One of the most dynamic areas of digital marketing is SEO, due to the fact that Google is constantly updating its ranking algorithm to improve the user search experience. Thus, each year marketers should analyze the SEO trends shaping the search engine landscape and figure out how to best align their strategy with them. Read on for the top 12 SEO trends coming into 2023 so that you can optimize your digital marketing strategy!
SEO Trends To Watch For 2023
- Content that targets audiences, not traffic: SEO content creation has been going into overdrive lately, and when a website that sells medical equipment starts producing blog posts about food recipes, it arouses the suspicions of Google crawlers. Businesses whose content strategy (or lack thereof) is just to seek search traffic without any consideration of what is relevant to users are unlikely to see ranking success. Stick within your general industry and topic areas for relevant, rank-worthy content.
- First-hand experience on a topic: EAT is a popular Google ranking acronym, which stands for Expertise, Authority Trust. Now, there’s an additional E: Experience; specifically the author or creator’s experience.
- Author authority is key: Google’s emphasis on experience is partially due to the rise of auto-generated content ranking in the SERPs. By highlighting author experience, they are trying to make sure that real people are writing for real audiences.
- Make sure the content is “helpful”: Google has always emphasized high-quality content, but now there is an added stress on “helpful” and user satisfaction. While user satisfaction isn’t easy to quantify or measure, some guidelines are:
- Target audience-appropriate
- Created for humans and not search engines
- Relevant to the primary subject area or topic of the website
- Shows a depth of knowledge regarding the topic
- Authoritative, experienced creators
- Automated SEO: Similar to content AI, SEO tasks will be moving towards automation in 2023 as digital marketers leverage evolving SEO software tools and platforms.
- A.I writing content: Although we’ve already listed all the ways Google is trying to fight against the tide of auto-generated content, it’s a losing battle, as the amount of marketing apps that now integrate SEO and AI is only rising. These integrations can save a lot of time, and while pumping out auto-generated drafts is definitely a no-go, marketers can still learn how to utilize these tools to help speed up their content workflows and still generate high-quality content.
- CTRs shifting due to SERP positions: Everything you think you know about ranking positions and CTR just got flipped on its head. Since endless scrolling has now become available on both desktop and mobile, Google has made it much easier for users to scroll through SERP results to find the content they’re looking for. However, CTRs may not be hit as hard as we thought it would be thanks to Google featuring more snippets and search features.
- Less crawl frequency: Google may reduce crawl rate to reduce computing resources and meet climate goals, which means it may take longer for Google to notice website updates.
- Product page SEO: Pages with thin content such as product pages can help to provide more helpful details on the page.
- Analyze SEO competitors: Use SEO competitor software to compare competitor’s content; looking to competitors has always been a smart way to shape SEO strategy.
- High-performing websites: Faster-loading, high-performing websites will be noticed more by Google, so prioritizing page speed improvements will pay off manyfold when it comes to increased keyword rankings for your domain.
- More image SEO: Images play a key role in higher rankings for image searches, and can offer opportunities to include additional semantically-linked terms and keywords into the content through alt text.
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