Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been an essential part of the marketing strategy for many businesses over the past decade. It will clearly continue to be a vital process for years to come. To make sure any business continues to benefit from SEO, companies must constantly stay ahead of trends to predict what may be next and how it can help them.
With the ranking trends constantly changing, it’s sometimes tricky to figure out which ones work the best for an individual business. For instance, with many fans online currently searching for March Madness stats, companies want to ensure they use the latest updated trends to direct those people to their sports websites.
While it’s important to look at the current trends, SEO basics are always the same. With more businesses moving online in the last two years, it’s more important than ever to keep up with the most critical trends that can generate traffic and potential customers to any online business. The following are some of the most important SEO trends of 2022:
Multitask United Model
Google has recently been concentrating on using Artificial Intelligence to improve the quality of online search results. It first started with RankBrain being introduced and then with BERT in 2019. The company now has a new Natural Language Processing Model called Multitask United Model (MUM), which is 1,000 times more powerful. It can analyze images, video, and text in 75 languages to give users the most accurate answers to complicated search queries.
MUM is still in the testing stage but will soon become an active part of Google’s search system, and the company should keep everyone informed on its progress and integration, similar to the process in which BERT was rolled out.
IndexNow
IndexNow is a ping protocol allowing search engines to know when there have been updates, additions, or deletions to a URL and its content and enable search engines to reflect these changes in their search results. Google has become the latest of the search engines to use IndexNow.
Developed by Microsoft in October 2021, it is already being supported by the Bing and Yandex search engines. It offers faster indexing that helps search engines limit excess crawl load, which speeds up the search process and saves energy. About 80,000 websites have joined IndexNow so far, and with Google becoming part of the initiative, many more websites will follow shortly.
Passage Indexing
Google is now using Passage Indexing, which is a natural language processor, to index web pages to comprehend the meaning of each individual passage within the page. This means that a specific section or passage within an article will now show up in results for search queries that are relevant, even if the passage is deep inside the main topic.
Currently, the indexing pattern takes into account the relevance of the entire page. However, using Passage Indexing, the search engine will attempt to find relevance within individual passages of the page to find more suitable answers.
User Search Intent
User search intent describes the purpose of a user’s online search. Businesses need to understand what users are searching for and provide specific content that answers their questions. Understanding search intent helps online businesses rank higher by creating content that search engines see as more relevant to the user.
For example, a user will mainly use informational keywords when first becoming familiar with a company online. However, once the user considers making a purchase, those will change into commercial keywords. Then, when the user is ready to make a purchase, the keywords change again to transactional.
Identifying search intent is an important step in any content strategy. The user’s search intent often lets companies know what stage users are in the marketing channel. As a result, companies that use intent optimization correctly will eventually see better engagement with their content, more qualified customers, and a larger overall audience.