7 SEO Trends to Use in 2022

With the global pandemic limiting regular movement, many businesses have been increasing their digital marketing efforts. Creating an effective online presence connects brands to their audience and helps to ensure that they remain top of mind in influencing consumer engagement. One of the best ways to develop a digital profile is through search engine optimization or SEO.

While you can promote your website using social media and the like, organic search is the main driver for web traffic. Using SEO boosts your page rankings and helps your site get closer to the top results, thus improving your chances of getting new visitors. However, search engine algorithms and user behaviours are constantly changing, so the tactics used for SEO have to be constantly updated as well. It is not a big deal to frame your own strategy if you have proper knowledge, enrolling in some reputed Digital Marketing Institute will help you achieve the goal.

There are many tactics for improving your digital marketing strategy, but it's best to identify a few key points and focus on those instead of going on an all-out revamp. If you are a business investing in your digital marketing, consider these seven trends SEO Singapore firms are currently following.

Optimizing for Mobile Access

As more and more users rely on mobile devices for their browsing activities, websites need to adapt mobile-friendly designs. Google's 2019 algorithm update began to index and rank websites based on their mobile version's content. In Statista's 2021 report, on mobile internet usage worldwide, about 4.28 billion users are on mobile devices when they go online, so that's 90 per cent of the global internet population that a site misses out on when it's not optimized for mobile.

Supporting Voice Search

Among the users who browse online on a mobile device, Google reports that 27 per cent of the global online population use voice search. Instead of going to the search engine and typing out all the keywords that give specific details, it's simply easier to voice a question for Google to answer.

Investing in Local SEO

In the wake of a global pandemic, many physical stores moved to e-commerce because of stay-home directives. It's a smart marketing move, and one worth sustaining even when restrictions relax again. Investing in local SEO is particularly important as it weighs location-sensitive searches into your website rankings. Doing so can bring more customers into the physical store once they know its location.

Maintaining Good Core Web Vitals

There's more to a good website than the quality of its content. It should also be able to load quickly, respond immediately, and remain stable. Website and page speed play an important part in the user experience and count as ranking factors on Google. Sites that take too long to load are likely to put off users and get a higher bounce rate, negatively affecting user engagement which can influence page rankings.

Creating High-Quality Backlinks

In an SEO-focused event held in early 2021, John Mueller clarified that a single link in a reputable page is much more valuable than several in lower quality websites. The revelation by Google's Search Advocate shows that the algorithm favours high-quality backlinks over quantity.

Developing Video Content

Next to Google, YouTube is the second most used search engine in Singapore. According to Alexa rankings, users also spend more time browsing YouTube than on Facebook. Video engages a larger audience, adds diversity to the content on your website, and can drive more traffic to your site with the use of backlinks and social shares.

Additionally, videos need to be optimized for search. Apart from using the right keywords, adding structured data markups can help search engines identify "Key Moments" that will be most relevant to a search query. Showing timestamps allows users to have an overview of the video's content. They can also access the information directly instead of having to watch the entire video to find it.

Aiming for the Featured Snippet Spot

The most coveted spot on a search engine results page (SERP) is Position Zero. Also known as Featured Snippets, this top display is the first search result you'll see, and it shows a portion of the actual text from the best result. This allows you to easily find the answer even before clicking the link.

Google's algorithm determines the content shown in the snippet, so it is not something that websites can control. However, experts say that content that answers a specific question in a structured format like bullet points have higher chances of becoming a Featured Snippet.

There are many different ways to do search engine optimization in 2021, but you don't necessarily need to apply all of them to your site. Choose a few that are most appropriate to your business and industry, and focus your SEO in these areas. An analysis of your site's performance can also help you determine which improvements to prioritize. Investing in SEO gives your business a competitive edge, even if it can take a while to show results. Make sure to set realistic goals and plan for long-term development.