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16 Biggest SEO Trends Set to Disrupt The Digital Marketing Industry in 2023
When SEO first became a “thing” it was shrouded in mystery. Both the newly-trained and the so-called “experts” tried everything short of voodoo to try and coax search engines like Google and Yahoo to highlight their brands. Eventually, as with most internet-related things, we collectively began to figure things out.
However, the art of SEO is a forever-changing practice. No matter how hard we try, Google stays several steps ahead of us. It’s not like information about search engine algorithms and ranking systems isn’t out there. But, the reality is that there isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach to SEO.
With that being said, the best thing we can do is anticipate changes and adjust accordingly. Therefore, as we head into the new year, it’s best practice to keep your eye on the latest SEO trends of 2023.
- Core Web Vitals Are Necessary Metrics
- E-A-T SEO is Still Key
- Online Shopping is a Juggernaut Here to Stay
- Featured Snippets
- Optimize Your Images
- Long-Form Content
- Evolution Of Link-Building
- Don’t Focus on Ranking in the Top Spot
- Influencers and SEO
- Original Content for the Win
- Mobile Users Are a Growing Majority
- Video Content Marketing is Mandatory
- Going Local Will Pay Huge Dividends
- Voice Search is Gaining in Popularity
- The Role of AI and Machine Learning is Growing
- Passage Indexing is Your Friend
Core Web Vitals Are Necessary Metrics
- 1First Contentful Paint (FCP): measures how fast bits of content load on your web page.
- 2First Input Delay (FID): measures the time delay between a user interacting with your website and the page response.
- 3Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): monitors how long it takes for the largest piece of content to load and appear for website visitors.
- 4Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures the visible stability of your web pages; indicates the total amount of unexpected layout shifts on a page.
E-A-T SEO is Still Key
Expertise - Do you create great content that your audience loves and finds useful?
Authority - Who are you linking to, and who is citing your content?
Trustworthiness - Is your website and its content secure and authentic?
Proving your authority comes down to link-building with reputable sources within your content. Easy places to start are .gov, .edu, .org, and other non-profit or organizational domains. Adding customer reviews and testimonials will also demonstrate your social proof.
Lastly, you should be using modern website designs and hosting solutions. This way, you will have a secure infrastructure that protects the data and privacy of your users.
Online Shopping is a Juggernaut Here to Stay
One new feature that is worth focusing on is the Shopping Graph. According to Google:
- Price.
- Website.
- Customer Reviews.
- SKUs.
- Images.
- Videos.
Featured Snippets
Google’s algorithms feature a snippet of text that the AI feels will directly answer or address a user query. This is seen as a time-saving benefit for the end user. They may also show up in the “people also ask” section or along with Knowledge Graph information (a Google tool for answering factual questions).
[Screenshot taken from Google.com]
To take advantage of the components of Google’s AI, you should focus on making specific content to answer all relevant questions for your business. This includes leveraging what “people also ask” questions that relate to your target keywords.
You should also be using schema markups to structure your content for search engines. This not only helps you make clarifications to website crawlers but also lets you block out exact text for use as featured snippets.
Optimize Your Images
Image optimizing best practices for 2023 must include auditing as part of your content strategy. Modern webmasters are well aware of the importance of properly labeling/tagging images as a best practice.
Filenames, captions, and alt-text are important to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of your content. This type of image enrichment will also let you target keywords and grab traffic from the image SERPs.
And don’t worry about using solely original images. It’s worth paying for images or grabbing royalty-free options–Google doesn’t worry about duplicates. In many cases, source images appear higher up in search results than the original image.
Long-Form Content
However, it’s best not to focus on length and instead focus on content. The main goal of long-form content is to address many questions with one web page. This also allows you to build on several keywords and diversify your backlink building.
Audit your content for quality and length to ensure you are putting relevant pages out to both Google’s crawlers and users. This process will help improve your SERPs for 2023.
It is also important to think about how you want users to navigate your website when reading longer-form content. Which will better suit your website: pagination or infinite scroll?
Evolution Of Link-Building
That means appealing to domain authorities and reputable websites when link-building. And as always, maintain a laser focus on creating original and quality content.
Don’t Focus on Ranking in the Top Spot
Google’s highly evolved platform is built to deliver the most relevant content to users. The algorithms will only continue to get more efficient with time. Focus on building structured web pages to help the indexing process and leverage things like image searches or questions.
Improving efficiency is something that can, and should, be applied company-wide, not just in your SEO efforts. With this in mind, you may wish to look up 'What is ACD?' This is an automatic call distributor that directs your calls to the right person or department, which will increase your company's level of efficiency and could serve to increase your customer loyalty.
When evaluating your 2023 SEO approach, use your page CTRs to determine the success of your optimization efforts. This metric will also indicate the quality or relevance of each page’s content.
Influencers and SEO
Of course, they will also advertise your products on their social media channel; however, for SEO purposes, it is best to form partnerships with influencers that have a good blog/website presence of their own.
In 2023, it will be all about using influencers as an alternative source of organic and paid traffic.
Original Content for the Win
It’s a good tactic to view content from top-ranking competitors for inspiration and guidance. Your website will need to provide branded and personalized content that tells your own stories. While reviewing the competition, look for areas where others are lacking content.
If you offer e-commerce businesses a Shopify loyalty app, build a content strategy that appeals to your target audience. For instance, create how-to Shopify content and guides for other aspects of e-commerce.
If what you are serving visitors is truly unique, you will be rewarded with more backlinks! In turn, you will get more views, more engagement, and a rise in Google rankings. It’s a vicious cycle that is a one-way train to SEO success.
Mobile Users Are a Growing Majority
Percentage of mobile device website traffic worldwide from 1st quarter 2015 to 2nd quarter 2022:
However, due diligence must be directed toward optimizing all of your web pages for fast loading on mobile devices. Google’s developer guide is the first place to begin. Follow the advice to help Google properly index your site and “help” you gain more traffic.
For a quick mobile-friendly check, you refer to Core Web Vitals for mobile performance baselines. Additionally, remember to build a strategy that leverages Google’s featured snippets. As previously mentioned, these text boxes will have a disproportionate prominence on most mobile devices due to screen size.
Video Content Marketing is Mandatory
A survey conducted by Wyzowl found that 87% of marketers say video has helped them increase traffic. The same survey found that 82% of respondents found video content to increase visitor dwell time on their web pages. As indicated by the trends of the study, marketers who don’t use video are going the way of the dodo.
Think of these like H2s for written content. For example, if you have an explainer video for PBX hosting, use clip markups for topical sections. These can be titles likes “What is PBX?”, “Benefits of VoIP”, and so on.
Additionally, seek markups instruct google about your URL framework. In other words, it lets google use direct links to each clip markup for relevant SERPs and “people also ask” pages.
Optimizing your video content will help you with Google rankings for user queries. You will also get an extra SEO boost from increased visitor dwell time on your pages that include video content.
Going Local Will Pay Huge Dividends
It used to be that consumers looked for business by qualifiers like “near me” or zip codes. However, Google has found that this practice is on the decline. Online shoppers now expect local results in many SERPs.
Even with a return to normalcy, it is looking like local online shopping will continue to trend upward heading into 2023. There are an increasing number of SEO companies like Google Analytics Agency Dubai that focus on local and regional areas.
You can build your local SEO strategy by first creating a Google My Business account. This will let you add important locality information including accurate and updated hours for any brick-and-mortar stores. You can also boost your SERP traffic and conversions by including local text in any featured snippet text.
These local SEO stats show the multiple ways that having a strong local SEO presence can benefit your business.
Voice Search is Gaining in Popularity
It’s nothing new as the tech has been in development since at least 2008. This is part of a larger digital movement towards more conversational experiences for users.
With interfaces like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa voice search is becoming critical to local search optimization. So that means you have to consider both the medium and the content of the query to reach your target audience.
Natural language processing (NLP) powers voice search technology. This AI is helping Google learn how to interpret conversational searches versus what users normally type into a search engine.
For example, you might type “best guitar music shop” into a query box. Whereas, if you were speaking you would say something along the lines of “Which is the best guitar and music shop?”.
These aforementioned strategies include the following:
- Optimize for local search: many voice search users are looking for local businesses–don’t forget to claim your Google My Business listing!
- Featured snippets: these concise texts can quickly address vocal queries with 40% of search results coming from snippets.
- Use conversational content: it goes hand in hand with building quality and long-form content.
- Use schema markups: structured data will help give better context to Google Voice indexing.
The Role of AI and Machine Learning is Growing
One area where Google has changed the algorithm game is with RankBrain. This algorithm uses machine learning to “determine the most relevant results” to search queries. Effectively, it continually evolves its understanding of related terms, allowing it to deduce the true intent of the user with a good deal of accuracy.
Heading into 2023, you can focus on new keywords that are related to your industry. Tie content with relevant keywords and you can be confident that when a user makes a “new” search query, your pages will be ready to rise up the rankings.
Passage Indexing Is Your Friend
Passage Indexing brings a higher granularity to content relevancy. So when you are putting out original long-form content, you can rest assured that users will be able to quickly find the most relevant sections. The image below shows how it can impact search results:
Passage indexing will be especially useful when targeting long-tail keywords and answering question queries. The key is to make sure your long-form written content features concise and clear passages. In this way, they become mini-pages of their own furthering your SEO efforts.
Conclusion
You could invent time travel and head back to a time before the internet was created, however, an easier way to deal with SEO is to accept that it is an ongoing process. Staying on top of the trends in your niche will help guide you along the way. This includes things like content creation, keyword research, and maintaining social proofs.
Your organization also needs to stay on top of Google announcements and updates. With due diligence and concerted efforts, your team will evolve your SEO practices to help your brand rises from the ashes of your competitors.
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