In 2021, SEO trends are changing at a lightning-fast speed because there is so much going on — natural language processing, video marketing, voice search optimization, and the list goes on. Currently, businesses in the US are spendingand that is bound to incre ase.
Every business wants to cut back on their ad spend by ranking on the first page of Google and are willing to pay for it. However, if you run a business, you must know what it takes for a website to get there. To help you get the basics right, we are about to discuss the top SEO trends in 2021. Let’s find out what’s working.
- Core Essentials
To start on the right foot, you need to have the right set of technologies working for you, including the right web hosting, domain name, and an appropriate SSL Certificate. These determine the speed, security, and prospects of your website.
- Web Hosting
When you buy a web hosting plan for your business website, the cheapest one would be the shared hosting plan, and the most expensive would be cloud hosting. It is strongly recommended that you pick the latter because the cloud comprises several servers and increases the web site’s speed and content delivery. On the other hand, the shared hosting is slower and uses a server that is shared by several websites, some of which could be rogue sites.
- Domain Name
Always pick a domain name with a keyword because that optimizes it for the search engines and gives you an edge over other domains that do not have a keyword.
- SSL Certificate
Since 2014, Google has made SSL certificates a ranking signal for websites to create a secure virtual environment. However, to get the most out of it, you must install the right type of SSL based on your website’s architecture. Those with multiple first-level subdomains can use the wildcard SSL certificate, and businesses with multiple primary domains can use a SAN SSL certificate. The domain validated, or the standard SSL, is only suitable for websites without subdomains or multiple domains.
- Original Content
Google is smart, and if you try to trick it with copied content, you’ll get penalized for it. So, make it a point to get original content for your website. If you plan on outsourcing content writing to a remote writer, always make it a point to confirm its authenticity on plagiarism checker tools like CopyScape. We recommend CopyScape premium instead of other free tools because it is more reliable and costs just a few cents to verify thousands of words. If copied, it shows you how much of the content has been copied and the sources from which it has been copied.
- Voice Search Optimization
The number of Alexas and Siris has steadily grown, so users use voice search through their mobile phones. Around 50% of people are using voice searches to look up products or services. That makes voice search optimization a priority for any business, but how is it done? The easiest way to get started is by answering potential queries in a conversational tone which is dear to both Alexa and Siri. Also, keeping sentences short (under 20 words) and crisp can help with voice search optimization.
- Google’s snippets
Google dominates the search engine market because of its user-centric approach, which is only getting better with time. Recently, Google has come up with featured snippets which answer questions in a very concise manner. Optimizing your blogs and posts for these snippets drives a ton of traffic and helps websites dominate the first page of Google. You can do that by answering common queries regarding related topics briefly and factually.
- Video Marketing
Does your website have relevant videos about your products or services? If not, it is time to create video content and upload it onto your website. However, to optimize it for the search engines, make it a point to use data compression tools, stream the video content from your server, and defer the video content loading until the page is completely loaded. In other words, let the text pop up first so that the mobile phone users don’t lose patience and bounce off.
- Google’s BERT
Google is becoming more sophisticated and now uses BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) algorithm for natural language processing. This makes Google smarter and capable of understanding languages as humans do.
So, you can expect all the idioms and conversational phrases to be understood. Also, it helps classify various types of content such as images, text, and more which makes it necessary to optimize your website for each type of content. You can no longer skip adding meta tags to your posts nor the alt tags to the images because, in 2021, it works more effectively than ever before.
- EAT SEO
When speaking of SEO trends in 2021, one cannot skip the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (EAT) elements crucial for SEO. Therefore, make it a point to post credible information that cites reliable resources.
Conclusion
Unless you use a combination of technology and content, your SEO efforts may not pay off. The above discussed are some of the most popular SEO trends in 2021, but none of those are complete without a solid content strategy with the right keywords. So, we recommend that you start with the core essentials such as cloud hosting, keyword-rich domain, SSL certificate, and a comprehensive keyword strategy.
