Although SEO is a highly competitive field, it usually does not have drastic changes, but rather trends slowly gaining momentum, while older SEO methods are losing their relevance.
So what trends have we seen in recent years, and it is essential to follow them as well, and how will we continue to be successful in the SEO process this year as well?
Website security
In 2018 Google took another step to increase network security and began to more prominently mark unsecured sites, especially on pages where the user submits forms to the site. According to Google, every site should be secure and secure areas have a slight advantage in search results. However, even if you assume that your site does not have one form, you probably still need to connect to the content management system.
Today a security certificate is a very accessible and available thing that most storage companies sell among their other services. There are even free security certificates that can be installed if you know how to work with the primary management panel of your storage package.
Mobile-First Index and speed
When it comes to mobile (mobile browsing), the good news is that responsive sites that are compatible with mobile are the standard today, and most sites that are not suitable for mobile are sites that were abandoned a good few years ago. The exceptions are sites with a fundamental difference between their mobile and computer content because they have two separate versions (even if on the same address). If this is the case, creating perfect synchronization between them should be the priority. The reason is that Google’s future index will only scan the mobile version and be based on it, hence its name – Mobile-First Index.
Advertisements
In recent years another essential move by Google has been to increase the punishment of sites that use intrusive advertisements. These can be sites where the top of the page is pushed down below the advertisements or even sites where the advertisements appear in the top layer and need to be closed (according to Google, these cases are more relevant on mobile).
Description tags (Meta Description)
While Meta Title tags are essential for promoting the site on Google, Meta Description tags are not important in terms of their words. They are mainly used to make sure the description the surfer sees below the page title is informative.
Content and trends
It used to be very common to try and identify the most worth promoting keywords and that the competition for them is not in the sky. Today, however, there is an increasing understanding that one does not necessarily have to promote a specific word. Sometimes, it pays more to incorporate similar terms within the content and let Google do 1 + 1. Anyone who still finds this strange should look at the changes that Google is making in the exact match, which is no longer accurate. All this without going into Google’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence that will understand what exactly we mean when we search
It is also important to remember that all the keyword lists we see usually do not indicate trends but averages. If you want to follow directions, you can do so through Google Trends and, of course, social networks.
Internal links and updating old content
The amount of content that goes online every day is dizzying, but that does not mean that it is impossible to take advantage of old content on the site and strengthen it. You can update existing content and link to it from the home page, and in any case, you must link to content within site. Internal links help Google understand the internal structure of the site and link to the page that is most relevant to the surfer’s search.
Schema and microdata
Schema is a technique for marking information that search engines cannot always understand naturally. If you do not yet have a schema marker on the site, you can add it through the Search Console and “Highlight the data” or directly in the code.
In conclusion:
Google will continue to be updated and renewed in 2021. Existing and new trends and improving the quality of the search engine will continue in the same trend to bring the highest quality, fastest and safest content to its surfers. And to the trends it is also producing in 2021.