Google releases more than 3000 algorithms every year. Trends that were popular in the previous year can gradually sink someday.
You already know the importance of positioning your page on the top of SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages). Well-ranked pages provide enormous organic reach to your website, increasing the possibility of attracting and converting leads.
To achieve this goal, it is essential to apply SEO techniques, which are designed to adapt their content to the algorithm’s ranking criteria.
These criteria, however, are not permanent. In an effort to make the user experience ever simpler and more efficient, Google frequently updates its parameters.
Besides the algorithm, it is also necessary to consider the audience’s behavior and preferences. Ultimately, the most important factor for maintaining good positioning is the quality of the experience you offer to your website visitors.
Below listed are some SEO changes that have taken place for the year 2021.
- Post relevant and valuable content
This year it is necessary to post relevant and valuable content on your website as per your buyer. Because this trend is one of the important trends which will not change ever.
As SEO mostly depends on the User Experience (UX), therefore to make visitors feel satisfied once they enter your website you need to post some relevant and eye-catching content for your audience.
If this does not happen, the user will press the “back” button and choose one of the many options present in the SERP.
This means that your brand will lose the chance to acquire a new client, who may even develop a negative feeling about the company.
The increase in bounce rate and the decrease in the number of satisfied users affect your brand’s general reputation and digital authority.
Therefore, to achieve and maintain good SEO results, it is imperative to create relevant and valuable content. Google doesn’t like poorly written text and will put you down very quickly if you can’t meet users’ needs or fail to create a pleasing user experience on your website. Remember the following line and keep it in mind while working on your next copy: high quality is a must-have, betraying it means you will be betraying your rankings.
- Aim for featured snippets
Nowadays when you search for something on google, you get your query answered in a box, either in an image, paragraph, or lists. These are known as featured snippets.
In almost every case, the answer box is pulled from the top 10 searches on Google. And 40% of Google home result comes from featured snippets.
This box is called a featured snippet. If your content is displayed in featured snippets, then you need to take time and appreciate yourself because your content contains the right keywords, with accurate structure.
Therefore in the year 2021, you have to take some time to make your content right and post it on your website so it can be visible in featured snippets.
So how to make your content visible on Featured snippets, here are a few things to follow:
- Focus on long-tail keywords.
- Make sure you use exact keywords in your headings and title tags.
- There should be words used such as “What”, “Where”, Whom”, “How”, “Which”, “When”.
- Answer the queries in a short and crisp way which will attract the users easily and the users will get their answers in an easy way.
- Videos will increase your search
Videos are one of the powerful forms of communication that will keep users engaged for a long time. 83% to 84% of businesses believe in video marketing for astounding results. Adding video content to your site is a great way to increase time spent On-page, which helps boost SEO. If you’re hosting the video on your website, make sure the rest of the page is relevant to the video as well.
You do not want two disjointed narratives on the same webpage.
Your user experience will take a hit and might negatively impact your search engine rankings. Google usually indexes only one video per webpage. So, if you have multiple videos on a single page, you might want to put the video you want to be indexed first.
And just for channel optimization never stuff keywords in your video description but provide sensibly content.
- Voice search
It’s been a little while since voice search was on the radar in terms of SEO, due in part to the state of technology. Since then, Google has been architecting its search results pages to accommodate shorter answers, mainly in the form of Featured Snippets and Answer Boxes. It’s done so with the help of AI and the BERT algorithm, which was introduced in late 2019.
Since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, voice search in the home has skyrocketed as people spend more time there. Increasingly, users are depending on their smart home devices to provide quick answers to in-the-moment questions, and Google is working to be there with the information.
How to prepare yourself for 2021?
Evaluate existing content for places where you can provide short answers to questions your audience is asking. Do keyword research to figure this out. In addition, consider voice search as you develop new content, which may present new opportunities to answer questions like how-to, when, where, why, what, etc. Engage with digital tools or marketing experts to see where your content is showing up for short answers like Featured Snippets.
