A lot of bloggers, SEOs and content marketers have wondered what’s going to be the biggest SEO trends in 2021.

If you’re one of those bothered about SEO outlook for 2021 then your worries are legit… because as far back as late 2020, Google, the world’s dominant search engine had already shown patterns of where SEO will be turning up in 2021.

As a matter of fact, SEO will still play a dominant role in the success of your website, Content Marketing and online business for some time, right into the nearest future.

And with continuous changes in search algorithm like the NLP, BERT etc, there’s going to be a need to rejig your search engine optimizations, to meet up with latest trends.

If you could notice the other year, page loading speed was officially made an important ranking factor in Google SERP. Ditto with semantics, featured snippets and others.

In the face of changing Google algorithm and search engine ranking factors, there’s so much to brace of for yet there’s hardly enough time to get ready for this changes.

In the following paragraphs below, I’m going to list out the most important SEO trends to look out for in 2021 and actionable steps you can take to build a more viable traffic for your blog…

Optimize for Local Search

Local Search Engine Optimization has helped a lot of new businesses get featured on Google search more prominently.

This wasn’t so a few years ago. Right now, with the proper keywords and optimized Listing of your business page on Google my business page, your business will be featured on Google maps and on local search.

With this, you can get locally relevant and direct traffic back to your website.

This is only going to get better. A lot of new businesses are going to get the chance to get features at spectacular spots on Google maps and local search.

If you’re yet to have your business profile listed on Google My Business then you’ll want to get that done now.

Understand Google’s BERT

BERT, AKA, Bid Directional Encoders Representations, is Google’s latest attempt at using Natural Language Processing to deliver better results for Google users based on their search intent.

With the coming of Google’s BERT update, many things have changed in the SEO world.

The idea about BERT is for Google to have a better understanding of the intent behind search queries and the context of a particular post…

Thus, with the existence of BERT, there will be less reliance on Keywords optimization… Because, beyond keywords, context, semantics and user intent will be play a key role in determining what what content will show up in search results pages.

In the long run, with a continuous improvement on Google’s BERT, even some well optimized posts may not show up on Google. So, more than focusing on keywords, you’ll want to target semantics, synonyms, LSI keywords etc in your posts.

Pay more attention to include semantically related phrases within your content.

Continue to target featured snippets! Featured Snippet remains one of the best ways to take up more search real estate and dominate your competitors in the SERPs.

Create Better Content

Despite recent algorithm changes, content still plays a very important role in SEO and search visibility.

For your content to get better rankings and visibility on the search engine, you’ll have to focus on writing not just fresh content but the best content in your niche.

A well written and promoted content will help you get back links and in turn when more people link to your content, you will get a boost in visibility and improved ranking on Google.

Write Long form Content

Long form content has usually been one of the best ways to get better and widespread long tail keywords across your content.

When it comes to Semantics SEO, investing in long form content will be very useful in giving you the opportunity to use as much semantically related phrases in your content as possible. In the long run, this will help in your Latent Semantic Indexing and improved rankings for your blog.

When this is done right, you’ll be able to generate a decent amount of traffic to your website.

Also, you can take your well performing content, expand on it, add better research and make it better. This can get you even more traffic.

Create Video Content

As usual, video content is still going to be on the rise especially in some target geopolitical regions.

Instead of focusing on text content alone, consider expanding your content formats to include video content also.

Instead of completely creating a new content, you can use one content and transform them into different forms including written content, audio and videos.

Improve your User experience

With the current updates to Google algorithms, user experience has once again become an important ranking factor.

In 2021 you don’t just need a very good looking website, you need a website that delivers a great user experience for your users.

So going forward, you want to remember that factors like your loading speed will play a role in your search rankings. Also, you will want to structure the design of your website in such a way that users will be able to navigate the website very easily.

These are all aimed at enhancing a user’s stay on your website thus reducing bounce rates.

Consider EAT as an important ranking factor

Google’s recent ranking factor, code named; EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) will still mark an important ranking factor in Google search in 2021.

Some niches like Medicals and Finance among others will demand a lot of expertise, trust and authoritativeness from the writers before such posts can rank.

For this reason, if you’re creating content on any of these niches, instead of focusing on ranking, focus on building expertise and trustworthiness for your brand.

This will help you rank faster.

Optimize for Google’s Core Web Vitals

Core web vitals are a set of factors used by Google to ascertain a webpage’s overall user experience. It contains a list of factors like website loading speed, responsiveness and visual stability.

The long and short of the gist is that while you’re paying more attention to SEO and Keyword optimization, Google is also paying attention to user exprience.

And for this reason, from may 2021, Google’s core web vitals will be launched and it’s going to be one of the major factors that will determine it’s page rank.

You don’t want to ignore this as it is going to become important in the coming years therefore you want to pay attention to giving your users a high quality user experience on your web pages.

Use Structured Data to answer Frequently Asked Questions on your blog

Instead of using the basic content editor to create your FAQ posts, work on using rich data to create the content. Doing this will get you a better search engine feature compared to using ordinary content.

Here’s where we’ll round off the top SEO trends in 2021 and actionable steps to take.

Remember, search engine is going to be as dynamic as ever and the changes in trends will keep affecting your website either positively or negatively therefore, it is in your best interest to evolve your SEO as the algorithms keeps evolving.

If you’re finding it difficult to update your SEO, you can always get to learn the ropes by reading other SEO related posts on this blog or hire our experts to help with your SEO optimizations.

Now, it’s over to you. Which of these SEO trends are you getting to notice with your blog? Let’s hear you.