When it comes to SEO, everyone wants to stay one step ahead of their competition.
But how can you do that with the constant search engine updates and target audience that changes and reacts dynamically?
So here are 8 SEO trends that you need to look out for in 2021!
- Personalized SERPs
- Voice Search
- Knowledge Graph
- Image & Video Search
- Mobile Optimization
- Long Tail Keywords
- Improved User Experience
- Featured Snippets
1. Personalized SERPs
Most search engines personalize their search results in different ways.
For personalized search results, factors such as users’ location, search preferences, and even history are considered apart from the other ranking factors.
Search engines are striving hard to constantly personalize their search results and improve the user experience.
2. Voice Search
Voice search makes use of normal sentences that we use on a day-to-day basis.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that in the year 2016, 20% of search queries came from voice searches.
Just like mobile use overtook laptops, voice search will overtake text search.
Amazon’s Alexa was a big hit in 2017. So it’s safe to say, this year voice search will be more popular.
Learning the use of digital voice assistants and natural voice search will help marketers and developers give efficient results.
The use of voice search may give more diversified search results.
A study by Andrew Ng, Chief Scientist at Baidu says that by 2022, 60% of all searches would be via image or voice.
3. Knowledge Graph
Snippets display concise answers to search queries. Knowledge graphs provide enhanced results taken from different sources.
The frequency of featured snippets and that of knowledge graphs has increased.
While working on featured snippets, SEO focuses more on high volume keywords.
Search engines will experiment more with knowledge graph and they may embed content from multiple sources.
4. Image and Video Search
Social media interactions include more images and videos.
Social media platform has become more visual-friendly, thanks to a faster internet connection and users’ desires for visual interaction.
Like voice search, image and video search will see a drastic rise.
Google has already acquired a few startups, which can recognize visual elements in videos and images accurately.
5. Mobile Optimization
In 2021, 8 out of 10 internet users used mobiles to access the web. This number is expected to increase more this year.
More than half of the total web traffic comes from mobiles or tablets. With the increase in a number of mobile users, mobile search has almost surpassed desktop search.
A small display of mobile, unlike that of desktop, urges the users to find a quick and specific answer rather than scrolling through hundreds of search results.
If your company is B2B, service-based, or e-commerce, your site should be mobile-friendly.
For mobiles, optimizing the search results is important.
A mobile app can boost the sales of e-commerce sites. So websites should have a responsive design and be more mobile friendly.
6. Long Tail Keywords
To ensure the bounce rate decreases, the sites need to provide deeper information across a wide range of keyword set.
The search shouldn’t be limited to short keywords but long-tail conversational terms.
Use of long tail keywords for search is on a rise. It will help web pages rank higher and get targeted traffic.
7. Improved User Experience
User experience was important back in 2020 and will be important this year too.
The content should be of good quality, be relevant and keep the users engaged.
The goal of any website should not only be to rank higher, but also to satisfy the customers and their end users.
As the number of users accessing data through mobiles is increasing, the need to provide excellent user experience across all devices is also increasing.
8. Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are director rich answers that include a link to the source of the answer.
A survey conducted on 1,000 users showed that around 60% users want a direct answer to their query without having to visit any website or app.
As featured snippets are gaining popularity the competition among companies to appear on ‘position 0’ in SERP is also increasing.
Stone Temple Consulting’s new study on Google search results of 1.4 million queries showed that about 30% of search queries displayed featured snippets.
So featured snippets is certainly another trend that will dominate in 2021.
What do you think will influence SEO in 2021? Leave your comments below.
