SEO in 2021: What You Need to Know
The world of search engine optimisation (SEO) changes fast and furiously. From constant algorithm updates to new trends arriving on the scene to SEO best practices, what was relevant yesterday, may not matter today. This is why, in order to keep up your SEO game strong, you need to stay on top of the hottest trends, tactics and topics.
Planning an SEO strategyor revampingyour existing one before a brand new year starts has many advantages. It helps you keep up with the industry, measure your progress against metrics that matter, and thus, increase your ROI from SEO efforts.
If you’re thinking “Is SEO important in 2021?” Well, it is. In fact, research by BrightEdge shows organic search is the top factor which is driving web traffic for most industry sectors and is a critical contributor to revenue.
That said, many significant changes are on the horizon for 2021 and the first thing should be to learn how to navigate the competitive SERP landscape. The impetus behind the industry’s changing dynamics remains Google’s laser focus on customer experience.
Here are some latest trends that you should be mindful of when planning your SEO strategy for 2021.
Core Web Vitals update
The biggest talking point in the SEO world right now, released in May 2020, and set for launch in 2021, it will be the new ‘page experience’ signal. Mixing user experience to evaluate the overall experience that a web page delivers.
An overwhelming number of tools, platforms, and metrics are present to measure and report on performance. This abundance is sometimes challenging and at times contradictory. This update aims to simplify the landscape as it directs sites to focus on metrics that matter, i.e. the Core Web Vitals. These are a set of metrics currently set to focus on speed, responsiveness or interactivity, and visual stability. Google plans to upgrade metrics based on evolving customer expectations and technologies.
Get ready to E-A-T
Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness or E-A-T as a ranking factor has been prioritized in Google’s latest algorithm updates. This is an important factor to know if you’ve been wondering “How do I optimize my SEO content?”
These crucial parameters indicate the quality and ingenuity of your main website content and in turn will decide on improving or degrading a site’s organic ranking.
An understanding of the human search evaluators, quality raters, crawlers evaluating backlinks, and other nuances present in the websites that rank high on the E-A-T rating can arm your content too. The Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines provides some pertinent examples.
NLP behind the intent semantics
If you’re interested to know how search behaviour is changing, you must pay attention to how NLP is evolving. Natural Language Processing or NLP analyses search queries based on the context of the keywords. The intent behind a keyword is approached and a broader query-matching with semantically-related search terms means an enhanced user experience. Hence, not exact match phrases but conversational voice and tone will matter in rankings. The widespread use of voice search, and updates like Hummingbird are upgrading search ranking where technologies aren’t limited to keyword search.
SEO creates an improved user experience, and Google is driven to improve it. Ranking factors will be subject to more rigorous testing come 2021. This guide will help you to align with the best practices and future-proof your search engine optimisation strategies. The goal is to provide a unified guidance and an emphasis on the evolved algorithms that can make or break the user experience, and hence, the ranking.
Interested to learn more about what are the most important elements of SEO? How SEO works step by step?
We have covered it all in this ultimate SEO guide. Our SEO experts at Sun Media Marketing not only provide you with practical guidance but also solid strategies and implementations to derive the best value from SEO and digital marketing.