5 SEO Trends to Look Out For Next Year

At the start of each year, advertisers ask the same question: “Is SEO still relevant for me?”

As the world limps back to life after the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged economies and continents, is SEO still the thing to invest in, especially when the resources are tight?

The short answer is yes.

As the 2008 financial crunch had shown us, businesses that ramped up their marketing spend in the middle of the crisis recovered quicker. Meanwhile, more conservative companies had a rockier restart.

However, it does not mean that you should hastily spend your money. It is why you should be on the lookout for SEO trends, which should help shape your decision.

Here are the?SEO trends?you can anticipate for next year:

01. Remember the Acronyms

You should be familiar with these two terms, which impact your SEO campaign:

I. BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations Transformers

II. NLP stands for Natural Language Processing

While they are not a new technology, you need to know that their machine-learning capability would drastically change the way Google will appreciate the search query.

With NLP, for instance, Google can better understand the context and nuance of the language used in the query. AI will continue to change the SEO landscape as the industry will reach an estimated $120 billion by 2025. With machine learning, you can ensure more accurate results in your analytics, which will enable you to boost the success of your SEO campaign.

02. Corporate Identity Becomes More Relevant

Now, more than ever, you need to know who you are because Google would be asking the same question when indexing websites. You need to tick all the right boxes on the panels on Google’s Knowledge Graph, so you show up when people search for people, organizations, places, etc.

With the Knowledge Panel, you essentially have a billboard that lists the vital information regarding your company. More importantly, it also boosts your credentials, as far as Google is concerned.

You should start thinking of your brand as an entity. Any marketing effort you employ going forward should be to persuade Google and your customers about who you are.

03. The Continued Dominance of Mobile

The trend is not new since, for many years now, people have been accessing the Internet using their mobile devices. Mobile e-commerce has shown no signs of slowing down from 2020 through 2024.

Your SEO campaign should take into account mobile Internet. You start with your website and make sure that it is optimized for smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

Since 9 in 10 of your target audience are using their mobile gadgets to access your website, you must enhance the customer experience rather than make it difficult for them.

04. Lifetime Value Vs. Short-term Gains

Your SEO should be a tool to meet your objective. But your job has just started once you funneled traffic to your company and created leads. Your ultimate goal should be to enhance the client experience to create a customer lifetime value.

Analytics will play a larger role in getting a profile of your target customers—who they are, what they do when they are online or offline, what they like, the links they click, the purchases they make, and the way they interact with your website. The profile will be material to create a unique experience tailored to each need. When you customize the experience, you make the customer feel important, and they are more likely to reward you with loyalty.

05. Search Intent

Search engines have automated almost all aspects of Pay Per Click, and, along with machine learning, they managed to unpack user intent. Again, search intent is not a new concept. But the advertisers who can unlock the true nature of search will have a higher chance of maximizing their marketing campaign. Search engines continue to tweak their algorithms to match user intent.

Fortunately, Google is already trying to show you the way. Its machine learning technology will recommend results. But you need to leverage best practices to gain an edge over your competition. One method to do this is to analyze your search engine results pages and parse data so that your keywords best address user intent.

Read about SEO trends for next year in detail.