In some ways, search engine optimization is like fashion. Businesses need SEO the same way that people need clothes, but even SEO trends change as time passes. In the case of SEO, effective ways of promoting websites on search engines are discovered, as more information is uncovered. Google also tends to change its standards regarding the ranking of websites, and thus SEO has to adapt to new conditions and guidelines.
So if you’re doing SEO for your website now, what should you focus on? To answer that, here are the trends that are gaining more traction today.
1. No more fluff
It’s been noticed more and more that readers and website visitors are really tiring of worthless fluffy content. Readers need info, data, statistics, and relevant content that are interesting. They don’t need long introductory sections and numerous paragraphs that repeat a point over and over again. They don’t care about boring or irrelevant topics either.
Google had actually stated publicly that website SEO should no longer focus too much on technical trickery. Instead, website owners should focus on providing quality content for their visitors. If they do, Google will find a way raise the ranking of their sites on search engine results.
2. Longer content
Not only are you required to post relevant and interesting content, but also nowadays you need a lot of it. Instead of snippets that are just 250 words or so, longer blog posts of at least 1,000 words are becoming more popular and consequently getting higher search engine rankings. It appears that people want comprehensive guides covering a particular subject, instead of different web pages for various categories for a certain subject.
3. Mobile-first
At first, having a website optimized for mobile users was merely an afterthought. Some sites did it, and others didn’t bother. Those who did bother either went with responsive design or they had separate sites for desktop PCs and for mobile gadgets.
Nowadays, more people use mobile devices such as smartphones to go online. This means that if you’re going to go with just one version of your website, you should do one that’s optimized for mobile. You can then do your desktop PC version later. Mobile must come first.
This is now an SEO reality, since Google also ranks mobile-friendly sites higher than desktop websites. So you need to make sure your website design accounts for the screen dimensions of smartphones, and your navigational controls should accommodate swiping.
4. Video content
This trend has been going on for quite a while, and it shows no sign of abating. The use of video for higher Google rankings has been quite obvious ever since the Google and YouTube collaboration. Today, searching for certain keywords such as “how to” procedures or names of celebrities will give you links to YouTube videos as the top ranking results.
Adding a YouTube video into your web page doesn’t directly improve your rankings, however. But it does improve in providing more info for your visitors, and that will certainly help with SEO.
5. Infographics
Pictures and images still command a lot of attention these days, and that’s why infographics remain potent SEO tools. You have a form that’s more interesting and colorful than just plain articles, while the content is all about relevant data and statistics. These images also work best as social median posts, as they’re easily shared and people like to share with their friends.
Takeaway
If you’re doing your own SEO, you need to monitor the current trends so that you can keep up with your competition. That’s another reason why lots of businesses tend to hire experts in search engine optimization—keeping up with SEO trends can be a fulltime job!