18 SEO & Digital Marketing Trends to Watch Out For in 2023
Businesses worldwide are investing in their content marketing strategy, and it’s increasingly clear this is a pivotal medium for global economic growth. Even so, SEO is a rapidly growing and evolving industry, often as unpredictable as Google’s algorithm updates.?
(On that note, read how?Big Leap salvaged Power Finance Texas’ rankings?after said updates.)?
Think of digital marketing as a sea and your company’s content marketing strategy as your raft. Keeping up with the?latest digital marketing trends?is critical to patching holes, upgrading your vessel, and ultimately staying above water.?
Let’s dive into 2023’s top?digital marketing trends?so you can ride the wave instead of getting pulled underneath.?
SEO & Digital Marketing Trends for 2023
While many 2022 trends are still relevant, such as niche marketing and non-linear customer journeys, new ones are emerging. These include passage indexing, the relationship between email marketing and PPC, and more.
Here are?18 digital marketing trends?to be aware of this upcoming year:
#1 Featured Snippets Are Where It’s At
Consumers want quick answers to their search queries and?would?rather not click through the top few results to find what they’re looking for.
Featured snippets?are those bits of information that Google provides directly in the search results in the form of an answer box. Google’s algorithm chooses the most?relevant?content based on the search query and features it at the top of the page. Google also tries to show content that is the most?useful?for readers, meaning the page it ranks has high traffic and a low bounce rate.
The most obvious benefit of capturing a featured snippet is increased web traffic. If your content is selected for the snippet, it will be front and center on the search results page, and?being at the top?of organic search results is nothing to scoff at. But beyond higher organic traffic, a featured snippet will also give your organization higher prestige. After all, Google is essentially saying your content is the most credible source of information, and the searchers will believe it.
In August 2022,?Google rolled out an update?that improved the quality of featured snippets. Google’s systems can now understand consensus using their latest AI innovation, Multitask Unified Model (MUM). This means Google comprehends when multiple high-quality sources agree on the same fact.?
The best way to gun for the featured snippet is to have your content answer the search query immediately. If you’re hoping to get a featured snippet for the key phrase “how do refrigerators work?” then you better title your article “How Do Refrigerators Work?” and dive directly into a simple summary of the answer in the first sentence. Then you can use the rest of the article to hash out the details.
Discover?how Big Leap used featured snippets?to raise rankings for McCoy’s.?
#2 Writing Based on Search Intent
In Google’s early days, content writers had to include very specific keywords or phrases to rank high on results pages. They were so specific that these phrases?often?didn’t make?much?sense in the context of the article. Fortunately, Google’s algorithms?continue to improve, and rankability is much more focused on search intent.
Search intent is the motive behind a user’s search query. Do they want to buy something? Do they want to read an informative article? Do they want to compare products before making a purchase? Are they looking for food near their geographic vicinity?
So when writing with keywords and phrases, you have to start thinking about the intent behind them. Why would someone be asking this? And how would they be asking it? Are they typing a common phrase into the search bar?or asking?a conversational question via voice assistant? These will inform you of what to write about.
#3 Speedy Load Times
People don’t like to wait for a website to load. In fact,?25% of visitors?would abandon a website if it takes more than four seconds to load.
Load time isn’t just crucial for consumers; speed is a ranking factor. If it takes web crawlers a long time to reach your webpage, they won’t stick around for long. Plus, an increased load time of one to five seconds makes the likelihood of a bounce go up by 90%.?
To improve your load times, reduce your image sizes,?remove?unnecessary redirects, and enable compression to start.?Optimizing for mobile users?is just as important. In 2021, over?54% of all web traffic?came from mobile users.?Ensure?your web host has a mobile optimization option to appease all that web traffic.?
#4 Think EAT
You’ve likely heard how important “high-quality content” is for improving your online relationship with readers, but what does that content look like? A popular and effective acronym that floats around the marketing bubble is “EAT,” meaning expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Expertise?means explaining your higher knowledge and skill on a particular topic to engage your readers. To do that, find out what your audience wants through searcher intent and then over-deliver.
Authority?comes when people start associating a topic or product with your brand. Getting mentioned or linked to in other blogs indicates to Google that you know what you’re talking about, making you much more likely to rank higher. Even a Wikipedia page for your brand can work wonders for developing authority.
Trustworthiness?means you are what you say you are. That means you are truly an authoritative expert?to whom readers come?for accurate information.?Positive?online reviews, a secure website domain, terms and conditions pages, and refund and return policies can instill this trust in your customers.
#5 Frequent, Long Content Ranks Higher
This is a two-parter: you need to write content more frequently, and you also need to write longer content to optimize your ranking chances.
The more content you write, the more keywords and questions you can answer. Since you only want to focus on one primary keyword and a handful of secondaries per article or webpage, you need to write multiple pages for a broad keyword portfolio.
Google also prefers content that is rich with information. The first ten results typically reach over 2,000 words each, but it’s not because Google checks the word count. Long-form content offers more opportunities for backlinks and keyword variations and keeps readers on your page—meaning longer user sessions.
But even though Google likes brands that produce a lot of long content, you can’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Be sure all of your articles follow the EAT principles.
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#6 Local SEO Is in the Front Seat
Local SEO took a?back seat?in 2020, mainly because COVID-19 kept everyone indoors. But this?change wasn’t permanent! Even in 2020,?46% of all Google searches?had local intent.?
If you prioritize local SEO, you can gain a competitive edge over your local competition. Besides, if you really want to stick around, you need to use local SEO to show consumers that you exist.
Read?how Big Leap used location-focused tactics to improve rankings?for a client in the rehab and recovery space. You can also learn?how Big Leap optimized and created localized content?for Visionworks.
#7 To Win Social Media, Use Niche Marketing?
Social media marketing is oversaturated. Every brand?tries?to reach its audience(s) with the “right” message. But, not every company?can?make its desired impact.
The key to social media marketing in 2021 is to identify where your customers are, create niche content that they are most likely to engage with, and get them to convert. This strategy has the potential to be highly profitable, but only after performing some extensive experimentation on these channels.
Figure out which social media channel is the most popular with your audience. Experiment with different types of content to find out what?garners the most engagement. And above all else, try to instill trust and authenticity in your brand image through your social media content.
#8 Marketing Automation Is Very Effective
Marketing automation is nothing new. For years, automation tools have helped marketers to target the right customers, simplify time-consuming tasks, and maximize overall efficiency for marketing campaigns.
So why is it so important to start on marketing automation??HubSpot has found that email automation campaigns are?71% effective.?
#9 Voice Search Has to be Personalized
Voice devices like Alexa and Siri made it so people can ask a question and get a handful of useful answers. It’s changed?how?marketers approach keywords, opting for full questions and phrases rather than a few choice words. But voice search is changing the way we market our products, too.
Voice search now works to improve the overall customer experience. This can include personalized messaging, which creates a more natural interaction between customers and brands. So when a customer asks about getting new shoes, their device can show them deals and styles related to their past purchase information, geographic location, and intent.
#10 Take Your Customers on a Non-Linear Customer Journey
In the early days of marketing, customers would see an ad and either go to the store to buy the featured product or order it from a catalog. Those days are long gone. Now customers are?researching, comparing one brand’s offer to another, and reading online reviews. It’s a long, thorough process.
Brands have to constantly re-grab a customer’s attention. That’s why strategies like remarketing and cross-device targeting have become so popular. These?strategies are what?make people think Google or Facebook is reading their minds.
#11 Customers Want a Memorable Experience
If you see two ice cream shops next to each other, one with flashy and colorful decor and the other with a simple design, chances are more customers will go for the flashy shop. It’s not because their ice cream is better, it’s because they’re offering something more: an experience.
Consumers don’t just want products anymore—they want a memorable experience to associate with their purchase. Whether they get that experience from the?brick-and-mortar?store, the unboxing process, or the product itself is up to you.
#12 Strong, Resilient Brands
All of these previous tips help your brand to get noticed, but what if your brand sucks? You’d be drawing attention to something that most may not want to associate with at all.
Start with?reputation management?and new social media marketing strategies if you need to fix a bad brand.?These can give your brand its strength back, help leads understand your values, and shows how your product can help them.
#13 Video Marketing Is No Longer Optional
Perhaps a top marketing trend today (and likely?one?for the next decade) is video marketing—and we don’t just mean recording a video and throwing it up on YouTube. Video marketing includes:
Video marketing is no longer an option but a necessity because, as discussed in?Biteable’s 2021 report, 74% of marketers say video has a better ROI than static imagery. And 68% say it has a better ROI than Google Ads.?
Where does this high ROI come from??Of those polled, 53%?say it’s from the fact that videos raise awareness, 49% say video engages their audiences, and 52% say video builds trust with potential customers.
TikTok is the new kid on the block when it comes to video marketing. Since it was founded in 2016, this platform has grown to more than?one billion active users.?People’s engagement with TikTok continues to grow and thrive with no signs of slowing down. Brands can extend their reach and target a new demographic through video marketing on this innovative platform.
In 2023, companies should expand beyond Facebook and YouTube by including TikTok and Instagram in their social media channels.
#14 Core Web Vitals Will Beat the Competition
Page experience, also called UX, is a new member of Google’s ranking factor family. The announcement said, “the?experience of interacting with a web page?beyond its pure information value” will now be considered in rankings.?Google completed the global rollout of this factor in August 2021, meaning that 2022 was when this new trend really got off the ground.