Ranking on Google has become one of the best ways to grow a business. You write content once, optimize your SEO, and get free search engine traffic for as long as you maintain your website's authority.
You can get a lot of traffic going this route too. Reports show that 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine.
But you'll have to do things right if you want to take advantage of Google search traffic.
Understanding the latest SEO trends is critical to keeping your site ranking on Google. Below are some of the biggest 2023 SEO trends you need to know.
Focus on Topical Authority
One of the most significant changes in Google is the focus on authority. Google doesn't want to rank websites with a random page on a website that doesn't relate at all to the rest of the site.
How is someone supposed to be an authority when they barely speak on a subject?
You can increase your authority by building topical authority on your website. Your goal is to have topic clusters that cover every aspect of a subject as possible.
Once you have those posts on your website, build internal links to each of them from similar topics. This will help Google determine what topics your website covers and improve your authority on that subject.
Increase in Video
There's no denying that video has increased more than any form of search. As people continue getting faster internet connections, they use those connections to view videos on the road.
One place this impacts the most is video search engines like YouTube. You can use SEO tactics on the YouTube search engine to rank higher and get more views.
However, YouTube isn't the only place this matters. There are more YouTube videos than ever showing up on Google search results. Doing this right will get your videos on those results and more traffic to your videos.
More Featured Snippets
Google is doing everything possible to make the user's search experience as pleasant as possible. Because of that, it tries to give people the information they searched for directly on the results page.
It does this with featured snippets. Google displays paragraphs, lists, videos, reviews, and other items at the top of the search results.
You can use this to your advantage and modify your website to get featured snippets. Look to see if there are featured snippets for any of your target keywords. See what results Google uses for snippets and change your pages to match what Google wants.
This can help you jump ahead in the search results if you don't have the top spot.
Focus on Performance
As people shift more to mobile devices, there has never been a time when performance was more important. It's easy to take the easy route on web design and not optimize for mobile users.
As a result, those users get a poor user experience and have to wait longer to download webpages. That's why Google created the Core Web Vitals.
This update emphasized experience and speed. If you don't consider those things, it can hurt your web rankings. Understand what makes a great user experience and add it to your website.
Additional SERP Features
Featured snippets aren't the only addition you can use on the search results. Google now reads SEO schema on websites when crawling pages. These schema features can give Google more information to show.
You can use this to gain more real estate on the search results. You can add more links, product information, prices, and much more.
One particularly popular one is the FAQ section. You can use a FAQ schema to put questions and answers on the search results, which improves the search page and gives your result more validity in the results.
Increase in AI Software
Whether you like it or not, AI is here to stay. People have long been discussing the role of AI in the future and when things will start changing. But today, that role is starting to become more clear.
Many people are using AI to help the content creation process. Some use AI to gather ideas and outline their articles. Pure AI is still bad for writing entire articles, so most people just use it to gather data and write articles faster.
However, you can now use AI for other parts of the process. You can generate keyword ideas, categorize topics, and much more.
Focus on Local
Local SEO has become even more popular over the past several years. Now that many people are on mobile all the time, they use their phones to track down local stores to head to.
As a result, local companies need to invest in local SEO to show up on Google Maps and local keywords. You'll need to sign up on Google My Business and create local SEO content.
You can work with a service like https://nerdnarrow.com/ to get the local SEO help you need.
Increased Search Intent Focus
The importance of search intent rose a few years ago. Google wants people to get what they searched for on web pages, so they try to learn what you're website is about and if your pages match that intent.
As a result, Google changed its search algorithm to prioritize this.
Expect more improvements to search intent ranking in the future. If you don't match the search intent for your target keywords, start optimizing your existing content to serve your visitors better.
Be Sure You Understand These SEO Trends 2023
Even though the basics of SEO have remained mostly the same over the years, you still need to understand the small changes that do occur. It started with keyword stuffing but has settled on quality content above all else.
But that doesn't mean there aren't small changes in the SEO world that you need to pay attention to. Remember the SEO trends above to prepare yourself for your work next year.
Head back to the blog if you want to read an additional SEO guide that will help you hone your SEO abilities.
