Top 8 SEO Trends and Insights Every Marketer Needs to Know in 2023

Before naming our 8 SEO trends and insights for 2030, let’s start by saying that Google regularly changes its algorithms. If yesterday your website met all search engine requirements and ranked high in the search results, today, it can be a thing of the past. Because with every update that Google drives, well-known SEO rules can be reversed again.

If you don’t want to experience any nasty surprises regarding your ranking results, you should always keep an eye on the current Google and SEO trends and update your website regularly. We have compiled what will be important in the SEO area in the coming year. Let’s read on the these 8 SEO trends and insights.

SEO Trends and Insights for 2023

1.      Content is still king – content quality is the most important SEO factor

This is one of the most important SEO trends and insights we consider. Basically, and as is well known, content should always be created first for the human user of a website and not for search engines (usually Google). In August 2022, Google underlined the increasing importance of high-quality content with the Helpful Content Update.

The Helpful Content Update is currently only valid in English-speaking countries (mid-November 2022) but will also be used for German-speaking sites over the course of the next few months. Until then, it is best to use the opportunity to revise and optimize your own content with the knowledge gained from the development of English-language pages after this update.

You don’t need to worry if your website already has the right content (helpful to users). The effects of the Helpful Content update on up-to-date and well-maintained pages are unlikely to be negative but rather positive. This is especially true when your good content is paired with satisfying UX and technical integrity. However, if your website is filled with text written primarily for search engines, then you should start revising your content.

The stuffing of texts with keywords, the repetition of individual keywords without added value in the text, and other of these already outdated SEO techniques are increasingly evaluated by Google as negative signals. In addition, because the Helpful Content Update is site-wide, it affects your entire site, not just individual URLs. Bad individual content, therefore, has the potential to lower the overall rating of a website. At the same time, with the Helpful Content Update, pages written by people for people will rank better.

2.      Local SEO

The regional search via Google is becoming more and more important. Anyone who is on the go and is looking for a restaurant nearby, for example, usually grabs their smartphone and uses Google Maps to display restaurants in their vicinity. According to Google, about half of the users go to one of the displayed locations after the search. It is, therefore, worth paying more attention to regional search engine optimization.

3.      Mobile First

The majority of Internet users now use Google search on their cell phones. The popular search engine recognizes this, of course, and filters the search results according to “Mobile First” criteria – i.e., according to pages that are optimized for display on smartphones. When designing a website, “mobile first” means designing the mobile version first and only then adapting the desktop version to it. This trend will continue in 2023.

4.      Usability

Usability refers to the user-friendliness of your site. Is it well structured? Does it offer the user the most unique added value possible? And does it contain the answer to the question the user entered in the Google search?

Short loading times are also crucial for Google’s evaluation of user-friendliness. Long loading times often cause users to bounce; After all, who wants to wait forever for a search query to be answered when they can find the answer on the next possible page by clicking “Back”? The trend is that user-friendliness is becoming more and more important and valued higher.

5.      Web spam update (Google Penguin)

Web spam are techniques that artificially improve one’s own ranking on Google using “biased” means. In order to punish websites that use such unfair means, Google introduced the Penguin Update, which among other things, checks the quality of links and keywords. The best way to stay unaffected by Penguin updates is to use keywords and links wisely, judiciously, and in moderation.

6.      Social signals

Being active on social media can push your website up on Google. Because the search engine recognizes when users comment on or share posts to which your website is linked. It is always worthwhile to be active on social media platforms and also to interact with followers. In addition to maintaining your own profile, you should also like and comment on other pages or posts to attract the attention of potential followers.

7.      Voice search and multimedia

In the future, it will become more and more important to optimize websites for search by voice command. More and more users are dictating their search query instead of laboriously typing it into the search. What does this mean for the search engine optimization of your website? First, adapt the content of your page to potential search queries via voice search – that is, answer the typical W-questions that are often used in voice search: how, what, where, why, and when?

Since voice search, unlike typing, does not just type in individual words but formulates entire questions, you can optimize your texts for the most likely questions and, for example, use the potential question as a heading. The higher you rank on Google, the more likely it is that a language assistant will display your page as a search result.

Be sure to answer the potential questions in “Featured Snippets” as accurately as possible, as these are the snippets that will then be read out to the searcher. In general, multimedia is becoming more and more important: Build more videos or audio, for example, in the form of a podcast, into your site.

8.      Backlinks and backlink quality

We will conclude our list of the 8 SEO trends and insights with the link building strategy. Backlinks (when other websites link to your own) are currently still an extremely important ranking factor from Google’s point of view. As with the content, it can be clearly seen that Google attaches great importance to the quality of the referring domain. With Google developments and page ranking innovations in the background, that makes a lot of sense. Value is placed on high-quality and helpful content as well as technical cleanliness. Websites full of spam, spammy links, and slow loading times are not penalized directly but are overtaken in the rankings by better sites.

The emphasis is also on the fact that backlinks will remain relevant since Google crawlers can discover new pages via links. Therefore, you should never lose sight of the importance of backlinks in the future!

I hope these trends and insights will help you building your marketing plan for 2023. If you need any help with your link building campaign,  reach out to us.