The New Year is upon us and let’s hope it isn’t as unprecedented as the last. As always, trends will come and go, but for business owners, following the trends can be the difference between gaining new clients or not. Would you believe that SEO is so prominent for businesses, it has its own trends to keep up with? At The Marketing Republic, we are always striving to remain up to date with the latest trends to make sure our clients aren’t missing out.
NOW is a great time to reflect on your SEO strategy and make the changes to see a difference in your website’s rankings. We’ve done the research to provide you with our prediction for the biggest SEO trends for 2021.
1. User Experience (UX) Optimisation is HUGE.
Firstly, user experience is simply all about the user, the person scrolling through a web page or mobile app. Customising your website to have the most pleasant UX possible will result in a more favourable website rankings by the search engine.
According to Google, through internal studies and industry research, users indicate they prefer sites with a better page experience. The search engine has added more criteria to its UX ranking factors, including how quickly a page loads and how mobile–friendly a site is. Do any pages on your site load slowly? How easy is your website to navigate? Too many pop–ups? Fix these issues! UX is here to stay.
2. Semantic Search Is Necessary Now More Than Ever.
Semantic Search specifically looks at the relationship between words and what they mean in different contexts. It is the ability of Google, to analyse the exact phrasing of a term whilst matching the results with a search.
The search engine will examine the semantics (what the words mean in relation to each other) to display more relevant results.
How does this apply to you?
Consider the search intent of your audience and keep rethinking this. What are you clients looking for? What are their changing needs? Aim to be the authoritative source by provide them with the answers easily through your site and always aim to solve their problems with your content. More than just an FAQ page, the content on your site should include full questions and answers in–depth to be ranked favourably on search. Think blog posts dedicated to a user problem. Internal linking and frequent use of keywords will continue to help immensely.
3. Google My Business (GMB) Will Be Essential for Local SEO.
If you haven’t set up a Google My Business page… you will be missing out on a huge influx of potential customers. It’s a free and easy tool for business owners to reach potential clients. It’s adding to your user’s experience by providing your customer with your details, opening hours, address and phone number without trawling through your website. The more optimised your GMB page is, the more likely your business will appear in local searches. How often do you use Google Maps? Google records more than 5 million people use the Google Maps app each month! How handy is it to search ‘ice cream’ and get a list of the closest stores nearby to meet your sweet tooth needs? Make sure your business is on this list!
Are the following elements up to date on your Google My Business Page?
- Services
- Hours
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- Menus
- Company websites
- Reviews and ratings
SEO is the backbone of your digital online presence, it is like your mortgage, which a long-term investment, but pays huge dividends down the track once you are consistent with monthly optimisation and maintenance.
