7 Smart SEO Tips For 2021

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2021 is set to be a big year for businesses all around the globe. With the increasing need to digitize business processes and automate most transactions, the use of smart Google SEO tips will be key in the thriving and growth of these global brands. Let’s highlight some of the most useful Google SEO tips that will guarantee businesses massive success in 2021.

1. Put More Emphasis on User Experience

The search engine ranking of your website will be greatly determined by the user experience. When a user clicks on the search results to go to a website and spends time on it, the site gains ranking and moves up in the search engine results page. However, if a user clicks on the search results to enter a particular site and immediately leaves the site, the site begins to lose ranking. Brian Dean of Backlinko opines that “when you optimize your page around a medium tail keyword, RankBrain will automatically rank you for that term”. The length of time that a visitor stays on your site (dwell time) and the percentage of searchers who click on your search (click-through-rate) is very key in determining how Google ranks you.

2. Use a Lot of Video Marketing

SEO necessitates prioritizing quality content rather than quantity. Videos are a great way of sharing quality content. Videos are an engaging way to deliver a brand’s message and are great for SEO. Shilpa Shah, the co-founder at Hummingbird Web Solutions, holds the view that video marketing is an under-tapped segment of marketing that can offer a huge source of the traffic to your site or page if effectively used.

Studies by Cisco have shown that online video marketing will make up to 80% of all online traffic by 2021. More businesses are thus encouraged to integrate videos into the content. This is because a user is more inclined to watch a 1-minute video but may opt out of reading a 100-word article, an exercise they may find time-consuming.

3. Use More Long-form Content

Ron Lieback, the CEO and Founder of ContentMender, suggests that the art of publishing longer-form content will go a long way towards achieving a good SEO score. He insists that blogs and websites with posts of 2000 words and above generally tend to rank higher than those with 2000 words and below. Google generally perceives long-form content as more valuable to a user than short-form content. According to research by the State of Content Marketing Report, long-form content of 3,000-plus words gets three times more traffic and four times more shares. These long articles also get 3.5 times more backlinks than articles of 901 to 1,200 words.

This trend is set to continue in 2021 and it is a great trick towards boosting the ranking of your site and it increases your online presence and places you in an enviable position of reaching a larger audience.

4. Mobile-friendliness

With more people using their mobile devices to access the internet, more effort should be directed towards ensuring the site performs well on these devices and that all your content is easily accessible via mobile phones. Shelly Fagin, the SEO Director and Founder of Highly Searched Inc. says that soon, “Google will be ignoring your desktop site and will determine your rankings based on your mobile site”.

Businesses are encouraged to optimize their pages so that their users find them easy to navigate and their optimized content easy to find. The optimized mobile responsive sites are also easy to use via mobile phones.

The level of mobile-friendliness and ease with which Google can crawl your URLs then determines your rankings on the search engine results pages.

5. Featured Snippets will greatly boost SEO

Featured Snippets are the results that show up on search engine results pages typically after the ads but before the ranked results. They are mostly found alongside a video or image and visibly stand out thus ensuring a site is in a good position to “steal” clicks from the pages that rank higher than it.

A.J. Gherich, the founder of Gherich & Co. advises that if you try to rank for a question, use a snippet in a paragraph format. He also says that if you try to rank for prepositions, make a list to structure your snippet. Also consider snippets in table format as a great way to rank for price comparisons.

6. Voice Search will dominate Search Queries

By 2022, a huge 55% of all American households are estimated to possess a smart speaker. Voice assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are set to further grow in popularity in 2021 as the voice search feature that will pervades our everyday tasks.

Optimizing for this feature requires identifying keywords, preferably longer phrases that are frequently used in everyday conversations. Phrases that sound natural tend to result in better outcomes when people perform voice searches. For example, via typing into a search engine, a person may write “best seafood restaurants Los Angeles” while when performing a voice search, the same person may use the phrase “what are the best seafood restaurants in Los Angeles?”

7. Image Optimization

Very soon, images are projected to be used to get desired information and in making a purchase. Using high-quality and relevant images will be key. Customizing the image file name and attaching a label that is relevant to the content on the corresponding page goes a long way in boosting your SEO. Alt tags usage is also essential as crawlers use them to classify the images that you have used in your site’s content.

In conclusion, SEO is getting wider and more involving as technology advances. Simply optimizing keywords and Meta titles does not cut it anymore. With SEO’s current trends, you have to integrate voice search features as well as increase video marketing. Metrics are constantly evolving, and good rankings on the search engine results pages are the desire of every business. Therefore, use these tips to achieve good SEO and general increased brand awareness and growth

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