Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most potent ways to attract prospects to your business website. As such, business owners across various sectors continuously invest in effective SEO strategies to give their companies a competitive advantage.
However, like any other technology, SEO continues experiencing new trends that modify several of its core approaches. The coronavirus pandemic, social trends, new software, and improvements in SEO strategies are factors influencing this slow evolution. Below are some insights into how today’s SEO best practices are changing for the better.
More preference for local SEO.
This year seems to be the start of a dominant era for local SEO practices, so you should consider aligning your business accordingly. Local SEO ensures your company’s website is highly ranked on search engines like Bing and Google to people who search for your business offerings in your locality. As such, certain geo-qualifiers govern modern-day local SEO searches. Customers are increasingly looking for “near me” businesses in their city, state, zip code, service area, among others.
Due to the current pandemic, many experts predict that search engines like Google will give more attention to local enterprises to help them flourish. Therefore, consider focusing on your local SEO strategy for this year since many of your prospects’ searches may lead them to your competitors if you’re absent from top search results. Also, you can try out several other practices to get your business up and running, like investing in quality resources for your startup. Since financial resources are essential to enterprise success, you can finance your startup using a small business loan from the SBA, local community banks, and other lenders. Also, consider engaging other successful entrepreneurs, developing a great marketing strategy, and leveraging social media to take your brand to the next level.
Keyword searches are increasing in relevance.
A significant portion of search results gets zero clicks due to the quality of search outcomes in the SERP. These results contain menus, contact information, related questions and answers, and featured question snippets with solutions. Therefore, consumers can receive answers to their queries without even clicking a result or even typing out their questions. As such, keywords continue to rise in relevance, so your ads, website, and blog content should cover keywords according to searchers’ intents. You can accomplish this by conducting quality keyword research using tools like Google Console to locate long-tail and targeted keywords popular with your target market.
Video continues to revolutionize marketing.
YouTube is the next most popular search engine after Google, so videos are naturally becoming increasingly essential to SEO efforts. Companies are continually optimizing their video content for search engines to help them rank higher. If you have a YouTube channel, you can try optimizing its name and description to make it likelier to appear in top-ranked search results. Although keywords remain essential here, avoid overloading descriptions with these keywords and choose a more user-friendly description of what your Youtube channel is all about.
More searches are being performed by voice.
Many people have smartphones and other smart home devices nowadays, so voice search technology is slowly taking over old-fashioned typing. Most of these voice searches contain long-tail keywords and are very specific since users seek particular answers to their inquiries. Many voice searches are typically at the marketing funnel’s consideration stage, so optimizing your pages to appear in voice search results is an excellent way for your small business to take advantage of this new SEO trend.
In conclusion, SEO continues to evolve like any other innovation, and so its best practices are continually being refined or replaced. The above-listed points are three specific ways that modern SEO strategies continue to change for the better.