SEO represents a constantly evolving world . To ensure that you always implement best practices , it is therefore essential to follow emerging trends . This is indeed how it is possible to constantly remain competitive, by improving your visibility and your ranking on the pages of various search engines.
SEO Trends and Practices: In Brief
To begin this chapter, here is a summary, point by point, illustrating the main practices and web trends in terms of natural referencing :
- Voice search is booming with the increasing use of voice assistants such as Siri , Alexa and Google Assistant . Adapting your content strategy to respond to voice search queries, which are often longer and more conversational, is therefore a good SEO practice to consider.
- Video content also plays an increasingly important role in the SEO picture. We will therefore give you, a little further on, practical advice on how to optimize your videos and thus make them more attractive to search engines.
- User experience ( UX) is another key, sometimes overlooked factor essential to web page ranking. It is therefore beneficial to make the required efforts to improve the UX of your website by making it fast, mobile-friendly and easy to navigate.
- High-quality content is definitely the cornerstone of SEO. Creating unique, informative and relevant content for your target audience must therefore be a priority.
- Featured snippets , answering questions asked by Google users , offer great additional visibility to your content since they are displayed at the top of the SERP . It can therefore pay to adapt your SEO optimization strategy accordingly, in order to attract the attention of users.
- Measuring and monitoring performance remains essential to understand what is working well and what is not working well enough. Let's remember that there are valuable tools such as Google Analytics , for example, to track organic traffic, bounce rates, conversions, as well as other key metrics.
- Mobile SEO has become a primary concern since the emergence of smartphone use. Mobile optimization of your site is therefore essential for a quality user experience on all mobile devices.
- Local SEO represents another aspect of SEO that should not be overlooked. Indeed, optimization for local searches is increasingly important, especially for small businesses. It is therefore recommended to take advantage of all the advice on this subject in order to maximize your visibility locally and thus attract more local customers.
- Do you know the Core Web Vitals ? Made up of three key points (loading speed, responsiveness and interactivity), they are in fact crucial measures for the user experience. These factors therefore occupy an important place, influencing the ranking of your website among search results.
- The EAT concept ( Expertise , Authoritativeness , Trustworthiness ) represents a good example of how the Google algorithm works in order to always offer the most relevant results to Internet users. Through this theory, sites demonstrating expertise and reliability are put forward and thus benefit from better SEO.
- Finally, the use of Schema Markup and structured data can help the various search engines improve the understanding of your content and at the same time increase your visibility on the results pages.
Since SEO is constantly evolving, it's important to stay up to date on emerging SEO trends, whether by checking out the news on trusted SEO blogs, attending conferences, or regularly testing new strategies.
At Bofu , we are convinced that SEO is at the heart of any growth strategy that aims to be effective and profitable. By respecting best practices and staying on the lookout for new trends , you can aim to attract qualified traffic , improve your ranking in search results and achieve your SEO objectives . All this, in order to propel your website to new heights of success!
Voice Search and SEO
Since the use of voice assistants such as Siri , Alexa and Google Assistant is becoming more and more common, it becomes crucial to optimize your website accordingly. To do this, it is first good to note that voice search queries are generally longer than traditional search queries. Therefore, it is recommended to include complete sentences and questions in your SEO content . The idea is that the content then takes the form of more of a conversation, able to respond to the user's requests.
For example, instead of targeting keywords like “best restaurant,” a good strategy might be to instead rank with complete phrases like “What is the best Italian restaurant near me?” ". This type of question actually represents more of what is asked of voice assistants.
SEO for videos
In order to properly adapt your organic referencing (SEO) practices, it is important to take into account that the algorithms of Google , Bing , as well as other main search engines are giving more and more importance to video content .
In order to adapt, here are 3 relevant tips to put into action:
- include a transcription of your videos in optimized text form;
- use relevant title tags and descriptions;
- add ALT tags for thumbnails.
For example, if you have a YouTube channel where you do cooking tutorials, it is relevant to ensure that each video posted contains a complete transcription, a clear title and a description containing relevant keywords.
User experience (UX) and SEO
Through its ranking algorithm, Google places significant importance on user experience (UX). To comply with this, a good practice is to ensure that your website is fast , easy to navigate and responsive data-mce-fragment="1" style="font-weight: 400;" data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;"> to tablets as well as smartphones. By providing Internet users with a better overall experience, and adapting your content for humans, your ranking on search results pages should improve !
You could, for example, improve the UX by reducing the loading time of your website , making it more mobile-friendly, and improving the clarity and navigability of your navigation menu.
Quality content
You now know that high-quality content is the key to success in SEO . In this sense, the content published must be unique, informative, and relevant to your target audience. In other words, the more value it adds for the target audience, the higher its quality will be judged.
For example, it could be relevant for a clothing store to create a blog with fashion advice, presenting new trends and including interviews with designers. This type of content could thus stimulate the online visibility of this store through good natural referencing .
Featured Snippets: an interesting SEO optimization
You have probably already noticed, when carrying out a search on Google , that a series of questions is offered to you at the top of the first page of results. The term “ featured snippets ” refers to these short extracts of text that follow, related to your query. They offer, according to the algorithms, a direct and relevant answer to the questions asked by the user. The additional visibility that they can offer represents a very good SEO opportunity . To optimize your content for snippets , we recommend structuring it to answer common questions clearly and precisely.
Let's take as an example a blog article on the subject: "How to take care of an orchid". In order to maximize your SEO potential, it could be relevant to structure a section of your article in a question-and-answer format .
So, to the question “ How should you water an orchid?” ", it would be possible to read immediately that " Orchids should be watered once a week in winter and twice a week in summer ."
Performance measurement and monitoring
Despite all the efforts to get SEO right, it remains essential to track your SEO performance in order to understand what is working and what needs to be changed. A good practice would therefore be to consider using tools like Google Analytics for effective monitoring of organic traffic on your website, bounce rates, conversions, as well as several other key indicators . Google Search Console is another valuable tool for accurately measuring your impressions and overall organic clicks related to your site.
So, in a scenario where a sudden drop in traffic on certain pages is noted, for example, you could then immediately find out if a technical problem needs to be corrected in order to restore everything.
Mobile SEO
Since a majority of the world's population now uses their cell phones ( smartphones ) to access the Internet, it is necessary to adapt to this trend in order to maintain effective SEO . Indeed, Google has even started using mobile-first indexing , meaning that the search engine's index is primarily based on the mobile version of a site.
It is therefore strongly recommended to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and thus offers a quality user experience on all smartphones and tablets. This point concerns in particular the speed of loading of the site on mobile, the ease of navigation and the readability of the text (display).
Local SEO
If you have a small business serving a narrow geographic area, we believe local SEO should be on your priority list. Indeed, we notice that optimization for local searches is increasingly important, in particular for SMEs as well as large companies operating in a specific territory.
To perfect your local SEO strategy , first make sure you have a well-optimized Google My Business page . This simple aspect can indeed have considerable impact on your online visibility. Other tips for good local SEO are using local keywords in your content (city name, geographic landmark, etc.), as well as promoting the sharing of local reviews , when possible.
For example, if you own a bicycle store in Montreal , it would be relevant to include sentences containing “bicycle store in Montreal” or “bicycle store Greater Montreal” in your content, in order to optimize your SEO and ranking on a regional scale. It would also be profitable to encourage your customers to leave reviews on Google as well as other local review platforms.
SEO Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals , as their name suggests, represent a series of measures that Google considers crucial to the proper functioning of a website , in order to provide an optimal user experience.
The key indicators of this concept are as follows:
- the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading time;
- the First Input Delay (FID), measuring interactivity;
- as well as Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which focuses on the visual stability of the site.
To optimize your site for Core Web Vitals , it is necessary to ensure that it loads quickly, reacts promptly to user interactions, while avoiding unexpected layout changes, for example.
The EAT method
It is well known that the primary objective of search engines is generally to provide the best possible answer to the query submitted by a user via the query entered in the search bar. The EAT method ( Expertise , Authoritativeness , Trustworthiness ) is based exactly on this principle. In other words, Google is constantly seeking to highlight sites that demonstrate particular expertise , good authority , as well as greater reliability .
YMYL ( Your Money, Your Life ) sectors , such as healthcare and finance, are particularly subject to this theory. For good SEO optimization in this regard, it is recommended to ensure that your content is written by experts, supported by reliable sources, and clearly presents, for example, your contact details and privacy policies.
Schema Markup and structured data
Using Schema Markup and structured data is another way to help search engines better understand your content and, in turn, improve your site's ranking on the SERP (search results).
For example, you could use Schema Markup to provide additional information about the products you sell, customer reviews, events you host, and more.
Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid
An optimal SEO strategy must of course avoid the main errors encountered in the world of SEO . These could indeed be costly to your positioning on the web.
Here are some examples of bad SEO habits, which are best avoided entirely :
- cloaking , which could be translated as camouflage, and which consists of showing different content to search engines than to users) ;
- overoptimization , which is defined by excessive use of keywords to the point of harming readability;
- duplication of content , which represents a technique often heavily penalized by Google, which rather wishes to promote unique content;
- as well as the use of poor quality links .
By avoiding these mistakes , you can ensure that your SEO efforts are rewarded rather than penalized.
In summary, by taking into account good practices and the main trends in SEO , it is possible to optimize your website . This is a wonderful opportunity to improve your online presence, attract more (better quality) traffic, increase conversions and ultimately improve your sales!
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