SEO trends 2022: do you have the right culture and technical resources?

It can be a daunting task to keep up with Google updates, but we got you covered with these SEO trends for 2022. 

As always, your main focus should be on creating useful and precise content that provides value to the user. Sprinkle some SEO tactics on top of relevant information and you should find yourself with a website that ranks high on Google Search results.

Recently, Google has introduced new measures that might change your entire scenario. Read further to find out major SEO trends in 2022 and how to make sure your website is not left behind.

MUM: an AI model that breaks the language barrier

Searches on Google are becoming more complex and precise. It can take multiple attempts for users to find answers to complicated questions. The primary goal of MUM is to resolve complex queries in a single search. 

MUM – or the Multitask Unified Model – is referred to as the brain behind the search engine. You may have heard about BERT, Google’s previous algorithm designed for natural language processing (NLP) ; well MUM is said to be 1000 times more potent than BERT.

MUM breaks down the language barrier. It’s able to transfer knowledge across different languages to ensure users always get the most relevant content and answers.

Imagine you’re planning a trip to Thailand and looking for information about transportation options, the most accurate information is probably published in Thai. With the new MUM algorithm, Google can get the essence of the original query, identify the best answer over 75+ languages, and translate it back into the original language. 

“MUM not only understands language, but also generates it.” says Pandu Nayak – Google Search Fellow and Vice President

MUM is also multimodal. This means it can also understand pictures, web pages, and other formats. In the mid-term development plan, we should be able to research a picture associated with a text query for context. For instance, you could take a picture of an item you like and add the query “what’s the nearest store to purchase this item”.

This is a considerable time-saving feature that will deliver much more precise results. In the future, we see this option associated with video or voice search as well.

The impact of MUM on SEO

No doubt this update will give more visibility to qualitative and precise content. But this doesn’t mean you should give up on “classic SEO” strategies. Relevance, quality, and authority are still major criteria for how your content ranks in Google search results. Follow the BERT algorithm recommendations and best practices to make sure your website’s SEO is not impacted by this update. 

As always when implementing SEO, focus on the intent. If someone researches a ‘how to’ query, they most likely want to see a step-by-step guide. Think about video and image formats. You can browse the ‘people also ask’ section of Google Search for guidance on related follow-up questions and queries.

SEO trends 2022: Core Web Vitals and mobile ready

Google’s metrics for SEO have become more user-centric over the years. Core Web Vitals (CWV) are a new set of standards that help measure user experience on website pages. 

Previously, 4 main criteria were taken into account to determine the UX of a website:

1. Mobile-friendliness
2. Safety
3. HTTPS
4. No intrusive interstitials (pop-ups)

While these factors are still of critical importance, Google has introduced new evaluation criteria with Core Web Vitals. It now uses ‘Page Experience’ as a 5th ranking factor on Google Search, and this translates into 3 main metrics.

Identifying performance issues and optimizing on-page user experience not only will improve your ranking on search engines, it will also lead to better conversion rates.

You can check your CWV score from your Google Search Console. Once you access the “Core Web Vitals” report, you will get a grade for each KPI.

How to optimize your Core Web Vitals

• Keep your page load times at 2.5 seconds or less

• Avoid complicated layouts and large image files

• Keep the source code simple

• Eliminate unnecessary plugins

• Use a reliable hosting provider to improve site performance and security

Visual content quality: content, images & videos

SEO trends in 2022 are mainly focused on visual content, you can easily boost your KPIs with videos, images, charts, or even gifs and memes. This type of content is also highly shareable, this will improve engagement and visibility.

However, you shouldn’t just add images to make your page pretty, they should always serve the purpose of your content and support visual storytelling. To further improve SEO, try to use original visuals instead of stock images.

Here are a few additional tips to ensure visuals serve your broader SEO goals:

• Always optimise your alt tags

Alt text is used to briefly describe images to search engines, it helps Google identify whether an image is relevant to the content and search queries. Ultimately, this will help show your images on Google image results. Most content management systems make it easy to add and edit alt tags.

• Search for backlinks

If you create a lot of original visual infographics and designs, chances are other websites might have reused these images to illustrate their content. Use Google reverse image search to look for pages that published your visuals and make sure you are credited with backlinks to your own website.

• Boost time on your webpage with video content

The longer visitors stay on your page, the more Google considers your content as relevant. Video content helps keep users engaged with your website. Make sure you incorporate video content to decrease bounce rate and improve your time on-page metrics.

• Add a descriptive text for infographics

While Google can understand image content, infographics often contain a large volume of complex information which makes it difficult for a robot to understand. Make sure you add valuable written content to introduce and highlight key points of your infographics.

Improve your website ranking on Google

If you’re looking to get more organic traffic and leads, we’re here to help. Book a short meeting with one of our experts and see how we can take your website to the first page of Google Search results.