A new year brings new opportunities as well as the chance to update your SEO strategy to make it as successful as possible for your brands and your clients. Since it’s estimated that more than half of website traffic comes from organic search, SEO remains one of the best investments for brands that want to expand their reach.
With recent research from Hubspot showing that 75% of users never venture beyond the first page of search results, it’s clear that being on the first page is crucial to your brand’s visibility. While it’s impossible to keep track of all the changes to Google’s algorithm, we’ve put together a list of the best SEO techniques for continued success in 2022.
Get Ready for Mobile-First Indexing
With mobile-first indexing, Google mainly uses the mobile version of your site for page ranking instead of the desktop version. The switch from desktop to mobile for indexing was supposed to happen in March of 2021. However, it was delayed because too many sites were not prepared for the move. Consequently, Google pushed the timeline back to 2022.
At this point, mobile traffic now constitutes more than half of all web traffic. This means is that you need to have a mobile-ready version of your site, regardless of when Google actually makes the switch. You also need to keep your content the same within both sites. Google has put out the word that they will penalize sites that purposely have less content on their mobile page.
Focus on Featured Snippets
Featured snippets should occupy a significant part of your SEO strategy if they don’t already. If you’re not familiar with them, they are the expanded blocks of text that appear in position zero or at the top of Google search results. For this reason, they are a very important tool for raising your brand’s authority and driving traffic to your site.
The point of a featured snippet is to answer a question right on the search page. Although you can’t choose the content displayed in a snippet, you can optimize your content to increase the likelihood that it will show in the box. This will also help Google to determine whether your page is the best answer for a relevant search. A good place to start is by using the question keywords that featured snippets usually begin with. It also helps to understand searcher intent in order to answer the questions they are searching for within your content.
Concentrate on Long-Tail and Low-Competition Keywords
Ranking on page one for competitive industry keywords is a tall task. If you want to build traffic for your website quickly, target long-tail keywords (more specific keywords with three words or more) and lower-competition keywords with similar search intent that are easier to rank for. While it may take a bit more effort and research to find these keywords, you will be rewarded with more clicks in less time. Once your site has more authority, you can go after the more competitive keywords.
Remember to Include Internal Links
While external links are always important, you should also have links to internal content whenever possible. When Google crawls the pages on your site, it wants to know that you are linking to articles related to the article you’ve just written.
Therefore, you need to link with purpose while keeping search top of mind, especially regarding anchor text. In other words, use anchor text that incorporates the primary keyword on which the article is based. This gives search engines an idea about where the link is going.
One strategy is to use internal links near the beginning of an article to help introduce a new concept to users. While there’s no limit to how many links you can include, the main thing is to ensure that all your internal links are relevant.
Although the world of digital marketing and SEO is constantly evolving, the core concept of optimizing for people and a high-quality user experience remains the same. In other words, instead of writing content for search engines, you still need to devise content that answers and informs your target audience. While it’s impossible to keep up with every Google algorithm update, you can keep up with the latest and most effective trends in SEO. So, try these SEO techniques to grow your audience and your revenue throughout 2022 and beyond.
