2023 Game-Changing SEO Trends

It is a new year! That means marketers must revamp 2023 buzzwords and content strategies to keep up with the latest SEO trends.

So, in this article, we jammed together a lot of things to help you out. Here, you can find the trends you already know, the must-know SEO trends of 2023, tips to create a successful strategy, and a couple of tools to help you along the way.

Why are SEO trends so important?

SEO is meant to improve the visibility of a website and effectively answer queries.

With that said, there is more and more content from companies to help increase their chances. As a result, there are always new Google trends, new algorithms, and search engine platforms that continue to evolve to sift through millions of pieces of information and content to find the most relevant piece to a particular query.

Simply put, if you do not stay up to date with the latest trEO trends, you will ultimately have the chance to grow your business.

Quick Recap: What is the future of SEO in 2022?

Before we jump into the trends for Google SEO 2023, let us recap the stuff you probably added to your SEO content strategy.

01. Voice Search

It is considered the future by 85% of consumers, according to a Google survey. A study by Comscore projected that voice search accounts for more than half of all the searches performed back in 2021.

02. Video SEO

YouTube has over a billion active users at any given time. With so much content and the platform becoming more crowded, it was only natural for the competition to be more fierce. That was how Video SEO came into the picture.

03. Search Intent

This is a top priority for Google. Not only for last year but even this 2023. In fact, Google got better at it and categorised people’s search intent into four main types: Informational, Transactional, Commercial, and Navigational.

04. Google’s AI Algorithm

Back in 2015, Google introduced RankBrain. Now, it is one of the ranking factors marketers constantly need to keep an eye on. This translated into optimising on-page SEO, title tags, and essentially CTRs for a website to rank.

05. The Mobile-First Index

The mobile-first version of a website is now considered the main version ever since Mobile-First Indexing was fully rolled out back in 2019. Since then mobile-first designs and the consideration of mobile users have been at the forefront of SEO strategies when creating new sites and even optimising existing websites.

15 SEO Trends of 2023

With that said, 2023 has a new set of trends and possibly even more SEO content strategy planning for marketers.

New E.E.A.T

Google’s EAT (Expertise, Authority, Trust) welcomes a new addition. Meaning, now it is Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EEAT).

What does the Experience element mean? Essentially, it is the significant amount of experience a person has in a specific field or topic.

Think of it this way: We naturally trust a doctor because they have years of experience studying the human body, health, and medicine. In the case of EEAT, Google wants to show the trusted pages with plenty of experience on a specific first before other pages.

Google MUM

The tech world has been buzzing about Google Multitask Unified Model (MUM) for quite a while now. It is an artificial intelligence algorithm that signals how Google has evolved again to better understand information.

It is a thousand times more powerful than its predecessor, the BERT, model of language understanding. This means it can help web users perform complex tasks without spending so much time searching.

What does this mean exactly.? For example, for marketers following B2B SEO trends, this means that they need to provide helpful content to businesses that need in-depth knowledge about a specific service first. Still, it might not necessarily mean a high click-through rate (CTR).

This is because MUM’s goal is to effectively answer a question. That means it will likely combine multiple contents from single or multiple locations about a topic and present an in-depth answer to a complex query.

Entity SEO

Back then, SEO was mostly based on keywords, title tags, and search intent. Now, Google’s SEO changes yet again and introduced entity SEO.

For Google, an entity is considered “singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable.” As a result, the search engine platform focuses on relational contexts to assess and provide the most relevant content to a query.

For businesses following eCommerce SEO trends, this translates to using keywords for all content, especially for product pages. This also means expanding to other formats and diversifying existing digital assets to create an ecosystem of related content.

Less crawl frequency

Google made a commitment to operate sustainably and made efforts to go carbon-free by 2023. As a result, the tech giant has been seriously considering reducing the frequency of crawling web pages which will help conserve computing resources.

What this means for marketers is that it might take a while for Google to notice new changes to websites. Moreover, it will impact the discovery of new content as well.

So, the best strategic choice is to already optimise the website and the content as it is being written or created to help save time and effort.

Complex and conversational queries

With the introduction of Google’s MUM, more people are able to search complex queries.

While that may be good for web users, it will require existing content strategies to go more in-depth. Simply put, one article should answer multiple relevant questions and answer these cohesively and straightforwardly.

Semantic search

Primary and secondary keywords are still important. However, for 2023 SEO trends it might not be the only thing to focus on when creating content. Google’s SEO changes are now factoring in semantic and natural language processing (NLP) searches.

For long-form content, that means adding related keywords. For example, if the article is about SEO trends for business, then other keywords like “ecommerce SEO trends,” “enterprise SEO trends,” “B2B SEO trends,” and “search engine algorithms” to name a few.

Expansion of SERP features

Google is expanding their SERP features. As of now, Google’s SERPs usually include the following:

People Also Ask (PAA)
“Questions and Answers” (pulled from sites such as Quora)
Images
Videos
Local map pack
Knowledge panel
Sitelinks
Top stories (News)
FAQs
Popular products
Rich snippets
Related searches

With that said, there is no news of what type of SERP feature will be rolling out. But one thing is for certain, Google already has plans to make its search results page to be more helpful for web users.

Changes to CTRs by SERP

Getting to page two or page three is no longer a bad thing. This is all thanks to Google’s endless scrolling feature and SERP features.

In fact, with these two features, the chances of zero click-through rates have significantly decreased. According to a recent SEMrush study, only 25% of desktop searches and 17% of mobile searches only resulted in zero clicks.

Author authority

Relevant to the new “E” in EEAT, Google is also carefully considering the authors of the content being published. As a result, the search engine platform is more likely to rank content that is made by real people for real audiences.

This means businesses should elevate both their experience and authority. Here are a couple of ways to do it:

Add author bios in all published content. Keep in mind, the authors should be real people and the bios should communicate the depth of the authors’ knowledge and expertise.
Create author pages. This is essentially a dedicated page that links all the articles written by a specific author or writer.
Link the authors’ social media accounts. This helps Google understand that these writers are real people.

High-performing websites

Fast-loading and high-performing websites are essential. However, since Google’s page experience update back in 2021, its importance is further highlighted and heavily underlined. This means, aside from focusing on just the quality of the content being published, marketing teams should take stock of the technical aspects of the website.

Core Web Vitals

With that said, businesses can use core website vitals to figure out just that. It is a performance metrics tool that Google uses to assess all websites, reward those the good performing sites, and penalise the website that neglected their site performance.

Here are the metrics that should be considered when taking stock of a business website:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
First Input Delay (FID)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

A.I. content and content writing software

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in SEO is big. So much so that, there are now options for AI content generators and content writing software that are available on the internet.

While auto-generated content is still a big no. Marketers can leverage these tools and speed up the time it takes to create and publish new content. Furthermore, here are a couple more ways that these tools can help:

Generate content briefs
Create content outlines
Give content ideas

Helpful content & unique value

The general direction that can be seen among the SEO trends this year is that there is a move to serve web users better. Naturally, this also includes Google doubling down on ranking all types of content that provide helpful information and unique value.

For marketers, the important one is providing unique value or having a sense of originality. So when creating new content, marketers should always ask: “How can I provide something new and different from what is available on the internet today?”

Video optimisation

Video content is playing a bigger role in SERP. It naturally makes sense with YouTube’s monthly visits and active users estimated to be by the billions. Now YouTube and TikTok are getting crowded. The competition is equally growing stiffer.

So, for marketers to stay ahead, video optimization is a must. That means using relevant keywords in titles and descriptions, hashtags, and even providing subtitle options in multiple languages.

Tips for creating a successful strategy with the latest SEO trends

With that said, you can only improve your eCommerce website through SEO trends if you create a winning content strategy.

So to do just that, here are a couple of actionable e-commerce SEO practices to use in 2023 that you can follow before you get started on your strategy:

Gather your own ranking data
Qualify your content & ranking data
Quantify your content quality
Supplement finding with human insights or ask your audience
Optimise your site and improve user experience (UX)
Justify your campaign with SEO ROI
Keep up to date with google’s algorithm updates

Lastly, use SEO tools to get accurate data and save time and effort. Luckily, we already have a list of tools that you can try yourself:

SEO tools for maintenance

AMP Validator
Ayima Page Insights
Check My Links
Link Redirect Trace
ObservePoint TagDebugger
OpenLink Structure Data Sniffer
Page Load Time
Tag Assistant By Google
User-Agent Switcher For Chrome
Web Developer

Tools for providing & analysing SEO data

Ahrefs Toolbar
Keywords Everywhere
MozBar
Nap Hunter
NoFollow
Portent’s SEO Page Review
SEO Analysis & Website Review By Woorank
SEO
SEOstack Keyword Tool
SerpWorx

SEO Competitor analysis tools

Seo Minion
Buzzsumo
Dataminer Scraper
Fatrank
gInfinity
LinkClump
SEO Search Simulator By Nightwatch
SimilarWeb
Wappalyzer
Ubersuggest

Final Thoughts

The SEO trends we see this year just go to show there is always room for improvement. These trends have underlined the importance of providing web users with the best service and information.

So instead of just producing content for the sake of it, content strategies should be more audience-centric. That means sharing information that effectively answers the queries of real people and solving real problems.

If you want to learn more trends that can help your business, our SEO specialists can help you! Consult with us today!

Eileen Malano - Author

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