Strategic insights for SEO 2021

The world is still trying to adapt “the new normal” after the nightmarish corona crisis, which left many businesses around the globe stranded and changed the way of living for the masses. There is no denying that things at the moment may take a while to get back to the normal state. (or the new normal, as it’s called now)

The Coronavirus pandemic waged war on the global economy by forcing entire countries into lockdown and disrupting multiple supply chains. During that time, many businesses were thrown into a limbo state where the business week came to a grinding halt, forcing them to rely on government aid packages to pay employees and maintain cash flow. Some businesses managed to weather the storm and develop new methods of serving their customers, which helped offset the damage, but many more were incapable of operating at all.

Whatever side your company fell on, there’s no denying the importance of a strong strategy for jump-starting your business as we begin returning to normal operations. One of the most critical (yet overlooked) factors of this strategy is SEO or search engine optimization. Neglecting this can have a dramatic impact on your company’s bottom line, especially as we begin making headway against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Most companies tend to think of SEO as the search rankings on popular engines such as Google, DuckDuckGo or Bing, but that’s a generic take on the formula. The actual premise behind SEO lies in organic traffic that moves as naturally as possible through the search engine formula and is tied directly to your company’s website. These search engines take an analytical snapshot of your website and its content, such as videos, images and text, to determine if the information is relevant to the audience. These methods are becoming more sophisticated by the day, especially as companies like Google continue to fine-tune their search algorithms.

There are the following three types of SEO activities focused by SEOs:

• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Technical SEO

TECHNICAL FOUNDATION OF SEO

The technical foundation of SEO factors are essential to see any positive movement in SEO ranking. Without completing these efforts, you will notice a negative or decrease in the rank of the website. In this, we focus on the following components:

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE AND BING REPORTED ISSUES

All issues like crawl rate, soft 404, AMP issues, 505 issues, structured data issues must be checked and addressed frequently.

CRAWL REPORTS: CONTENT AND BUG FIXES

Issues like canonical issues, similar or duplicate content, internal linking issues, non-compliant URLs are bugs for the website and must frequently be fixed to enhance visibility.

PAGE SPEED IMPROVEMENTS

Page speed is also vital to enhance conversion rates on the website in SEO strategy for 2021. If your organization has a conversion optimization or user experience team, this is a beneficial opportunity to contact additional units by fixing your page speed.

ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES (AMP)

If your company does not have AMPs, then it is time to set or create these for your website, but if you have AMPs, you need to update them frequently to gain higher ranking.

SEO GROWTH PROJECTS

Understand the latest trends, keywords searching, and new business opportunities by your target audience are the key to your business’s success. Deciding long-term strategies that focus on potential growth shows that your SEO strategy for 2021 positively impacts your organization. It involves the following:

KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION

Keyword Optimization is mandatory for the following purposes:

• Pages with high ranking and impressions are on the second page of the search engine.
• Phrases for that, you get higher rankings with high search volume, but the page is not monetizing it well.

NEW KEYWORD SEARCH TRENDS

Grab the opportunity of having top rankings by setting a new strategy around new options that kept you over the competition. Recent keyword search trends enhance the order.

DISCOVERY OPTIMIZATION

Optimize discovery by users on your website to improve the ranking as keyword discovery plays a vital role in search.

PERFORM LOCAL KEYWORD SEARCH

Sample img

The keywords and phrases are the necessary foundation of Search Engine Optimization practices. To rank top in Google for local searches, you must first figure out what people are searching for to find your business in the first place. Check your Google Analytics and to perceive how people are searching your website online. Once your website grades on the first page of Google or different search engines, you can now optimize your website and blog for other related inquiries. Google currently employs a more local-oriented approach that favors business with local directory listings close to the person searching.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT URL STRUCTURE

The right structured URL is a significant part of SEO strategy for 2021. Following is the list of specific rules we can follow to get the most out of our URLs and set up our sites for future SEO success:

• Use your keywords in the URLs
• Build a sound structure for the future
• Avoid unnecessary characters and words
• Minimize dynamic URL strings
• Consolidate the different versions of your website
• Make correct use of canonical tags
• Incorporate topical authority
• Create an XML sitemap

The essential features of the URL are as follows:

• Easy-to-read
• Keyword-rich
• Static
• Consistent
• Comprehensive
• Supported by data
• Submitted to search engines

USE THE HREFLANG ATTRIBUTE IN YOUR CODE

Sample img

The Hreflang Attribute tells Google which language you are using on a specific page so that the search engine can serve the search results to users in that particular language. Hreflang Attribute may not help you enhance website traffic, but the motive to use them is to provide the right content to the right users. They allow the search engine to swap the correct version of the page into SERP based on its location and preferred languages. It is a tool to show which of the different pages should show up in the search queries.

RESEARCH CONDUCTS TO RANK IN LOCAL SEARCH ENGINES

Sample img

For the SEO practices’ triumph, you must research different ways and tactics in local search engines. The following is some fundamental ways to enhance the rank of the website:

PRIORITY TO LINK-BUILDING

Sample img

When it comes to OK search engine rankings, you need to attract links from trustworthy and reliable sites and connect to webmasters, bloggers, publishers to get your content some press. It helps people discover your business and enhance your ranking.

WRITE SEO-FRIENDLY AND SKYSCRAPER CONTENT

Sample img

Content is the foundation for improving search engine rankings. You can improve your rankings by writing SEO-friendly and Skyscraper content as it serves as the complete guide to the users.

CREATE RESPONSIVE SITES

Sample img (use hellopixels)

A responsive site permits your website to adapt to any user’s device automatically. Whether searching your website on a laptop, smartphone, or desktop, they can read and navigate your website with zero issues.

MAKE THE BEST USE OF CTR IN SEARCH RESULTS

You can improve your rankings by boosting your CTR or Click-Through rate. It describes the percentage of users that see your website in search results and click on it.

USE SEO-FRIENDLY VIDEOS AND IMAGES

Sample img

You can upload images and videos that match the requirements of the SEO. Use media which should adhere to the standards of the Search Engine Optimization process.

Influencers: Social Media Meets SEO

Sample img

People often feel inundated by intrusive ads and are looking for information they can trust and authentic reviews. This has led to a rise in influencer marketing. People are much more likely to engage with a respected and well-known person than an ad.

But here’s what you need to know,  big celebrities aren’t the only ones with substantial cred as influencers. You don’t even need to be a fulltime influencer to gain a large following. Consider BuzzFeed TV producer Kelsey Impicciche: When she’s not creating content for the media giant, she’s posting popular videos on YouTube and streaming her gameplays on Twitch under her username kelsey dangerous. With over 509,000 YouTube subscribers and 228,000 Instagram followers, Impicciche has a vast platform to leverage.

How this pertains to SEO?

Hiring or partnering with an influencer can help you amplify your content reach and generate even more traffic to your website. They can also help you build valuable backlinks. As you know, backlinks are one of the most important factors that Google uses when evaluating a web page’s ranking.

When developing your influencer marketing strategy, consider what type of content you want them to create and how it can link back to your website. And be sure to partner with influencers that are relevant to your industry and your audience. If they are an authority figure with a strong digital presence, their backlinks can be gold. If you invest in influencer marketing, you’ll not only improve brand awareness and generate leads, but you’ll also boost your search engine rankings.

Secure Websites: Safety and Privacy Are Crucial

Sample img

User safety is another trend that doesn’t seem to have much to do with SEO, but it is imperative to the website user experience. If a user doesn’t feel safe visiting a web page, then they’re very likely to leave quickly. Or if they see a “Not Secure” warning appear, they may decide not to proceed to your page. As a result, high bounce rates could affect the position of that page in the organic search listing.

It’s crucial to enable HTTPS protocol for your site. HTTPS gives website users a secure connection that is both encrypted and authenticated. According to Google, HTTPS “helps prevent intruders from tampering with the communications between your websites and your users’ browsers.”

Google wants to provide its users with a secure browsing experience, so those that implement HTTPS may experience a minor SEO boost.

If you’re trying to collect personal information from your users on your website via a web form, then you have a responsibility to protect their privacy.

It’s imperative to assure your users that their data will be protected for as long as they stay on the page. There are still many vulnerabilities on the web, but every day there are new security measures that can be implemented into your website.

Voice Search Optimization: Next Level SEO

Sample img

Before the existence of innovative smartphones, people searched by plugging words into search engine boxes on their desktop computers. Keywords were born from this behaviour. With the growing use of mobile devices, voice searches are becoming a popular trend among internet users. These searches are not only done on phones, but they can also be performed on home voice assistants such as the Amazon Echo, Samsung Smart TV, Voice Pod, etc.

But how do voice searches change SEO?

Voice searches affect SEO in a big way since it’s all about asking questions via voice instead of entering search queries. Subsequently, the terms have become more conversational and targeted.

However, when using voice searches, the search engine must do a lot more work to get the relevant information that the user is looking for at that moment, making short choppy keywords not so important anymore.

This change is imminent, considering that by the year 2020/2021, it is expected that more than 50% of all internet searches will be initiated through voice. Therefore, your content should adapt to this new trend to stand out in the current search engines.

Artificial Intelligence: Personalizing User Experiences

Sample img

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important technologies today and is being used in a wide variety of industries to create unique, personalized experiences for consumers.

Companies such as Google use artificial intelligence to deliver better search results to its users. So how did AI become the new norm within Google algorithms? Here’s the timeline in short:

Image source: Image source: https://www.slideshare.net/kloeckner/seo-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence-how-ai-influences-search

But how does artificial intelligence work?

Without delving into the cumbersome technical aspects, artificial intelligence has progressively learned the characteristics of what makes published articles valuable or not.

Then, AI automatically classifies these web pages and determines their rankings- with perfect precision. This is already a reality; companies like Google are applying these technologies right now.

Some tools use technologies like AI and machine learning to provide enhanced features and services to users. And to help you get a better understanding of these tools, we present to you the ultimate AI and machine learning marketing tools list.

Don’t Limit Your Strategies and Options.

SEO is essential today for businesses irrespective of the industry. Although this doesn’t refer only to the use of keywords—it also entails optimizing content for users.

After all, Google is a search engine that processes information based on how search users behave, and it’s getting more accurate, which means that each year new trends appear that change the way information is published on the internet. This ensures that all users can get their questions answered in a matter of minutes (or even seconds).

If you’re already familiar with these trends, then that’s great—it’s time to double-down on them so you can generate more targeted traffic from Google. But if you still have questions and need help with SEO services, contact us today.