5 Latest SEO Trends and Strategies To Ensure Growth for the Rest of 2022

‘SEO is a marathon, not a sprint’. I have repeated this mantra to my colleagues, my friends, and to my audiences everywhere. For running a marathon, what you need is patience, practice, and expertise.

Google changes its algorithm more often than not. ‘But, not every update affects your SEO,’ said every SEO expert ever. I would say it is good to stay updated. But, you need not overthink. Stick to the right practices, don’t go for black hat techniques, and if need be, hire some SEO company that can do it for you. 

Here are SEO Trends and strategies that can help you stay on track for the rest of 2022. I would update this blog if there are any major changes. If you have been following these strategies or trends already, ignore them. If not, do some research and apply them to your company’s SEO strategy.

Top SEO Trends and Strategies

I don’t want to waste your time. Here is the synopsis of the post. Jump into the topic that you want to read about. 

1. Site-Wide Content Quality
2. Keyword Clustering
3. Core Web Vitals
4. IndexNow
5. Schema Markup

1) Site-Wide Content Quality

Websites have pages that are published, but not yet indexed. Usually larger sites that push much content face this issue. It is important to be aware of this exclusion type. This can be found in the Coverage report from Google Search Console. 

The main reason behind this is focusing on the short-term benefits, and only fixing the major technical SEO issues. It sure does work then and generates awareness, backlinks, and business. But, it isn’t going to pay well in the long term.

Spamming hundreds of generic content on your page is going to affect your ranking and SEO in the future. The worse that can happen is Google deindexing your website or pages. 

What search engines expect you to do is produce high-quality and well-researched content. Understanding your target audiences, their intents, and their needs can help you produce relevant content. The recent updates to Google’s algorithm also support unique content. Adding to this are video and image contents. People prefer to watch videos or infographics than read. This is something to be considered and ventured into while devising an SEO strategy in 2022. 

Companies should start focusing on the quality of the content, their relevance to business goals, and site structure, to rank and stay at the top. 

2) Keyword Clustering

Earlier, websites and blogs were used to optimize and target for single keywords. Google’s algorithm has evolved so much so that websites are automatically ranked for multiple keywords. With NLP coming into the game, effective keyword targeting has become more ambiguous. 

It was an eventuality that everyone expected, but one that most didn’t adapt for. SEO experts say that most companies still stick to age-old SEO techniques. But, it is simply not going to work effectively anymore. 

The solution is to go for keyword clustering. It is a strategy to establish your website as an authority in your niche as well as increase the number of keywords that you rank for. 

It is the process of choosing a cluster of keywords that are related and relevant to your business and incorporating them into your SEO strategy. It is, frankly, a time-consuming process, but the results are all worth it. For example, if you’re an ice cream shop in the greater St. Louis area, then the following are the keywords that you can target for, 

Courtesy: WordStream Free Keyword Tool

The customer intends to find an ice cream place in St. Louis. It is important to analyze the intent of your target customers and optimize your website accordingly to rank for multiple high volumes and relevant long-tail keywords. 

(Tidbit: ‘People also search for’ or ‘People also ask’ is a place where you can find relevant keywords. Try ranking for them as well.)

3) Core Web Vitals

The biggest change in the past several years has been quantifying page experience with Core Web Vitals. It is now, officially, a ranking factor in Google. It involves various metrics such as, 

• First Contentful Paint (FCP) – Time frame from when the page starts loading to when any part of the page is visible on screen.
• First Input Delay (FID) – Time frame from when a user clicks or uses a control on the page to when the page reacts to the interaction. 
• Largest Contentful Page (LCP) –  Time frame from when the page starts loading to when the largest block or image in the view is rendered.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Total amount of layout shifts in the website during its loading and interaction. 

Improving these vitals improve your SEO in 2022 and the future. However, this requires the expertise of a skilled developer. If you don’t have an in-house team, I would recommend you hire full-time developers or SEO companies that offer these services. 

The issues with your core vitals and other details can be found at PageSpeed Insights tool. Head over there and enter your website to see how to score for these metrics and to understand the ways to improve them. 

Example of Core Web Vitals results from PageSpeed Insights.

4) IndexNow

Oftentimes, when people talk about SEO, they necessarily mean Google. It is understandable since Google has the largest user base. Yet, other web search engines such as Yandex and Bing also provide substantial traffic and leads. 

Talking about Bing, Yandex, etc. it is noteworthy that they have adapted to the IndexNow protocol. IndexNow is an API that allows website owners to notify search engines about the creation, updates, and deletion of content in their websites. 

In response to this, the search engine crawls these contents instantly and indexes them. Gone are the days when the IT team patiently wait for the crawlers to crawl and index the websites. It is also said that Google is now testing this protocol and sooner or later they might climb the bandwagon. 

IndexNow is one of the most recent trends in SEO and it helps small businesses and companies to rank while eliminating ambiguity. If you’re a company that hasn’t incorporated IndexNow or considered optimizing for other search engines, it is high time you started including them in your SEO strategy. 

5) Schema Markup

Search Engines and their algorithm updates serve one purpose. It is to provide a rich user experience and the information they need effectively and efficiently. Schema markup is one such tool that can help search engines understand your websites more and thereby rank them effectively. 

Schema markup is structured data that helps webmasters provide more clear information about their websites in code. Schema vocabulary includes different formats to indicate different items on your webpage. The complete list can be found on the schema.org website. It is generally used to define articles, events, organizations, etc. 

For example, searching for events near me would provide this, 

Implementing Schema markup for Events can provide you with detailed information in the form of rich snippets. The same can be done for other items as well. However, implementing schema markup might require the assistance of a developer. Use your developers or hire SEO companies that provide these services. 

In conclusion, it is important for search marketers and SEO companies to stay updated with Google’s algorithm. At the same time, it is not enough to keep track of the latest trends and update your websites with them. Any webmaster should study the latest trends carefully and plan things for the long term. Short-sightedness isn’t going to pay well in the long term SEO. 

The good old SEO technique of mastering ‘E-A-T’ is still the best way to go about the strategy. SEO isn’t a single person or department’s effort. The SEO strategy should be inculcated into the core of the organization’s values for better results.