eCommerce website owners expecting higher conversion rates, digital marketers wishing to create a solid SEO strategy, or freelance specialists offering services – SEO trends for 2023 are crucial for all.
And why shouldn’t they be? You need to have the search engine algorithm at your fingertips for your website to rank well.
From site navigation on mobile devices to its overall performance – even the technical aspects have gained significance.
Besides, content quality has become more important than ever to gain traffic organically. The top search engines like Google crawl through multiple websites to look for to-the-point answers and only feature sites with relevant content.
At the same time, remember that the search engine optimization (SEO) market is highly volatile. The ranking factors are constantly changing.
Whether you own an e-commerce website or service web pages, this post brings you the most important SEO trends for 2022. Besides, it will also take you through actionable steps to uplift your eCommerce website and landing pages. So, stay tuned!
Leverage these SEO Trends for 2023
With evolving technology making way for new algorithms, SEO trends are constantly changing. What works today may be an old story tomorrow, which is why your eCommerce branding strategy needs a regular overhaul.
Even if you have a steady flow of visitors to your website, you need to entice new buyers.
So check out the 8 top SEO trends for 2022 to stay ahead of the game!
User Intent Rules the SEO Strategy
Also known as search intent, user intent refers to the primary reason behind an individual’s search query. It conveys the motive behind the keyword searched. Wondering how is it essential for you?
A search intent may be informational, navigational, or transactional. Essentially, it helps you understand the keywords you have picked up after research.
You can leverage this information by completely creating content that matches the search intent. Let’s take an example.
When you search for protein powder, do you get search results for the best protein powder brands or benefits of protein powder?
If I get the latter, I will know that’s what the search intent is – informative content, and that’s what I will provide for my audience.
Optimise Content for Featured Snippets
To appear on the first page of Google search results, you need not just aim to rank well, but you have to rank for featured snippets.
These are concise answers (approx. 2-3 lines) to the search queries related to your keywords. For example, if your keyword is ‘SEO writing’ and the user query is ‘what is SEO writing,’ here’s how the featured snippet will look like.
To optimize your content such that it appears on Google search results, here’s what to do:
- Write a direct answer for each subheading before diving into details
- The answer must be about 90 characters
- Use H2 or H3 to rank for a listicle snippet
Note: Featured snippets are crucial ranking factors for both mobile and voice search.
E-A-T for Every Web Page
Another significant search engine ranking factor is the E-A-T, a.k.a., Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness. So, how do you ensure your content meets these guidelines?
Your website content must exhibit a good on and off-site E-A-T for high Google rankings.
On-Site SEO
Either hire a professional or ensure you’re writing factually correct information. That is because search engines wish to feature only the top-rated content written by experts in the field.
The next point is for website owners – for adequate site performance, make sure it comprises your basic information.
- Have a detailed About Us page
- A complete Contact Us page
- External sources to reputable sites
- Author byline
- Sections like Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy
Off-Site SEO
This section is more about your site’s credibility, i.e., about link building. Your website or you must have plenty of citations. For example, if a credible source mentions your name as one of the top SEO experts, Google will consider your site authentic.
As a result, you will get more website visitors organically.
Mobile SEO Trends for 2022
During the last quarter of 2021, about 54.4% of all internet search was conducted from mobile devices, making it over half of the entire search.
When over half of your audience is mobile users, making your site mobile-friendly is crucial. Besides, Google predominantly considers the mobile version of the content for search results.
Here’s how to make your website mobile-friendly:
- Compressed images
- Quick load time
- Minimal (or none) ads and pop-ups
- Spaced out links and buttons
- Readable font
Voice Search Optimization is the New Cool
While mobile search is on the rise, so is voice search. The good news is mobile-friendly websites can even meet the requirements for voice search optimization.
Most individuals conducting search queries from a mobile device use voice search. You’re hitting two targets with one stone.
Here’s what you need to do for voice search optimization:
- Focus on featured snippets as answers to relevant Google search queries
- Consider long-tail keywords
- Provide concise answers to complex search queries to be featured on the search engine result page (SERP) in natural language
Visual Search Gaining Heat
Google SERPs always comprise relevant images to enhance user experience and make search easy. Especially when it comes to eCommerce, about 85% of online shoppers consider visual information more important than textual.
The same report also shows that over 36% of respondents use visual research as frequently as voice search.
It is clear how visual search is a vital SEO trend. Here are a few tips to expand site visitors through this trend:
- Add the relevant image name and alt text
- Make your website mobile-friendly
- Focus on long-form content
While we’re talking about visual content, how can we miss video content! Do you often see YouTube videos on search results? It is one of the latest SEO trends and can quickly help boost your content rank. Here’s how to leverage video content for SEO:
- Organize your video content into clear sections for Google to feature clips
- Optimize the tags, title, and description with keywords
- Add a transcript to enable Google and YouTube to analyze video
Long-Form Content for Google Passage Ranking
Google now ranks a blog post or web page according to a specific section or passage like featured snippets.
Therefore, even if you write long-form content, Google Passage Ranking can feature a section of your website. For your content to dominate search, organize content into individual sections.
While earlier Google used to rank an entire page for a specific subject, it can now rank one page for multiple different topics.
We have noticed it for our “SEO services in Sydney ” page, previously it was a page with small content and it was not ranking for many keywords. After that, we have added multiple questions related to the service as an FAQ section and made the page lengthy. Now the performance of the page is quite satisfactory.
Capitalize on Google Trends in 2022
Google Trends allows you to search for trends and obtain data on the search volume of those trends. This data is reliable because over 92 percent of internet search is on Google. Plus, internet users conduct more than 3 million searches daily.
Google Trends is a valuable research tool. Here’s how you can use it to achieve results
Keyword Research: Keyword research provides information on customer needs. Google Trends show trends and searches on specific keywords. You can optimize your website and create digital marketing strategies to increase traffic, reach, and conversion.
Quality Content: Google Trends helps you research compelling topics and current trends to keep your content fresh and readers engaged.
Promotional Campaigns: Use reliable seasonal trend data from Google Trends to determine the best time to launch promotions that target customers at different year spans. Also, tailor advertisements based on trending topics in different regions.
Competitor Monitoring: You can monitor competitor performance and use the information to improve business strategies to outperform competitors.
Product Category and Niches: For business, Google Trends can provide information to help you create new product offerings or adjust the product mix.
Boost E-Commerce Landing Pages with SEO Trends for 2022
Now you know what to include, the question is, how do you incorporate it? What do effective eCommerce landing pages look like, and how do you design your landing page to maximize conversions?
Here are the best practices you should try to follow to answer these questions.
Laser-Focused
Good landing pages are laser-focused. They have just one focus, one offer, and one buyer persona.
Don’t make the mistake of providing too much information or offering too many choices. That can hurt your conversions by distracting your user and taking their attention off what you’re trying to get them to do.
Remove Site Navigation
Your landing page shouldn’t include navigation options for the same reason as above. Remove your navbar so that the customer only has one choice: to click your CTA.
Include A Lead Generation Form
Lead generation forms are somewhat rare in eCommerce landing pages, as most stores use their landing pages to drive sales. However, in doing so, you’re missing out on an opportunity to add new customers to your mailing list and drive further sales down the line.
Try incorporating both into your landing page. Collect their email addresses first and then direct them to your sales page or show them exclusive offers. That way, you’re driving both sales and sign-ups simultaneously.
Make Sure You Have A Strong CTA (or several)
Your CTA is probably the most crucial part of your landing page. Think carefully about the copy, colour, placement, and shape of your CTA buttons.
The goal is to make it as ‘clickable’ as possible. Use contrasting colours so that it stands out against the page.
Place Important Elements Above the Fold
The ‘fold’ is the section of the webpage that the user can see without scrolling. Studies show that users don’t like to scroll, so make sure that your essential elements are above the fold.
By essential elements, we’re talking about things like CTAs, forms, and important copy.
Include Video Elements
One of the biggest challenges eCommerce stores face in landing pages is giving their audiences all the information they need to make a purchase on one page.
Buyers typically want to see a lot of information before they’re ready to make a purchase, but landing pages, by nature, are concise.
Including a video is a neat solution to this problem. All the info they need can be delivered in video form, thus condensing it into a small box.
A/B test
Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all perfect eCommerce landing page. Every brand is different; the best way to figure out what works for you is to A/B test various designs.
This means setting up two versions of your landing page with one element changes and measuring the results to see which converts better, then adopting that element.
Bonus: eCommerce Brand SERP Optimization
Creating a brand is not enough. Optimize it through a strong digital presence to improve its search visibility.
The search engine algorithms consider Natural Language Processing an important ranking factor. Through semantic search, engines like Google process large amounts of data according to the search intent to provide relevant answers on the search results page.
Therefore, your overall brand presence is as important as using the right keywords. Here’s how to optimize your brand for Google SERPs.
A Blend of Social Media and SEO Trends
Today, online branding requires a mix of social media and SEO. While the latter brings in new prospects organically through quality content, the former keeps them engaged.
Be creative in your campaigns. Take, for example, the Australian insurance company that insured President Obama for a crocodile death policy.
The $50,000 AUD policy got them coverage across the globe for this unique policy. The press included being featured on SkyTV and Huffington Post.
Build Trust Through Quality Content
Once you have built out a great site, you need customers who want to stay. The best way to do that is through a great website copy. Here are three specific steps you can take to build that copy.
First: Test What Works Best
Neil Patel of Quick Sprout did an A/B test of his long-form and short-form copy. What he discovered was that the long-form content outperformed the short by over 40.54% in the first test.
The second test he did was even more conclusive, with a 66% negative ROI on the short form and a 50% ROI in the long form. By testing, he could determine the best course of action for his copy.
Second: Make Your Copy Scannable
While long-form content works better for instilling trust, it does not get read as much. In fact, only 20% of the website page copy is read.
That is because people on the internet scan copy in an F pattern. They look at the first word in each sentence and then scan the rest of the page.
In essence, you need a long-form copy to impress them with your knowledge. Then concise bullet points and headers to give them the information about your product without reading the entire text.
Third: Conversational Text Works Best
Based on a study by the Journal of Educational Psychology, less technical text that talks in a conversational manner had a 20-46% higher retention rate among college students. In other words, ban jargon from your sales copy. Otherwise, customers can become confused and agitated with your brand.
Craft Amazing Offers
Creating great content requires one more thing. An amazing offer for your prospective clients to take action on your services. If you cannot create something memorable, then why are you in business?
Customers remember and purchase from companies who stand out in their efforts to create great products.
Take Warby Parker, for example. The eyeglass maker ships up to 5 pairs of glasses for free for customers to test out for 5 days. They cover the return of the glasses customers do not want. An amazing offer that has made them one of the largest eyeglass eCommerce stores.
Also, consider a simpler model like Audible.com (an Amazon company). The company gives users the first audiobook for free. They can test out the system and decide if they want to continue using Audible for their audiobooks.
It’s All About the List
In today’s ultra-competitive, busy world, consumers do not always purchase the first, second, or third time on your site. Furthermore, many do not remember you after their first purchase.
They need a reminder. That is why it is so important to build your list. The more you build your list, the more you can brand your business over time with each product launch, giveaway, and special event.
If you are going to build your list for your brand, make sure that you have a good reputation. Check out a site like SenderScore.Org to determine what your email score is for your site.
Building a reputation takes time, and if your emails are no longer being delivered to your audience, that could hurt your brand.
To keep your reputation high, segment your list. In fact, recent research suggests that 62% of all email marketers want to improve the segmentation of their lists. Not surprisingly, 64% want to personalize their email marketing more.
The more you segment your list as you continue building your brand, the more you can create personalized messages that consumers can associate with your brand.
That is probably why the second most effective email you can send to a prospect after the opt-in is a birthday email. To paraphrase Dale Carnegie, “The sweetest email is wishing a happy birthday!”
The more your emails show a genuine interest in prospects, the more they care about your brand.
EndNotes
To get more organic traffic, make sure you follow a comprehensive SEO strategy. It must include different aspects like video content, well-structured data, and answers to search queries without keyword stuffing.
Create content that provides value to the reader while following the guidelines that Google announced recently.
Besides, improving your site’s SEO will automatically boost its click-through rate. It’s a win-win situation!
Leverage the 2023 SEO trends for exemplary site performance and returns.
If you need more help to leverage the 2023 SEO trends for your website then reach out to our SEO agency in Melbourne for a free consultation.
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