SEO Trends for 2022

2020 and 2021 have been a wild ride in the digital marketing sector. From unpredictability and uncertainty rises the innovation and adaptability of the internet as more brands than ever before ferociously compete online for visibility.

But how exactly do companies gain that visibility online? There are many threads woven into the complex tapestry of digital marketing, however, none is more begrudgingly respected than that of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Driven by both speculation and more importantly, data, SEO is the process of improving your website, to increase your visibility when people search for products or services related to your business. 

Of course, the above definition doesn’t even scratch the surface of what is encompassed within a “good” SEO strategy and with the ever volatile search landscape (here’s looking at you, Google algorithm updates), it’s important to keep yourselves on top of the latest SEO trends.

So, what are the latest SEO Trends for 2022? Check out our top 5 below:

1. Core Web Vitals
2. Quality of Content
3. Localisation of SERPs
4. Images and Visuals
5. IndexNow

Core web vitals

First on our list of SEO Trends for 2022 is Core Web Vitals. This beast of a topic could be its own post! Core Web Vitals are a set of standardized metrics that webmasters can use in order to understand how users experience a web page.There are 3 main factors to consider: 

1. Loading performance (how fast does stuff appear on the screen?) 
2. Responsiveness (how fast does the page react to user input?) 
3. Visual Stability (does stuff move around on the screen while loading?) 

Making sure your website meets the recommended metrics by Google can help your website’s performance in Search Engine Results Pages. The above 3 factors have key measurable metrics: LCP, FID and CLS.

• Loading performance = LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) – This measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content to appear on the screen. This could be an image or a block of text etc.
• Responsiveness = FID (First Input Delay) – This measures how long it takes for the site to react to the first interaction. This could be a tap on a button etc.
• Visual Stability = CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) – This measures the visual stability of your site. For example,  do elements move around on the screen while it is loading? How often does it happen?

So what does this mean for SEO’s?

As Core Web Vitals has previously been confirmed as a ranking factor, this is certainly a top trend to jump on, making sure your page experience is top notch for all of your users. Although this trend may require developer assistance, it’s bound to have a tangible impact.

PHA TOP TIP: Utilise tools like Search Console and Page Speed Insights to find out which pages need your help from a Core Web Vitals perspective.

Quality of content

Remember RankBrain and BERT? Well you need to make sure you’re getting familiar with its more robust and sophisticated relation – Multitask United Model (or MUM for short).  This is Google’s new Natural Language Processing Model, with an aim to understand sentiment, context, entities and intent. Google has said that MUM is not just more powerful and more efficient than its predecessors, but it stands out in three main categories as it is:

1. Multimodal and handles diverse media types,
2. It handles more complex search queries,
3. and, it overcomes language barriers.

So what does this mean for SEO’s?

With the latest SEO trends 2022, There’s a variety of things to consider with the roll out of MUM:

• There may be new types of search results that help to answer a users specific question more clearly and precisely
• 0 click result search may be much more common
• Structured data will become more crucial – As Google is taking all this data from the Knowledge Graph, we need to make sure structured data is in place which then feeds into this data source
• Longform content is going to become more powerful
• Keyword Stuffing is dead – Due to Natural Language Processing power, we think focusing on natural content will be the way forward – make it readable for both users and search engines alike

Localisation of SERPs

Next up on our list of SEO Trends 2022 is the localisation of SERPs. Over the past few months we have seen country-specific content and local businesses benefit from search results rather than the global entities. This is Google wanting to showcase results that are beneficial to a user taking their location into account.

As an example, If I search for “plumber near me” in London, my results would be much different to someone searching in the USA. Even depending on which city I search within the UK, my results will differ and tailor to that location!

So what does this mean for SEO’s?

That’s why it’s more important now than ever to make sure you’re generating high quality reviews on not just Google My Business, but other reviewing platforms that are highly trusted by users (Reviews.io, Trustpilot etc). Not only this, but focus on wikis, GMB completion, site markup, and knowledge panels. In addition, for sites that are not just targeting one country, it will be increasingly necessary to create local-focused content.

Images and visuals

Did you know our collective attention spans are narrowing? Some believe that we have as little as 8 seconds before our mind wanders, which is why it’s so important to grab a user’s attention. 

Quickly, can you tell me what the first trend was in our list? – No cheating now! I didn’t think so…

When looking at SEO trends for 2022, images and visuals should definitely be making your top 5. This is an aspect of which Google is well aware and those who can cast their mind back to Search On 2021 will remember their announcement to make SERPs more visually browseable and intuitive. This is something we have already seen come into play with product imagery being pulled out onto the SERP on mobile.

So what does this mean for SEO’s?

Imagery and video are certainly better ways to grab a users attention which is why we should be leveraging good-quality imagery – however be warned! Don’t fall into the trap of utilising stock imagery as younger users are incredibly savvy when it comes to knowing what’s staged and what’s not. In addition, make sure your looking at optimising your imagery from file size, to structured data!

IndexNow

This is definitely a very exciting update coming our way , one that has content creators and SEO’s jumping out their seats in excitement. Next up on our SEO trends for 2022 is IndexNow. For those unaware, IndexNow is an open-source engine which is currently used by Search Engines such as Bing and Yandex, which allows them to discover new content a whole lot faster. 

To put this into perspective, when a website integrated with IndexNow API updates content, deletes a post, or publishes something brand new, the API pushes this information to search engines so they become aware.

Due to this faster version of indexing, Search Engines will be able to avoid excessive crawl load and will make the entire process from start to finish, a lot more energy efficient.

So what does this mean for SEO’s?

Instead of waiting for crawlers to come to us and figure out there’s been an update, we can now go to them and submit a list of URLs where changes have been implemented on a massive scale (should we so wish).

With the above in mind, 2022 is most certainly going to an exciting time for SEO. Don’t forget all your basic principles and best practices when it comes to content and technical SEO and  definitely keep your ear to the ground when those new algorithm updates occur!

If your mind is boggling just a little from what we’ve spoken about above, fear not, The PHA Group have a team of highly skilled SEO’s who can help. To speak with one of our team click here or give us a call on 0118 324 9000.