Is SEO still a viable marketing strategy? Digital marketing agencies often face this question from their clients who argue SEO is a dying craft. The answer is, YES. Surprisingly, even some well-established corporates with no budget constraints have taken a big hit in organic traffic. Search Engines (consider Google) have become a major communication channel for businesses and SEO is no way close to being dead but evolving rapidly every day.
SEO is not anymore about irrelevant link building, keyword stuffing, invisible or hidden text – all these methods are considered spam today. Thanks to Google Algorithm Updates, some practices that are relevant today might get obsolete tomorrow. SEO has evolved dramatically and you need to constantly add value in everything you do. Businesses are striving hard to ensure that their website appear high on search results when searched with certain keywords. It helps their site get discovered by users when they search for keywords related to the industry (niche), brand, products or services. Google processes 5.5 billion queries per day and 51% of the website traffic is organic. Most of these users are driven to the sites ranked in the top five search positions of Google SERPs. So, it has become very crucial to stay at the first few search results of Google to have an edge over your competitors. It is only possible when your website will be properly optimized with valuable content, website layout, usability and strong link profile.
SEO in 2021 – What’s new?
Previously, Google could understand the content in your website but it was not very smart. So, it was easy to manipulate the information and content on the website and get favoured by Google’s algorithms.
Now, Google has evolved a lot and considers a lot of signals to determine which sites deserve to be in the first page or rank #1. Since smart devices and IOT have invaded the internet space, marketers need to work hard to stay updated with latest algorithm and align their SEO strategies accordingly. Here are 3 most challenging changes in the SEO scenario:
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Prioritising users:
Google is focusing more on satisfying user intent. It houses the world’s information and know what exactly people are looking for. SEO strategists need to pay a closer attention to search results to create competitive content and meet the need of the audience. Brands should focus more on value addition instead of preaching about them and present the content in the way searchers desire to consume it. Websites should render and stabilize fast to hold the attention of the consumer. No forced pop-ups or registrations is a good way to prioritize users.
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Rise of Zero-click searches:
Zero-click SERP means that the queries of the users are resolved right on the results page. When the search intent of the user is satisfied without clicking any actual search result links, it’s called Zero-click search. It can include:
- Database-style searches like – queries around date, time, currency conversions etc.
- Dictionary style searches like – queries around ‘definition of’ or ‘what is’ or ‘meaning of’ etc.
- Map direction style searches like – queries around ‘near me’.
Though it becomes convenient for users, it creates problems for SEO professionals and content creators who rely on organic traffic to run their business. So, they should adapt different tactics to win the top positions. Optimizing content by paying more attention to the specific queries that matter to them can be a good strategy to win featured snippets. They grab more attention from the users and a good SEO practice.
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Visual and voice search:
Voice assistants and smart devices are rapidly changing the way people search. Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa have come a long way. They have intrigued the users to use them which resulted in steady increase in the number of voice search queries. Users are preferring voice and image search over text-based searching. Today, it is considered to be among the standard best practices in SEO. Voice Search Optimization should be a part of your long-term SEO strategy and here are some strategies for success – understand your target audience and their behaviour, focus on long-tail conversational keywords, create compelling and relevant content, provide context with schema markup, build pages with FAQ etc.
Apart from them, SERP formats are changing and information are presented differently for better user experience. Emergence of artificial intelligence has made searching more intuitive than ever. A good digital marketing agency will always stay updated with the latest changes in the SEO world and optimize your website accordingly to maintain its position among the top searches.