In the universe of SEO, change is the only constant. The unpredictability in SEO Trends keeps the experts on their toes; Right from E-A-T to Artificial Intelligence and more.    To understand the factors that will drive traffic in 2022, let's take a recap of the SEO trends in 2021

12 Major Google Updates   • One of the main highlights in the 2021 SEO trends that rattled most of the digital marketers was Google updates. Google was extremely vigorous with 12 confirmed major updates – this includes core updates, spam updates, user experience updates.    • A few other specific updates include Infinite scroll update for mobile, Product reviews update, and Title Tag rewrites   Search Quality Guidelines   Google finally confirmed the search quality rater guidelines or E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). The guidelines were documented and are now concrete.    Power Of Artificial Intelligence   • With the increasing focus of imbibing AI in their search, Google is now able to rank a particular excerpt (a.k.a Passage Ranking) instead of displaying the whole page of a website. This technology has improved in digging out search queries for all languages by over 7%   •  In video marketing, Google now understands the semantics and highlights the “key moments”. This structured data type also appears in Google discover.   Rebranding Of A Few Google Products   Google My Business (previously known as Google Places) changed to Google Business. Also, Google Webmasters became Google Search Central.    Now that we have focused on the 2021 SEO trends, let us see the transition towards 2022.    

1. Death Of Third-Party Cookies & Rise of First-Party Data   We, digital marketers, like to collect information and data from users to target the right audience and launch various campaigns and acquire leads.    Although Google has decided to restrict us from using that data. Their plan is to fully phase out the process by 2023.    Even though we are accustomed to using third-party cookies, it is time to shift towards collecting data from the first party.   This is the most important SEO trend a digital marketer must focus on in 2022.   2. Page Experience Update   Ready or not, here comes another Google update. By the mid-week of February, Google is planning to roll out an update for page speed experience (desktop version).    Sites that rank poorly in terms of page speed experience will start having a tough time ranking despite having top-class content. So, do make sure your website architecture and core web vitals are strong.   3. Technical SEO vs Content (& Design)   While technical SEO is always important for large sites and sites having javascript, in today's world, Google and Bing emphasize authoritative content with a seamless design. Due to these advancements, more importance is given to topics that are in-depth and well revised.   This is where E-A-T comes in, Expertise, Authoritativeness & Trustworthiness is a way for Google to show how the page design along with structured content of a brand’s website shall rank higher.  4. User Experience & Intent   User experience plays a major key in making or breaking your brand. Users have always been the key target, in terms of generating leads, traffic, or revenue.    The focus for your 2022 SEO trend should be creating quality content for your users and search engine. Gone are the days when we generate content to serve Google's algorithm. Websites with easy user navigation and high-quality content that are SEO optimized are the way forward for 2022.   5. Good news for those focusing to rank better via content     In the recent light, Google uses different Artificial Intelligence technologies in SEO to dive deep into long-form content and extract certain excerpts for you., as we discussed earlier is called Passage Ranking.   Content that is holistic in nature and contains information and answers to a lot of user questions, has a higher-ranking factor. Creating holistic structured content should be in the focus arena.   6. Go Local   If your brand caters to the local market, then your website should be under this interesting SEO trend. Google has been trying to push localized search queries and gaining authentic reviews for your site will be of big help to the local market.    To start with SEO localization, you can also add your city and state in your website (and Google Business) to help your website rank higher.   7. Multichannel SEO Visibility   It’s vital to have a 360-degree perspective when it comes to your website’s discovery. Customers are spread across various social platforms and to gain maximum ROI, it’s necessary to tap every user digitally.    8. Tap Into Google Discover   Google discover gives you all the latest articles, videos, and topics that your search query usually lies upon, it is critical to include an appealing image that corresponds to your topic and keyword. It always includes images as part of the search listing, making it easier for your website's visibility.   9. Knowledge Graph for Branding   There are chatters around, where Google might start creating personalized knowledge graphs soon.  So, what does the personalized knowledge graph mean for SEO trends in 2022?   This entails optimizing a company’s whole digital presence, such as its social media profiles, YouTube channel, and so on, to guide Google in featuring the brand’s knowledge graphs in the desired way.   We knew this! So, what is the difference in 2022 SEO trends as compared to the previous SEO trends?   In 2022, it will not just be about the website and the content it displays, but it's about the full digital presence and how it interacts with one another on SERP. NLP (Natural Language Processing) plays a key part in Google results, which SEO experts must be aware of.   10.  Expansion Of Image Search   Amongst the other SEO trends, SEO experts must also contemplate the popular growth of image searches.   Voice search comparatively became a hit a couple of years ago, although, after the pandemic, image search due to Google Lens has become prevalent, especially in the field of e-commerce.   This year, multimedia in content, as well as through search, will continue to expand and become more ubiquitous.   11. Increased Use of Automation   AI-generated content became one of the lionized SEO trends last year (GPT-3) However, content is just one part. We use various automation tools to find keywords, crawl a website, for off-page analysis, and so on.   This just proves that in 2022, there will be bigger opportunities for us to unleash. We can use these tools to strategize & thus improve our overall site performance.   12.  User Engaging Experiences   Something that really piqued our interest for 2022 is the use of different interactive experiences that Google is focusing more upon.   Usage of interactive quizzes has shown immense shares and likes among millennials. Usage of GIFs and stickers in between the content of a website has become more prominent. Use of Engagement is making its way quickly up the ladder and your website should too.   13.  Rediscovering Your Content    To be honest, this trend has been important for a while now. Although, what makes this unique?   The uniqueness of this year is the numerous changes that have come over the 2nd half of 2021. Updating our content in line with those updates and aligning the upcoming trends such as user intent, page experience, and so on, shall skyrocket the page in SERP.   14. Is a Mobile-Friendly Website Important In 2022?   According to statistics, 63% of the organic searches in 2021 were done via mobile. In the last quarter of 2021, Google also rolled out an important update for the mobile page experience.    This shows the importance of a website that is mobile-friendly. One must make sure their website is mobile-friendly and optimized accordingly.    15.  Importance Given for Semantic Keywords   Many SEO experts always focus on primary keywords without any hesitation. It is time for us to focus on secondary keywords and intent.   Gone are the days when Google merely focused on the string of keywords together. The improved AI technology now attempts to figure out the intent and relevancy of information offered via keywords.   16.  SEO Trends Chatter 2021 vs 2022   In the year 2021, the chitter-chatter was around building “UI/UX”, “Search Intent” and “Page Quality”.   On the other hand, in 2022, the rattles around the bush are towards “AI & Automation”, “Machine Learning” and “Sentimental Analysis”.   Continuing to focus on what we did in 2021 and keeping in mind the upcoming SEO Trends of 2022, there is a lot you can achieve.    

As seen above, we can only comprehend that SEO is more complex than we know. Optimizing the meta tags and selecting keywords is not sufficient.    One must coherently understand and analyze the user’s intention and focus on serving the users than Google. Since the metrics are volatile, focus on high-quality pages, with long-form structured content.    Implementing the SEO trends on your site is good enough to rank higher than your competitors.    Looking to improve your organic reach? Get in touch with Merkle Sokrati and our industry experts are eager to help!