How effective is your SEO? If you haven’t looked at it for a while chances are it has fallen out of sync with today’s best practices. The reason for this is the dynamic changes taking place in the world of SEO and online marketing. The rise in video has altered search trends and algorithms now look for user experience a lot more. Here’s what you need to know.
Video SEO
Video has always been a useful SEO tool, but in the past, its value has been content-based – videos are easy to watch and increase viewer engagement with your page. While this is still the case, Google has introduced SEO technology that helps videos rank on search engine results.
This works through structured data known as Seek Markup and Clip Markup. Until now, Google has used Key Moments that time-stamp your video and help it to rank on SERPs; now there are more subtle ways to boost engagement, markup features tell Google directly about your video.
Multitask United Model (MUM)
Artificial intelligence is the foundation of search engine processing, the search engine algorithm collects data from web pages in the form of video, images, and text in multiple languages. This data is ranked in the index and used to deliver answers to search queries, but it evolves.
Google’s AI began with RankBrain – a sophisticated machine learning tool technology that Google acknowledged in 2015. RankBrain was superseded by BERT in 2019 which has now been replaced by MUM. MUM is more powerful than BERT with improved video analyses.
Passage Indexing
There have been huge strides forward in the area of natural language processing in recent years. Natural language processing is a type of algorithm that analyses the structure and cadence of language, it can then imitate it or process it for quality and relevance.
While this new technology might worry content creators it has a role to play in how long-form content ranks on the search engine results. Passage Indexing analyses long-form content and identify passages that are most relevant to the page – ultimately this improves user searches.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is Google’s attempt to improve user experience on the page, when a user lands on a website they should have an experience that is relevant and user-friendly. To facilitate this, Google introduced Core Web Vitals to encourage better customer service.
The three metrics used are Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift. These metrics help a webpage to rank higher on search results, but as with all SEO it’s not the only criteria – if the website has quality relevant content it will still rank on SERPs.
User Intent
Search intent is the practice of understanding the intent behind searches and optimizing websites and content to align with what users expect. This goes to the heart of SEO and is one of the primary ways the search engine algorithms rank keywords and websites.
If you want to improve the SEO of your business then focus on search intent. Consider the content of your web pages and optimize them for the keywords users are likely to use to search food your products or services. As ever, keywords relevant to content rank more highly.
Customer Analytics
Once upon a time, it was all about keywords. Keywords were the primary metric the search engine algorithms used to rank websites and deliver better services to customers, but things have evolved somewhat since those early days. Today, it’s also about how site visitors behave.
To improve the quality of service your customers receive and therefore your search engine ranking it’s important to use the latest analytics tools to understand how your customers behave on the site and optimize it for quality and user experience. Behavioral analytics is the future.
Brand Optimization
Nowadays Google and other major search engines have a wealth of data about your business and personal search history including open searches, social media data, e-mail, and search behavior analytics. SERPs will now be influenced by the integration of your digital presence.
Although keywords and on-page SEO practices are still relevant, Google will pay close attention to your digital brand and rank your websites based on how integrated and relevant they are. So if you want to improve your SEO think about the relevance of your digital presence.
Mobile SEO
Google has a major focus on user experience and with over 6 billion people on smartphones worldwide the influence of mobile technology is significant. Not only does your desktop website need to be optimized for SEO but your mobile sites also need to be user-friendly and relevant.
A well-optimized mobile website is simpler with larger buttons, it also adjusts to different angles and movements. At present, Google uses mobile optimization as a supplementary ranking factor but that is likely to change as the search giant starts to use a broader series of metrics.
Adapt and Execute
An effective SEO plan is no longer optional for the success of your business, it’s now indispensable. In the past, it was possible to get away with loose SEO practices provided you had other promotional tools at your disposal, but that is no longer enough to stay competitive.
What you need is a comprehensive SEO strategy for your business that aligns with the latest SEO techniques and practices used by the search engine algorithm. Not every business can be expected to keep up with demands so an SEO manager like Mike Smeth is recommended.
Automation
Automation is a growing technology that’s improving all the time. Although automation renders many SEO roles obsolete it does free up time for agents to apply their skills in other areas; instead of content creation, for instance, they might put more of their time into Core Web Vitals.
If you want to enhance the performance of your business online in the coming year you need to devise an effective SEO strategy, one that aligns with the latest algorithm and technological advances. Consider an SEO specialist service to optimize your business for current trends.
