SEO in 2023: 10 Trends to Consider In Your SEO Strategy

April 18, 2023

As we all know, the world of SEO is constantly evolving and it can be difficult to predict future trends. However, through extensive research and analysis of facts, Google's news, and expert opinions, we have identified the top 8 SEO trends to watch out for in the coming years.

1. Organic search is on the rise. Recent revenue reports from Google and Bing Ads suggest a decline in paid advertising. In October 2022, Google Ads revenue increased by just 4.25%, compared to the 13.5% and 22% increase in the previous quarters. This decline in revenue could be due to the impending economic crisis in 2023, making companies more cautious about their spending. Additionally, consumers are increasingly preferring organic search results over paid ads, as the latter is often associated with low-quality content. In response, Google is planning to change the "Ad" label to "Sponsored" to make it sound less aggressive. As a result, companies are likely to invest more in expanding their organic positions, making SEO a top trend to watch out for.

How to act: To take advantage of this trend, consider revising your advertising campaigns and targeting affordable bids. If you're cutting costs on paid promotion, focus on optimizing your site for organic search. Start by using basic Google tools like Search Console to identify technical issues on your site.

Here are some additional tools and tips to help you stay on top of your SEO game:

  • SEMrush: A comprehensive tool for SEO, SEMrush provides keyword research, competitor analysis, and site audits to help you optimize your site.
  • Ahrefs: Another all-in-one tool for SEO, Ahrefs offers backlink analysis, content research, and keyword tracking to help you improve your site's visibility.
  • Google Analytics: This free tool allows you to track your website's performance, monitor traffic, and analyze user behavior to optimize your site accordingly.
  • Google Search Console: Use this tool to monitor your site's health, track search engine rankings, and identify issues that may be impacting your site's performance.
  • Moz Pro: A suite of SEO tools including keyword research, link building, and site optimization to help you boost your search engine rankings.
  • Yoast SEO: A popular WordPress plugin, Yoast SEO helps optimize your site's content for search engines, ensuring that your site is easy to find and rank.

By staying on top of these trends and utilizing the right tools, you can improve your site's visibility and drive more traffic to your site.

2. Featured and zero-click snippets will become prevalent. As the popularity of paid promotions decline, website owners are turning their attention to optimizing their pages for featured and zero-click snippets, which attract the most clicks and views in organic SERPs. However, the SEO community is divided on how to approach featured snippets, as they offer users quick answers without clicking through to other SERP snippets. Nonetheless, Google continues to prioritize featured snippets, making them more prominent in search results.

To optimize your pages for featured and zero-click snippets, focus on structured data. Google often uses structured data to fetch information for zero-click results, so apply schema markup that suits the content on your page. This will increase the chances of your content appearing in featured snippets and other zero-click results. Additionally, ensure that your content is concise, relevant, and answers common user queries, as this is what Google looks for when selecting content for featured snippets.

3. E-A-T remains crucial. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) has been an important factor for many years and will continue to be in 2023, especially since Google confirmed its application to every single query. E-A-T is made up of various aspects, such as backlinks from authoritative sources and linkless mentions from niche experts. Personal branding is also essential for credibility and trustworthiness.

To improve your site's E-A-T, invest in your brand, focus on quality content, partner with credible sources to get mentions, and be active in public events. Additionally, promote your company's image positively and encourage employees to do the same. Reputation investment may be costly, but it is worth it.

4. Overuse of AI content. AI content writers are becoming better every day, but they are not yet good enough to replace human writers. Some SEOs may fall into the trap of overusing AI content and sacrificing quality over quantity, which can lead to penalties from Google's Helpful Content update.

To use AI content tools, use them carefully. These tools can help with writer's block, generate raw outlines, create short pieces of text, and aid in localization. However, AI-generated content, including translations, still requires manual editing.

5. Entity-based optimization will become more important. Google has trained its BERT and MUM algorithms to understand entities behind keywords, leading to an entity-based optimization approach to replace traditional keyword optimization. Google's natural language processing algorithms analyze content to understand the most meaningful words or entities and create a knowledge panel.

To improve entity-based optimization, give Google access to as much data about your business as possible. Surround your target entity with related entities, create a Google Business Profile, engage in link-building, and let customers review your business.

6. Google Shopping's dominance in e-commerce. Google is becoming a shopping aggregator, showing goods from many platforms and offering "where-to-buy" links. While direct selling is not yet offered, Google is actively promoting its Google Shopping platform.

7. The popularity of visual search is expected to increase as Google Lens and AI technology continue to improve. In 2023, Google is expected to release multimodal search that will allow for better image and video recognition. However, heavy visuals can slow down page loading speed and negatively impact Core Web Vitals and PageSpeed metrics, affecting the user experience and potentially costing rankings. To avoid this, focus on image SEO strategies such as high-quality visuals, lazy loading, and optimizing page layouts for all devices. Adding relevant schema markup and proper alt texts can also help Google categorize and understand images better.

8. AI-generated images are becoming more popular, with platforms like Midjourney and DALL-E creating high-quality images with enough context. Google can even recognize these artificial images and may feature them in SERPs if the query is relevant. However, it's important to use AI-generated images sparingly, especially for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites that require credibility. Quality over quantity is still a key factor in SEO, and AI algorithms are expected to continue shaping the industry. Keeping this in mind while developing an SEO strategy can help improve rankings and online visibility.

9. Voice Search Optimization: With the rise of voice assistants and smart speakers, optimizing your website for voice search has become increasingly important. This means focusing on long-tail keywords and natural language queries, as well as providing concise and informative answers to common questions.

10. Local SEO: With more people using mobile devices to search for businesses and services in their local area, local SEO has become a crucial part of any SEO strategy. This involves optimizing your website and content for local keywords, as well as ensuring that your business information is accurate and consistent across all online directories and platforms. Additionally, building local citations and getting listed on Google My Business can also help improve your local search visibility.

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