Search Engine Optimization is used to know the relevance of the information on a blog for search queries. Site owners
use SEO tools to enhance their pages and to be front-page worthy when a keyword is searched.
In this post, I’m going to talk about the changes you should expect from SEO in 2021. You’ll also learn how well you can prepare your website for the advantages and disadvantages of these changes.
Table of Contents
Some New Changes and Improvements to SEO
- Mobile-first indexing for all websites to be fully effective
Mobile-first indexing is the practice of indexing the mobile version of pages as the first consideration on Google’s database.
Google introduced mobile-first indexing for a pretty long time now. It should not be a new development for most of us. It was initially introduced to give a solution to an already popular problem. Most web users are no longer making use of desktops but are using their mobile phones.
Google introduced mobile indexing because almost all websites were created to fit desktop versions. Now, this has become a problem as most web users now prefer using their mobile devices to desktops. Due to the increased usage of mobile, Google had to partially implement mobile-first indexing.
Google implemented mobile-first indexing to improve mobile searches. That was why it slowly had to implement its decision.
But beginning from the month of March 2021, Google will roll out new updates. This will ensure a smooth and easy transition to mobile-first indexing by both new and existing websites.
Page experience as a very important ranking factor
Before now, things like mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, and safe browsing were all-important ranking factors Google used to rank sites.
Google now explores Page Experience signals as a significant ranking sign. This signal is a metric Google will employ in measuring the quality of the experience a user gets from visiting your page.
Google will use the “page experience signal” to measure a lot of elements on your page.
- The level of interactivity your page has
- Speed and loading time of your page
- The average time that is spent by each reader on your page
- The visual stability that your page has.
All the elements mentioned above are self-explanatory. Visual stability is described as how stable the layout and other related features of your page can be.
Some Important SEO Trends
1. UX (User Experience) in SEO
User experience (UX) is based upon making huge or little adjustments to the front or different pages of your site. This ensures that your users get a much better experience. It is important to have a lot of visitors coming to your page on a monthly basis. But the most important thing is giving your users a wonderful experience.
SEO is no longer about titles and Meta tags only. It is rather about the kind of experience your user gets from visiting your website. The better the experience a user can get from your website, the greater the chances of that user returning to your page.
2. More Visual and Engaging Posts
As each day passes, the internet becomes more overpopulated with landing pages and blogs. This is making it really difficult for search engines to rank keywords with valuable and relevant content. So, you need to diversify the kind of content you provide.
To create more engagement with your viewers, you have to diversify the kind of content you give to your audience.
An effective way to keep your audience’s attention is to try using more infographics and lots of relevant images. You can also try making and embedding standalone explanation videos to the content on your page.
3. Micro-data and Featured Snippets Are Becoming More Diverse
Google is making a lot of efforts to improve on the different kinds of featured snippets it shows on its homepage. Some of these featured snippets are the likes of video tutorials, trending news, and recipes. This is why you need to focus on increasing the chances of your site appearing on these snippets.
These featured snippets keep more traffic on Google’s page. They also make searching faster for the user but cannot guarantee you an exponential increase in website traffic.
By trying to enhance your site for these snippets, you have a small chance of increasing your site’s click-through rate.
4. Most People Have Started Using Voice Search
The voice search option was certainly not available on the internet six years ago. The development of various voice assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa has made voice search much more popular.
The popularity of voice search might really affect some SEO approaches you use. And this is why you constantly search for more ways to make your SEO strategy fit into this trend.
5. Specific Updates to the Algorithm
Google algorithms are used to deliver the best available results to a keyword search or query. These algorithms are constantly updated on a monthly and yearly basis.
But this year Google made a lot of specific changes to its algorithm that might affect your SEO approach. This is why you need to find good SEO strategies to fit your website into these changes.
Local SEO: Improve Your Site for Local Search
Use ways to optimize your website when potential customers do a search that is related to your line of business. If you aim to drive nearby customers through search, then this is the post you’ve been waiting for.
Why is Local SEO Vital for Business?
- Local searches can generate more profitable client visits. There is a high possibility that a customer who searches for a local business is willing to visit. From a deep search, 76 percent of searchers who perform a local search on mobile purchase from a brand in less than 24 hours
- The local SEO initiative is definite. Most local clients look for local brands that can offer them a particular service or product. For instance, someone who needs a dry cleaner in San Francisco has nothing to do with a dry cleaner in Tampa
- Local searches create more buying initiatives. Clients who look for local brands are frequently willing to take action. An analytic report by Search Engine Land revealed that 78 percent of local mobile searches result in a purchase either in-store or online.
Local searchers opt to reach a brand that offers what they are searching for; hence, they are willing to make a purchase.
Understanding the Concept of Search Engines and Local SEO
Local SEO is a result of the search engine’s commitment to delivering the most useful and relevant search results. The major distinction between local SEO and organic SEO lies in the geographical factor. Search engines present the relevant results to potential users.
Search engines consider factors that provide the best and relevant local results. These include the closeness of the business, the reputation of the business, and the significance of the business.
You need the aforementioned ranking factors to optimize your business’s online presence for your local SEO to improve.
Tips to Improve Your Site for Local SEO
We have so far covered what local SEO is and the importance. Now, let’s consider the following tips on how to optimize your site to achieve local search.
1. Operate and Build Mobile-Responsive Sites
The Mobile-friendliness of a website is one of the essential factors for SEO. Your site should be responsive enough to adjust to any screen size. This aspect is both a customer’s expectation and an SEO ranking factor. Mobile pages should perform excellently in search and deliver a friendly experience to the audience.
To run a mobile-friendly test on your website, you should make use of Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Or alternatively, run a technical SEO audit to see how your site performs.
2. Create a Valid Address for Your Website
Google finds your business quickly with this simple process. You can incorporate your business address by following the tips below:
This simple act helps Google locate your business. Below are the ideas you can use in the process of incorporating your business address:
- For one location, the address should be added to your contact page and your site footer
- For multiple locations, you can create a location page where addresses of every location will be listed
- Integrate a Google map to show your business location on your location pages
- Include location-based structured data or schema data in your website.
3. Construct a GMB (Google My Business) Page
Business owners can create Google My Business (GMB) listings for all their business locations. GMB is usually displayed as rich results on SERPs.
GMB rich results could also display data about the location of a business and the call-to-action buttons. Create a GMB page and advertise your brand in these listings for all of your business locations.
After creating the GMB page, optimize it by boosting its visibility. You can do this by making regular updates, adding pictures, adding FAQs, and creating posts.
4. Cite Your Brand
A brand citation is a process of making mention of your brand such as your real name, office or home address, and business phone number. Note that Google My Business is also a form of citation especially for local SEO.
Citations help in presenting a brand to Google as loyal and rank-worthy. They appear on directory sites such as:
- MapQuest
- Yellow Pages
- Angie’s List
- CitySearch
- Apple Maps
- Trip Advisor
- Foursquare
- Yelp
Create suitable business profiles on well-known citation sites and business directories.
5. Be Consistent With Your Information (NAP Consistency)
Building citations for your business is great; however, your effort could easily go down the drain with inconsistent citations.
The consistency in NAP requires the frequent use of your business details like brand name, business address, and phone number. Your NAP consistency enables the search engines to rank your website.
6. Give Attention to Meta Descriptions and Title Tags
Meta descriptions and title tags are codes that are added to a webpage, usually the backend. Its basic function is to help the search engine know what the page is all about.
Tips to Optimize Your Meta Description and Title Tags
- Add information like your area, city, or region to your Meta title and description
- Your title tags should be limited to 60 characters
- The Meta description should be limited to 320 characters
7. Implement Off-Page Optimization Tactics
In addition to on-site optimization, off-page SEO is required to give your site the relevance and authority it needs.
The number of external sites that link to your site is a good pointer that you have an authoritative site. Google and other major search engines consider backlinks as a factor in their ranking algorithms. So do not disregard important off-page SEO tactics like building external backlinks.
8. Get Customers to Drop Their Reviews
Google also considers customer reviews as a ranking factor; it shows that your site is trustworthy.
Your local SEO strategy should direct your attention towards getting reviews from previous customers and potential new ones. Google My Business Page seems to be the most significant place to get such reviews. You can also get reviews from other citation sites.
How to Receive Rank-Worthy Reviews
- Highlight the current review you have on your websites for customers to see that you collect them
- Set up a fresh page for clients to leave their reviews
- Use incentives to encourage customers to drop their reviews with links to relevant websites
- Prompt good customers to offer their reviews through follow-up emails and social media
You can take your brick-and-mortar business to a greater height with tips from this article. If you are ready to create your own website and want to start for free and learn as you go read all about my #1 Recommendation here. No need to pay a web designer, take control yourself, it’s easier than you think!
In Conclusion
Google continually implements more than three thousand changes to its search algorithms on a yearly basis.
The results of these changes on your content cannot be predicted. So take the time to read these tips and keep up with the Google updates for SEO in 2021.
You have to consistently try your very best to keep up with the changes, trends, and happenings in the SEO world. This will keep your page or site relevant for search queries in the future.
I hope this has helped, please leave a comment, like, and share. Thank you.
If you have any special tips on how to keep up with the changes in SEO, please share them below.
LILY
Thank you for outlining all these changes. I know that Google wants super fast sites. I have been building my site for a few years. And during all this time I have been collecting Plugins. Right now, they are making my site slow. I’m planning to change my theme and clean it up from all these plugins.
An excellent idea Paolo as plugins that you really don’t need must be deactivated and deleted to help to speed up your website.
This is a wonderful review and one of the greatest educating posts I have ever read.
As Google continually implements more changes to its search algorithms every year, I took my time to read these tips to make sure I keep up with the Google updates for SEO, the changes, trends, and happenings in the SEO world in 2021. this is because I think I have found here in this post, SEO tips that will help keep my website relevant for search engine Rankings.
I think it’s time for me to create a valid Website Address and also Receive Rank from customers Reviews. I have always wondered about meta descriptions and tag in my back office, but as a newbie still in training with wealthy affiliate, I am yet to know how to use these tools for SEO.
But going through this post, I think its time to carry out the skills I got here into practice as I put information like my area, city, or region into my Meta title and description and as well make sure my title tags stay at the limit of 60 characters and Meta description at the limit of 320 characters according to this review.
Thanks, LILY for helping out with this informative post.
Hi Nathan, this is really great news for me to hear and I’m so pleased that it has inspired you to gain the knowledge to help track the changes in Google SEO. It’s the only way to be successful and worth the effort.
The easiest way to be reminded of how to insert meta descriptions and tags is to use something like Free Yoast. It’s fun to use and has really helped me to be consistent with my SEO. You can have a read about it in this article. Hope it helps you heaps.
https://cleveraffiliatesuccess…
Lily
Hi!
Thank you very much for this review of all the changes expected for this year.
The truth is that I am no expert in SEO, although I recognize the great importance it has for our site to get a good ranking, so I care more and more about these issues. Thank you for offering this valuable information. I will put into practice all those tips that you propose that I am not yet taking into account.
Best Regards,
Marta
Hi Marta, it certainly is worth learning about Google SEO. Even if it is confusing at the moment you will find that by using one tip at a time you will slowly begin to understand these issues and suddenly you will wonder why it seemed so hard. Baby steps.
Hi Lily, three thousand changes are a lot and thank you, I know what to do with most of them and how these changes impact my sites ranking. Your article here gives us detailed information about Google updates for this year. I noticed during this month fever site links search box pages in my Google Search Console account. I don’t know if it is the result of these changes. I think that I need to start to implement your suggestions here to improve.
Thank you for sharing
Alketa
Hi Alketa, I’m so pleased that my article helped you to identify any extra places that need fixing. Google is something you need to be watching all the time.
Going through this post, I think it’s time to carry out the skills I have acquired here into practice as I put information like my area, city, or region into my Meta title and description. As well as make sure my title tags stay at the limit of 60 characters and Meta description at the limit of 320 characters according to this review.
Thanks for the great information as I wasn’t aware that Google changes its rules all the time. I will need to watch for these updates in the future.
It sounds as though you are on the right track, Amanda. Keep tabs on the changes and try and incorporate them as they change. That way you won’t be getting any rude surprises.