Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is constantly changing. Although the SEO wheel will not be reinvented in 2022, there are still some trends to consider in order to be able to keep up with your own website. Here are six SEO trends to look out for in 2022.
The goal of Google is to give users the best possible results on their search queries. To achieve this, the search engine giant continues to develop, forcing website owners to constantly adapt their strategies. We have summarized six important trends for you here.
SEO Trend # 1: Google Core Web Vitals will stay with us
One of the SEO trends of summer 2021 was one thing above all: Google updates in the marathon! What was announced at the beginning of the year with the Core Web Vitals has kept SEOs in suspense for the whole of last year. Google mixed up the SERPs, there was a correction, another update, and another.
The result: The page experience is an important ranking factor and will continue to accompany us in 2022. The core web vitals are at the center of all of this.
The Core Web Vitals are key figures for the metrics Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The Largest Contentful Paint metric indicates the loading time of the main content in milliseconds, which is in the user’s field of vision.
First Input Delay (FID): The input delay measures the time in milliseconds until the first possible interaction of the user: inside with the page (e.g. clicking on a link or entering data in a form).
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): The Cumulative Layout Shift specifies a value for changes to the layout of the visible page content during the loading process. This value takes into account whether and to what extent the content changes after the page has been loaded.
Together with other well-known indicators for the page experience such as the optimization for mobile, the Core Web Vitals form the foundation of technical SEO.
Are your web vitals still not optimal? Then it is worthwhile to pay attention to this SEO trend in 2022 with time and money.
SEO Trend # 2: User Experience
For Google, the user experience is an important component in evaluating a website. This was shown not least by the Core Web Vitals just mentioned in 2021. User signals that visitors to a website send through their behavior are very relevant metrics for search engines.
3 user signals that you should keep an eye on:
- Time on page: The time that the user spends on a page should always be as long as possible. Always look at it in relation to the function and length of the content of the page.
- Bounce rate: The bounce rate indicates in percent how many visitors left the page without further interaction. The higher the bounce rate, the more likely the site did not meet user expectations.
- CTR: The click-through rate (clicks on a search result/impressions of a search result * 100) is a clear signal of how relevant and interesting a search result is for users. If the CTR is low, you should revise the meta title and meta description.
For search engines, the return to SERP rate is also relevant, with which they conclude the satisfaction of the search results. Search engines can recognize whether users change the original search after returning to the search results and search for further hits in the SERPs.
Measures that result from this: As before, the content must keep an eye on the needs of the users and treat them as holistically as possible. B
ut the topic of content UX is also relevant. If you design your website and your articles as user-friendly as possible and if you integrate boxes, bullets, checklists, or other elements to loosen up the content, the chances of strong user signals are extremely good.
SEO Trend # 3: Video Content
Video content is an SEO trend for the year 2022 both on your own website and on YouTube, with which you can generate added value for users and achieve top rankings.
Videos also contribute to the page experience, as users have the option of viewing long texts as well as videos. If companies do not solve the need of (potential) customers for video information, others will. Millions of unboxing, tutorial, or review videos on Youtube are proof of this.
On their own website as well as on their own YouTube channel, companies can publish videos that address visitors’ problems and questions. In most tools, you can not only see the search volume from Google but also from YouTube. This way you can see for which topics users are looking for videos.
By the way: The video platform YouTube is the most visible website on Google – ahead of Facebook and Wikipedia. In addition, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world in terms of user numbers and search queries.
The creation of videos to satisfy the information needs of customers is not only worthwhile for your own website, but also for high visibility on the largest video platform.
Keyword optimization doesn’t play a role here? Not even close! Especially in the video’s metadata, you should let Google understand what the video is about.
But you mustn’t ignore the spoken word either. Also, bring your focus keyword on the sound level to give the search engine an understanding of who the content is relevant for. What sounds amazing at first is called MUM and is another SEO trend 2022.
SEO Trend # 4: Say hello to MUM
In the summer of 2021, Google announced that it would incorporate AI even more into the algorithm. What has been known as BERT since 2019 and should better understand the relationship between text and search intentions is now coming onto the market with MUM.
MUM stands for Multitask United Model and no longer includes text alone, but content as a whole.
With this, Google is fulfilling its claim to want to “understand” content apart from the text. With this AI approach, the focus is on the content of images, videos, and audio, which the algorithm should also learn to understand.
It’s not just about making visual and audio content findable, Google also wants to understand more complex search queries and output suitable pages.
SEO Trend # 5: Voice Search
The topic of voice search has long been known in the area of search engine optimization, but it has not yet fully come into focus. High time to change that in 2022? Definitely!
In 2020 alone, sales in this market rose by 20%, a trend that not only emerged in 2021, but in 2022, forecasts even speak of 40% more people using this technology.
The FAQs on your page could be a good start to getting started with voice search. Formulate the questions as your audience asks them, taking into account that spoken search queries can also be longer than typed ones.
SEO Trend #6: Rich Snippet Optimization
The rich snippet function will not lose its importance in 2022 either, because relevant questions are increasingly being answered using rich search results directly in the search engine result pages, or SERPs for short. Hence, you should optimize your rich snippets as best you can.
The rich snippets can include other elements such as ratings, links, images, or events. As soon as you know what information is relevant for your company, you should put it in the source code. In this way, they are then formatted and played out via Google.
SEO Trend #7: Search Intent and E-A-T
Taking into account the search intention of users has always been a central topic and will remain so in 2022. Because there is no point in providing users with content that does not match their search intent. In search engine optimization, it is therefore important to identify which search intentions users have for certain keywords that are to be ranked. If the search intention is missed, there will be too few clicks from the search results on your own website – despite possibly temporary high visibility.
When optimizing for a search intention, you should always consider E-A-T. E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness. Three factors by which Google measures whether or not it considers a website to be trustworthy.
E-A-T is particularly important for websites that Google thematically categorizes as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL). These are websites, the content of which can influence the health, joie de vivre, financial situation, or safety of users. It is therefore particularly important here to give the search engine credible authority, for example by always backing up statements with facts and statistics.
SEO Trend #8: Mobile Optimization
If you haven’t already optimized your website for mobile devices, now is the time to start. Because now more than half of the traffic via Google search comes from mobile devices.
Website browsing via smartphone or tablet is very different from operation via a computer. The screen and the fonts are smaller and look completely different. If you do not adapt your website to the format, it is very possible that users will drop out because the user experience is not a pleasant one.
You should therefore adapt your website accordingly and also make sure that the loading times are still within an acceptable range.
SEO Trend #9: Longtail Keywords
The increasing number of zero-click searches in search engines is becoming more and more of a problem for website operators. The zero-click searches are short search queries where the answer is already displayed in the search results. Users no longer have to click on a website, but can end their search again immediately. As a result, website owners lose valuable traffic.
So far, zero-click searches have only occurred for simple or frequent search queries. That is why longtail SEO is gaining in importance, as longtail concentrates on complex search queries with a low search volume and these usually cannot be answered in the SERP due to their complexity.
If you, as a website owner, work towards ranking for more complex keywords, especially in the longtail, you can avoid the risk of a possible zero-click search.
SEO Trend #10: Data-Driven Content Optimization for SEO
Trust is good, control is better. This also applies to content creation and content optimization – our penultimate SEO trend for 2022. For example, in a text, you can tell whether the keyword to which the text should rank on Google occurs often enough and the set around this keyword is adequately served (semantic analysis).
Therefore, when creating new content and optimizing existing content, it is important to make data-driven improvements in addition to your own judgment and experience.