If you are on the lookout for the latest trends in SEO to improve your SEO strategy in order to drive free traffic to your company’s website, then you are in luck!
(To learn the basics about driving paid traffic to your company’s website, read this post on Pay-per-click ads)
This article discusses five trends that will reshape SERP rankings in 2023.
Search engine optimization is the most dynamic area in the digital marketing landscape and with different elements having their own effect on how webpages and websites rank on SERPs it’s no wonder that new SEO trends pop up every now and then.
Google is the most popular search platform and it updates its algorithm several times a year (Search Engine Journal published an article about the history of Google’s algorithm updates) to serve relevant and helpful information to its users and improve their experience on the platform.
That said, read on to learn the 5 SEO trends and how they will shape the search engine landscape in 2023.
Real-Life Experience on a Topic: The New “E” in E.E.A.T
Google’s algorithm had previously used the concept of E.A.T to check how its search ranking system provides helpful and relevant information to users.
E.A.T. stands for expertise, authority, and trust. However, in December 2022 it added another “E” into the mix which stands for “Experience”.
With this new update, Google wants to see that information served to users on SERPS (search engine results pages) not only shows the author’s expertise in the topic as it relates to the theme of the website but also demonstrates that the author has a degree of real-life experience in said topic.
For example, an email marketing expert can write authoritatively about email marketing best practices on a digital marketing website having had real-life experience in the topic but can’t write a quality article about the early signs of heart disease on a health-based website because they don’t have experience in the field.
So if websites want their articles to occupy top positions on SERPs, they would have to take into account, not only who their authors are but also their experience in the topic discussed.
This leads to the next trend
Diversity in Channels & Content
The average consumer’s search journey has become rather quicker and almost instantaneous. The time gap between them having a question and getting the answer to that question has reduced drastically.
Now with the availability of various digital channels, each one serving content that engages its users, consumers’ attention is divided across channels making it imperative for SEO professionals to start considering building new channels that have a ‘search’ element to them in order to meet and engage consumers where they are at.
Google recently admitted that about 40% of Gen Z prefers TikTok and Instagram to Google searches. This reveals a shift in the way searchers prefer to consume information now. The popularity of social platforms such as TikTok indicates that people want content in short, digestible video format.
Google also launched its own short video format on Youtube so it’s expected that as Google learns from how users engage with these videos, content leveraging Youtube’s short video format will appear more on search results.
In addition, the Google discover feature, which provides information to users in different content formats, indicates that Google is taking a predictive and active approach to serving users with relevant and helpful information based on what its automated systems believe to be a good match with users’ interests.
SEO professionals and businesses can ensure they reach the majority of their audience by repurposing large-form content (or high-performing articles); Take the key points and turn them into infographics, video snippets for social channels and Youtube, and audio snippets for podcasts. They can also leverage Google Analytics to monitor user behavior, see how they consume content, and then optimize for the higher-performing ones.
User-focused Content, not Traffic-focused
Google’s algorithm update which saw the inclusion of “Experience” as a concept with which its search ranking system would be evaluated further indicates the search engine’s mission to provide helpful information to its users and with the increase in SEO content creation, basing articles on search volume alone will prove to be a failing strategy.
That said, businesses that focus on search volume in their content marketing and SEO strategy without considering what users actually want will unlikely see ranking success in SERPs in 2023.
Need help coming up with content ideas? These content idea-generation tools can help you come up with content topics that will prove relevant and helpful to your target audience.
AI-generated content & content-writing software
AI-generated content and software became popular amongst content creators across multiple digital channels including SEO and that trend would likely see an increase in momentum in 2023 despite Google’s 2022 updates such as its helpful content update targeted at combating auto-generated content to ensure that people see original, helpful content written by people with expertise and real-life experience.
That being said, the number of marketing tools that integrate SEO and AI is steadily increasing which is no wonder because these integrations are incredibly time-saving. Most content marketers have utilized a version of these content-generating tools in the past year.
But with Google’s recent updates, can these AI content-generating software be safely depended on to generate content?
Of course! However, it falls to the content marketers and creators to optimize auto-generated drafts so that it passes Google’s algorithmic check for original, quality, and user-focused content.
And Finally…
Continuous scroll & CTR Change in SERPs
The relationship between CTR and ranking position has remained mostly constant – the top 3 results on SERPs get the most clicks. All that would change as Google has introduced continuous scrolling feature on both desktop and mobile which would see users scroll through multiple pages of search results at a time to find content they want.
In 2023, the click-through rate in SERPs would likely be impacted as searchers would easily be able to navigate across multiple pages of search results so basing articles on search volume will fade as ranking answers and product information will be about quality and helpful content that trigger featured snippets and rich SERP results.
This continuous scroll feature will also be a win for low-zero click search queries that provide quality content with structured data that qualifies for rich result
For example, Google’s speakable structured data feature (which is still in BETA) identifies sections within an article or webpage that are best suited for audio playback using text-to-speech, making it possible for webpages with the speakable structured data feature to use Google Assistant to distribute content through Google assistant-enabled devices in order to reach a wider range of users.
In Conclusion
Ranking factors in SERPs are ever-changing as search engines such as Google look for new ways to improve user experience on their platforms. For this reason, content marketers and SEO professionals should keep their eyes peeled for new trends when building an SEO strategy for their organization’s website in 2023 as they are essential factors that would potentially affect ranking success in search results.
Some of these trends include:
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Real-life experience on a topic: The new ‘E’ in E.E.A.T
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Diversity in channels & content type
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User-focused content, not traffic-focused
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AI-generated content & content-writing software
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Continuous scroll & CTR change in SERPs
