5 SEO Trends and Predictions for 2021

Search Engine Optimization evolves each year. New market trends and new technology, in a lot of ways, influence this marketing strategy. Companies that leverage SEO must adapt their tactics to maintain their rankings on SERPs. That’s why it’s important to keep a watchful eye for upcoming trends and predictions.

With the market growing more competitive and crowded each year, it’s of vital importance to stay visible in such an environment. Moreover, consumers still prefer organic search results over those of paid ads, and this is where SEO can truly shine if you know how to leverage its full potential. With that in mind, here are a few SEO trends and predictions for 2021.

The age of mobile

Back in 2019, Google released their mobile-first indexing that changed SEO as we know it. It started taking mobile versions of the websites into account first. Before that, desktop versions were considered primary, so a lot of websites weren’t really mobile-friendly.

This forced a lot of companies to accept the fact that mobile traffic has already surpassed that of the desktop and that mobile optimization is simply a must.

This trend is still ongoing, and it’s predicted that websites will need to be even more optimized for mobile to support the increase in mobile usage and the increase in mobile traffic. That will include content optimization, fast page loading time, using AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) as your content framework, and so on.

The rise of voice search

Speaking of mobile optimization, another trend that closely follows this one is voice search. What that means is that people are not just using their mobile devices for searching via voice instead of typing everything down, but it also means that more and more people are using digital assistants, such as Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, and others.

It’s estimated that around 8 billion people will be using one of these assistants by 2023. Optimizing for voice search is, therefore, one of the primary trends you should brace yourself for. This trend will mostly impact local search, which means additional optimization is required. For example, the content you optimize for voice search will have to be easier to understand or read if you want it to rank well for voice search.

Local SEO

When it comes to SEO, most of the products or services consumers are looking for are, indeed, local. Local SEO has always been important for companies, and this trend is starting to evolve. One of the main reasons this is happening is that zero-click searches are becoming more and more popular.

In other words, users’ queries get answered by the SERPs so that users don’t have to click on any results. The best example of this trend is a featured snippet. For highly competitive local markets, such as Hong Kong, for instance, companies might have to enlist professional services for local SEO in Hong Kong so that they can properly optimize for this upcoming trend.

This type of local SEO optimization will require more effort and focus, especially since consumers will no longer browse through the first page of search results. Instead, they will most likely zoom in on the first featured snippet that pops out.

Reshaping the content

Content has always been considered king in the marketing world, especially when it comes to SEO. This little fact hasn’t changed over the years. However, what does change is the way search engines, such as Google, rank the type of content your company produces and publishes regularly.

Moreover, it’s no secret that Google prefers to view content from the consumer point of view, which is why they stress the importance of content quality. It’s predicted that the content that meets Google’s EAT principle will rank higher than the rest.

So what does that actually mean? Google’s EAT principle stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Your content will have to have such traits if you want it to rank well because Google will use this principle to determine if the web pages have useful and quality content that will provide value to consumers.

Long-form content on the rise

It seems that content marketing has drifted away from short and on-point articles to long-form content because of the SEO rankings.

It’s estimated that the content of 3,000 words or more gets around three times more traffic and about 3.5 times more backlinks than content between 900 and 1,200 words. That said, you’ll have to start focusing on long-form content to improve your rankings with the SERPs.

However, the content must still meet certain quality standards so that consumers can have useful and shareable information at their disposal. It’s estimated that this type of content will keep consumers engaged. That would mean that marketers will, once again, have to redesign their approach for content marketing.

With 2021 right at our doors, companies are looking forward to the upcoming trends and predictions regarding SEO. It’s important to get a head start so that you can adjust your strategies accordingly and maintain, if not increase, your rankings in 2021.

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