When it comes to SEO best practices, you can’t rest on your laurels since things change and evolve over time.
Your digital marketing team must be up to date on the best SEO strategies to please the mighty search engine algorithms and reach your company’s target demographic more effectively.
So that you take your SEO strategy to the next level this year, here are some trends to consider.
Audience-Focused Content Over Traffic-Focused Content
As SEO content creation grows in quantity and scope, it’s not uncommon to see websites with different types of non-complementary content. But if a website sells CRM software applications but also publishes blog posts on beauty tips can confuse Google crawlers. The reason? The algorithms will have trouble correlating how content about makeup, lipstick, and eye shadow will benefit the target market of people interested in CRM software.
What’s the takeaway here? You need to ensure your content strategy isn’t focused merely on pursuing a critical mass of search traffic with no attention paid to what your customers are actually looking for. Ensure your content strategy focuses on your industry if you want to generate content that ranks well in search engines. It’s essential to brainstorm relevant sector topics and keywords to maximize SEO efforts – nothing less will do in 2023.
Satisfying, Useful Content
Another SEO trend to be mindful of this year involves the helpful content update Google announced last summer. The search engine juggernaut has always promoted providing high-quality content to people looking for products, services, or information in general. But in its helpful content update revealed in August 2022, Google stressed that content needs to be “helpful” and that users should feel “satisfied” with the content they access in the search engine results pages (SERPs) they access.
The content you generate should read like it was written for humans rather than search engine crawlers. Among other things, your content must be relevant to your target demographic, created by experienced and authoritative writers, and showcase more than surface-level knowledge on the subject matter.
Focus on quality over quantity for 2023. When creating a content calendar, pace yourself so you don’t end up churning out a lot of content that is shallow and not as helpful as it could be. A few well-written, authoritative articles are better than a bunch of content that isn’t particularly useful.
And in addition to providing helpful content, you should revisit your keyword research strategy. Consider things like the type of content that ranks for specific searches, the word count of the content, the links included in the content, the answers provided in the content, and the originator of the content.
SEO Competitor Analysis
While you need to develop your own winning SEO strategy, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep up with what your competitors are doing. In fact, that’s one strategy that will never go out of style. Google is ramping up focus on sector expertise, so it behooves you to focus on thought leaders and leading companies in your sector.
What this will do is help you focus your content so that it will rank well in search engine result pages. When you see competitors who are doing well on search engine result pages, you can study what they’re doing right. Consider authoritativeness, experience, and other things that contribute to good search engine results.
The year is still young. So, if you haven’t been following the trends and putting them into practice, it’s not too late to get started. You’ll want to make sure your digital marketing team knows the best practices. A lot is expected from your digital marketing team because so much is at stake. In addition to pampering them with things like a flexible work schedule, a wellness program, and bidets in the washrooms, you’ll want to ensure they never rest on their laurels.
