New Search Experience Means New Strategy
Modern Brands need to upgrade their SEO strategy to maintain higher visibility as Google is getting sophisticated with every update.
SEO is a practice of increasing your website visibility on organic search engine results. The higher you rank in Google's SERPs, the more clicks and traffic your site will generate, giving your business more opportunities to convert visitors into potential customers.
When done correctly, SEO can help your brand stand above others as it allows you to build trust & credibility in the minds of your customers.
What is New with Google Search This Year?
Google has made it clear that they are working on getting rid of spam and increasing the number of links with more engaging and informative content that delivers a positive user experience in their series of updates last year.
As a result, the best method to guarantee that your website obtains the right kind of traffic from Google is to make adjustments to your SEO strategies right away.
In 2022, here are eight SEO trends that we think will help brands stay on top of Google Search Results.
Enhanced User Experience
Delivering exemplary user experience is not optional anymore, a website with vague navigation and slower load times will hurt your chances of ranking high in the Google Search Results, as Google tracks user engagement. Here are ways to improve the user experience.
Provide Engaging Content: It's essential for a website's user experience to have relevant content. Visitors nowadays are looking for more than just a transaction; they are looking for an experience. Adopting a compelling content strategy is a wonderful place to start. In order to build a relationship between a company and its customers, effective content strategies explain the narrative of the brand. Content may come in any form, from a blog post to a vlog or even a distinct website, with the appropriate plan. The use of content to develop a brand identity helps to guarantee that prospective customers know more about who they are buying from. After reading a company's personalized content, 82% of customers are more inclined to trust the company.
Use Layout Strategically: In 2022, the rise of brutalism is still going strong. This style involves an unadorned and minimalist approach to layouts with emphasis on user experience; alternatively, a well-structured site can go a long way in establishing your brand as the leader among others market participants while taking risks accordingly.
Provide Information Concisely and Efficiently: Visitors to websites are looking for some type of information when they get on a page. According to their website design, some firms don't appear to grasp the importance of this. You may make sure a user receives what they want by offering information in an organized and appealing manner.
Optimize your website: Working on the backbone of your site is also critical; things like F.C.P (First Contentful Paint) and mobile responsiveness have a significant impact on the user experience. This has a direct impact on revenue. For example, because of the high expectations for website performance, visitors are less likely to make a purchase from a site that is seen as sluggish. More than $2.6 billion is lost each year because of delayed websites.
User-Intent
Matching a searcher's intent query with the most relevant search results is also one of the top goals of Google.
Marketers need to reimagine their approach to content creation by understanding the relationship between keywords and knowing how to target them to meet the user’s search intent. There are 4 types of search intent:
Informational intent- searches can be answered by providing accurate data or guidance about the topic at hand.
Navigational intent- searchers who are seeking a specific site or page.
Commercial intent- searchers in this category want to find something that will help them with their future plans. They're looking for information on products, services, or brands so they can complete an action or purchase at some point soon.
Transactional intent- keywords that indicate a searcher's intention to complete an action or purchase.
First-Party Data Collection
Google announced its plans to phase out support for third-party cookies by 2023, which was originally planned to be in 2022. This gives brands one more year to plan their first-party data collection strategy.
Marketers can collect first-party data from their owned sources like websites, mobile apps, social media, SMS, email, surveys, CRM systems, point of purchase, and offline campaigns, this approach will help them with precise targeting, better measurements, and higher ROI.
High-Quality Content
Google will now prioritize content with high-quality information and uniquely different from others, especially with their new AI algorithm MUM (Multitask Unified Model).
MUM can understand 75 different languages and can provide genuinely useful responses to searches that don’t have a simple or straight answer, it is designed in a way that it can present information gathered from video and image resources as well as text, utilizing an in-depth understanding of the world.
Brands need to produce high-quality content which can cope up with tangential linking meaning providing value with your textual content and using multimedia formats like podcasts, audio, videos, and image-based content.
Localization of SERP
We all know that Google is consistently evolving, and now they will focus more on the localization of content. This means you'll see more websites with country-specific links topping their SERPs over those which use a global approach.
Google has been expanding its local search offerings, and it will only get more obvious. For instance, if you have a business that solely operates online but provides services or products within the U.K and the keyword “U.K” is attached to your website's SEO content, there will be higher chances for local rankings.
Images & Visual Content: Showcase your unique images
With the rise of social media, original content is vital. If brands want to be on top with your customers and followers alike, then it's time for some strategically placed branding.
Displaying unique images across all channels will give brands an edge over competitors, especially when their targeted audiences are millennials and Gen Z, who can tell if something feels too fake or posed easily thanks largely due to their expertise as imaging professionals.
Sustainability
As Google's new initiative to make sustainable choices in search result pages, Maps and Nest comes into effect. The company has already added incentive features that will promote eco-friendly behavior.
Google has brought carbon emissions information for Google Flights so that users can see associated per-seat costs as well as lower-carbon options when searching on the internet.
Brands can leverage this by developing and designing their website centered around the people and the planet. It should be able to follow the six principles of a sustainable web manifesto: clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient.
E-A-T
E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is one of the ways Google tries to ensure that it returns accurate, truthful, useful information to searchers.
A good way of enhancing the best qualities in your story is through branding. Your main goal when doing this should be to highlight leadership and experts, update content with the current information that authoritative sources provide (and vice versa), as well being transparent about what you’re doing so people know how it's done - all while maintaining an excellent tone.
Conclusion
By following the best practices we’ve outlined in this post, you can help your website rank higher in the SERPs and attract more organic traffic. Creating valuable content that is both informative and engaging is essential for any business looking to grow its audience online.