Let me talk about my experience in the last 20 odd months at our own agency. It’s been bitter-sweet to be honest. If I compare between the pre-pandemic era and the ongoing Omicron crisis, I notice that a lot has changed. That is quite evident.
At our firm, we always put effort into making new plans and implementing those plans to get the best results for our SEO clients. We have been striving every single moment to achieve that excellence for our esteemed clients. But the current ‘Corona virus’ fear spread across the globe has made lives difficult here and everywhere. Right from closing deals to achieving quick search engine positioning for the clients, it’s become harder now. And the situation is the same all over the places. Let’s be honest!
We have had to do all that we could in order to get back on track as it’s been over 2 years now. We have not been able to change the bad fortune entirely, but things are improving. That is something to cheer about. We’ve been able to learn some positives the hard way and I want to share some of that useful learning with you in this post. You can apply these tips to future-proof your SEO strategy for this year and beyond.
Let’s begin. Find out the best keywords
We all know keyword research is the base point. It’s the foundational step of your SEO campaign, so it needs to be sturdy and solid to make sure your entire campaign is strong and productive.
When doing the keyword research some use keyword analysis tools (like Google keyword planner), some do it manually by trusting their own knowledge and common sense. The point is, we need to find out the best keywords for our campaign.
For me, a suitable combination of short-tail, mid-tail and long-tail keywords is the best choice of keywords. Those additional terms that you use along with the root keywords can be synonymous terms or derivative terms that can provide a deep optimization advantage to the site. Today, it’s very important to understand the searcher’s intent and that is a vital part of your keyword research process.
Focus more on the search intent than just the search terms. So, for this, you have the freedom of choosing as many target search terms as you can.
Since Google crawlers understand the synonyms you have the option of using synonymous terms to make your keywords mid-tail and long-tail. People type in multiple terms to anticipate the best search results. You can target those mid-tail and long-tail terms. And you can add those terms inside your page content suitably for easy and quick ranking. Remember not to simply stuff those keywords into the content; rather add them so as to provide natural meaning and value to your content. The readers must like the content even if the content has a few of those mid-tail and long-tail terms.
Google’s Auto Suggest, Questions and Answers snippet and Search suggestions at the bottom of the search pages are a few features that can help you find out your best target keywords.
Create your content strategy
Do you have a content strategy for this year already?
If yes, I’d love to know a little bit about that.
If no, create it now.
The first step to creating a good content strategy is to understand the user intent. A thorough understanding of the user intent and the readers’ expectations will help you understand what you have to write for them.
Your content has to be easy to understand and useful for your target audience. Here’s how you can enhance the quality of your content:
- Use simple words, short sentences and break the entire content into small paragraphs.
- Take care of proper formatting by adding headings, sub headings and bullet lists.
- To make it interactive add images, videos and graphical elements. If your images are original and interesting, it can give your site a huge boost in Product and Image searches. Visually interactive elements can make your content more discoverable especially due to the more usage of tools like Google Discover these days.
- Make sure your content is unique and exhaustive, and no other website has created such content.
- To increase the SEO performance of the content use internal linking by adding hyper links at suitable places, so readers would click those links to go to other pages within your site. This way, they will get extra value plus you will get an SEO boost due to this increased user retention time.
So, content is always a top priority, so focusing on creating original, high quality and exhaustive content is definitely going to make the entire SEO strategy future-proof.
Pay attention to local search
Google is trying its best to help local businesses reach out to their actual audience, which is the local audience.
Why?
The reason is simple. Local businesses owned by the local people understand the needs and behaviors of their local customers better, so they can serve them better. If their products and/or services have some value to offer, they have the potential to beat the international counterparts. Google Local search is a great place for local or regional businesses to reach out to their target customers.
International businesses will be compelled to create content targeting local customers, or it will be impossible for them to compete with local businesses that are only creating country-specific or region-specific content. Google is going to focus more on localization of content, which means content with relevance for the local audience is going to be liked by Google more for ranking. In 2021, we saw this impact already as a lot of websites with country-specific content outranked those that have more globally focused content.
Therefore, if you are a local business owner or an online business owner with no physical office, you must optimize your website for the local audience in 2022 and beyond. That’s how you can actually future-proof your SEO strategy.
Optimize for mobiles first
This is one of the most common SEO trends for 2022 and will continue to remain vital in the future too. Google has already launched tools in 2021 to support mobile optimization and mobile page experience. If your business website or blog is not optimized for mobile devices, you are going to lose a significant portion of your potential audience. This is because the number of mobile users is getting higher day by day.
So, mobile optimization has to a top priority this year. Having a mobile responsive website is not enough. You need to completely optimize your site for mobile devices. In order to achieve complete mobile optimization for your site, you need to make sure the site provides the best user experience on mobile devices.
Mobile-first indexing, Page speed, Mobile security, On-page user experience, Content for mobiles are some of the areas you can focus on. The text, and the visual elements like images and videos must be created keeping mobile users in mind. You shouldn’t ignore the traditional desktop optimization, but more focus on mobile optimization is what will make your SEO strategy future-proof.
Implement Advanced SEO techniques
Those traditional SEO techniques like back-link creation, profile creation, blog posting, digital PR awareness and specific on-page and off-page SEO fixes are no longer going give you long-term benefits. They can gain links and give quick wins, but in the long run they are a solution any more.
The solution is implementation of advanced SEO techniques.
Here are some advanced techniques you can implement to make your SEO strategy futuristic.
Automation: Automation of SEO practices including technical audits, search intent analysis, competitive analysis and more is gaining in popularity off late, so for 2022 and beyond, this should be on your SEO to-do list. One big advantage of SEO automation is that it will provide quality assurance. AI-driven analysis and understanding will decrease speed and increase accuracy so the quality will naturally improve.
Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning: Thanks to the introduction and popularity of natural language processing and machine learning, Google is now able to select portions of the content that is most relevant for the searchers. It can now read and understand the search query better, and show only the portion of the content that the user needs to see.
Sustainable SEO: SEO professionals are now required to leave the traditional habit of applying those short-term SEO tricks and embrace the habit of attaining SEO sustainability. This is only possible by focusing on increasing the merits of your site and brand, and not getting influenced by the frequent Google algorithm updates or the industry news that teaches you more than what you actually need to be taught.
This last point is the best one. Making your SEO campaign sustainable is how you can make your SEO future-proof. There is so much of data available today, but you need to keep calm and stay focused. This noise should not affect you. Google has added result enhancements already in order to promote sustainable choices in Shopping, Maps, and Nest. This clearly indicates that sustainable SEO is the future.