If your New Year resolutions include growing your company, don’t miss our top 5 SEO golden rules as you head into 2022.
Mobile-First indexing
As of March 2021, Google went fully mobile-first. Your website’s ranking will now depend solely on its mobile version’s performance. This was perhaps the greatest algorithm update to come out of 2021 and will need to be attended to as you head into 2022.
Make sure your desktop and mobile pages share the same content, but differ in form according to user experience. Think about viewing your content from the perspective of a mobile audience: is your text big enough to hold audiences captive on a smaller screen? Is your design responsive and able to adapt to smaller screens?
Content
Ensuring the correct audience arrives and stays captive to your site rests heavily on your content. Are you engaging in thought leadership in your field? If not, 2022 is your chance! Remember, as of February 2021, when the passage ranking update was released, Google brought an even more sophisticated approach to examining long-form content on a webpage. And long-form content is indeed preferred, as showcased by the April product review update, prioritising longer reviews over thinner ones. This is the time to invest in quality content. Your website should have an active blog section, with relevant and original content.
Keywords
As always, keywords are the linchpin between the user query and your content: a good keyword strategy is absolutely essential going into 2022! Not only will they drive traffic to your site, keywords will drive relevant traffic to your site. That is, your ideal target market can be reached through keyword research. A solid keyword strategy can thus lead directly to conversion. User queries are constantly evolving according to market need, so make sure to go into 2022 with a fresh keyword strategy for your business.
User Experience
Google’s page experience update in August re-emphasised the search engine’s approach to a streamlined user experience geared to an audience with lots of options and a short attention span. Ad experience in particular took centre stage, as Google now penalises sites that use distracting and interrupting advertising techniques. Make sure your basic web core vitals are constantly being upgraded, that is: your site’s largest contentful paint, first input delay and cumulative layout shift. Respectively, these terms refer to: how your site loads on the screen, how the site responds to user interaction and the visual stability of any given page.
Links
One of the original contributing factors to Google’s success as a search engine, links remain an integral ranking factor. Link building, be it internal or external, has only become more difficult over the years. Organic link building has always been prioritised: thought leadership generally indicates a higher quality of content. However, as of the past few years, link spamming, that is the practice of excessively posting links to one’s own site on forums or other sites, as well as paid link acquisition have become harshly penalised by Google. In 2022 it’s time to work on those business networks!
Hope the above help you in your digital marketing journey, we are always happy to advise you with regards to SEO, please contact us or email info@digitalportfolios.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
5 SEO Tips to Keep in Mind Going Into 2022
If your New Year resolutions include growing your company, don’t miss our top 5 SEO golden rules as you head into 2022.
Mobile-First indexing
As of March 2021, Google went fully mobile-first. Your website’s ranking will now depend solely on its mobile version’s performance. This was perhaps the greatest algorithm update to come out of 2021 and will need to be attended to as you head into 2022.
Make sure your desktop and mobile pages share the same content, but differ in form according to user experience. Think about viewing your content from the perspective of a mobile audience: is your text big enough to hold audiences captive on a smaller screen? Is your design responsive and able to adapt to smaller screens?
Content
Ensuring the correct audience arrives and stays captive to your site rests heavily on your content. Are you engaging in thought leadership in your field? If not, 2022 is your chance! Remember, as of February 2021, when the passage ranking update was released, Google brought an even more sophisticated approach to examining long-form content on a webpage. And long-form content is indeed preferred, as showcased by the April product review update, prioritising longer reviews over thinner ones. This is the time to invest in quality content. Your website should have an active blog section, with relevant and original content.
Keywords
As always, keywords are the linchpin between the user query and your content: a good keyword strategy is absolutely essential going into 2022! Not only will they drive traffic to your site, keywords will drive relevant traffic to your site. That is, your ideal target market can be reached through keyword research. A solid keyword strategy can thus lead directly to conversion. User queries are constantly evolving according to market need, so make sure to go into 2022 with a fresh keyword strategy for your business.
User Experience
Google’s page experience update in August re-emphasised the search engine’s approach to a streamlined user experience geared to an audience with lots of options and a short attention span. Ad experience in particular took centre stage, as Google now penalises sites that use distracting and interrupting advertising techniques. Make sure your basic web core vitals are constantly being upgraded, that is: your site’s largest contentful paint, first input delay and cumulative layout shift. Respectively, these terms refer to: how your site loads on the screen, how the site responds to user interaction and the visual stability of any given page.
Links
One of the original contributing factors to Google’s success as a search engine, links remain an integral ranking factor. Link building, be it internal or external, has only become more difficult over the years. Organic link building has always been prioritised: thought leadership generally indicates a higher quality of content. However, as of the past few years, link spamming, that is the practice of excessively posting links to one’s own site on forums or other sites, as well as paid link acquisition have become harshly penalised by Google. In 2022 it’s time to work on those business networks!
Hope the above help you in your digital marketing journey, we are always happy to advise you with regards to SEO, please contact us or email info@digitalportfolios.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
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