority stands as an excellent metric that determines what Google considers websites linking to the domain. You can obtain the backlinks in Search Console of Google and then punch them all into Moz to get a profile of your site.
A site with low backlink profile will get a low score. If a website is spammy, then we recommend disavowing it before Google recognizes it. This can be a case especially when you have bought links using black-hat techniques.
Also, spammy backlinks can be easily recognized by the update of the Penguin algorithm and if it does it, then your website can get blacklisted.
To ensure that Penguin does not become an issue for you, it is essential to keep a strict check on the quality of your backlinks. It is entirely about backlinks today and rather than trying to garner a higher number of backlinks, it is better you focus on the quality.
The SEO Future: Final Verdict
The SEO industry is becoming more dynamic than ever thereby making it difficult to envision what the digital realm will appear after a couple of months from the present. One thing you can expect is even more new updates to keep an eye on!
While earlier, most of the focus was on optimizing a website to impress the search engine crawlers, the present, and future demands websites to focus more on the user’s search intent. The novel algorithms clearly state that the experience of the users must be the top priority.
The SEO marketers must focus on shifting their task from being practical to creative as one thing that is for sure is that searching will always be in trend.
If you want to stay ahead of the game then do keep a close check on these trends till we bring you the new SEO trends announced by Google.