We’re almost halfway through 2022 and the SEO industry is still way too unpredictable.
With Google’s mysterious ranking factors, SEO seems more like speculations than a real data-driven approach.
That being said, the least you can do is stay on top of the latest updates, follow up with the newest trends, and pay attention to the many metrics available.
So follow along this blog to find out 10 Google SEO trends that matter the most.
Top #1: Google SEO RankBrain
AI rules today’s content and online interactions, such as Google SEO. Google’s AI algorithm is definitly one of these world leaders that should guide your Google SEO strategy.
Unveiled a few years back, in 2015, Google’s AI algorithm called RankBrain plays an important role in processing and understanding search queries, then sorting the relative search results.
It’s the resulting user experience that primarily determines RankBrain’s sorting of your SEO. User experience factors mainly include click-through rate, readability, backlinks, and time spent on page.
To optimize your Google SEO for RankBrain, you need to captivate the searchers’ clicks and engage them with useful, well-organized content.
Top#2: Indexing
After RankBrain, Passage Indexing is Google’s latest algorithm. Passage Indexing is expected to have an even bigger impact on search results! While RankBrain sorts different search results, Passage Indexing sorts the relevant content within one search result to best match the research queries.
Based on Advanced Natural Language Processing, Google will try to understand the meaning of each passage within the page rather than the context as a whole while indexing web pages. That’s how the results of search queries will be presenting researchers with the best appropriate answers from the best legitimate sources.
To optimize your content for Passage Indexing you will need to take care of the structure of the content as much as you take care of its quality. When talking about structure, we’re actually stressing on outlines, paragraphs, topics, subtopics, sections, subsections, headings, subheadings, and tags.
Passage Indexing is less likely to uncover the relevance and value of your content if it’s hidden inside one text block.
Which brings us to the next trend…
Top #3: Long-Form Content
If you check the top-ranking pages on Google right now, you would find that 9 out of 10 results are long-form content that exceeds 2000 words. 2000 words is not even that long! A real long-form content is considered to start at the threshold of 2000 words and reaches a standard mark of 3000 to 3500 words.
According to the Semrush State of Content Marketing Report, long-form content of 3000 words wins 3x times more traffic, 4x times more shares, and 3.5x times more backlinks than 1200 words content. But, to beat your competitors with long-form content you will need more than just traffic.
You will need them to engage with your content. To achieve this engagement, first, make sure to write scannable content with clear sections and subheadings.
Second, don’t be shy to link your sources especially when they’re highly relevant, authoritative, and credible ones.
Finally, make your content easy to share by including obvious sharing links at the right places like the headline and conclusion.
Top #4: Keyword Clustering
From structure to syntax, keywords are the key for your content SEO.
As you already know, keywords search is the foundation of Google SEO. So, what’s new here?
Google’s Natural Language Processing technology is going for a more complex and clustered keywords targeting strategy. This means: Cluster your keywords!
Forget about optimizing your pages, blogs, and content for a single keyword target. You’re living in the era of multiple keywords targeting, forming, as it’s called, a cluster of keywords.
Applying this advanced strategy, you would level up your total keyword rankings. Your Google SEO strategy will also act like a sort of magnet, attracting multiple keywords that share the same research intents to your content.
Your content will be the one answer to hundreds of keywords searches!
Top #5: Localization of Google SEO
The impressive part about showcasing in so many search results, is actually appearing in search results that benefit the user. That’s possible thanks to Google SEO pushing towards highly localized search results.
To follow along Google’s traction you need to start creating country-specific content. Add the name of the city, state, or country to gain more traffic from users near your location.
Top #6: People also ask
Following this user centric approach, Google’s “People also ask” section could be your Google SEO game changer. A section of your content would have the chance to feature at the top of the results page even when your content lies at the bottom of the search results page.
To get at the top, your content has to provide answers to commonly asked questions. Don’t forget to include the questions as H1, H2, and H3 headings using the right keywords for a more prominent “People also ask” visibility.
Top #7: Voice Search
People also ask using voice search! Voice search technology has gotten better and more popular. Voice search seems like an easy conversation with Google using longer, natural-sounding phrasing.
To optimize your Google SEO for voice search, you have to consider lots of long keywords forming a complete statement that would usually be abbreviated in typed search queries.
Top #8: Mobile SEO
Does another better and popular technology ring a bell at this point? That’s right: Mobile devices!
Google is tending to determine rankings completely based on mobile search experiences and ignoring desktop content.
Therefore, your Google SEO strategy must ensure a successful mobile search user experience. You can achieve it with a responsive mobile site and a simple user-friendly design that caters for the needs of your audience.
Top #9: Optimizing Images
If too much text overwhelms your audience, don’t worry anymore. Google SEO is not only for text. Visual content search has evolved drastically, so has visual content visibility.
Visual content such as images enables users to download an app, subscribe to a newsletter, purchase a product, obtain information, and much more.
Although Google has voiced for proper marking and optimization of images long ago, it’s now that you should optimize your images! Image optimization starts with producing high quality images, placing them at relevant positions, customizing their file name, adding alt tags, and labeling them.
Don’t forget to add images to your site map too. You would definitely want Google to classify your content and scrollers to notice it.
Top #10: Video Markups
If you’re also into video visuals, Google SEO has a lot to offer you with its 2 newly launched structured data markup for SEO.
Google’s Seek Markup and Clip Markup are designed to help video content appear in the search results with the key marked moments that answer the questions in the queries.
The current markups features are available for YouTube videos. However, later versions are expected to show any timestamp from any video on any platform. So, how do they work?
Clip Markup function requires your manual selection of timestamps and labels for Google to recognize them and display them. Seek Markup is more automated. This function dictates for Google how a URL structure works so that it automatically displays timestamps recognized from your video.
These 2 features are a must if you’re looking to increase both the visibility and the click-through rate of your video content via Google.
To sum up the 2022 Google trends you’ve been missing on, SEO is all about standing out as a quality content, as an ideal search result, and as a better competitor. So, at a time when SEO technologies are constantly evolving, your gateway for riding Google’s results is to balance between staying up to date and focusing on the timeless core SEO principles.
