21 SEO Tips, Tactics, and Trends for Website Content in 2021
Will Google reverse the natural search landscape in 2021? I doubt it. While change is inevitable, you can survive these changes or gain an advantage over others with a little vigilance. But don’t expect any help from the relentless downward trend of search engine results pages. Like any good marketer, Google is attentive to the needs of its audience and searchers. This search engine, which tends to produce relevant results, is constantly improving its technology. It has improved itself and relies on artificial intelligence to support results. For example, Google’s focus on natural language processing, which includes both search intent and content. Fortunately, marketers are still seeing traffic from visitors to Google and other major search engines. According to BrightEdge data, organic search accounted for 53 percent of website traffic in 2019. Don’t expect that number to change much from 2019. To help you with your SEO efforts in the year ahead, here are 21 tips and reminders. Use the tactics and insights that align with your goals. Before we dive into the full list of recommendations, keep in mind that after the search formula is readjusted, the ranking factors for sites will eventually align 100 percent of the time. The emergence of a new one means a very small change in the weight of another variable, such as the title or backlink.
1. Get ready for more hype around core web essentials
In May, Google is expected to combine its core site with other mobile-friendly websites, safe search, blocker algorithms, and HTTP security. For marketers, this shows that Google cares about how users visit your website. The core requirements include website development standards that assess users’ experience of your site (including speed, consistency, and overall responsiveness). You can use Google Search Console and related extensions to understand how Google is evaluating your site.
Google says that the factors that influence page rankings “depend on hundreds of signals that Google considers when generating search results.”
Translation: You won’t know the impact of your page experience on your site. But it could have a positive or negative impact on your rankings from hundreds of signals.
According to Google’s search engine, “Good content is the most important factor in ranking pages, although the page experience is also important. Great page experience is no substitute for great content.” Remember, Google is what people see on their mobile devices (i.e., mobile-first index). Poor user experience is bad for SEO. Things like relevance, prominent use of keywords in page titles, headings, backlinks, and more are essential to ranking a page, even if it’s mobile-first indexed.
Test your site using the Mobile Usability Test.
Addressing your site’s essentials in 2021 should be a priority.
2. Enjoy the benefits of snippets
In October, Google announced that it would index sections (snippets) within a page in addition to indexing pages.
Consider a fifteen-paragraph website. Before these changes, the fourteenth paragraph didn’t matter much to Google. However, this paragraph was at the bottom of the page and was a small part of the page’s content. Perhaps this paragraph was the main point of that content or the main answer to the search query.
Now Google says it can identify the useful part that will make a page rank higher. Here’s how Google describes it:
“By better understanding the relationship between specific variables, the information you need can be found like a needle in a haystack. With the global deployment of this technology, searchability will improve by 7% across all languages.”
3. Pay attention to topic subheadings
Google expects to produce better results for specific topics.
As Google explains in the same announcement: “If you search for ‘home gym equipment,’ we can now understand relevant subcategories like budget, equipment, top picks, or small space ideas and generate a wider range of content for you on the search results page.”
My sense is that it will be hard to rank for general search terms and easier to rank for specific search terms.
Your site needs to use specific keyword phrases to succeed in thematic subcategories. With recent advances in machine learning and AI, there’s no need to repeat this phrase throughout your site’s overall content. Incorporate it into your content and then support it with similar phrases.
Maybe your keyword is “winter and cold weather running gear.” Work the title into your page title, header content, etc. But use relevant phrases, including the image title and phrases like “coat” and “running in the rain” in the text.
4. Get featured snippets
If you have a featured snippet, you have an advantage over other websites and it’s good for your company to stand out. Yes, some searchers won’t click when the snippet you’re showing answers their questions, but you’ll benefit from every click that’s relevant to you.
A variety of content types are suitable for featured snippets, including paragraphs, tables, lists, charts, and more.
With over 110 million keywords in its database, Ahrefs released detailed findings from its 2020 Featured Research Collection. One interesting finding is that 12.3% of searches return search engine results pages with a featured snippet. This means there are plenty of opportunities to get a spot on the same terms.
5. Protect your turf
If you have a page that ranks high, protect it. Track its performance, but don’t manipulate it to get higher rankings or be greedy.
What’s the best way to protect it? Don’t change anything on those pages. If you have to change a few words or add additional text for non-SEO purposes, that’s fine. But I try not to change the title of the page content and leave it alone. And of course, don’t delete the page.
If you take the risk and change other SEO-related factors, see how those changes affect your page’s ranking.
6. Create new content with SEO in mind.
New content, whether it’s a page or a topic, gives you a fresh chance to get things right. When creating a new page, pay close attention to things like page titles, page content titles, subheadings, image file names, etc.
Choose niche keywords of three or more words that give you the opportunity to search for targeted content. Because in this case, you will increase the chances of achieving content marketing goals such as website visits, brand introductions, advertising and sales.
Let’s be realistic. Not all content on your website is long and will not be. If your articles have not already conveyed your message, do not put them on the site because visitors will no longer read them.
Write according to the short or long terms. One clear example in this regard is question and answer pages. Some of these pages are short and simply answer basic questions such as shipping standards. Balance short content with content that can explain a lot about the product (product usage, key benefits, features, and a wide range of insights related to the product). This mix of short and long content helps your audience and search engines.
8. Check your website analytics settings
I often come across websites that are not set up properly. Are the goals defined? Is the free site visit designed to drive sales? Using Google’s tag management features, you will understand the number of PDF downloads, the number of free site visits, and the number of users who clicked on links like info@ and sales@.
9. Take the time to find out if Google has found your page or not.
Google Search Console shows whether Google has found your page or not. If Google can’t reach your page, re-adjust your internal linking strategy. You need to find ways to link to the page or popular sections of it.
10. Don’t freeze (stay static)
Often marketers create a lot of information on their page. Optimize the information and never return to it. If you can’t do this for all pages, at least take the time to optimize the popular pages and the pages that are close to Google’s ranking on the main results page.
Here’s an example of this. ApplicantStack has a website with a very good graphic design, but its products page doesn’t rank well according to SEO analytics tools. Instead of reflecting the needs of customers, which increases free traffic to the site, the page is stuck on content and page title.
11. Refine your page titles
As mentioned in the ApplicantStack article, one of the most important things to do for search engine optimization is to refine your titles.
Website pages can rank better by creating different page titles (for example, hyphens, vertical lines, or no separators).
• Drip – Coffee Makers – Coffee & Espresso – Home Depot
• Coffee Makers | Drip | Home Depot
• Buy Coffee Makers at Home Depot
The key is to tweak your titles based on ranking data, keyword relevance, and search volume over time, and then test your changes. Only testing will tell you what works best. Some marketers prefer to avoid anything that breaks up keyword phrases. And that’s unfortunate because they could be losing out on better page rankings.
For example, a coffee maker, a team could try these different combinations of titles:
• Coffee Makers (Week 1)
• Buying a Coffee Maker (Week 2)
• Buying Coffee Makers at Home Depot (Week 3)
• Coffee Makers at Home Depot (Week 4)
• Drip Coffee Makers at Home Depot (Week 5)
12. Update Page Content Titles
You can also easily adjust your page content titles to get the most out of them. For example, if you had to write about shipping, you might use this blog page title: Order Management and Order Processing: Why They’re So Important to Business?
Let’s assume that the person who is responsible for determining the content is also involved in SEO success. Are the words “why,” “they,” “so,” and “important” crucial to SEO? And should the word “order” be repeated twice in the title?
You can’t just summarize this title and say Order Management. The subject line is not a fun title. Different approaches should be tested with some of these additional words.
• Order Management: Is it important for business?
• Is Order Management important for business?
• Order Management and Processing: Yes, they are important for business
13. Remember that quality is no guarantee of SEO success
Google has been promoting the importance of quality content on websites for years. Marketers have championed quality as a factor in achieving high rankings. However, it’s also easy to find websites with high-quality content that don’t rank well, due to poor keyword placement, page titles, headers, backlinks, and more.
14. Find your breakeven point
Be realistic about your keyword selection. If your breakeven point shows the top ten keywords that are searched between 10 and 100 times, does it make sense to look for keywords that are searched 5,000 times per month?
Your breakeven point in relation to your website’s SEO goals is actually the correlation between your website’s ranking and its monthly search volume. Consider this example from Manpower.
15. Focus on strategic content changes
Sometimes small changes to the page can have big results. I covered Betty Crocker’s chicken recipe in a previous article, and this lesson continues. Here’s an example based on Betty Crocker’s pancake recipe. Despite having a lot of recipes, this company’s site misses opportunities to boost its search rankings. A small change can improve its strategic rankings.
16. Focus on page load speed
I believe page load speed is a nominal ranking factor (many corporate websites rank well even if they don’t load quickly). But this is a technical and empirical issue that you need to address. Use a tool like GTMetrics or PageSpeed Insights to understand your speed.
17. Track Backlinks
The quality and quantity of backlinks to your site directly affects your search engine rankings. In 2020, about 95% of all website pages had no backlinks from other pages. You can track and attract backlinks through existing relationships and great content (such as a video collection, original research, articles, and helpful lists).
18. Prefer short and clean URLs
URLs still make a small difference to search engine rankings. That’s why you should shorten them. Make sure to choose the words that carry the most weight. Don’t reduce the weight of your URL by loading 12 pages of your title. Users will click on short URLs on results pages.
19. Optimize images, file names, and image alt text
You can help your website pages load faster by using small image files. A simple image compression tool is Optimum. Make sure to include keywords in the file name and supplement them with alt text. For example, include an image file called “The-induction-treating.jpg” with an alt text like “Heat treatment is used in automobiles, firearms, and many other industries.”
20. Learn from internal search
You can easily get keyword and SEO ideas by reviewing the search terms people are using on your website. First, make sure you have site search tracking enabled in Google Analytics. If set up correctly, it should look like this:
21. Add text to videos
Videos can be useful and help with site engagement. But audio and visual content isn’t the only way to optimize directly. Why not boost the SEO potential of a page with copy? Additional text can be generated with services such as SpeechPad.