It’s time to build a winning SEO strategy!
One that reflects the latest best practices and trends that are taking the market by storm. By making yourself aware of these trends, and by adopting a considered approach to SEO in 2021, you are setting your website up for success.
1. User experience
User experience is crucial to SEO in 2021. This is because of the intentions of Google in crafting their results pages — the search engine giant wants to provide high-quality results to users, and not simply provide free advertising for businesses.
With this in mind, make sure your site is crisp, clear and easily navigable for your visitors.
2. E.A.T. content
E.A.T. stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness, and your content needs to be all of these things if you want Google to take it seriously.
Cite your sources, encourage users to comment on and discuss your content, and publish transparent communication policies and terms and conditions as you target this key SEO best practice.
3. High-quality backlinks
Backlinks have fallen from favour in recent years. This is because too many businesses were buying links from other websites or adopting a “quantity over quality” approach. Google quickly became wise to this and began penalising this sort of behaviour.
But backlinks are still important; they just need to be of very high quality. Develop organic relationships with high-value publishers, and create content that people want to share and link to, building those great links naturally. Remember that you can disavow low-quality links from publishers you don’t want to be associated with.
4. Mobile search
The number of Australian mobile internet users is increasing year-on-year and is likely to go beyond 19 million in 2022. With this in mind, mobile search needs to become a key part of your SEO efforts.
Make sure your pages are all mobile-optimised and ready for action. Device agnosticism is key here — you need to be providing a great experience, regardless of which device your visitors use to access your page.
5. Voice search
Voice search is also taking off in a big way and is going to be one of the key SEO trends in 2021. This search method has reportedly driven US$2 billion (A$2.59 billion) worth of sales already, and this is likely to continue growing in the coming year and beyond.
Optimise your pages for voice search, and reap the SEO benefits of providing diverse access points to your users.
Do SEO right in 2021, and beyond
Unfortunately, there is no end-goal in doing SEO right. Best practices shift and trends change, so businesses need to adopt a proactive approach to get the best results from their digital marketing efforts.
