3 Trends Driving SEO Tactics

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been a buzzword for over a decade. This pillar of digital marketing isn’t going anywhere. Indeed, any SEO agency will tell you it’s more important than ever. With increased competition, and as more companies become tech-savvy, and digital natives start businesses, it’s time everyone took notice of the latest SEO trends and tactics. Are you keeping up-to-date with your search engine optimization?

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What Is Search Engine Optimization?

Before diving into specific SEO tactics, you need to know what SEO is and why it’s crucial to business success. In short, search engine optimization is a set of best practices marketers implement to help a website appear at the top of search engine rankings and drive more traffic. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, there are over 200 ranking factors in the Google algorithm, and all of your competition is fighting for the same prized positions.

Why Is Ranking High Important?

Google’s main goal is to show the most relevant content in search results. Users trust its highly sophisticated algorithm, and feel that they’ll find exactly what they need in the first few results. If people can’t see you on the first page of results, it’s unlikely they’ll know you exist. According to an SEO report by SmartInsights, the likelihood of a Google search result being clicked falls with every lower ranking position. Position 1 has a click-through rate of 39.6% Position 2 has a click-through rate of 18.4% Position 3 has a click-through rate of 10.1% At the bottom of the first page of results, the 10th result has a mere 2% click-through rate. Then, when you hit page two, this drops to less than 1%. Often, you’ll be told to deploy the best SEO tactics to push your website to the first page of SERPs (search engine results pages), and the numbers above clearly illustrate why.

3 Latest SEO Trends That Will Help You Climb The Rankings

The Google algorithm’s 200 ranking factors can be overwhelming for those relatively new to SEO.  However, the good news is that not all carry the same importance. Recently, the Google algorithm had a drastic change. Historically, it was focused on the information presented to users without a care for how a website functioned. Now, there’s a greater focus on user experience (UX) as well as the quality of content you deliver. So, let’s get into the latest SEO trends that drive tactics.

1. E-A-T

This tip comes from Google. This acronym stands for: Expertise Authority Trustworthiness How are these words relevant to SEO? These are what the Google algorithm measures your content against. Google makes its assessment using certain data metrics. These include how long people engage with your content, how quickly people bounce from the page, how often it’s shared on social media, and the quality of backlinks. If people don’t engage with content for a lengthy period of time or consider it shareable, Google won’t deem it high-quality ,and it will be difficult for it to climb the rankings. Many other factors are assessed to judge how well content matches with E-A-T, but the above is most important. Make your content engaging, interesting, and shareable.

2. User Intent

One of the latest SEO tactics sites should employ to capture as many users as possible is user intent. Recently, there’s been an epiphany amongst marketers and Google that users aren’t all searching for the same desired outcome. In fact, search intent can be closely linked to and thought of as a sales funnel. There are four types of user intent:

a. Information Intent

This is a user looking for information, such as answers to questions, recipes, and how-to guides. Usually, they could be referred to as cold leads because they know nothing about your business. And, at the moment, they may have no interest either.

b. Navigational Intent

Essentially, people with navigational intent could be considered direct traffic. They know exactly what they’re looking for and are going straight there. More often than not, these will be via brand search terms.

c. Commercial Intent

This group knows they want to make a purchase but needs help deciding. They’re looking for reviews, comparisons, and suggestions to help them make a purchasing decision.

d. Transactional Intent

People with transactional intent are going to make a purchase. They’ve decided on the product or service they want and are searching with the sole aim of making that purchase.

To capture as much traffic as possible, you should create content for each of these user types.

3. Artificial Intelligence

The Google algorithm is a form of artificial intelligence (AI). While some drastic changes are made by human coding, the algorithm is constantly learning and implementing changes to better serve users. Recently, Google introduced its MUM update (multitask unit model). This has switched the focus of the algorithm to look at user feelings and intent to produce the most relevant results. Do you see why thinking about creating content for all user intent types is important now? Lately, all Google updates have aimed to improve user experience while continuing to provide the most relevant search results. Alongside user intent, Google knows people searching on mobile need an optimized mobile experience and a website that functions perfectly on all screens. Additionally, users are impatient. They expect websites to load quickly. If it doesn’t, a user will bounce – and if you link that back to E-A-T, it suggests your content isn’t high quality.

Summing Up

You should see from this article that all of the best SEO tactics interlink, working together to provide a website that users and Google bots love. Now’s the time to broaden your perspective with content production, focusing on all types of user intent. You should remain up-to-date with the AI algorithmic changes – there are always changes that impact rankings. If you do both of these things, you’ll satisfy Google’s need for high-quality E-A-T content. To learn more about the latest SEO trends, get in touch with our experts today.