SEO Trends of 2021: What You Need To Know

Posted by Vivek Parikh

October 22, 2021

SEO 38 min read

The search engine optimization industry often introduces new trends to support better relevancy and context in the search results. It is one of the most effective ways of attracting potential customers to your website. However, you must be aware of the right techniques and ways to use them, as the search engine industry can be unpredictable just like the algorithm updates that Google launches from time to time. 

Many brands focus exclusively on organic search results rather than on paid listings, in order to optimize and expand their website traffic for constructive outcomes. Nevertheless, top-ranking search engine optimization performance requires the utmost attention and accurate insight into many metrics, including backlinks, traffic, and other social shares. It further requires the implementation of befitting search engine strategies to quickly adapt latest SEO trends and updates. 

In this article, we will discuss some effective strategies and tactics that can help you in dominating the search engine results page (SERP) along with detailed insight about SEO trends for 2021 and strategies to imply accordingly. 

How has SEO changed in 2021?

We have reached an era where users have gotten so used to instant access to information that they look for almost everything and anything on the internet for quick solutions and answers. The internet has become an essential communication tool, where online commercial promotions can value more than 400 billion dollars in a year and are also more prominent than the traditional advertising industry. Therefore, any changes in SEO trends can largely impact the functionality of many brands and organizations, which can further result either in huge business losses or benefits.

In 2021 one of the biggest changes in SEO trends and ranking factors is Google’s Page Experience update. The page experience update is primarily based on Core Web Vitals, which helps in measuring the speed and usability of a web page. These core web vitals work on your metrics such as web load speed, the responsiveness of the page, interactivity, and the number of content layout shifts as the page loads. Further, the key purpose of the introduction page experience ranking framework is to allow non-AMP content to appear in the top stories feature for mobile searches. This way, the list ranking would also be disrupted for many websites on mobile devices along with the change in SEO trends and search algorithms. 

Latest SEO Trends Explained

Below we have mentioned some of the best SEO trends practices that can help you prepare your SEO strategies and modify your entire work environment.

1. Launch MUM for multimodal search

Multitask unified model (MUM) is an advanced artificial intelligence that helps you fix complex problems in your website. MUM operates on a T5 text-to-text framework and is 1000 times more powerful than BERT. MUM not only understands the language but also helps in generating it.  It is capable of multitasking that enables it to analyze video, images, and text within 75 languages to give users accurate answers to their complex search queries. This MUM will be able to combine different aspects of the search query and comprehend different sentiments, contexts, entities, and the intent of the users in order to offer answers that are related to the user’s expectations.  

MUM New Google AI AlgorithmMUM has the potential to break down language barriers and improve information by transferring knowledge across the languages and providing users with specific answers to their queries. In other words, more 0 click results on the search pages.  To improve your ranking and SEO trends strategy you can make use of structured data, as Google generally takes all the data from the knowledge graph while it’s being fed by markups within each site. In addition, Google’s algorithm often prioritizes natural and long-form content that touches the pain points of the audience. Therefore, it is always an ideal decision to make content simple and readable to your audience.

2. Enable new specific video features

The search engine giant has recently announced the launch of two new structured data- Clip Markup and Seek Markup to help your video content appear on search lists along with the key moment feature. However, the key moment feature is currently available only for videos uploaded on Youtube. If you utilize other platforms to host your video content, you can use any of the two structured data markups for better search results of your video content in these SEO trends.

Video Clips TrendsClip markup structured data manually informs Google about your video content timestamps to increase the click-through rate of your video content via the search result pages. All you need to do is manually tell Google What timestamp and label to use when displaying the key moments. Ensure this information is embedded on the video object element of the structured data along with required properties. 

On the other hand, Seek markup data is a more straightforward and automatic feature unlike its sibling structured data. It informs Google about the working of a URL structure and automatically displays key moments identified for your video. As a matter of fact, seek markup is still in its beta version and we can expect more feature additions to this distinct markup very soon.

3. Introducing Passage Indexing

Passage indexing is an automated search engine feature used by Google’s algorithm to rank individual sections of words within a web page on search lists based on the user’s search query. This means Google will highlight the section of your content and rank them individually irrespective of the content topic and the rest of the context of your web page. Passage indexing can be a game-changer for long-form content that fails to drive traction.

Passage IndexingPassage indexing uses a natural language processing feature while indexing web pages to comprehend the meaning of each passage within a page. It is more of an internal ranking system that will have a bigger impact on the search results that you see on the search engine results page (SERP). Hence, in 2021 we can expect Google to focus more on improving the ranking of holistic content in search results through passage indexing.

4. Core Web Vitals & Other page experience signals

Core web vitals is a new addition to the SEO trends that helps webmasters to provide a better page experience to the users. Core web vitals is a set of three key page experience metrics that offer Google information about the user experience on individual web pages. Core web vitals are primarily used for measuring user experiences such as loading, interactivity, and visual stability. All these three metrics focus on page speed loading and the interactive ability of a web page. 

Core web vital SEO trends are beneficial for web pages with non-AMP content, however, if you have activated AMP then you may need not spend your time and money to optimize your site for Web vitals.

5. Focusing more on User Experience

Users often tend to have unpredictable and ever-changing search intent behavior. However, once you comprehend what users are searching for and their search intent behavior, then you can offer them the required content and solutions. This way, you can notice remarkable growth in your business in no time. SEO experts can dominate search and SEO trends in 2021 only if they truly understand what users are searching for. 

UX DesignPaying more attention to consumer search intent and queries can help brands in creating competitive online content that the users wish to consume. You can establish author bios for all your content creators on your brand website and detail their expertise along with the link out to authoritative sites for definitive proofs. Ensure to use high-quality content in order to connect with people and influencers, so that they can share your content and boost your brand strength. Lastly, make sure to monitor reviews of your brand across the internet, handle negative reviews smartly and encourage constructive criticism to bring dynamic changes to your web pages and products.

6. More mobile-friendly websites in search results

In our technology-driven world, more and more people are getting used to mobile devices and it has now become a top-most priority in the digital world. Furthermore, Google has also decided to switch to mobile-first indexing for all websites. Mobile-first indexing is the process of indexing the mobile version of the website first in Google’s database instead of the desktop version. However, before implying this SEO trend in your web pages, you must design a mobile-friendly website and focus on ways to improve your customer experience on your mobile website versions. 

mobile friendly websitesIn order to gain more traffic on your mobile-friendly website, you must ensure not to engage your websites with software that are not compatible with mobile handsets, focus more on font size as mobile screens are comparatively smaller than desktops. Try to keep the font size minimum of 12 pixels which covers almost 60% of the mobile website. To have the same content both on desktop and mobile, you can enhance your metadata and work more on layouts and content order. And lastly, to have an increase in the search ranking list, you must make sure that your websites perform well on all types of mobile devices and test your mobile websites with the help of Google’s mobile-friendly test tool for suggestions and faster processing software.

7. Voice search is becoming more prominent

As per Goggles’ analysis, a staggering 27% of the entire global population uses voice search on their mobile handsets. To accommodate the voice search feature, Google uses Featured Snippets and BERT algorithm to provide quick and short relevant answers in the search results. 

Voice Search OptimizationIn order to prepare your webpage for this particular SEO trend, you can begin with evaluating your existing content for areas where you can provide short and relevant answers to the potential questions your audience might ask. Add keywords to your web content. Nevertheless, you can also develop new content to grab new opportunities and attract more users to your webpage. Engage with experts and marketing tools to upgrade your search rankings and show up for short answers like Featured snippets.

8. Featured snippets optimization

Featured snippets usually appear at the top of your search engine results pages, that contain overall topic relevance passages from various web pages. These snippets aim to make searching faster and easy for users. Along with that they also help in driving a lot of traffic on your web pages. Featured snippets are mostly used for voice searches. Google algorithm bots select the passages that are to be appeared on snippet boxes based on your content relevancy and search requirements. 

 

Google feature snippetAs a matter of fact, both passage indexing and featured snippets focus on passages relevancy, however, they both operate on a different system. Passage indexing offers an individual ranking of passages irrespective of the content topic and other content on your web page. Whereas, Featured snippets don’t overlook the entire page relevancy and offer results both based on the search query and other related topics.

Sum up

In today’s digital world every brand needs a robust SEO trends strategy to compete with other brands and attract a larger amount of audience on their web pages. With these above-mentioned SEO trends of 2021, you can streamline your audience experience on your website more effectively and efficiently. 

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