Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is evolving daily as AI and other new technologies drive conumer behavior. While algorithms and data play a large role in the way SEO is detected, these 3 SEO trends of 2023 will shape your rankings and should be implemented as soon as possible. According to LocalIQ, these 3 trends play key roles.
Optimizing for voice search will bring new opportunities
Content expert Erik Emmanuelli rightly noted that “with the rise of smart speakers and virtual assistants, more and more people are using voice search to find information online.” In fact, searching the web is now the second most common usage for voice technology on smartphones.
Shopping, in particular, is a favorite activity. For example, compared to 2018, there was a nearly 10% increase in people with voice shopping experience. That’s an increase of tens of millions of people in the US alone!
And, yet, many businesses are missing out on the traffic and sales opportunities that come from optimizing for voice search. What can you do to leverage the increasing popularity of this trend in 2023? Erik recommends, “using natural language keywords and phrases, as well as making your content easy to read aloud.” And this is in addition to things like:
- Targeting long-tail keywords
- Optimizing for featured snippets
- Optimizing for “near me” and other local search terms
If you’re not sure where to start with this, the beginner’s guide to voice search will get you up to speed.
Boosting EAT signals will be essential
EAT—which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness—is by no means a new topic. While it’s not a ranking factor in that there’s no singular EAT score, Google has been evaluating EAT signals for years. What makes boosting those signals so crucial in 2023 is the recent Helpful Content Update.
This 2022 update cracked down on sites with “unhelpful” content, giving them less visibility in search results. Google’s own documentation shows how serious this development is, saying:
While we all should have been producing “helpful” content anyway, going forward, it’s wise to ensure that our definitions of helpful content align with Google’s. That our content is written for people over search engines, demonstrates deep topic knowledge, and meets the other criteria in the guidelines below.
Out of all the trends on this list, this one is likely the most deserving of your attention. You can have a great mobile site, create video content, and optimize for voice search. But, if your content doesn’t provide a positive experience and trustworthy information to searchers, it will not perform as well as it could.
So, fact-check and periodically update your content. Incorporate expert insights, build backlinks, and take other actions to improve content quality and your site’s reputation.
A mobile-first approach will be critical for ranking
According to Statista, “In 2022, 281.5 million people in the United States accessed the internet through any kind of mobile device. In 2026, this figure is projected to amount to over 303.6 million mobile internet users.” Yet, the fact that 84% of the U.S. population are mobile internet users isn’t what matters most. It’s that more people currently use Google Search on mobile than on desktop, and this trend is expected to continue.
We’ve been hearing about the importance of a mobile-first approach for a while now, especially as Google began the slow rollout of mobile-first indexing in 2018. But many have been slow even to adopt a mobile-friendly approach.
However, with Google now predominantly using the mobile versions of sites for indexing and ranking, you can’t wait any longer to prioritize mobile. It will be worth your time in 2023 to implement mobile-first best practices such as:
- Ensuring that your content is accessible to Google so that it can be crawled properly
- Optimizing the images and videos on your site
- Checking your structured data to ensure that it’s consistent across your mobile and desktop sites
- Ensuring that meta titles and descriptions are the same across both the mobile and desktop versions of your site
