Stay Updated with SEO in 2022

Search engine optimization, commonly abbreviated as SEO, has been around for a really long time. In fact, Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, filed the page ranking patent back in 1998 while still studying at Stanford.

Now, a lot of people might tell you that the SEO ship has long sailed or that you were too late to the SEO party. Do not pay heed to what they tell you. Technology keeps evolving and a lot of fundamental changes take place in it.

Source: Advertisingweek

So, you constantly have to learn about the new updates to technology. What this means is that it is never too late to learn any piece of technology.

Yes, SEO has been around for ages but how it works today is completely different than how it did just a few years ago.

Let’s just say that you’re in luck. A lot of changes have taken place in the SEO world and 2022 is the right time to learn SEO from the ground up.

Let’s start with the basics!

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Many activities are undertaken to optimize your website for the best performance and the content in it to gain recognition from search engines. All these activities are what form the search engine optimization process.

SEO has a wide scope in terms of website optimization. A lot of things matter when it comes to attaining a higher rank in search results.

Source: New Online Road

You will have to focus on two core objectives to rank higher on any search engine. The two core objectives are:

Optimizing your website for the search engines.

This makes it easy for them to understand who you are and what you provide. This understanding allows them to categorize your website accurately.

Moreover, it also makes a search engine’s job easy. A well optimized website is easier to grade in terms of the performance and quality of content published.

Optimizing your website for your audience.

Pleasing the search engines is only half of the job. You even have to make sure that your audience is having a good time on your website. You can start with getting a unique wordpress theme for your website.

There are two benefits to this. Improving customer experience is always beneficial to any business. A good search engine will always recommend websites that provide an amazing experience to the users.

Many activities are undertaken to ensure one’s website appeals to both the search engines and the users. We shall discuss these activities in detail.

But first, let us understand how undertaking SEO can benefit your business.

How Does SEO Benefit a Business?

The primary benefit of having a strong SEO is that you will generate more traffic. For any online business, more traffic equates to more opportunities.

However, the benefits of a strong SEO don’t end there. Generating more traffic is just one of the many benefits. Your business benefits in multiple ways when you invest properly in SEO.

Let me list down the other benefits that your business stands to gain from SEO.

Enhances Trust and Credibility.

A search engine’s primary objective is to provide solutions and suggestions to its users. Any search engine will strive to do this to the best of its ability.

If a search engine recognizes you and recommends you to its users, it means that they trust you and find you credible. This instills a feeling of trust and credibility among your audience towards you.

Improves Customer Experience

Customer experience is one of the ranking factors for search engines. Improving customer experience will benefit your business vastly.

Source: Helix Digital

A good customer experience in itself is an asset for your business. With SEO, it will even enable you to generate more traffic and other benefits.

Keeps You Competitive

Compliance is the biggest evil in the business world. SEO practices, ranking factors, etc. keep evolving every day. The only way to stay ahead is to be updated with all the developments.

This allows for more opportunities as you learn about new technologies every day. You can utilize this knowledge for other business processes as well. Thus, SEO helps you stay competitive in the constantly evolving world of technology.

Enhances Brand Value

SEO grants you three distinct benefits, enhances trust and credibility, improved customer experience and vast exposure. When these three things work in tandem with each other, they result in an enhanced brand value.

Optimizing your website for search engines and audiences helps your business be recognized and grow its reputation.

Now that you know the benefits, we can go through all the optimizations you can undertake for your website.

Top 8 Ways You Can Optimize Your Website

Here, I will run you through the top optimizations you can perform for your website. For ease of understanding, we will divide these optimizations into two sections.

Legacy Optimizations

These optimizations have been around for a long time. These are considered the basic best SEO practices. Let's check these out.

Producing High-quality and Relevant Content

Yes, I know, you must already know this. However, there have been a few changes. You now have to produce high-quality and relevant content strategically.

The content needs to be aligned with search intent. This makes it easy for both the audience and search engines to find answers to their questions.

Source: SearchEngineJournal

You have to ensure you fill up any content gaps which will help you create a good topical authority. Search engines reward websites having a good topical authority with higher ranks.

Content Length

Some might say that content length no longer matters because of various changes and the rise of voice search. What I believe is that we’re still in the middle of a transition to web 3.0.

So, the content length will remain relevant until the transition to web 3.0 is completed.

Source: Linderobrands

With that, we can come to the main question. How long should your content be? There is no specific answer to this question. However, the content length of the top 10 search results has been observed to be above 2000 words.

It is safe to say that you need to produce content that goes into the detail of the topic. This shall be so until we’re completely transitioned to web 3.0.

On-Page SEO

You must already know the drill. If not then pay attention. You have to ensure you properly compose the meta title, meta description, title tags, image formats, alt tags on images and graphics, etc.

All of this is done to make it easy for search engines to understand what your webpage is about, what questions it answers and what topics it covers.

Source: SEO Periodical

Moreover, all these optimizations even make it easier for the users to easily navigate a webpage and find what they need quickly.

Backlinks

Domain Authority is still considered a major ranking factor. To grow your domain authority, you need backlinks. Backlinks are the links that are generated when someone else links to your content or cites your work on their website or blog.

Search engines consider backlinks as a gauge of a website’s authority in that particular field. The best way to generate backlinks is by simply publishing high-quality content or statistics about the latest developments in your industry.

Another effective way of generating backlinks is via Infographics. Infographics are a good way of disseminating information. Preparing them is a difficult task, however.

If you publish good infographics, chances are a lot of people on the internet will repost them and mention you as a source.

Or another effective strategy is guest posting. Get your high-quality content published on some other site and have a backlink in it to your website.

Recently Trending SEO Optimizations

As stated earlier, technology keeps evolving. SEO practices need to evolve with it to be up to pace with all the changes. Here are all the search engine optimizations that are the latest and trending in 2022.

Go Mobile First

Smartphones have become our primary means of communication and web browsing. Desktops and laptops are still used but they’ve become a secondary option.

With the ever increasing capabilities of smartphones, browsing the web and communication will become easier. Many business processes will also shift to mobile devices.

Looking at the changing share of device wise web traffic, it is safe to say that you need to go mobile first with your website and design.

Ensuring your website is best optimized for viewing on a smartphone will enhance the user experience. This in turn will significantly help your SEO efforts.

Optimize Content for Voice Search

Almost 427 million voice searches are made using smartphones each day. The number is slated to grow significantly. Even as far back as 2020, 30% of the browsing sessions were screenless.

We’re headed towards Web 3.0 quickly and you need to adjust your content accordingly. Voice search will soon account for the majority of search volume.

The only way to retain your existing traffic and grow is to optimize your website and content for voice search.

This can be done by keeping sentences short and concise. Two things have to be ensured. The content should be easy for the search engines to understand. The content must be served in a palatable manner for the user.

The Rise of Semantic Web

With Web 3.0, machines will begin processing information more like humans. Combined with technologies such as Google’s NLP and GPT-3, machines will be able to understand the content better.

Machines will be able to understand what topics a piece of content covers, what questions it answers and how well it answers those.

When this happens, keywords will cease being the primary focus of content optimization for SEO. The focus will then shift to creating high quality content best suited for users.

Core Web Vitals

Google announced the page experience update in May 2021. This made the core web vital a quantifiable ranking factor.

Core Web Vitals are a form of indicators that allow search engines to evaluate the user experience a certain webpage provides.

Optimizing your website and webpages for peak Core Web Vital performance will swiftly impact your SEO performance. The main indicators are:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - The amount of time it takes for the largest element on a webpage to load.

First Input Delay (FID) - The time it takes for your website to respond to a user’s initial interaction.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - The number of unexpected layout shifts that occur during the lifespan of a webpage.

To Summarize

It is never too late to learn about technology. Technology keeps evolving and learning about it is a constant process.

There are many big changes coming that will transform the internet. Web 3.0 will revolutionize how humans use the internet.

SEO has and will remain an important function for online businesses. However, the ways of SEO are changing and you will have to keep yourself updated.

For now, you learn all the SEO basics from this guide and keep yourself positioned well for the coming future.