You might be the owner of a flourishing online business, the website owner of different niche sites, who wish to monetize and establish the presence of your brand online. You are indeed at the right place to get an analyzed guide for top Google SEO Trends 2021 and the most practical SEO tips to rank on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Are you struggling to rank your ‘perfect content’ on the first page of Google? Perhaps the Google ranking algorithm doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea!
Google search engine optimization is the core answer for all such queries. It is highly variable in times and has evolved from that of 2020.
But why do I need to rank higher, some might wonder? The answer is simple and essential. When you optimize and rank higher, your website’s traffic increases and provides potential leads and customers, increasing your sales. Isn’t that your ultimate goal? Now, let’s get started to know how to optimize your Google rankings.
Start with the basics
Before we jump to the actual SEO tricks, you must make your website provide all the information clearly and concisely. You might rank higher initially through these SEO tricks, but poor website information may pull you down later.
Search Intent Tops The Chart
Search Intent is the primary goal of a user, that is, searching for a query in the search engine. Whereas, Search intent optimization simply means giving the best answer to the question raised by a user.
Google cares about Search Intent, and that makes it the primary SEO trick. If you are inclined to understand your audience and make your content more oriented towards customers’ needs, you will win hearts for sure.
There are four types of search queries (intent) which you should know:
- Informational intent – where the users are looking for information!
- Transactional Intent – where the users intend to buy something.
- Navigational Intent – where the users are navigating to the website and are unsure of the URL.
- Commercial Intent – this is where they are comparing products before actually buying them.
SEO’s importance is to guide the right audience to your site for the mentioned query types.
Three simple ways to optimize for search intent that improve your google ranking
- Presume
Think like your audience. Make the format of questions relatable to the service or product you offer, and provide the answers accordingly.
- Present answers to active and passive intent
Users are not going to ask direct queries. Your content needs to be optimized for those presented as well as hidden queries.
For example, a user searches for “Best hotels to stay in Las Vegas.” This is his direct intent that tells the search engine to show the list of hotels. But it also implicitly asks for information like pricing, reviews, facilities, etc.
Providing sufficient and valuable information to your target customer is the first step to build authority in your industry.
- Optimizing the content
- Do keyword research. Include Short tail and Long tail keywords accordingly. (use keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.)
- Split your content in digestible bites.
- Include relevant keywords in URL, metadata, headlines, Alt text images (pro tip- keep it simple and full of targeted keywords).
- Use images, videos, infographics to make content more appealing.
- Create a long, explanatory post for the user.
- Leverage the external and internal linking.
- Use a solid call to action in between or at the end of the post.
- Make use of FAQs to facilitate the customers’ search.
- Uncover your company’s USP (unique selling proposition) to understand the target audience your site would be attracting.
The final step is to check if your website is perfectly aligned with specific search intent or not by going through the above-mentioned SEO tips.
Google’s On-Page SEO
On-page SEO means optimizing every page of your website to increase your ranking. For on-page SEO, you need to optimize your content and the HTML source code of your page.
To optimize the HTML source code, you should:
- Make a proper CSS placement
- Have an adequate javascript placement
- Compress your files
- Optimize your images
- Improve the loading speed
While it may sound intimidating, your web developer can do it, and all you have to do is supervise.
The Mobile-First Index (Mobile SEO)
The word itself explains that your website’s mobile version is the first thing Google will include in their index, the baseline to determine google ranking.
From 2019, google started considering the mobile version of your website as the “main” version.
Basic tips for Mobile SEO:
- Give the most valuable content
- Have the same structured data markup on both mobile and desktop.
- The meta descriptions and the titles should be equivalent (not necessarily identical) on both versions.
- Verify your mobile version on the Google search console
Voice search
A recent study by Comscore estimates that half of all searches are going to be performed by voice in 2021.
This makes it your top priority to optimize for voice search.
How to optimize for voice search?
- Optimize your content with long, conversational keywords. Voice searches are more natural-sounding and longer than keyboard searches ( example: “what are the simplest SEO tools for small scale business?” vs. “best SEO tools”).
- Schema markup and rich snippets (of 30 words or so) can help keep queries and answers during a context that’s better understood by search engines.
- Consider adding FAQs to your content end.
- Since voice search is used to conduct local searches, optimizing your Google my business profile will help.
Video SEO- most trending of all ‘Google SEO trends 2021’
You may like or dislike the fact that videos and images are ruling the internet in 2021, but you can’t deny it.
YouTube reports that they have a billion active users. This number is increasing for various involvement reasons of the user.
Simple SEO tips for video content are-
- Choose the right platform for video hosting
- If you have a video topic in mind, search for similar on YouTube. The suggested keyword list will pop up based on what people are currently searching for. Use them in the video title, tags, descriptions, etc.
- Insert a video transcript.
- Make thumbnails attractive.
- Ensure your rest of the content on the web page is related to the video and optimized for on-page SEO.
- Google indexes only one video per page. So, if you are using multiple videos on a page, ensure the targeted video is first.
Including videos on your business page increases user retention time on your site and increases social shares’ chances.
Core Web Vitals
Google combines its core web vitals with other user-oriented signals like intrusive interstitials, HTTPS security, Safe browsing, and mobile-friendly websites.
SEO tips for improving core web vitals of a site:
- Preload key resources to speed up visual load times- quick loading of the main on-page elements.
- Optimize main thread activity by minimizing long tasks- reduce waiting time between user interaction and browser response.
- Audit your site for any security issue.
- Forms and embedded resources must serve over HTTP.
- Make sure interstitials never obstruct the crucial content.
Conclusion
Let us dive back into the summary of “Google SEO Trends 2021”.
Google Search Engine Optimization, or the process of optimizing your site to make it easy to find via search engines.
The greatest advantage of having SEO on your business site is getting traffic; the meaningful traffic converts into the lead and later into a potential customer.
~ Keywords play an important role in driving the right traffic to your site or page. Proper short-tail and long-tail keyword usage will redirect the audience to your page and increase your SERPs’ credibility.
Search intent + Focus on users is the combination to rock the SEO chart. Website builders and keyword researchers need to have a better understanding of their local and global audiences.
~ Google’s On-page SEO helps Google analyze your website, and it allows Google to make sure that the content on every page is relevant to the user instead of just the landing page.
~ Consider mobile-friendliness as an obligation. The mobile-first index feature changed the way Google looks into your website. Mobile SEO aims to smooth the mobile web user experience in terms of site structure, design, speed, etc.
~ Voice search has decreased long-phrase typing issues on mobile. This means your content must be explained in a conversational tone that the user is going to convey. Adding specific FAQs and snippets to your page is like “cherry over the cake.”
~ People are sending their maximum time watching video content over the web; it can be educational, industrial, entertaining, and so on. But your search engine is keyword-oriented. So give proper keywords inputs in the title, tags, and descriptions to enhance your video SEO.
~ Core web vitals were introduced to measure how the user experiences a page’s speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Core web vitals SEO is a difficult task since it is subject to change.
Takeaway: Some Google SEO tools to help you in mastering optimization to an extent.
- Google Search Console- Top SEO tool
- KWFinder, Ahrefs- SEO keyword tool
- Ubersuggest- long-tail keyword finder (specifically)
- Answer The Public, SEOQuake, SpyFu- Free SEO tool
- Google Trends- SEO checker tool
- Majestic, SEMrush- Marketing SEO tool
- Moz Pro – SEO software
