New SEO Trends: Google Enhances the User Experience

What are the new SEO trends? 

Back in 2020, Google began incorporating new metrics for measuring website loading time and overall user experience: Web Vitals. By summer 2021, these metrics would become part of their core algorithm update, which means they would be used to assess the overall user experience. Read about how Google has enhanced the user experience.

SEO trends 2022: Core Web Vitals

There is a subset of metrics every site owner should focus on, called Core Web Vitals. According to Google, “Core Web Vitals is a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience.”

Each Core Web Vital metric looks at a specific piece of the page experience puzzle and together they help both Google and the user make sense of the perceived site experience. Core Web Vitals are available in all Google tools that measure the page experience.

User experience affected by a wide range of criteria, including load time

How hard can this be? You click a link in the search results, and the corresponding page appears. But we all know that’s not always how it works. Pages (and images) have increased in size; the addition of JavaScript has made them even harder to load. Even with our speedy internet connections and sophisticated devices, waiting for a webpage to load can be a drag. More often, we move on.

Google SEO trends

But loading times are only part of the equation; the harder part is defining and measuring the overall user experience. This is about how a user experiences all those optimizations. A website well could load quickly, but it still may not feel fast, and the overall user experience may not be positive. 

According to Google: 

“Great page experiences enable people to get more done and engage more deeply. A bad page experience could stand in the way of a person’s being able to find the valuable information on a page.” Google still seeks to rank pages with the best information overall, even if the page experience is subpar. Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content. However, in cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, page experience can be much more important for visibility in Search.”

The Core Web Vitals will evolve, but for now, Google identified three specific focal points:

• Loading
• Interactivity
• Visual stability

These focal points correspond with three new metrics:

• LCP: Largest Contentful Paint–This metric tells how long it takes for the largest content element you see in the viewport to load.
• FID: First Input Delay–The FID looks at how long it takes for a browser to respond to an interaction first triggered by the user (clicking a button, for instance)
• CLS: or Cumulative Layout Shift–This is a new metric that measures the percentage of the screen affected by movement—for instance, does stuff jump around on the screen?

These core metrics transcend load time. The Cumulative Layout Shift is about how all of the elements on the page work together. Do all of the images and text load together so you see the full page at once rather than its individual parts?

Combining new metrics with existing ranking factors

The launch of Web Vitals was noteworthy on its own, but Google stepped it up. Google is going to incorporate these new metrics into their existing SEO ranking factors to help with ranking pages. 

Web Vitals helps make up the page experience ranking factors, including:

• Mobile-friendliness—whether or not your site is optimized for mobile.
• HTTPS—is your site using a secure connection?
• Interstitial use–does your site stay away from nasty pop-ups?

These new user-centered metrics take into account everything a user experiences on a website to try to come up with a more holistic view of your site’s performance.

New insights provide more comprehensive analysis

Of course, this is just another way for Google to get a sense of how good your site is and it might be easy to overstate the importance of this particular update. It’s still going to be impossible to rank a site with a great user experience but crappy content. While the quality of your content still reigns supreme in getting good rankings, the performance and perceived experience users have now also come into play. 

Latest SEO trends 2022

Put these new SEO trends to work for your company. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.

What’s the Best Way to Do Keyword Research

I recently watched a YouTube tutorial on keywords and online ads—some of these guys are really smart, and I’m always up for learning something new–but the guy who was doing this tutorial hadn’t done any research on his keywords. He just used his company name and tacked on a few words to make up each keyword phrase. Unbelievable. This guy was completely missing the most important part of doing PPC campaigns: KEYWORDS! 

So now of course I was curious, and I researched his keywords to see how they ranked, and not surprisingly, they all fell in the “Low”, range, which means that no one is even searching for the terms he’s using! There were no costs associated with his keywords because no one is searching for them. He totally missed what is the most fundamental part of PPC/online advertising. 

What is keyword research?

Online advertising is an auction. You’re bidding on words/phrases. In some ways, it’s an equalizer—you can bid against the big guys where your bid is as good as anyone else’s. But doing comprehensive keyword research to understand what words/phrases you can afford to bid on is critical to your campaign’s success. 

Keyword research:

• Is the process of finding and analyzing search terms for online optimization (SEO). 
• It can identify the popularity of queries and their ranking difficulty—which translates to their cost per click (CPC) and the bids’ affordability for you. 
• It helps identify the keywords for which your audience is searching.

 

How to do keyword research for Google ads

Keywords have evolved. Keyword research tells you what topics people care about and how those topics rank with your audience. The operative term here is topics—by researching keywords that are getting a high volume of searches per month, you can identify and sort your content into topics that you want to write about. These topics will then dictate which keywords you target. It’s the intent behind those keywords, and whether or not a piece of content satisfies the intent.

How do I do my own keyword research?

Make a list of important, relevant topics that are indigenous to your business. Ideally, you will have five-ten information buckets of topics. If you’re a blogger, your blog’s categories should directly translate to your topics and are a great place to start. Fill those buckets with related keywords and keyword phrases. Get creative. Do some googling to find related words. Or use the thesaurus in MSWord to get started thinking about this.

You’ll want to plug your keywords into a keyword tool to narrow down your list. There is a range of proprietary tools on the market that come with a pricetag. You’ll see references to Semrush, Moz and Ahrefs, for instance. All are very good products that do a lot in the SEO space. 

How to use Google Keyword Planner

I use Google’s Keyword Planner. I really like that it’s free, and Google owns the search space, so it makes sense to use their free tools. Enter your keywords/phrases into the search field in Google’s Keyword Planner, and you’ll get a results screen that shows a wide range of data—the number of monthly searches for that term, competition, and pricing for the keywords and phrases you’re considering.

I start by sorting on the Competition column. You want High search volume results—maybe Medium. Forget Low—if no one’s searching for that keyword, why bother? Look at the next two columns to the right and you’ll see projected prices for words at the top of the page and the prices at the low end of the page. Forget about the low end—they’re meaningless. You’re interested in the high-end prices. Time for a big reality check. You’ll find that people are paying a lot of money for a chance to be on page one of a google search—and that, of course, is the holy grail, our true north. Page 1 of a search.

The best way to do keyword research

Identify your budget and decide how much you’re willing to pay when someone clicks on your ad. Look at the top of column prices and eliminate those words that are way too costly—you’re going to find that it’s a lot of these, so you’ll have to get creative about identifying your keywords and building your ad. Keep drilling down to find new words and new combinations of words that are a fit for your business. Continue to work the keyword planner until you find a group of keywords/phrases that are a good fit for your ad marketing goals and fall within your budget. 

Pay attention to the phrases that Google planner spits back at you while you’re doing keyword research. Learn from them. Some of these keywords provide industry insights of which you may not have been aware. Use these and/or combine them with other words and do another search. For each keyword/phrase, look at the competition and top-page cost. Continue this process of identifying potential keywords and running this test. Copy the words/phrases that meet your specs—relevance and affordability–so that you can use them in your campaign. 

Keyword research can be time-consuming and frustrating

This is just an example of how the results screens pick up words and come back with results—often irrelevant ones. I was looking for keywords for one of my clients who owns a small storage/moving business. His business is entirely rental. People use his services on a short-term rental basis only. Google keyword planner kept throwing back phrases about moving and storage containers for sale. What? This gives you an idea of how Google works—it recognizes a relationship between rent and sale and “sale” words show up on the result screen. Keep trying new word combinations, stay diligent until you identify enough words to create your campaign.

Try to include a mix of short terms and long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords, or longer phrases, will have a lower monthly search volume. While they may have lower search volume, they also will have more qualified responses. More words narrow the qualifications—and the quality of your responses. These are the people who are at the bottom of the sales funnel, ready to buy.

Keyword research can be confusing, but it’s the most important part of your online advertising (PPC) campaign. Getting this right is essential. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.

What's the Importance of Offpage SEO?

Increasing your organic traffic takes more than onpage SEO

That’s the easy stuff that you likely have nailed by now. You’re doing all the right things to increase your organic traffic. Things like: 

• Writing really good content. 
• Developing metadescriptions that include your focus keyword. 
• Identifying keywords and phrases and using these in your headings and subheads, in your titles and metadescriptions.
• Creating smart inner links among your pages. 
• Optimizing images by labeling them with your company name and the image’s description and providing descriptive alt tags. 

But this isn’t enough. You also need to be doing off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is an essential part of a successful SEO strategy—it’s the activity that’s OFF your website’s pages. It’s your total online and offline presence. It’s your social media sites where you’re posting on a consistent basis. It includes podcasts and the reviews you’re getting on your Google Business Profile. If you’re not into endless self-promotion, asking for reviews can be uncomfortable. Get over it. All of us are reading reviews these days before making both big and small decisions. 

What is the importance of offpage SEO

What’s most important about offpage SEO is understanding that it’s the activity that takes place OFF the webpage. It’s the stuff you’re doing away from your website to build your brand. 

Off-page SEO includes brand building and PR. That’s getting out in front of the public. Pitching articles to local publications or industry newsletters. Looking for opportunities to be a guest blogger or speaker. It includes networking, meeting people and growing your presence. 

According to Whitespark’s 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors report, reviews can influence both the Google Local Pack and Local Finder rankings as well as local organic rankings. You do want to be part of local search and show up on Google’s Local Pack. Podcasts are part of offpage SEO, just as influencer marketing is is. 

You’ve seen the Local Pack a gazillion times

You didn’t know it was a product in the search space. Let’s say you’re going to be in Athens for a month and you’re looking for cafes with wifi near your airbnb. (My local search for the month of May.) You’re served up a map with three listings, your location and that of three cafes. This is your Local Pack. I found a delightful little café in my neighborhood that became my go-to home with yummy food and friendly people, thanks to Local Pack!

GBP ranking factors guidelines

• Relevance: Complete and detailed business information will help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. 
• Distance: How far each potential business is from the location terms used in a search. Google prioritizes by location. 
• Prominence: Your overall online presence. More reviews and positive ratings will improve your local ranking.

Reviews are another important component of offpage SEO

A Google Business Profile (GBP) review well may be one of the first places a user encounters your name and brand. 79% of people said they trust reviews as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family. Your GBP acts as a mini-website or citation that is displayed on the right-hand side of the Google search results page, which business owners can manage. It’s building a relationship within the Google environment. 

Feedback from your clients will produce more keywords and phrases—your company name shows up again and words about your services. It’s always a good thing to be drilling down into this big, robust Google network. That’s why I believe in using these Google tools. You can use a vast inventory of proprietary apps for just about everything, including keyword research. But Google owns the search space. Using their tools means that you’re in synch with their way of doing things. Take advantage of this.

We can help optimize your website. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.