10 SEO Trends You Should Follow in 2022
The “trend is your friend” mantra is valid in the world of SEO.
Instead of inventing the wheel yourself, you can optimize for SEO trends 2022 to improve your SERP rankings and achieve your marketing goals.
As a busy marketer, it can get hectic for you to invest a ton of time and effort to find SEO trends. We have discussed the SEO latest trends in 2022 in this blog to make things easier for you – let’s dive in!
1. Introduction of Core Web Vitals
Google has been making changes to make it more quantifiable for webmasters to understand the quality of their webpages and how to improve it.
One of the recent changes in this regard is the Page Experience Update – the update that was published last year. Many experts consider this update as one of the most important algorithm updates published by Google.
Core Web Vitals is the new ranking factor adopted by Google as a new ranking factor. The new Core Web Vitals can be broken down in three metrics:
- Largest Contentful paint
- First Input Delay
- Cumulative Layout Shift
Many SEOs still don’t know how important it is to update their webpages as per the criteria of Core Web Vitals. This new rank factor is one of the most SEO trends 2022 you should look out for!
Optimizing your webpages for Core Web Vitals is trickier than you might think.
From understanding new terms to finding out how you can make your webpages more optimized for Core Web Vitals for upcoming SEO trends 2022, you will have to do a lot of SEO heavy lifting. A simple way to save your time is working with an SEO agency.
2. Internal linking and backlinks
Internal linking and backlinks are one of the good ol’ SEO trends that are still relevant as SEO trends 2022. Improving the internal linking and building backlinks can still have massive results on the SERPs.
Let’s revisit what internal links are and how they are one of the best SEO tips and tricks 2022.
Internal links are an important part of what to know about SEO in 2k22 as these links connect different pages of your website.
Internal links show that you have built a hierarchy of content. Search engine bots and users alike find it easier to scan the links on your website through internal linking.
You can easily control your website’s internal linking as a site owner. The more you’ve worked on internal linking, the easier it will be for search engine bots like Googlebot to explore the content on your website.
Internal links can be divided into four types:
- Contextual links
- Navigational links
- Footer links
- Image links
The placement of proper internal links is still relevant. If you want to know how to use SEO to increase traffic in 2022, you must start your journey with proper internal linking.
Source: alexa.com
Authoritative backlinks are also an important part of latest SEO marketing tips.
In simple terms, backlinks are links pointed by another website to your website. These links show that other websites trust the content you’ve posted and find it reliable for their readers. Earning more backlinks ensures that your website will rank higher on SERPs.
Your website can never have better SEO results if you forget to focus on backlinks. Remember that you only need relevant and high-quality backlinks from relevant websites that operate in your target industry.
Here are some of the strategies you can adopt for getting backlinks:
- Guest posting
- Blogger outreach
- Skyscraper content
- Reciprocal backlinks
- Broken link building
- Local content creation
- Niche edit backlinks
- Image backlinks
Building backlinks in 2022 is a time-consuming task that requires proper experience in the SEO industry. You can hire a link building agency to speed up the process of link building for your website.
3. Focus on User Intent
Content helps people make better decisions, but how do search engines identify the content that will show up against a search query?
The idea of User Intent decides what type of content will be presented on SERPs to a user. With the increasing number of internet users, Google and other leading search engines are trying to make their search results relevant to the user intent with the help of AI tools.
Source: neilpatel.com
When working on search engine optimization 2022, you should be more focused on producing content that meets the user intent instead of focusing only on creating SEO content.
The user intent can be easily broken down into three categories:
- Navigational
- Informational
- Transactional
Simply put, SEO trends 2022 is not about stuffing content with relevant keywords – it’s more about understanding the customer journey and producing content that is created with the marketing funnel in mind.
4. The essence of Quality Content
Content has always been essential to any SEO strategy. In the past, more emphasis has been made on producing “keyword optimized” content – the type of content written to optimize for specific keywords and get some backlinks.
Source: bluecorona.com
This short-term content creation approach will get even more irrelevant in 2022!
Adding tons of blog posts to your website for “keyword optimization” might sound interesting, but it’s useless if the content you publish doesn’t help you in the long run. Google is relying more on AI-based algorithms like MUM, which will crush useless content in 2022.
Source: wordstream.com
Remember that quality content is one of the top SEO ranking factors 2022. Here are seven characteristics of quality content other than “grammar” and “length” you should optimize for:
- Quality content has a better CTR and gets more social shares.
- Quality content is aligned with your marketing goals.
- Quality content performs well in SERPs.
- Quality content converts prospects into customers.
- Quality content is omnichannel.
Avoid boring content, focus on user intent, and create rich content that can be adjusted with SEO trends 2022.
5. Improvements in SERP Localization
Over the years, Google and other search engines have shifted their focus to showing relevant local search results to users.
The increasing number of mobile searchers has ignited this trend. As of 2020, more than half of the web traffic comes from mobile users.
The majority of mobile users want local search results to make buying decisions.
For example, if a customer searches for a “restaurant in Manhattan,” they are probably looking for a restaurant for having lunch. Google shows this user a list of Manhattan restaurants instead of showing an article that talks about the history of restaurant culture in Manhattan.
This example shows us how SERP localization is one of the budding SEO trends 2022.
As a website owner, if you want your website to rank higher in SERPs, you’ll have to create local webpages, publish local content, and follow the search engine optimization trends.
For example, if you sell clothes in different geographical locations but want to rank for “buy clothes Toronto online” keyword specifically, you’ll have to:
- Establish a separate subdomain for Canadian users.
- Set up local pages that target Canadian audiences.
- Focus on local keywords used by Canadian customers.
- Publish local content relevant to Canadian shoppers.
6. Importance of Visual Content
Images play a huge role in improving content visibility on a webpage. Proper images make it easier for readers to understand a topic and provide a step-by-step way to use a product or service.
But when it comes to SEO trends 2022, images mean much more than improving the visibility of content.
As mentioned above, Google relies more on AI to provide richer search results to users. A part of this approach is increased focus on quality images. Google Lens is getting better day after day, and real imagery is being preferred more than stock images.
As a webmaster, you should focus on adding quality images to your content. Try to add real product images of your product instead of using stock images. Make sure you follow the basics of Image SEO to improve your SERP rankings.
7. Adoption of Automation strategies
Some of the tedious SEO tasks are:
- Website audit
- Competitor analysis
- User intent analysis
SEOs have to spend a ton of time generating these reports and getting useful data. SEO automation has shown promising results for SEO managers and has helped them generate quicker SEO reports compared to the past – and this is definitely one of the SEO trends 2022.
Python-based tools are getting famous among SEO managers. These SEO tools allow us to perform tedious SEO tasks that take hours and even weeks in some cases to complete. Proper automation will ensure that more time is spent creating and implementing SEO latest updates 2022.
As an SEO aficionado, you can anticipate the advanced implementation of Machine learning in SEO analysis. Larger datasets will empower SEO managers to automate boring tasks and focus more on marketing strategies that translate into achieving goals.
One of the important SEO strategies 2022 is the usage of automation strategies for SEO quality assurance.
Relying on good old spreadsheets is not the best option for marketers to guess the estimated results of SEO strategies. Automation will help us make learned SEO decisions that bring long-term results.
8. Advancements in AI & ML
AI is more or less a buzzword that we keep on reading a lot. As for Artificial General Intelligence, that’s believed to be as smart as a human; experts estimate that we will have to wait for 2050 to witness the AI singularity. But the delayed arrival of AGI doesn’t mean that the AI tools we have can’t help us.
Coming back to SEO, the current AI tools we have can help us do a better job as marketers, and AI is an SEO trends 2022 you should not ignore.
Source: serpstat.com
NLP is one of the leading frontiers of AI playing a vital role in SEO. As mentioned above, Google is more focused than ever on showing relevant search results to users. The adoption of NLP algorithms is allowing Google to show better search results.
Google’s NLP can understand the sentiment of content and use this data to show better search results.
Machine learning is getting more relevant in SEO best practices 2022 in addition to NLP. In simple terms, Machine learning is the process of feeding data to an algorithm and using the patterns recognized by the algorithm in data to make future predictions.
Statistics show that Machine learning is going to become more relevant this year. With the news of the death of web cookies around the corner, machine learning is the only way SEOs and marketers can use data to draw useful conclusions and develop better marketing strategies that bring reliable results.
9. Localization with Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO has always been important for SEO needs, but in 2022, the surging focus on Mobile SEO shows that it’s one of the SEO trends 2022. Google released new tools to help SEOs optimize pages for mobile users in 2021.
With the introduction of Core Web Vitals and the availability of these tools, it’s easier to understand how Google is focused on improving mobile web experience and why mobile optimization is one of the SEO new trends.
Source: statista.com
Recent statistics point out that the number of mobile internet users will increase. Google keeps this increase in mind and has encouraged SEO experts to create web pages that show up nicely on mobile devices.
Make sure you improve the UX of your websites for mobile users and adopt mobile content marketing strategies so you can stay updated with this latest SEO trend.
10. Emphasis on Sustainability
Sustainability is one of the biggest concerns of the modern world. With the focus on green marketing and changing perspectives of people about environmental issues, sustainability is one of the important SEO trends 2022 that is going to get stronger over the years.
Google Flights has already started showing the carbon footprint of flights.
Source: Google Flights
With the changing trends, Google might also start showing the carbon footprint of websites in the future.
Focusing on sustainability is one of the best SEO optimization tips 2022 that can have a better impact on SEO in the future and can also help you build your brand. Consult your legal team to have a clear sustainability mission and adopt it in your SEO practices.
Conclusion
We have covered ten essential SEO trends 2022 in this article. Make sure you identify how to implement these trends in your SEO strategy to stay ahead of your competitors and get better results from your SEO campaigns – happy marketing!
