The only thing that’s permanent in the online realm is Google algorithm updates.

So, when you thought you were getting a handle on SEO strategy, Google decides to release a new update to its search operation. All of this is to give the most relevant search results to its users. Thus, downplaying the updates might cause you to nullify your SEO efforts and lag behind your competition in no time.

Hence, the best way to generate greater returns on SEO investment and more revenue is to advance SEO strategies that better match the latest SEO trends.

Look no further if you’re looking to optimize your SEO strategy for 2023 to get the best ROI.

But before that, let’s understand this: SEO is a shape-shifter; hence some of its strategies are now obsolete and no more effective in helping websites rank highly on SERP.

Yet, despite the continual algorithm improvements, some classics are much in use to date. So make sure that the below tried-and-true strategies are a vital part of your SEO action plan for 2023, in addition to our advanced SEO recommendations.

Evergreen SEO Strategies You Should Follow 

1. Create perennial content that is as effective tomorrow as it is today.
2. Optimize content for audience and search engines.
3. Specific keywords cater to specific search intent and are less competitive. Hence, target long-tail keywords.
4. Always maintain a fast and responsive or mobile-friendly website.
5. Offer a great user experience (UX).
6. Work towards boosting webpage loading speed.
7. Leverage internal links.
8. Build and diversify backlink profile.

And most importantly….

9. Measure the ROI of SEO campaigns by tracking SEO metrics.

Top 5 Techniques to Advance Your SEO Strategies in 2023

1. Optimize for Conversational and Voice Searches

The increasingly intuitive technology is reshaping the way users interact with it. Talk about search engine queries.

Compare these two search queries — “What type of haircut suits me?” vs “Different types of haircuts”. The former one is looking for personally relevant advice from search engines.

It is called a conversational query. Conversational queries are made up of natural-sounding verbal phrases and complete sentences.

As consumers become more tech-savvy, we see an upward trend of specific questions about the products and services they are interested in. Plus, the advancements in Artificial intelligence (AI) and Natural language Processing (NLP) are also driving the adoption of voice searches by users.

This has prompted Google to refine its algorithms through breakthrough language models such as LaMDA and MUM and better understand the context behind search queries.

Meaning it’s in your best interest to refine your SEO strategy to accommodate the turn of tides in search queries successfully.

How to optimize SEO tactics to adapt to conversational and voice queries:

• Write content that is conversational and speaks to readers more naturally.

For instance, people are more likely to ask, “How do you fix the light switch that won’t turn off?” rather than “What is the correct way to troubleshoot the light switch that won’t turn off?

• Optimize for conversational keywords by framing direct and concise answers to specific questions.
• Be sure to rephrase the query in several different forms in your answer.
• Keep your Google My Business listing up-to-date to rank for “near me” searches.
• Add FAQ pages.

2. Focus on Video Marketing

Now is the right time to invest in video content. Because Google’ May’22 broad core algorithm says so.

Yes, the algorithm update has now rolled out, prioritizing content with video over content sans video. Also, it is known that videos improve two of the most vital SEO metrics — time spent on your site and the number of backlinks pointing at your domain.

Understandably, digital marketers are fascinated by video marketing. According to Lito James, a digital marketing expert, short videos are one of the most important branding tool after the rise of TikTok. A Hubspot survey shows that 68% of marketers feel video content showcasing their products and services generates the biggest ROI.

Done right, video content allows you to convey your value proposition better and establish deeper connections with potential customers. It’s an essential part of your marketing plan. So, adding them to websites can drastically boost your SEO efforts. The takeaway — not focusing on video content is a lost opportunity in revenue-shifting SEO strategy. While not the cheapest option out there, it is still worth the while. Also, remember that your audience can generate content for you if motivated properly.

Here, we would also ask you to leverage the two latest features for video content – they expand your odds of appearing in searches and increase engagement.

• Clip markup – This markup timestamps your video, highlighting the key moments and guiding the users to the specific part of the video.
• Seek markup – This markup automatically communicates the same to Google, allowing you to link within the specific part of your video.

3. Prime Your Images to Get Found

Well-optimized and engaging images matter a lot in search engine ranking. They raise your chances of getting crawled, indexed, and finally displayed by search engines.

And the advent of “Blended Search” has meant that you care about ranking under image search also.

As for Google, the indexed images can appear in the following search environments.

• Google Image Search– the vertical search engine specialized for visual searching.
• Google Web Search- Traditional SERP for keyword search.
• Google Discover- Google’s social media feed displays content on popular topics that match the user’s browsing history well.

The following tips will help you with your image SEO game in 2023:

• Image-ranking algorithms weigh the web page authority to prevent displaying a great image on a not-so-great webpage to the user.
• High-quality visual content, original images, screenshots, and custom graphs and charts have potential SEO benefits. When people use that image in their blogs, it earns you more backlinks.

P.S. Despite the updates, factors like context, alt tags, image file name, title, and description continue to hold up.

4. Claim Your Featured Snippet

Expanded search results that appear as a direct answer to the search query at the top of SERP is called a featured snippet. They come in several stripes- bulleted lists, paragraphs, videos, or tables. Securing a featured snippet puts your website on top of SERP and earns a higher click-through rate (CTR).

Make sure of the following tips while optimizing for featured snippets:

• Understand the user query and intent to cover all the information the user expects in content.
• Back up your content with as much statistical data, images, and examples as possible.
• Write content in Q & A format with relevant question keywords in headings.
• Provide a better answer than your competition.

5. Invest in Local SEO

Local SEO is aimed at boosting SERP rankings for specific geographical areas

97% of consumers turn to search engines first to find a local business online and check its online presence before deciding to visit them.

These statistics show that you are missing out on valuable traffic that is highly likely to convert by not having a local SEO strategy.

Image Source: WebFX

To optimize for local search:

• Create a Google My Business page.
• Add schema markup to your website.
• Optimize your website for local keywords.
• Deliver content around local stories and events.
• Build and manage positive reviews.

6. Emphasize on Guest Posting

Guest Posting is one of the best off-page SEO practices for eCommerce business. Guest posting is the ideal way which can provide high-quality backlinks to rank higher. You can find eligible prospects for outreach by using competitive analysis that provides great guest posting opportunities. Use tools like email marketing CRM for bulk emails and easy follow-ups without any manual tasks.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that with the right SEO strategy, ROI not only exists but also grows. Nonetheless, it is equally important to keep tabs on evolving SEO trends. That way, you can rest assured that your SEO strategy always supports the success of your business.

When creating written content for search engines, many people think shorter content is better, but every piece of evidence proves that long-form content is more effective. It’s also a fact that most of the content that ranks on the first page of Google SERPs is long-form content. 

In this article, we’ll discuss long-form content and how it can boost your SEO strategy. 

What is Long-Form Content?

There are varying definitions of long-form content, but most digital marketers agree that they’re articles or blogs with more than 1000 words. So, you can create long-form content up to 2,000, 4000, or even 8,000 words. This type of content is usually very comprehensive, informative and more useful than short-form content. This allows them to gain more authority and backlinks quickly, which increases your SERP rank. 

The goal of long-form content is to give every detail you know about a topic. This is similar to how authors at bestdissertation.com work on essays and assignments that students outsource to them. This may include the history, background, and other questions people ask about the topic. That’s why it’s this content type is usually relevant and insightful. 

Humans, indeed, have a short attention span, and the average user only spends 10-20 seconds on a website. This is why many website owners believe it’s ideal to use quick bullet points and short content to pass the point across easily. Considering that 10 seconds is very short, you might doubt the performance of long-form content. However, the reality is that they perform very well both on web pages and social media. This content form takes effort and time. It also requires lots of research and planning to ensure there’s enough relevant information to be authoritative. But if you do it right, there are several benefits that you can enjoy from it that short-form content may not be able to offer. 

How Does Long-Form Content Boost SEO?

Long-form content is far more important for SEO than short-form content. Your readers also find it valuable because it seeks to answer more than one query. So, even if they don’t read the full content, they still pick valuable information from the parts they read. There are also several SEO benefits to this content form:

1. Ranking for multiple keywords

When you put great detail into explaining a concept, you will likely add several keywords related to the topic. The two advantages of this are that it helps Google determine the relevancy of your content and also helps you rank for several keywords, unlike a 500-word short-form content. For instance, if you write a detailed 2000-word content, you could rank for over 100 keyword variations on google, but a 500-word content on the same topic might only rank for one keyword. So, long-form content increases your online visibility exponentially. 

2. Increased possibility for more backlinks

You’re more likely to get backlinks to your website with long-form content than short-form content. Other websites tend to link to long, detailed content than short ones. The idea is that longer content is more insightful and useful to the topic than short content. Additionally, long-form content demonstrates your expertise in a field or topic, making it more trustworthy. 

3. More social sharing 

This works similarly to backlinking. It has been proven that long content is shared more often on social media than short articles. This is because they solve more problems than short articles, so readers are excited to share them with their social media audience. 

Also, short-form content provides generic answers which are less surprising or exciting for readers. Meanwhile, long articles give more meaningful insights. 

4. Increased dwell time

The amount of time your website visitors spend on your website is one of Google’s ranking factors. It’s called Dwell time – the time between when they click on a Google search result and when they return to the search result page. 

To keep your visitors on your website for longer, it’s obvious that you need long-form content. They can easily skim through a short article, but a long article with lots of insights and relevant information will keep them stuck on your website. So, long-form content generally increases your visitors’ dwell time. It’s also likely that they find the solution to what they’re looking for on your website, so they don’t have reasons to move to another website. 

5. Improved domain authority 

Your domain authority is your web page’s ability to rank on search engines. The higher you rank on a scale of zero to 100, the higher your domain authority. Long-form content is crucial for improving your website’s domain authority. Given the many benefits of long articles, it makes sense that they improve domain authority, especially considering factors like social media sharing, backlinking, relevance, etc. 

Conclusion 

There are many SEO benefits of long-form content, especially when you compare them to short-form content. They’re more effective in boosting your SEO strategy and making you more visible on Google.

The rise of search engines has made SEO one of the most valuable digital marketing methods for companies worldwide. Today, SEO can help you rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), get more targeted traffic from keyword-specific searches, and ensure your customers read your content on the most advanced browsers. Digital Marketing has become one of the key promotional activities businesses need to build their profiles.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

SEO is a broad term that refers to two things: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page refers to how you optimize your web pages so that they may rank as high as possible when someone searches for specific keywords. Off-page SEO refers to any content generation or keyword placement offsite that can affect its rankings.

Each sector relies on various strategies to manipulate search engines and their result suggestions according to the latest trends. The methods, however, are not free from the influence of trends and end up catering to the demand. You must monitor these trends to guide traffic toward your domain. To begin with, you need to understand what the different search engine algorithms look at when ranking websites. Algorithms are unique formulas that search engines use to trace and analyze content for its relevance to the search query. You can explore The Marketing Vibe SEO blog for dedicated observations and discussions related to these trends. Here are some of the most popular SEO trends that’ll help boost your digital marketing strategy.

1. Interactive Experiences

People indeed want to interact, which is one of the main reasons they are so interested in social media. Businesses not active on the Big Four social media websites find it hard to reach their target markets.

The same applies to SEO as well. People are looking for interactive experiences when they search for something on Google. Thus, a user may be less likely to click on a non-interactive site but rather scroll over to sites that offer more engaging content. If your site doesn’t provide a certain type of content, you may want to rethink its design or make changes accordingly. As an example, compare any product advertisement website and the BuzzFeed homepage. The former introduces no interactive experiences and generates fewer clicks than the latter, which boasted 100 million hours of usage from its audience in 2016. The link between interaction and traffic is undeniable.

2. Focus on user intent

Another concept that’s more likely to affect your search engine rankings is user intent. Also known as the search query, the goal is the core of all online searches. Although search engine algorithms know how to extract this information and display results according to it, they also look at how you structure your website in this regard. In other words, they judge you based on how you answer the question: “What are my users looking for?”

The good news is that this concept is not an entirely new one. Your task is to determine the search’s intent and structure your content accordingly. For example, if you own a store that sells furniture, you should know that Google interprets any furniture-related search terms visitors to enter to understand their intent. Customers may be trying to find reviews from other clients or contact details, or they might be looking for how to reach your store or find out about a promotion. Your online content should target these key elements and your offsite content. Even a minor increase in user experience can mean a serious SEO breakthrough for those who understand what the resulting figures imply. Ultimately, it’s about answering questions and providing what people are actively looking for when they visit your site before they’ve even clicked onto the page.

3. Omnichannel Digital Marketing

One thing that may have grown in popularity due to the rise of social media and smartphone apps is that people tend to be less loyal to one specific website. This lack of constancy is because they prefer to use more than one platform at once instead of sticking to just one. In other words, they are more inclined to use multiple digital media channels simultaneously when conducting their searches. For example, people may search for a product on Google and finish the process on Amazon instead of visiting both websites simultaneously. It’s also true that users are subjective buyers with preferences that extend to what digital media platform they’d rather use for the same activity. For example, someone might like buying clothes they see advertised on Instagram rather than on Google, simply because they prefer using the former site. Omnichannel marketing is the key here, as it requires marketing campaigns to spread across multiple sites based on the target demographics’ preferences. This method can easily drive organic traffic to the main website and boost interactions.

4. First-Party Data Collection

First-party data is data you collect from your website and may use to improve your keyword ranking. For instance, if you publish a blog post about traveling to France, you can create a list of related topics that your readers might be interested in. You can easily generate this type of information by having a live chat on the site or by collecting feedback through other methods. Once again, you create these opportunities to engage your customers rather than as a task, which is why first-party data collection may also be beneficial for Google rankings.

5. Mobile Optimization

It’s fair to say that mobile optimization is a significant trend in digital marketing, as nearly 60% of all searches are made using mobile phones. Even if you aren’t planning to create an app for your website, you should consider optimizing your web pages for mobile devices. The good news is that there’s nothing tricky about it. Add responsive design elements and ensure a pleasant user experience while using any device on the website.

Conclusion

To succeed in digital marketing, you need the latest information on user trends and awareness of techniques to capitalize on the various social media networking channels to build a brand identity. By following trends, you can get great ideas for your advertising campaigns or make well-informed decisions to invest in an SEO strategy that will work for you. Today, we know more than ever how search engines like Google will use first-party data to determine their rankings. However, as with many other things that influence our day-to-day actions and drives, there are still quite a few unknowns that need to be uncovered by digital marketing experts. Until then, it’s up to the marketing sector to make the best of what they have available.

The SEO field is full of a lot of trending buzzwords, to the point where it’s easy to get a little cynical. However, some of these trends have substance behind the style, and searcher intent is a great example of that. Think of it this way: no marketing initiative ever succeeded without knowledge of the target audience and its goals. Searcher intent is the equivalent of this for SEO initiatives.  In addition, searcher intent is one of those things that you’re going to need to keep referring back to in order to create an effective long-term SEO strategy. Here’s how it works and what you need to do to implement it successfully.

What Is Searcher Intent?

The fundamentals behind searcher intent are easy to understand, and likely something that you go into every time that you use a search engine. Basically, searcher intent is what the goal of any Google or search engine user is any time that they put in a query. This is important because even searches on the same topic can lead to different keywords used, and searcher intent is the reason why. For example, say a person wanted to learn more about how to create an effective blog. They may put in something like “blog writing tips for non-writers” or “blog ideas.” However, if they are looking to outsource their work, you’ll likely see a query like “freelance blog writers” or “blog writing services. The good news is that generally, you can boil the types of searcher intent into a few key options.

People who want a specific brand

People with this searcher intent literally have only one goal in mind—to go to a site they are already aware of. For example, someone who may want to go to Wal-Mart’s site for a deal they heard of elsewhere will literally type in Wal-Mart in the search engine and be on their way.

Informational searches

This is close to the “blog writing tips for non-writers” example that we gave earlier, where someone wants to learn about a subject or topic. In general, this will be reflected in the type of queries people use. Expect lots of “how to” “what is” “can I” and other similar expressions used in these searches.

Action searches

These are the searches that many business owners are hoping for, based around some sort of conversion. Things like “deals on” “for sale” “near me” are all indicators that someone is ready to buy something with their search. However, there are other types of SEO conversions that call fall under this umbrella as well, like signing up for an email list or heading to a physical location.

Free action searches

Technically, these are the same as action searches, but for people looking for free services. It can be hard to get a conversion for people who aren’t looking to pay, unless you have an e-book or something similar on free options for a certain niche.

How To Use Searcher Intent For SEO

For typical marketing, you would simply gear your marketing materials in order to align with your marketing intent. However, there are a few different ways to do this for SEO. The main way to make this happen is to optimize for keywords that match with the type of searcher intent that will match your content. For example, if you were working on a blog post, you’d probably want to use primarily informational keywords. However, if you’re working on e-commerce pages, you’re going to want to make sure that your keywords are mainly transactional in nature. The goal here is to make sure you’re getting the customers most likely to be interested in your page in front of it via a search.

There are some tangential ways that you want to customize your site to fit with searcher intent as well. For example, when people are using action keywords, they ultimately want to make some sort of conversion. If you’re optimizing for those keywords, make sure that you work to make your Call To Action prominent so people can follow through on their searcher intent.

As a final addition, it’s important to note that certain growing SEO trends are going to change the nature of searcher intent in the future. For example, voice search is growing in popularity, especially through mobile devices. However, the way that different queries are spoken is different than the way they are typed. As a result, people may need to adapt their SEO optimization down the line.

Author

With over 10 years of experience helping hundreds of businesses succeed online, Paul Teitelman is one of the most respected and top ranking SEO consultants in Toronto & across Canada. A passionate SEO expert that works directly with clients and offers custom white-labelled services to search marketing and digital advertising agencies in Canada and the United States. Add Paul on LinkedIn or check out his SEO blog for more great tips. To learn more please visit – https://www.paulteitelman.com/