Google made some substantial updates and announcements in 2020 which kept SEO experts all over the world on our collective toes. Now that 2022 is well underway, what organic SEO trends should you focus your resources, talent, and treasure on? The people at Search Engine Journal interviewed 44 experts to prepare for their SEO Trends 2022 eBook. Here are 3 SEO trends they agreed on.
User Intent
“User Intent” is kind of a big buzzword among SEO-heads and after Google started rewriting TITLE tags and coming up with indented results last year, it seems this is here to stay. Kristina Azarenko, SEO Consultant & Founder of MarketingSyrup Digital Inc., puts it like this.
It’s time for people to finally stop thinking in terms of ‘SEO content’ and create content for users with the intent and keywords in mind.
Be it video, blog, or web content, it must be planned more for the users’ intent behind the search more so than the specific keywords they used in their search. That’s something everyone is still trying to get their head around, particularly with the introduction of Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) update which using AI to understand a searcher’s “thought-process” behind their search.
The trick to “User Intent” is to think in terms of what is the pain point you’re there to solve for them?
Less, Better Content
Webmaster have been seeing an uptick in Search Console with many pages on large sites being excluded because they’re categorized as “Discovered, Currently Not Indexed.” That’s because a lot of firms were creating hundreds of pages of content that wasn’t all that helpful or all that original.
Say it with me, “published, indexable pages must be fantastic!”
Your SEO mantra should be, “published, indexable pages must be fantastic!” Considering the MUM update, it’s critical to publish unique content covering specific topics your ideal persona needs information on. It can never hurt to spend just a little extra time making sure your content is valuable and trustworthy.
Fair Well Stock Visuals
Google Lens loves seeing new, original images and graphics on the web as it continues to learn and grow. But, that means it hates seeing the same old image over and over again. So, sites with unique images will see a boost in SEO-juice and I think we’ll see a sharp decline in stock imagery use by digital web design agencies.
The Future
Those are three pretty big trends and there’s many more that are beginning to take hold. Figuring all this nerdy stuff out and finding ways to apply it to your site is becoming a full-time job. But, web nerds like us love this stuff. It IS our full-time job.