Search engine optimization is one of the most rapidly evolving parts of an organization’s marketing effort. Keeping up with SEO trends is a critical part of business survival, especially if your website is a major source of income, traffic, or interest. You should consider studying the following trends and finding ways to implement them on your website.
First-Party Data Collection
In the previous decade, third-party data collection through vendors like Facebook and Google was a major trend. Today’s internet and app users are significantly savvier about protecting their data, though. The rise of adblockers, VPNs, and other privacy-first solutions on the customer side has made third-party data collection less thorough and accurate than it was even a couple of years ago.
The upside to owning a website, though, is that you can collect first-party data. This is data that comes directly from your relationship with end users. Your websites and apps can track lots of valuable data, including IP addresses, preferred pages, logins, and user patterns.
Also, you can integrate customer relationship management software to track larger relationships, such as studying which consumers respond to particular appeals or products. Email subscriptions provide a superb pipeline to data from users, too. You can also directly request data from users in the form of surveys and customer feedback forms.
Search Competition
Optimizing for search — specifically for Google — is still the main goal of SEO. However, there are cracks in the foundation at Google. Competitors like Bing and DuckDuckGo are making inroads with users largely because people find Google’s search results to be worse than they were a decade ago.
Businesses with small budgets probably shouldn’t throw money at optimizing for these platforms just yet. However, the slow trend away from Google could accelerate, so you’ll want to monitor search engine choice over the next couple of years. Also, larger marketing operations should consider putting some work into optimizing for alternate search platforms to see if they can chip away and win a little market share.
Visual Search
Particularly with almost every new phone sporting an AI chip for scanning images, visual search is on the rise. Users can now point their phones at real-world objects and get search results quickly. Especially for product-focused websites, the time to update your photos is now. Likewise, make sure to use alt tagging to supply detailed information about each image. The opportunity to optimize your website visually for search is as good right now as it has ever been.
On-Page Experience
As the king of search, Google has long emphasized the importance of the on-page experience of the end user. Google continues to track how long it takes users to come back to search following a query, an indirect reflection of a search result’s quality. The search giant also tends to reward sites for following best practices for UX. Ugly websites or ones with broken code or content suffer penalties.
Google’s expectations of the on-page experience are getting much stricter. Old and ugly pages rarely rank anymore, unless there’s no competing content of similar value. The same goes for pages with missing videos, broken scripts, and dead links. Likewise, pages that don’t flexibly adapt to devices, such as refitting content automatically to mobile device screens, rarely rank well now. Audit your website for busted and missing elements. Also, assess whether the user experience is pleasant because Google is doing so.
Latent Semantic Meaning
The gist of a page is far more important today than in the past. Keyword stuffing has been dead for decades, and latent semantic meaning is the current king. If you’re building a website for a car dealership, for example, the website needs to be broadly conversant about purchasing, financing, leasing, and servicing vehicles. Also, the latent meaning of the content needs to be consistent.
If you run a used car dealership, there needs to be an emphasis in the content on meaning that has value in the used buyer’s worldview. Stronger meaning is always better. The difference between a certified pre-owned dealership and a used one is relevant. Do not try to game the system. Simply make sure that your SEO content hits topics and tones that make the most sense for your market niche.
Continuous Scrolling in Search
Finally, continuous scrolling is making the second and third result pages more valuable real estate. Many search engines now use dynamic code to keep feeding results onto what used to be the first page. Even if you can’t beat a handful of superior competitors on the first results, put some effort into elevating your results. Users are more likely to see second- and third-tier results today than they were just five years ago.
Optimizing Your Website for the Future
Staying on top of SEO trends like first-party data collection, visual search, and on-page experience is critical for maintaining your website’s competitiveness. By making these adjustments now, you can position your business for better visibility and growth.
If you’re ready to optimize your site and need a trusted partner to help, contact My Marketing Department. We’ll work as an extension of your team to drive results and boost your online presence.