It probably seems the SEO techniques you need to know evolve each year. And that’s because they do! As each year passes, Google gets more intelligent, and search results constantly change. If you want to keep up to speed, the techniques you use will need to evolve.
Here are the top SEO techniques you need to know in 2022, all the way from basics to advanced.
1. Write useful, compelling, and targeted content - People visiting your site want to read something not only relevant but also valuable for whatever they search for within a search engine. You should do a few key things with your content to fulfill their needs.
Build trust, show expertise, become an authority. Building trust, showing expertise, and becoming an authority should be at your SEO strategy's core.
Expertise, authority, and trust (E-A-T) are the guiding principles that Google uses when building and qualifying algorithms, to make sure they are doing what they should do. That does not mean that E-A-T is a ranking factor. It does, however, mean Google is looking for measurable signals that align with E-A-T, such as high-quality content, a popular brand, or links from other reputable sites.
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If you want to show better show E-A-T with your content, here are some tips:
- Use authors who are experts and display them on your site with bios.
- Tell users why they should trust you, such as the process you’ve gone through to build a product or research an article.
- Keep content factually accurate. Reference third-party sources to verify statements.
- Make sure the content is current.
- Show positive comments and reviews from users or third-party sites.
- Display trust signals on your site, like any awards, certification, or events you’ve spoken at.
- Make it easy for users to contact you, especially if you’re a lesser-known ecommerce store.
2. Quality content, not quantity. While a simple point, it’s an important one. The content you publish must have a purpose instead of being there for content’s sake. There is no SEO benefit from creating a set number of articles at a specific word count that doesn’t fulfill your audience’s needs. There is, however, a benefit from developing content that matches search intents, is comprehensive, and is of a higher quality than competing URLs.
You’ll often hear the question, “How many articles should we create a month for SEO?” The answer is always, “As many as we can create while ensuring they’re better for users than competing ones.” Creating higher quality, thorough content will outperform competitors who are writing more articles at higher word counts.
3. Make your content engaging and useful. There are multiple ways to create engaging and compelling web content. Some effective methods for blog articles are to:
- Use short, concise paragraphs that are to the point, as mentioned in Google’s SEO Starter Guide
- Include images and video
- Add quotes from experts
- Provide useful resources like templates or calculators
- Create custom graphics to explain a concept
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4. Adding FAQs
Videos showing customers using the product. FAQs usually have great content, especially if you use your targeted key phrases in this content.
5. Ensure your content is targeted. You should always create content that your audience is actively searching for. You can validate you’re creating targeted content by:
Understanding users' searches: You can do this easily with keyword research tools that show you what users are looking for.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analysis: This will ensure you’re answering the query with the suitable types of content, whether that’s a blog post or service/product page.
Competitor analysis: Check competing articles while doing your SERP analysis. Does your content have value-add assets like imagery, video, expert quotes, or unique data?
Contact your company’s help desk and see what people are asking about: This isn’t only targeted, but it also means users aren’t finding what they’re looking for.
In addition, making targeted content goes beyond what a user searches. A large part of creating valuable content is catering it to your audience.
There are several ways you can learn more about who you’re writing for:
- Look at your competitors’ audience. A tool like Quantcast or SparkToro can help.
- Understand demographics: Tools like demographics.io can help you understand demographics based on keywords. You can even filter this for individual countries.
- Use social insights. Facebook offers a follower breakdown of your company page. Platforms like Instagram and Twitter allow you to create polls, so if you already have an audience and want something answered, these can be useful.
- Run surveys: Tools like Google surveys allow you to hone in on precisely what you want to know.
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6. Use heading tags for structure. Heading tags are a great way to incorporate structure into your content. Not only do they break up blocks of text, but they are also an excellent way for your audience to find the part they want to read. The concept for heading tags is simple — nest lower headers (like H3s) within high headings (like H2s) to show how content is organized.
7. Keep your content fresh. Google has a freshness algorithm that matches queries looking for new content with new articles, so it’s essential to ensure you’re keeping content up to date. Not all content needs refreshing. If you’ve already covered a topic thoroughly and there is nothing more to add, there’s no need to update the content. That’s unless you see an opportunity actually to make the content better. Fresh content is most important for news, trends, celebrities, or other ever-changing topics.
8. Organize content logically and optimize internal linking. How you organize content and internally link to it significantly impacts your site's search performance results. If you’re not incorporating logical site hierarchies and internal links into your strategy, you could be missing out on the many benefits that come with them.
Build content around topics. Search engines are much better at understanding sites built around topics and subtopics.
Internal links are a crucial way to show how you’ve organized your content. By building clusters of content where broader parent topics internally link to more specific subtopics, you’ll help search engines better understand your site.
9. Make good use of sitewide links. Sitewide links included in your header and footer are still a key focus for SEO. Having a URL in one of these areas will signal to Google its importance and increase the amount of link equity passed to it.
10. Provide a great user experience. A user-friendly site can't make up for poor content, yet good content can't entirely make up for a poorly functioning site. Instead, a good-looking site and quality content go hand in hand to provide an excellent experience.
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