#5 SEO Trends for 2022 That Actually Matter

Trends are an interesting bag of tricks, with solid advice mixed in with sparkling new ideas that glitter like gold but don’t always carry the same weight. In this article, our SEO specialists in Melbourne are looking at what’s in store for this year – and what to ignore.

#1 – EAT stays on top

EAT is the guiding principle on which Google’s search algorithm is founded, which makes it a priority for guiding your own SEO strategy. It stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness, and if you want your content to pull its weight in the search results then it needs to check each one of these boxes. Good ways to bring this into your strategy include listing genuine reviews from your customers on your website, using the right language for your industry and audience, creating high-quality sharable content, and inputting links into this content to relevant pages on your website.

#2 – Natural language is critical

For a long time now, SEO has been associated with keywords, and this has led many companies down the wrong path – a path filled with awkward phrases crafted around multiple keywords that reads poorly. In 2022, Google is continuing to move away from keyword stuffing by testing powerful natural language processing like MUM (Multitask United Model), which tries to understand the context, sentiment, and intent of the search rather than matching keywords. This doesn’t mean that keywords aren’t important, but it does mean that writing content as naturally as possible about a problem, project, solution, or product, will help make that content rank highly when MUM comes into play. So, worry less about keywords and more about how useful, interesting, and well-written your content actually is.

#3 – Local gets a thumbs up

This year, there’s a strong push towards localised SEO results that prioritise country-specific, region-specific, and even town-specific results. The reason is clear because most organisations can only serve a specific area or a specific country at the most. So, there’s no need to lump in a pizza restaurant in Perth for search results for pizza by someone in Melbourne. It’s all about making search results as useful as possible to the person who is searching, so Google is combining keyword search phrases with GPS location targeting to make it as effective as possible. For example, if I was visiting friends in Perth and wanted to order pizza, my results would target Perth pizzerias even though most of my searches would’ve happened in Melbourne.

#4 – Behavioural analytics takes centre stage

The pandemic has shown us that uncertainty can cause massive shifts in SEO focus. In the past, SEO specialists could rely on matching keyword research to website content. But when the pandemic hit, new keywords that couldn’t have been forecasted with any reliability suddenly became the most searched terms worldwide. For this and other reasons, SEO should now focus more heavily on understanding your audience’s behaviour, not keyword trends. Using AI and behavioural analytics, organisations have a more accurate way of forecasting their consumer’s needs, unlocking hidden content opportunities that wouldn’t have been revealed in keyword research along, and matching content with the intent of your audience.

#5 – Long-form content is king

Long-form content – anything from 500 words to around 3,000 words, is going to become an incredibly powerful SEO resource. It’s been shown to get more traffic and more shares in the past, making it a direct way to boost SERP rankings. It also suits the MUM and natural language direction that Google is taking, creating a larger content footprint for the algorithm to browse and index – essentially, helping the algorithm to get to know you better and creating that context and sentiment it needs to match it more accurately to search intent. But this must be done very carefully and with a lot of thought and planning. After all, a 3,000-word document is a big chunk of text that can look very intimidating – especially on a mobile interface. It needs to be well-structured, well-written and filled with different types of engaging content formats to pull it off successfully.

Digital Freak is a holistic digital marketing agency that’s all about no-fuss, no-hassle results. We’re not here to tell you what your audience wants to hear – we’re here to help you become the brand your audience wants you to be. With search optimisation, social media, website development, and analytics expertise, we’re here to help your business shine. Get in touch with our digital marketing team in Melbourne today and let’s chat!