As we are going through the pandemic for the last two years, our main concern is “2022 SEO Trends”. This year has seen exponential growth as far as SEO is concerned. More and more businesses are going online, and as a result, numerous websites are getting launched daily.

Increasing visibility at the search engines becomes more challenging with every passing day. The year 2022 would be no exception. You need to be aware of the upcoming SEO trends in the year 2022 if you want your digital marketing plan to be successful.

Whether your goal is to attract an audience or increase traffic to your website or improve your ranking at the search engine sites, you need to have a well-planned digital marketing strategy. 

The year 2021 was a year of transformation as far as SEO trends are concerned. The increasing popularity of social media platforms caught the attention of marketers, as well as businesses. As per marketers, this trend is going to continue in the year 2022.

With increasing competition, websites need to invest more of their time, money, and effort in SEO to mark their presence on the internet.

Websites need to update their websites and content strategy as per the ongoing and upcoming SEO trends. Some of the essential SEO trends for the year 2022 are discussed below.

User-focussed Optimization 

The BERT algorithm by Google in the year 2019 brought a transformational change in content marketing. This has changed the focus from string matching towards intent matching. In the year 2022, the concept of keyword search might not work.

Marketers have to create content as per the needs and requirements of the user. They need to reach their customers and understand their problems and queries at various stages of the buying cycle. This includes both pre and post-sale needs. 

Use SEO as an integrated part of their business plan. They need to talk to their customers and understand their issues and try to provide a solution through using the content as a tool. 

High-Quality Content

Online ads are still considered as one of the most effective ways to attract the viewer’s attention. However, with time digital ads are going to get costly.

In addition to this, there is no assurance of the customer’s reaction. Hence, creating high-quality content becomes more crucial. 

Users are very smart. They like and share content that is useful, informational, well-researched, and relevant. Also, users follow and prefer revisiting sites, which gets updated regularly and gets new content timely. In addition to this, Google rewards such websites by giving them a higher ranking.

E-A-T Is Going to be The Golden Rule

New opportunity brings new challenges with it. Though social media channels have opened a gate full of opportunities, it has its limitations. At any given point in time, millions of people remain active on social media.

One mistake at your end, and you might have to face heavy consequences in terms of bad reviews, negative feedback, and dislikes.

In 2022, companies that will succeed in winning the trust of their buyers and potential buyers would have higher chances of getting a higher ranking on the search engines.

In the coming years, search engines would give more importance to Expertise-Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness of the business (E-A-T). The same rule would apply to the people posting the content.

Companies need to focus on creating a good reputation and a positive image among their audience, as well as the buyers. 

Technical SEO and User Experience

Become successful in digital marketing, companies, and marketers should focus more on the UX factor. It starts from the time when the user sees your company’s name at the search engine result page until the user visits the website and continues even after the user leaves the website.

Companies should focus all their efforts on making this experience an unforgettable one.

An easy way to take user experience to another level is by focusing on technical SEO. This includes page speed and website speed. 

Mobile SEO

In 2019, we have already seen how important it is to have a mobile-friendly app and sites. Businesses that do not have a mobile-friendly version might end up losing most of their users. Smartphones have become an inseparable part of our life.

Advancement of technology and easy access to mobile networks has made internet access and search a lot easier. Hence, companies should make their mobile version user-friendly, attractive, and easy to read. Besides this, marketers should post interesting and relevant content on their mobile version. 

Structured Data

Good quality and relevant content cannot be ignored. Still, there are chances that the content might miss the search engine algorithms. To avoid this, companies should focus on data structuring.

This would give a clear picture to search engines about the contents of the page, the relationship among various elements of the page, and also how all the pages of the website are interrelated. 

Data allows Google to extract more information from the company’s website, which further gives companies better exposure as compared to their competitors. 

Snippets Dominate Search Engines

With time, search engines have come a long way as far as user experience is concerned. Featured snippets are one such feature that helps the users in making their search easier. The best part is that these snippets appear at the top of all the search results. Hence, they tend to get the maximum attention of the viewers. 

If you want to take benefit of this feature, you need to post relevant answers to the most commonly asked questions on your company’s website. Studies have shown that featured snippets get maximum clicks. In 2022, content writers should use this opportunity to improve their website’s traffic.

Brand and Link Building

As discussed earlier, the company’s need to focus on their brand building. They should focus on creating a positive image in the eyes of their viewers. Similarly, content marketers should channelize their effort in link building.

The responsibility of creating new links lies with SEOs. Content writers and marketers should try to create links which help in improving traffic to their site. 

Focus On The Zero-Click Search

With time, SEO has changed drastically. The concept of ‘zero-click searches’ has become very popular. Its popularity is going to continue in the coming years. In a zero-click search, the answer to the user’s search appears directly on the screen of the search engine.

The content writer has to be very specific about the information they share on their website, other websites, or any other channel. 

Programming

2022, website owners should focus more on using programming languages like R and Python. SEO automation would save lots of time for marketers.

Programming would also help the marketers in better analysis of their data, which further helps in making more rational decisions and solve complex problems. 

Follow these 2022 SEO trends to make sure you are right at the top of the SEO game this coming year.