When it comes to affordable, sustainable marketing strategies that help you drive traffic, generate leads and drive sales, there is nothing better than search engine optimization. About 70% of marketers consider SEO to be more effective than PPC. Although SEO is constantly changing, Google frequently updates its algorithm and ranking factors. Currently, Google uses more than 200 factors to rank websites.

Many new trends have emerged in the SEO space. Knowing these trends and applying them to your SEO strategy will help you hold your competitors back and rank higher on the SERPs. Here are the top five trends SEO trends by SEO agency Melbourne that will rock 2022.

1. AI will revolutionize SEO 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing every industry from BFSI to healthcare, and SEO is no different. Recent marketing and AI survey reports show that marketers are ready to use AI:

  • Understand customer behaviour
  • Develop a better content strategy
  • Increase functional productivity

This gave birth to a new concept – AI SEO. With the advancement of artificial intelligence, the search engine executives will automate their tasks and analyse their website performance without any hassle.

The AI-enabled SEO offered by SEO agency Melbourne is faster, more precise and more accurate. It has three focus areas:

  • Understand the idea behind a user search query
  • Determine the purpose of the query
  • To achieve the most consistent results to ensure customer satisfaction.

2. Voice will rule the search engine.

Voice search was introduced by Siri and Cortana and smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home have taken it to the next level. In addition, more than 50% of households are expected to have smart speakers by 2022. It is a truth tath more than 30% of the browsing experience are with done with connected devices in 2020.

Thus, these figures show that the voice search will rule 2022 and beyond that, so you must need to change your SEO strategy accordingly.

You must need to optimize your content for voice search. When people speak up to find something, they say long phrases. Therefore, targeting long, naturally phonetic phrases is ideal for voice search optimization.

3. Must be mobile friendly

Mobile already surpassed desktop as 55% of all Internet traffic in 2020 came from mobile; 42% came from the desktop. Mobile Internet users are on the rise, making it necessary for marketers to ensure mobile friendships.

Google also announced Mobile-First Indexing in 2018. The search engine giant is using the mobile version of the website for indexing purposes. In addition, mobile-first indexing is applied by default to websites published after July 1, 2019.

Therefore, mobile friendliness will be the main focus area for marketers in the coming years. Here’s how you can optimize your website for mobile devices:

  • Customize the design of your website with all screen sizes.
  • Prefer fast loading speed.
  • Make the CTA buttons bigger and easier to click.
  • Include less text and use larger font sizes to improve readability.
  • Avoid using too many scenes.

4. Video will rank better than text.

Consumer interest in visual content has grown due to the recent rise of video platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Reels and Facebook Watch.

The inclusion of videos on your website has a direct impact on SEO. Video content is 50 times more likely to receive high rankings and traffic than text content. This has encouraged many brands to incorporate video into their SEO and marketing strategies. In the future, more marketers will take advantage of video marketing to drive traffic and engagement.

5. The growing importance of EAT theory

Google’s May 2018 Medic Update clarifies that Google will prioritize high-quality and reliable content on optimized web pages. Traditional SEO practices by SEO agency Melbourne are still in effect, but the needle has changed significantly towards quality and reliability. Medic Update introduces Google’s EAT principle for ranking web pages. This means:

  • Speciality
  • Jurisdiction
  • Reliability

Therefore, official websites publishing trusted content written and reviewed by experts will rank high. This principle applies to all websites but mainly focuses on YMYL (Your Money Your Life) sites. These include websites in healthcare, law, finance, education and other areas that can make life-changing decisions.