Maximum human focus – perhaps this is how you can briefly describe the main trend in SEO promotion. Of course, search engines began to work in this direction a long time ago, but now this factor has become paramount. Keywords and link mass are not as important as the usability of the site and its usefulness.
Today we’ll tell you what will be relevant in SEO in 2022 and how to optimize your site to be at the top of the search results.
- Emphasis on expertise
Search engines are increasingly fighting against low-quality content every year, this trend will only intensify in 2022-2023. Just rewriting articles and stock images to fill the content of the site is not enough, now a meaningful and serious approach to copywriting is important.
If you want to earn the trust of users, prove your expertise in the topic. Deep content gives arguments and evidence and supports what has been said with links to the original source, official documents, laws, etc.
- Link weight needs to be gained in a new way
Of course, links will continue to be an important element in rankings. But if quantity mattered before, now the emphasis is on quality. Link building methods have changed in the direction of “collecting” links from high-ranking sites.
When search engines see that authoritative resources link to you, it is logical that your level of trust in their eyes will increase. It no longer makes sense to hunt for a lot of backlinks, it is better to pay attention to 3-5, but prestigious sites.
- Usability is getting more relevant
This aspect can be called not just a trend of 2022, but even, perhaps, eternal. Search engines in the struggle for visitors want to please them to the maximum and therefore stand up for easy-to-use sites. These are the ones that move you up. If you want to be in the game, fit in.
Usability means:
- fast loading
- clear, easy navigation
- nice, uncluttered design
- all buttons/pages work
- there are contacts, feedback
- adaptive design
It is worth noting the first point separately. Google began to evaluate the download in a new way: it is no longer so important how quickly the page loads, the main thing is the display of the part that a person manages to see.
And be sure to check for broken links with the broken link checker. Clicking once on a non-existent page, a user can leave a site and never come back.
- Keywords are losing positions
We don’t call to abandon them, but we also don’t recommend exaggerating their role.
Instead of stuffing a site or article with keywords, it is better to throw all your efforts into semantic content. As an option, change the order of actions: if earlier they first assembled the semantic core and adjusted the text to it, now it makes sense to write the content part, and only then check it for keys, over spam, etc.
Once again, search engines have begun to monitor behavioral factors more and more closely and respond accordingly. A meaningless set of keywords without useful content will not linger on the user. Keep this in mind when optimizing your page.
- Mobile first
This trend is also natural. Humanity is actively switching to smartphones, so it is quite natural to pay more attention to the mobile version of the site.
Creating a design for the desktop version, and then adapting it for mobile is no longer relevant. The accents have changed, so adjust your work to the current modern realities.
- Smart search becomes smarter
Google has directed efforts with its new service – Google Discover. It’s not just about predicting a query and returning the user’s expected to answer to a question. This is a modernized news feed that offers content based on personal interests. Experts suggest that Google Discover will be developed into more sophisticated tools for presenting information in the future.
- Reputation on the Internet
The number of positive and negative reviews on your resource is now also an important aspect of ranking. Search engines have learned to identify natural and artificial behavioral factors, so now they are looking for other ways to determine the quality of a site. Reputation has become an interesting alternative. The level of service, trust, and relationship with the client are now also taken into account.
Wrap up
The main message of search engines today is to create useful content and present it in a convenient way. Web resources should reflect reality as accurately as possible. If the product is of poor quality, it becomes more and more difficult to disguise it online using fake reviews and other manipulations. The algorithms of search engines are learning more and more complex NLP techniques, they are better able to capture the meaning of the content. Very soon, distinguishing the real from the fake will not be a problem for them.
So search engines literally insist that a business should, first of all, think about the quality of its product or service – if everything is fine with this, then the online promotion will become much easier.
