The landscape of SEO is always shifting and 2021 is likely to see some advances you should take note of as a website owner. It may no longer be enough to optimise your website in the traditional way, new metrics from Google are coming in such as Core Vitals, and search is changing with the introduction of visual search and voice search. To stay on the working edge of SEO read on.
Core Web Vitals
Google has announced that in May 2021 Core Web Vitals will be a new ranking factor for the search engine algorithm. But what are Core Web Vitals and how can you ready your website to take full advantage of the changes?
Core Web Vitals are metrics that include The Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift, and tracking visitors on website, although these are not vital for your website’s overall ranking, they will help support a higher position and should be optimized for best performance.
Voice Search Optimization
Voice search technology has improved considerably in recent years and is now being used by a significant number of Internet searchers. As a result it’s important to optimize your website for voice search as well as traditional forms of search.
So how do you optimize for voice searches? When searching by voice users tend to search with alternative keywords. For instance a standard keyword search might be “hospital near me,” but with voice search, they might say “what is the nearest hospital near me.”
Search Engine Optimization
You should check the SEO of your website regularly since it’s possible to underperform due to small changes in practice. Ensure your keywords are updated and relevant to Titles and Meta Titles. You might also work your back links to improve performance.
In 2021 backings will be more important than ever before. A backlinks from a strong content source elevates you in the rankings better than most other SEO. Improve your backings by offering good data in the form of stats and industry studies. Bloggers and journalists love this.
Conversion Rate Optimization
So much effort is made with SEO strategy that other areas of website optimisation are sometimes neglected. Landing pages and conversion rate performance is one such area. It refers to the performance of landing pages after customers follow an Ad link.
Until now CRO has been mostly passive resulting in underperforming businesses and websites; with CRO efforts are made to gauge customer’s behaviour on websites and guide their actions towards a desired outcome. It could mean clicking a link or making a purchase.
Visual Search
With over 3 billion people worldwide regularly using mobile devices it was only a matter of time before visual search became a thing. Cameras and convenience have brought visual search to the forefront of SEO strategy and it’s set to take off in 2021.
The best known search engine for it is Goggle Lens which can now recognise over a billion objects and relate them to high quality search results. To optimize for visual search you will need content rich pages, authoritative content, and a mobile friendly website.