The world around us changed drastically in 2020. Business owners used the digital shift to advance their businesses and tweak components of their marketing plans. Knowing that things will never be the same, how will this new world change SEO trends in 2021?

Search engine optimization is forever developing and it can be hard to keep up. Put your business on top by using these SEO trends for 2021 to guide your strategies in the coming months.

The Rise of Voice Search

It was predicted that half of this year’s online searches would be made through voice, with 30% of those searches being made on devices without a screen, like GoogleHome and Alexa. Even our voices are changing the approach to SEO.

Looking to get in on voice search optimization? Then your 2021 strategy should include more long-tail keywords — especially if you consider that voice searches average 29 words in length.

These keywords and phrases should reflect popular queries used by your customers. Use question-leading words like “how,” “what” and “best” in your SEO strategy. Then optimize your content based on higher-value questions.

Mobile-Friendly for Google’s Standings

In 2015, Google released a sprint that began prioritizing websites’ mobile experience, and since then, there’s been an even greater shift. With the advancement of technology, more and more people are accessing the internet through their phones.

This is what prompted Google’s 2019 mobile-first indexing. Well, it’s official now. The mobile version of websites pushed out desktop viewing.

Nearly 73% of internet users will access the internet only through mobile devices by 2025.

If you’re looking to check how well your mobile experience is, Google offers a free mobile-friendly test. Googlebot crawls your site but, note that any required clicking or swiping will not be loaded. This deferred loading of non-critical content is called lazy loading. When not handled correctly, you can accidentally hide your content from Google so be sure to test your page and correct any issues

Related reading: Is Your Mobile Experience Stunting Your Growth?

E.A.T. Over Everything

In order to rank higher on Google, you have to think E.A.T. when creating your content. Perhaps you’ve heard of the E.A.T. principle tossed around in reference to SEO, but you’re not sure what it means. Simply put, quality content showcases Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Although not an algorithm, E.A.T. heavily weighs on where your business placed in Google’s ranking.

E.A.T. Every Time

  • Create expert content by discovering what your target audience is searching for using keyword research. Analyze why people searched those terms. From there, meet and exceed those needs. Content should be detailed but easy to digest.
  • Show your authority. Citing experts and adding links to reputable sites is a great way to validate what you’re saying. Getting your content widely circulated is another great way to show you’re growing your authority.
  • Prove you can be trusted. This goes beyond addressing and correcting negative reviews. Make it clear how customers can contact you, add a physical location to your website and make sure your domain is secure.

Go Long

Thinking about cutting corners? Think again. When it comes to creating traffic-worthy content, more is better. Content with 3,000-plus words gets three times more traffic and four times more shares. This is because they offer a higher value as opposed to to-the-point short reads. This also goes for headlines as well. Using 14 or more words within a headline is an effective SEO trend to drive traffic.

Think Visual

When it comes to SEO strategies, adding video should be at the top of the list. If you’re not among those using videos as a marketing tool, consider it. Whether it’s a product showcase or how-to video, it’s worth adding.

84% of people said a video is part of what convinced them to make a purchase.

Even the photos used on your website play a factor. While using high-quality and relevant images is a must, many people skip labeling their photo files. It’s important to use alt tags. Originally used to help describe images to the seeing impaired, they’ve since been used to assist web crawlers to classify images.

Rules of ALT Tag

  • Be descriptive and specific: This helps rank on Google Image Search and show how it relates to your page’s content.
  • Stay relevant: The images should be described in a way that relates to the page’s topic.
  • Make it unique: alt text should describe the specific contents of the image and not repeat elsewhere