Generally speaking Google employs about 200 ranking signals per-site. Not all of these signals are equally important leaving many companies confused as to where they should begin and end in algo compliance stewardship. To this end and without further ado, in this article we will explore how you can leverage the most critical SEO trends to your advantage in 2022.
6 SEO Trends to Harness in 2022
Optimizing for Google Discover
Find on Google is a curated feed of content relevant to user behavior as well as online searching which is displayed on Google’s homepage on mobile. The critical component here is stellar content. You should be creating good, targeted content for your core demo / audience. When your content is targeted, it helps Google understand context and recommends it to their users. By producing content that is optimized for intent based search results it will increase the chances of garnering exposure and being featured on the Search engine and get more qualified leads. Want to dig deeper into ranking for Google Discover? Google offers a fantastic resource.
Video content
Since the 2000s the use of online video has dominated the industry. Often businesses utilize YouTube and TikTok as platforms when attempting to engage with their potential and existing customers.. With video advertising anticipated to account for 82% of total website traffic by 2022, infusing the video content into SEO strategy is highly relevant. To optimize your videos you need to use keywords and hashtags to aid in reaching a targeted audience. Google has the benefit of gaining better understanding of what people will do if they find out what content in their search results is thematically relevant for the videos that populate search. Here are additional tips to propelling video for search engine optimization:
- Utilize a video transcript – be seen by more people but also serves up the content in a more easily scrapable capacity.
- As always titles and descriptions matter – Do not stuff the title and description with keywords but ensure it evokes the click and is contextual to the content.
- Dedicate a page to the video. Google recently provided new video SEO recommendations as follows:
“To give your videos maximum exposure, create a dedicated page for each video, where the video is the most prominent subject on the page. Some features require that type of video page, including Key Moments, the Live Badge, and other rich result formats.
It’s fine to include the same video on both a dedicated page and its original page alongside other information, like a news article or a product detail page.”
2022 Trends once again Lean on Domain Authority and Link Building
When it comes to SEO trends for 2022, link building is not new but, again it remains a strategy that must be nurtured and managed to outrank in the SERPs. Google is sophisticated and so must you be to truly leverage backlinks in a way that will truly provide long lasting value to your impression share and rankings. There are a variety of link building strategies that should be on your radar for SEO in 2022, including but not limited to:
- Link reclamation / unlinked brand mentions
- Competitor link building
- Broken link building
- No-follow to Do-Follow
- Skyscrapper
- and more..
Snippets
Featured snippets have always proven to be helpful in organic SEO. 2022 is a year where more brands will begin to leverage their teams in the race to position zero. The goal of generating results at “Position Zero” are becoming the most coveted location within search results. Why you may ask? FAQ snippets give great exposure as they take up a lot of space with search engines and websites who rank for them are likely to earn better clicks and traffic. A definitive SEO trend in 2022 is the increasing importance of FAQ snippets. This also folds in to leveraging PAA (People Also Ask) as a way to get into the consumer journey, their narrative of the most popular questions that need to be answered. Keep in mind that position zero also coveys allot of trust in the user, as if Google see’s your answer as a definitive source and propagates it into the results in this way, consumers can impart this as a trust signal in your brand.
Digital PR
Digital PR will surely become a key component for our SEO strategy in 2022. Producing high-quality content that is research-driven is already going to help garner pick-ups from highly trusted websites in your specific niche or vertical. The key to Digital PR is monitoring the journalistic wires and being poised to respond with an authoritative quote. As well, beyond reactive, being proactive with PRs, outreach and connecting with podcast hosts to garner interviews are vastly effective. The exposure is propelling for brands, but the links that they share back pass trust and authority along which is coveted and effective in strengthening your SEO and rankings. Create a captivating tale surrounding your research. Reach out to journalists and blogs and voila your back links will most likely start rolling in alongside mentions and social media shares.
Voice Search
According to industry predictions voice-based shopping will reach $40 million in 2022. Google voice searches. As well, with COVID, people are turning to touchless interactions more than ever. In fact, Perficient stated that 55% of mobile users perform voice search to obtain information. As we look past mobile devices connected devices are prolific, ranging from Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Siri and more. For a more impressive lens on this, Google has stated the following:
“62% of those who regularly use a voice-activated speaker say they are likely to buy something through their voice-activated speaker in the next month.”
All of the above to say, if Voice Search is not part of your SEO strategy now, it is absolutely worthy of a seat at your 2022 SEO strategy table.
While SEO in 2022 is critical to maximizing the potential for businesses, and leveraging new tactics is certainly viable and strategic, always ensuring best practices and white-hate efforts are being utilized is a necessity. From on-site SEO fortification to off-site toxicity remediation, the core SEO pillars which have been tried and true must remain in tact and mindfully managed. Leveraging new approaches are an addition, not a replacement, to SEO processes which maintain a healthy website and your overarching rankings.
