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The Top 15 SEO Trends for Increasing Traffic in 2022 and Preparing for 2023

1- Mobile
It may sound stupid if you don't have a mobile-responsive website these days, but believe it or not, some websites still haven't made the switch.
With more and more searches being conducted on mobile devices, having a mobile friendly website has never been more important. If you want to retain people on your website, you should provide them with pages that are mobile-friendly. Because if people can't get the stuff they want, they'll most likely go to a competitor's site and find what they're searching for.
The sole reason to build a mobile responsive website is that Google has plans to divide their existing index and develop a new one only for mobile index in the near future.
Although it is unknown how the mobile index would function, it has been said that it will eventually become Google's primary index. As a result, we may assume that it will only show mobile-friendly information.
Be mobile-friendly.
When it comes to SEO trends in 2022, mobile optimization may appear to be outdated. Many SEO practitioners are aware that, with the launch of the mobile-first index in March 2018, it has become a more crucial ranking element. It's also more likely that your site will rank better in search results if it's optimized for mobile.
What you may not realize is that if your website has both a desktop and a mobile version, the Google crawler will crawl the mobile version first when determining how to rank your website. When you consider that 90% of internet users use their phones to access the internet, it's no wonder that mobile optimization is a crucial SEO tactic.
If you don't have a responsive website or a dedicated mobile site, you'll be missing out on contacting prospects and consumers who are browsing on numerous devices if you don't have one.
In 2022, you must continue to ensure that your website operates properly on mobile devices. All SEO specialists will pay close attention to the user experience on mobile devices.
The cornerstone to a user-friendly site design is simplicity. You must also tailor the content of your website to the demands of your visitors. To decide your ranks, Google will ultimately overlook your desktop site and rely solely on your mobile site.
So, if your focus on enhancing user experience on mobile devices has been little to far, it's time to put all of your efforts into it. If you have a separate desktop and mobile site, you should think about switching to a mobile responsive site.

2- Site Speed
The speed of a website is one of the most important aspects of SEO. If your website isn't working properly. You can be certain that your users will be annoyed and may leave. According to some estimates, a one-second delay might result in a 7% loss in conversions, implying that a significant amount of money is lost. Especially when it comes to something that can be easily repaired.
Increasing your website's speed will not only keep visitors on your site longer, resulting in more conversions, but it will also help you rank higher. Google's primary objective is to create an exceptional user experience. They accomplish this by promoting websites with a quick response time.
Imagine yourself sitting in a lonely drive-through, when every minute feels like four. The same is true for your website, only that instead of minutes, it just takes seconds. Users have grown accustomed to fast internet speeds, so if you leave them hanging or waiting for a page to load, you are not providing them with the user experience they expect.
Or you'll be left behind if you don't improve your mobile and desktop website load times. While it's no secret that page speed is one of the most essential SEO trends, it's grown even more critical in recent years.
In reality, Google's new algorithm upgrade has elevated page load speed to a far higher priority than it was previously.
A fast-loading website will enhance your chances of being successful in optimizing for highlighted snippets, voice search, or even just being on page one.
Google aims to provide answers as rapidly as possible, and studies show that one out of every four visitors will abandon a website that takes longer than four seconds to load. High bounce rates will harm your Google reputation and cause you to lose business.
In addition, Google said in July 2018 that page speed will be factored into mobile search rankings. As a result, it isn't limited to desktop searches.
The bottom line is that if your website takes longer to load than other websites on the same network connection, it will most likely rank lower and get fewer visitors.
You'll need a thorough grasp of how your website performs on desktop and mobile before you can increase its performance. Not only will you get a score out of 100 if you use Google's PageSpeed Insights, but you'll also get some top tips for speeding up.
To begin, make sure you're adhering to Google's web page speed requirements. This includes utilizing CSS or Javascript instead of server-side languages like PHP or Python to reduce the size of pictures and add content to your HTML.
Second, employ a Content Delivery Network to offer your website's content from the server nearest to the user's location.
Third, employ caching to ensure that static resources like as pictures and CSS files are only downloaded once, saving bandwidth for both you and your users. Finally, make sure that all of your site's scripts are GZIP compressed, since this may make a 70 percent improvement in page performance.

3- Page Experience
Customer experience is a topic that has been gaining traction among internet organizations for some time. This ties in with the page experience standards indicated in Google's most recent upgrade.
As a result of the upgrade, Google will now evaluate a website's user experience when determining its ranking. This covers things like how many redirects you have, how many photos you have, and the length of your pages, among other things. Google will examine the key web vitals, including website usability and navigation on desktop and mobile, button placement, how dynamic content, such as pop-ups, appears, and more.
As a result of the latest upgrade, employing the AMP format for content is no longer required.
Making your website as basic and easy to use as possible is the greatest method to ensure that your users have a positive experience. You should also consider how many advertisements or irrelevant information you have on each page. Make sure your site has a valid HTTPS certificate, isn't cluttered, and is simple to browse for your visitors.
In 2022, you'll put the search purpose of the query and user behavior ahead of anything else.
The search purpose and behavior of people are always changing. They use Google or other search engines to get answers to their questions or to learn more about a certain issue.
When companies recognize what consumers are looking for and give them with content that answers their inquiries, both the company and the users gain.
As algorithms become more powerful, SEO specialists, according to Britney Muller of Britney Muller LLC, must shift away from classic SEO methods that hold little to no value today.
They should instead focus on the search intent. Businesses may generate competitive content that the online audience wants to consume by paying close attention to search inquiries.
According to Mary Hynes, CEO of Marie Haynes Consulting Inc., in order to succeed in SEO in 2022, you'll need to be great at giving them the proper information.
Google will improve its knowledge of when people are asking for expert guidance and will prioritize information that adheres to the E.A.T principles. Only when SEO specialists properly grasp what people are looking for will they be able to dominate search in 2022.
More than just marketing their brand or products and services, brands will need to respond to audience needs. This implies that you should not force people to register on your site, nor should you offer them unwanted pop-ups or link them to registration forms.
According to Steven van Vessum, VP of Community at ContentKing, in addition to understanding what customers want, companies should identify the preferred content format (videos, podcasts, essays, etc.) and supply appropriately.
INFUSEmedia's CEO, Alexander Kesler, offered some further search intent recommendations. According to him, organizations should examine their organic leads' on-site journey and search data. This will not only help them comprehend the search term they used to reach your content, but it will also help them understand the on-site search terms for all of the pages they have viewed on your website. Brands will be able to link this data to the content journey with the aid of this aggregation.

4- Core Web Vitals
The SEO world was buzzing about Core Web Vitals before we heard about Passage Indexing.
As you may be aware, Google has been pressuring webmasters to improve the user experience on their pages.
This was primarily to ensure that any visitor who arrived at a page via Google search results did not leave because of a bad user experience.
Page Experience Algorithm has been around for a while, and starting in May 2021, key web vitals will be added to it.
This implies that current Page Experience indications like HTTPs, Intrusive Interstitial, Safe Browsing, and Mobile Friendliness will be used to determine page rankings.
Google introduced three new measures for gauging user experience in May 2020, dubbed Core Web Vitals: loading, interactivity, and visual stability. All three SEO measures are primarily concerned with one thing: page speed: how quickly the website loads, how quickly it becomes interactive, and how stable it is while loading.
In May 2021, Core Web Vitals will be one of Google's ranking variables, which means you'll have to pay attention to them if you want to rank on the first page. If two pages have equally relevant material, for example, user experience measurements will aid search engine bots in determining which one should be ranked higher. Here are some more small company SEO tactics.
The following are the Three Core Web Vital Factors:
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) First Input Delay (FID)
5- Schema
If you're not acquainted with schema, it's a means to markup the pieces of your website so that search engines can better understand what that material is.
These markups will not only ensure that your data is shown appropriately in the SERP, but they will also aid in raising your clickthrough rates. This may or may not be true depending on your question. Rich snippets may appear in Google's search results. The more information you provide in this manner, the more likely you are to get a click.
Another reason to use Schema is to boost the popularity of voice search and artificial intelligence. By marking up data on a website, you make it easier for crawlers to understand the information, which may assist improve your chances of ranking.
The search results that often appear at the top of Google's organic search results, known as highlighted snippets, take several forms, including answer boxes and ‘People also ask', which Google considers relevant based on the original search query.
Such boxes are part of Google's continual endeavor to respond to requests as swiftly as possible and improve the user experience. It eliminates the requirement for the user doing the search to click through in many circumstances. Regardless, this is a fantastic opportunity to boost organic impression sharing and establish yourself as a knowledgeable and useful resource.
Because you're answering a query, the approaches previously advised for optimizing for voice search may also be used to highlighted snippets.
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to appearing in featured snippets, we do know that Google like numbers, steps, and lists. Have you ever used Google to look for a recipe, for example? If you answered yes, you've probably noticed that ingredients are listed in a clear and straightforward manner.
If you have numbers and interesting statistics, make sure to incorporate them while developing material for rich snippets.

6- BERT is a Google search engine that looks for intent matches.
Machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) are used by Google's BERT algorithm (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) to better comprehend searches and what people are looking for. It works in over 70 languages and for nearly every Google English inquiry.
The Google search engine bots have become much more “conversational” as a result of Google's BERT upgrade, and Google's algorithm can now comprehend the searcher's intent. To put it another way, Google now understands the human brain.
This also indicates that websites with content-intent mismatches will suffer as a result of this. No matter how thorough or high-quality that long-form information is, if it doesn't fulfill user intent, BERT will disregard it in favor of another piece of content that does.
It's important to remember that the Google BERT penalty is not an algorithmic punishment. It's a feature of the Google search engine that helps users find the most relevant and valuable stuff by interpreting search queries and content in the same way that humans do. As a result, it will neither de-rank or punish websites. It will simply give preference to companies that provide the greatest results to users, as Google has always endeavored to do.
If your material does not provide what a user is seeking for, it is not BERT-friendly, and you will not be able to rank for that keyword in the long run. That's why providing excellent material that fulfills the user's aim might be beneficial.
When a user types a certain term into a Google search, search intent is exactly what they're looking for. Is there a query they're seeking for an answer to? Is there a list of choices? Is this a how-to guide? Do they want to purchase a product and read reviews, or do they want to buy a product and read reviews? Because consumers bring a lot of intent to the Google search box, it's critical that your content and keyword intent match.
For example, if someone searches “seo” as a term on Google, it indicates that the user is interested in learning more about SEO.
However, if a user searches for “seo services” as a term, it suggests the person is looking for “seo services.”
As a result, the keyword “seo” is a descriptive term, but “seo services” is a commercial one.

7- The importance of keyword research will increase.
Zero-click searches account for more than half of all searches. More than half of Google searches (about 175 billion each month) conclude without a click. This is because the SERP provides such rich results—Google business listings with menus and contact information, Featured Snippets with answers, related questions with accordion answers, and more—that consumers can get the answers they need without having to click a result—or even finish typing out a query…
But only if your website, advertisements, Business Profile, and blog material include and cover those keywords in accordance with the purpose of the searcher. With the developments in the SERP and so much competition out there, it's more important than ever to devote time in keyword research to uncover phrases that may truly generate traffic and revenue for your company.
For your business, find long-tail and focused keywords. To obtain those keywords, you'll need some imagination and talents. (However, the secret is Google Search Console, which is your gold mine for finding unique keywords for your business.)
Recognize the goal. While SEO tools are necessary to employ, you must first examine the SERP for that term before making your decision. In a recent experiment, I discovered that if the purpose is correct, even a low-volume term with only 10-20 searches per month may still yield thousands of dollars per month provided the intent is correct.
That's why you should take your time with keyword research and look for terms that will rank quickly and create cash for you.
Consistently generating long-form and meaningful content on your website is one trend that will help you outrank your competition in 2021. The material should follow E.A.T requirements and be at least 2000 words long.
Long-form content will continue to gain relevance in 2021, and well-written long-form material will be able to surpass the 2000-word mark, aiming for a standard of 3000-3500 words.
In order to outperform your competition in 2021, you should work on increasing the scalability of your SEO services.
Mark Traphagen, Vice President of Product Marketing and Training at seoClarity, suggests making a list of all the jobs and process, then figuring out which ones can be automated with SEO technologies.
You should also set up an alert system to track significant changes, such as changes in keyword rankings, URL modifications, or content changes. Create SoPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for any jobs that can't be automated.

8- Ethical Link Building
Have you ever tried to rank a page for a specific term, only to have a different page appear instead?
This is frequently connected to internal linkages. Start by looking at your internal links to see if there are any instances of the keyboard referring to the wrong page.
You may come across the same word linking to various sites, or anchor text that should be leading to one page but is instead pointing to another. That's all you'll need to get started cleaning.
Google has also started to punish link strategies. This is why you should avoid any link-building efforts that incorporate reciprocal link exchanges, bought links, or other non-organic methods.
Exchanging money for links, excessive link exchanges, and even large-scale guest blogging efforts are now deemed black hat SEO methods, according to the newest update.
If you want your company to appear higher in Google's search results, it's important to concentrate on more ethical methods of obtaining excellent backlinks. The simplest approach to achieve this is to provide helpful material that will naturally draw links.
Make sure to share your high-quality material on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter once you've created it. However, don't spam while sharing the link! To achieve the greatest results, be sure that any postings you make are related to what you're attempting to advertise.

9- Passage Indexing
Have you heard about Google's recent revelation concerning a new algorithm known as Passage Indexing?
So, if you're tired of creating long-form material that doesn't get read, Passage Indexing might be a game-changer for you.
According to Google, while indexing web pages, it will now employ the natural language processing function to try to comprehend the meaning of each paragraph inside the page.
This means that a specific segment (passages) of your content will now appear in search results for relevant search queries, even if it's buried deep inside the scope of the main topic.
According to Cathay Edwards of Google, Passage Indexing will affect 7% of all search queries in all languages by the end of 2020, according to the search giant's Search On video.
If you recall, BERT received a similar notification in 2018. According to the company, BERT will affect 10% of all search inquiries.
Prabhakar Raghavan acknowledged in the same video that BERT is currently utilized to offer results for practically every search query customers type.
As a result, the Passage Indexing is more of an internal ranking algorithm that will have a greater influence on the SERP results.
The Passage Indexing Ranking Algorithm is more or less verified to favor web sites with highly organized content.
This also suggests that in 2021, Google will place a greater emphasis on boosting the ranking of holistic content.
A holistic content strategy examines a topic in depth and attempts to answer the most frequently asked questions by the target audience.
Furthermore, for long-tailed and question-based search queries, Passage Indexing will have a significant impact on search results.
This is understandable because obtaining the appropriate answer to a specific issue necessitates a needle in a haystack method.
This is precisely what Google's Passage Indexing aims to do.
“So, let's assume you're looking for something specific, like ‘how can I tell whether my house windows are UV glass.' This is a difficult question, and we receive a lot of online articles about UV glass and how you need a particular film, but none of this actually helps the layperson take action. Our new technology can focus in on a single sentence on a DIY forum that answers the topic. Apparently, you can tell by looking at the reflection of a flame, and the rest of the entries on the website that aren't quite as useful are ignored.”

10- Original content
Google is still looking for unique material.
Authentic content is critical for organizations in more ways than just branding, because outstanding content is so important for SEO and ranking. Simply simply, this is original stuff that has not been published anywhere.
unique content seo trends for 2022
Would you buy a shirt in the same color and pattern as the one you have now? No! The same thing occurs in this case. On Google, there is a lot (thousands of pages) of comparable information on the same themes. Why would Google rank a piece of material that is substantially identical to current content that is already ranking on the web higher than the original piece? Why would anyone bother looking beyond the top-ranked results? As a result, your material must be genuine, relevant, and valuable, and it must be written in your own brand voice and style.
Case studies, trials, client testimonials, corporate milestones, and other relevant materials may be used to create unique content. Not only will this provide original material that Google appreciates, but it will also position you as a trustworthy brand in the eyes of both Google and your audience.

11- Voice Search
Voice search is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, roughly 58 percent of customers use voice search to locate local company information, according to reports.
Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant already play important roles in people's daily lives. With the emergence of voice activation in everything from televisions to medical gadgets, it's just a matter of time until voice search becomes the dominant mode of search.
What this means for SEO trends is that firms and marketers will need to focus more on their “conversation marketing” talents, which include transforming written information into conversational language. This shift in terminology may also provide marketers with a chance to interact with their customers on a more personal basis.
According to Google, voice search is used by 27 percent of the world's population on their mobile phones. Furthermore, according to ComScore, by 2021, more than half of smartphone users will be using voice search technology.
Here's the thing: the majority of voice search inquiries are long-tail and extremely specialized.
When using voice search, users are looking for particular solutions to their questions.
And these users are in the contemplation stage of the funnel, which means they're more likely to convert than the others.
Because voice search optimization is continuing rising in popularity as more people choose for it, it is projected to remain popular in 2021 as well.
As a result, this may be a need in terms of SEO.
You may and should spin long-tail keywords into queries by adjusting your target keywords to appeal more to certain conversational-based inquiries. You'll be able to create content based on these questions, which may be in the form of a blog post or a FAQ page. Remember to add the search query as an H1, H2, or H3 as you would usually.

12- Video marketing
If you're interested in video SEO, the 2021 Google I/O conference has a lot to offer. The search engine behemoth announced the debut of two new structured data formats – Seek Markup and Clip Markup – to aid in the display of video material in search results with important moments.
The Key Moments feature is currently only accessible for YouTube videos. Any platform that hosts video in the future will benefit from employing one of the two new structured data markups.
While the Clip Markup manually informs Google about the timestamps in your movies, the Seek markup informs Google Search in an automatic manner.
These two markups are a godsend if you want to enhance the click-through rate to your video content from the search results page.
Here's how to include Clip and Seek MarkUp in your video to help Key Moments appear in search results.
You must explicitly tell Google what timestamp and label to use when presenting the critical moments for Clip Markup to work. These needed characteristics must be included in the Video Object element of the structured data to include this information.
Seek Video markup is less complicated than its sister.
Using the following characteristics in your VideoObject, it tells Google how a URL structure works so that Google may automatically show important points determined for your film.
While the SeekToAction attributes aren't essential, you must include the following properties if you want Google to comprehend your URL structure and connect people to a specific point in the movie. It's currently in beta, so anticipate more features to be added to this markup in the near future.
With over 1 billion subscribers, YouTube is the second most popular search engine behind Google. So, even if you don't like videos, now is the time to start.
But how can you make that video material search engine friendly? Begin by improving the name and description of your video channel. Though the description shouldn't be crammed with keywords, it should give a clear picture of what your channel is about.
Even keywords, though, are crucial. You may utilize YouTube's autocomplete function, for example, if you're optimizing your videos for YouTube. Start typing the topic of your video, and a list of ideas will appear in the search area. The keywords suggested are similar keywords that you may use to optimize the video for the correct audience.
13- Orphaned Pages
Orphaned pages are ones that are on the root domain but aren't linked to the website via an internal link. They may be old pages that were not redirected when you redesigned your website, or they could be pages from an old advertising campaign that you forgot about.
Unfortunately, orphaned pages may easily slow down a website since they are either obsolete, not optimized, or, in certain situations, duplicates of other pages on the website.
Before you begin cleaning these up, you must first locate them. To do so, use Google's advanced search function and enter website:yourdomain.com. You can find out how many pages it says you have indexed and see whether that figure corresponds to the real number of pages on your website.
If the figure is larger, you have a major disaster on your hands that you must clear up.
14- Influencer SEO
Influencers have millions of followers, and if you can get your brand in front of them, these followers may become your clients.
Such influencers acquire your target audience's confidence over time, and if they come forward to endorse your business, the ROI may be significant. As a result, 89 percent of marketers feel that the ROI from influencer marketing is equivalent to or superior to that of other marketing strategies.
However, when selecting influencers to augment your SEO approach, you must be very particular. Not every influencer will benefit your brand. You must select those who have the correct audience—the people you wish to attract.
15- SEO for EAT and branding SEO
When it comes to ranking, Google prioritizes content quality. But does “quality” work on its own? The EAT principle comes into play: expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
Brands are the SEO of the future. The focus of SEO is shifting to branding and authority. The higher and more regularly your brand ranks on Google, the more popular and authentic it is. This will become clear in the following months.
As a result, you should work hard to build your brand's reputation. Make it a major focus in your SEO strategy for 2021. Additionally, raise brand awareness to improve brand search inquiries. Brand inquiries are a secret ranking feature that will assist you in ranking better and establishing yourself as a trustworthy brand on Google.
This is especially significant if you work in a YMYL (Your Money Your Life) area. Improve your EAT, as Google states it is highly careful about ranking YMYL pages and takes EAT significantly. (While EAT is not a direct ranking component, Google does utilize some algorithms that assess EAT for pages.)
Publishing your company in news media publications, author profiles that are well-described (including qualifications and recognitions), address, information about the founders and C-level executives, awards, and proper contact information, among other things, can help you improve your website's EAT.