Google updates and changes its algorithms hundreds of times a year. It is impossible for us as SEO experts to follow all these changes. That’s why an SEO strategy that worked last year may not work this year, or a strategy that works today may not work next year. But in the meantime, if you are aware of some of the biggest trends and modern SEO techniques in 2022, you will be a head above your competitors.
You need to look at this ever-changing environment as a great opportunity to improve your website SEO and user experience, not as a threat to your site position.
According to statistics, about 25% of users never cross the first page of search results. So it’s important to understand how these search engine algorithm updates can benefit your site and stay on the first page of search engine results.
In this series of SEO training articles, we have introduced the best modern SEO techniques in 2022. Join us to get acquainted with these techniques.
Table of Contents
Pay attention to Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals, or Google Vital Core, is a relatively new SEO term that in 2022, it is essential to know its meaning and criteria.
We suggest you read the article “What are Core web vitals? + Comprehensive guide to SEO optimization for SEO” for a deeper and better understanding of Core Web Vitals.
Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics that measure speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. The basic criteria of Core Web Vitals are:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Measures page speed. In other words, LCP is the time it takes to load the main content of the page. The minimum LCP is 2.5 seconds.
First Input Delay (FID)
Measures page responsiveness. FID is the time it takes for the user to first interact with the page. The minimum FID is 100 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Measures the stability of visual elements. In other words, CLS is the rate at which page content changes. The ideal CLS is less than 0.1.
To measure these metrics for a website, Google has updated many of its existing tools to measure Core Web Vitals. Each of these tools displays reports that provide detailed information about the status of the site’s Core Web Vitals. These tools include:
- Google search console
- PageSpeed Insights
- Lighthouse
- Chrome DevTools
Focus on featured snippets
Featured snippets should become part of your SEO strategy in 2022. Featured snippets work in such a way that Google displays a piece of information that the user seems to want in a box at the top of the results page. This way, users get their answer without having to visit the website.
Some SEOs think that featured snippets will hurt their click-through rate, while if used wisely, it can attract users and attract them to the website.
Content SEO for E-A-T
In the world of SEO, E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority and Trust. E-A-T is one of the criteria for measuring your brand reputation on the web. Google ranks higher reputable sites higher than unknown sites. In other words, the purpose of E-A-T is to validate the content written by a real expert, and as a result, the possibility of the presence of unreliable sites on the first page of Google is reduced.
Generate new content
It may seem obvious, but sometimes marketers and SEOs get too caught up in the SEO details of their website and overlook the importance of producing quality, new content for their audience. It is interesting to know that more than 4.4 million blog posts are published daily. So if you do not produce new content on a regular basis, your competitors are more likely to overtake you. Continuity in the production of new content is in itself a ranking factor. The more quality content you publish, the faster Google will index your pages and the faster your content will rank.
New content is more valuable to users than old content. When people are looking for an answer to a question, they often look at the release date and content update. If your content has outdated history and information, it will drop quickly.
Update old content
In addition to producing new content, you should not neglect to update your old content. Updating old content is an essential modern SEO technique in 2022. If you only publish new content, your old content will be discarded. Because it takes a lot of time and energy to produce content that was once very useful.
When updating old content, consider internal and external links. Fix and update outdated or corrupted external links. Also update your internal link building. When creating new content, do not forget to go back to the old related content and do its internal linking. This tells Google that there is a link between these pages and helps Google index your new pages faster. This not only improves your user experience, but also protects your site from being penalized by Google for having too many broken links.
Quality backlinks
Backlinks are the heart of SEO. You can not ignore high quality link building in 2022 in your modern SEO strategy.
Backlinks are a vital way to build brand credibility. When a site with high credibility links to your site, the E-A-T criteria mentioned earlier increase, so Google recognizes your site as a credible site for users.
Focus on user experience
Modern SEO means a great user experience. In modern SEO, every tactic must be somehow related to improving the user experience. You no longer optimize your website for search engines, you optimize it for the experience that users will have after entering your pages.
In addition, Google takes into account the bounce rate, the time the user stays on the site and the click-through rate.
The goal is for the user to click on your site on the Google results page, spend time clicking on different pages, and spend at least 5 minutes on your site.
In other words, all the efforts of SEO professionals in 2022 are to improve the user experience with various techniques.
To analyze the status of your site user experience, consider the following:
- Mobile compatibility: Does your site have a responsive mobile design?
- Site Navigation: Can users easily find other pages on your site?
- Page Speed: How long does it take for your site to load?
- Interaction: Do you have features on your site that get users to interact with your content?
- Content quality: Do you have broken links or poor content on the wrong typing site?
- By improving some of these, you will find that users will spend more time on your site.