The Top 11 SEO Trends for 2022 Guide

The world of SEO is changing. Again! Search engine optimization is one of the most evolving concepts in the online marketing world, and now that we’re grading to 2021, the previous trends are fading into oblivion.

We have to adapt to the new ones that will grow our businesses. If there’s one thing, you need to keep in mind, about 80% of users only focus on organic results and pay no heed to paid listings.

Even more important than that is that almost 30% of them convert to customers that make a purchase. For this reason alone, staying on top of SEO trends is of absolute importance. So, what are the future SEO trends you need to watch out for?

Now that we’re about to welcome a new year, it’s vital that you get into it with a fresh business perspective. In this post, you’ll learn about the top 7 SEO trends of 2021 and why they could work wonders for your business.

Table of Contents

• 1. Voice Search Will Dominate and Impact Search Queries
• 2. Mobile Friendliness Will Have a Significant Impact on Rankings
• 3. Artificial Intelligence Will Play a Considerable Role
• 4. Google’s EAT Principle Will Impact Ranking
• 5. Long-Form Content Will Rule
• 6. Predictive Search Will Improve
• 7. Video Will Be More Prominent
• 8. Featured Snippets & Passage Ranking Play a Bigger Role
• 9. Local Search Is Key
• 10. Online Shopping Becomes More Important
• 11. Core Web Vitals Are Essential Viewing
• FAQs
  • What Will Be the Trending SEO Technique in 2022?
  • Is SEO Relevant in 2022?

1. Voice Search Will Dominate and Impact Search Queries

With technological innovations like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri, voice search will dominate and impact search engine queries. More and more people are searching for products through voice search on their mobile devices, and 55% of homes are predicted to have a smart speaker by 2022.

This means that as a business, you need to take full advantage and optimize for voice search. Conduct thorough keyword research and identify long phrases that users are likely to use in their daily conversations. Voice search works well with natural-sounding speeches that are much longer than general keywords.

2. Mobile Friendliness Will Have a Significant Impact on Rankings

Google rolled out the mobile-first indexing in 2019, which essentially means that search engines are now primarily looking at the mobile version website as the primary version instead of the desktop version. This was long due because a majority of users access the internet sorely through mobile devices.

This means that if your website is still not mobile-friendly and responsive, you will miss out in the future. Use the Google free mobile-friendly test to check your mobile site’s effectiveness, then check your mobile usability report from the Google Search console. Your website needs to be user-friendly and ensure you have a disallow directive and use content that doesn’t require user interaction.

3. Artificial Intelligence Will Play a Considerable Role

Artificial intelligence has completely changed how people are interacting with online content. You must note Google’s AI algorithm, RankBrain, which was enrolled a few years ago.

It plays a considerable role in search engine ranking. One of the best parts about it is that it has the ability to learn, which means it will keep improving with time, making artificial intelligence one of the top SEO trends to watch out for in 2021.

4. Google’s EAT Principle Will Impact Ranking

Content is still king. It will continue to be well in 2021.

The thing is, though, that Google has a ranking principle when it comes to ranking content, which is the EAT principle. It stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This is the principle Google uses to determine if the content is of high quality and useful and helpful to users.

One of the best ways to create quality content is by creating a buyer persona that will help you understand what your clients consider valuable. It’s also vital for you to conduct research on search intent as it’ll help you with the customer journey. Create content that will fit the format that your customers prefer, and it’ll improve your ranking.

5. Long-Form Content Will Rule

You may not know this, but content that goes way beyond 3000 words gets three times the traffic and five times more shares. Such long-form content also features more backlinks than average-length articles. This essentially means that you need to start using it on your website to rank higher on search engine results pages.

Regardless of the word length, you have to keep in mind that the content must be of high quality to be shareable and keep your customers engaged. Make sure the links you use are relevant and from authoritative sources. Make it easy to share by including obvious share links in visible places.

6. Predictive Search Will Improve

Google Discover is becoming one of the most used aspects of searching online because users don’t even have to type in their queries. It’s also an AI-driven tool that identifies user behaviors and learns from them gradually. With this information, Google Discover identifies content that appeals to users.

Your website can be included as long as Google indexes your pages. All you need to do is create quality content and pay attention to user intent, which will help you rank higher and appear on Google Discovery.

7. Video Will Be More Prominent

Video has taken the world by storm, and it seems to be the way forward. With over one billion YouTube users, if you’re still not creating video content for your business, you’re truly missing out. Video is predicted to surpass every other form of content when it comes to consumption, so you need to get yourself in the game.

Now once you get into it, keep in mind that you have to optimize your video content. Use keywords as well and offer quality video content to your customers.

8. Featured Snippets & Passage Rankings Play a Bigger Role

Traditionally, breaking into the top search engine ranking position was tough. It took weeks, maybe even months, of relentless link building, optimization, and keyword re-strategizing. But with the implementation of featured snippets, portions of your article could appear above your competitors.

The problem with featured snippets is that they’re determined by the page that snippet is located on as a whole. As a result, if the overarching topic of your blog post, for example, isn’t related to the snippet phrase, it likely won’t appear as the featured snippet.

Passage ranking, on the other hand, aims to provide quick answers to searched questions just like featured snippets. But thanks to Google’s ever-improving ability to process meaning from language, these passages aren’t ranked on the page. Rather, it’s based on the value of the passage itself.

For business owners like you, that means you have a better chance of ranking higher if you’re clearly and directly answering questions your audience is asking. Cool, huh?

9. Local Search Is Key

You’ve heard about all the benefits of local search SEO, right?

No? Well, let’s fill you in.

Local search SEO helps small businesses like you by:

• Getting your business in front of more qualified leads/customers
• Reducing your advertising costs
• Boosting your non-local SEO and getting found by non-locals
• Building up your local fan base
• Reaching customers on a variety of platforms
• Giving your business the upper hand over your competition
• Generating more trust with customer reviews

The first step to the ranking is filling out your Google Business Profile. But there’s a lot more to it than that. You also need to optimize by continually adding new media, listing your products, gathering reviews, publishing posts, and more.

The more optimized your profile is, the likelier you’ll be to appear at the top of Google’s “local pack”—a huge benefit since it shows up before other organic results.

And with the rise of “zero-click” searches thanks to featured snippets and local business info presented right on the SERP, it’s more important to rank locally than ever.

10. Online Shopping Becomes More Important

If you offer physical goods, online shopping is more important for you than it ever has been. This shift has been in the works for a while. But the onset of the COVID pandemic led to the warp-speed adoption of this growing SEO trend.

And unsurprisingly, Google has developed a few changes to make shopping online easier and ranking higher on SERPs a bit more interesting. The biggest of these changes is The Shopping Graph.

The Shopping Graph is “a dynamic, AI-enhanced model that understands a constantly-changing set of products, sellers, brands, reviews and most importantly, the product information and inventory data we receive from brands and retailers directly – as well as how those attributes relate to one another.”

Translation?

The Shopping Graph is a new model that’s even better at connecting potential customers with your products and services.

Google is also adding functionality that lets you search photos for buyable products with Lens, browse through your open carts on Chrome, link your Google account to loyalty programs (coming soon), and much more.

It’s a brand new world for online shoppers and sellers.

11. Core Web Vitals Are Essential Viewing

Last but not least is Core Web Vitals—a set of metrics that measures page load speed with a focus on UX.

User experience is playing an increasingly important role in ranking factors. And with a recent update, Google is putting even more of an emphasis on these three factors in particular.

Here’s a quick rundown of each:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – LCP measures loading performance and should be under 2.5 seconds for the best results.
• First Input Delay (FID) – This metric measures the time from when a user first interacts with a page to the time their browser can start processing even handlers. Aim for less than 100ms here.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – CLS measures visual stability and should be above 0.1 for the best results.

This all can get a bit technical, of course. But with the help of an expert SEO company, you can take advantage of this new shift.

FAQs

Below are some of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to SEO trends in 2022.

What Will Be the Trending SEO Technique in 2022?

From AI and mobile optimization to passage ranking and predictive search, everyone will have a different idea of which SEO technique is trending the most in 2022. But more important than implementing that single trending technique is using a wide variety of techniques as a part of your overall strategy.

If you want to see the best results, make sure you’re capitalizing on as many of these techniques with your SEO strategy:

1. Voice search
2. Mobile-friendliness
3. Artificial intelligence
4. Google’s EAT Principle
5. Long-form content
6. Predictive search
7. Video
8. Featured snippets and passage ranking
9. Local search
10. Online shopping
11. Core web vitals

Is SEO Relevant in 2022?

Yes—and more than ever.

People are using search engines about three to four times per day. For Google, that adds up to about 2 trillion global searches every year. And if you want to get found by your customers online, you need to follow SEO best practices.

In the days of old, SEO was a way to trick search engines into ranking you higher thanks to keyword stuffing. But today, SEO is a highly technical, exceedingly strategic, and especially effective marketing skill.

And when implemented correctly, following SEO best practices can have a massive impact on revenue. In fact, businesses spend on average about $5,000 per month on SEO.

The Most Promising SEO Trends to Watch Out For

As we say goodbye to SEO trends 2020, it’s essential for you to be ready for your business in the coming year. With these SEO trends, you’ll be in a better position to improve your ranking, get more traffic, and in turn, get more customers to grow your business.

Given that SEO services require expertise, you may require an SEO expert to implement all these strategies for your website. At StudioC5, we have some of the top digital marketing experts, and we’ll be more than glad to take you through this journey.

Request a free consultation today, and let’s talk about your strategy!

Have you checked your Local SEO Health? Get a free local SEO audit right now!