Search engine optimization plays a vital role in driving organic traffic to a website and boosting its online presence. To achieve this, SEO is guided by a set of rules which must be followed for your website to rank high in search results.
Keeping in mind that Google is constantly updating its ranking algorithm, content creators, digital marketers, and website owners need to stay updated with the latest developments in the SEO world.
That said, here are the top SEO trends and best practices to increase organic traffic and help you boost your online presence and attract a relevant audience to your site:
1. The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Content Writing Software
The use of AI and content-writing software is on the rise despite efforts to combat auto-generated content. Although using AI content generation tools is not against its guidelines, Google says that pumping out auto-generated content would violate its guidelines.
Many digital marketers are using these tools to help in the content creation process. So, how do you ensure you create high-quality and original content in accordance with Google’s guidelines using these tools?
- Content ideas: Artificial intelligence and content writing software are great at preventing writer’s block since they can help speed up the brainstorming process.
- Content briefs: These tools are a great source of insight to help you better grasp the topic you intend to write on. This includes sub-topics and important keywords to be included in your original content.
- Content outlines: They can also give you a roadmap of how to create original and relevant content.
2. SEO Automation is on the Rise
With the emergence of AI and ML, more and more digital marketers are automating their SEO tactics. There are several SEO automation platforms that are excellent at it.
Although these tools encourage you to do it on your own, it’s best to hire a qualified professional to guide you through or completely take SEO strategies off your plate. After all, SEO is an ongoing process that takes time to produce desirable results.
Examples of SEO automation tools include;
- Site auditing and monitoring tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, etc.
- Keyword research tools such as Moz and Soovle.
- Website graders such as Hubspot Website Grader, Woorank, and Nibler.
3. Google’s “Continuous Scrolling” Feature
With Google introducing the “Continuous Scrolling” feature on desktop for search, it’s high time you changed your perspective on CTR (Click-Through Rate) and SERP ranking positions. Currently, desktop users don’t need to navigate across pages to find relevant information since they can endlessly scroll through multiple pages.
This will change the perspective of many SEO experts on appearing on the first page of search results. as the changes will significantly impact click-through rates. As a result, appearing on page two or three of search results may prove more beneficial in the coming days.
Therefore, ensure your page titles and meta descriptions are well-optimized for your content to appear valuable and engaging to your visitors in order to boost your CTR. However, this is not to suggest that you should give up on trying to appear on the first page of search results.
4. Spying on Competitors
By conducting a competitor analysis, you can gauge their performance so as to get insights into how you can outperform them. This trend is becoming more prominent, especially with the rise of competitive analysis tools such as SpyFu, Majestic, and Google Alerts.
Using these tools, you can compare competitors’ backlinking techniques, content, Domain Authority, etc. In doing this, you will be able to leverage on-page and off-page signals and establish Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) in your SEO campaigns.
5. Focusing on the User and Search Intent
One of the best practices to increase organic traffic is the user experience. Although this isn’t a new trend, it’s important to emphasize the search intent since the behavior and the intent of the searcher are continually changing. Therefore, it would be an important part of your SEO strategy since it helps solve your audience’s problems. Besides, they can learn more from your content.
To achieve this, ensure you increase the speed and stability of your website. You can also listen to the visitors’ requirements and concerns instead of always talking about your product and company. It makes it easier for the audience to find what they seek exactly instead of forcing registrations or pop-ups.
In doing this, you’ll be able to offer personalized and enhanced experiences to them. In fact, this is among the crucial factors search engines take into account while ranking websites; so ensure you don’t overlook this strategy.
6. Customer Analysis, Retaining and the Lifetime Value
An important aspect that would boost your SEO efforts is customer analysis, also known as a buyer persona. Many businesses and websites often fail because they stop analyzing their content, undermining the visitor’s control.
A webmaster’s central role is to provide their audience with exciting yet comprehensive and efficient content.
If you publish material on your website that is not useful enough, it would significantly reduce the chances of ranking higher in search results. In this case, your audience’s type of content would require time, focus, investment, and commitment to prove valuable to them.
Furthermore, many businesses also have poor online customer support service. The customers often wait for hours before they finally get their queries answered, which again reduces the business’s authority in the eyes of its potential customers and search engines like Google.
When creating an SEO strategy, you need to ensure that you create valuable and high-quality content and analyze its performance. In this case, you would look at metrics such as bounce rate, traffic, Page authorities, etc., to keep it optimized throughout.
In doing this, you will not only be enhancing your audience’s experience but also staying ahead of the curve.
7. Page Experience Optimization and Core Web Vitals
Google has introduced Core web vitals as a ranking factor which greatly influences your ranking position in search engine results. Therefore, it’s important to take into account page experience metrics because the technical side of your SEO improves user experience.
There are various tools available online that can be used to obtain this insight and help you use the information to outrank your counterparts. They help establish how quickly page content loads, the stability of your content as it loads in web browsers, and the speed of a browser when responding to user input.
Here are some of the metrics that you need to be looking at:
- Page speed
- Mobile compatibility
- Rendering
- Image optimization
- Security Protocols
In this case, consider what users feel towards the page instead of only focusing on whether your page is logical and available to Google’s crawlers.
So, what factors should you be concerned about?
- How smoothly and promptly a page loads.
- The duration at which the pages become responsive with the user’s interaction.
- How easily your website can be navigated on a mobile phone.
- The security and protection of a website connection when users are browsing.
8. Importance of Mobile SEO
Mobiles have become an integral part of millions of people across the globe. Therefore, web admins and SEO specialists alike need to be concerned about how their sites perform on mobile devices, where most searches are conducted.
The key thing here is the website’s design, which needs to be simple to make it easier for users to navigate. Additionally, the content on your website and other elements need to be personalized based on the user-preference.
9. SEO Scalability
SEO trends and best practices are all about building scalability in your search engine optimization strategy in order to surpass your competitors. When we talk about scalability in the context of SEO, we focus on how you can perform huge-level SEO tasks. This is particularly important for sites with a huge number of pages.
Here are a few tips on how you can achieve this:
- Listing every task, process, and workflow that you perform regularly: It would be best to establish if the steps you execute regularly are capable of being automated or better handled by a tool.
- Setting up an alert system is another essential tactic that would bring a lot of success: You need to create a system that monitors necessary changes to various factors like important keyword rankings, a ranking of flip-flopping URLs for the similar keyword described as URL cannibalization, changes in URL, changes in the content of a page, etc.
- Establishing SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for consistent tasks that are not possible to automate: This saves you a lot of time as you don’t always have to figure out the tasks you need to perform to bolster your SEO strategy. Time is of the essence here. Latest SEO trends and best practices require timely planning and execution.
Final Thought On Best Practices To Increase Organic Traffic
Keep updating yourself with the latest happenings in the SEO world, and be sure to succeed in the business. And since SEO is an ongoing process, only after conducting a website analysis should you weave the above trends and best practices into your strategy.
I hope this guide on the best practices to increase organic traffic had help you out. However, if stuck, just reach out to Outreach Bee for a discussion on how you can leverage the latest SEO trends to boost your organic traffic.
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