Imagine, if you will: your website looks beautiful. Your brand is superior. The customers you do have are generally happy with their web browsing experience. And yet, you don’t see the online traffic you hoped for in 2021. What’s up with that?
Given the latest 2021 Google algorithm updates, it’s possible that search engines are to blame. Well, that and your SEO strategy. Brands that can’t keep up with the latest SEO updates risk being flagged as “static” by Google’s algorithm. The key is to create content that’s not only fresh, but strategic.
Today we’ll explore some of the very strategies for updating your SEO performance. 2021 is well underway, but there’s still plenty of time to get ahead of the curve.
1. Google’s Algorithm Is Constantly Changing
There are nearly 4.4 billion internet users worldwide, and 4 billion of them use Google. In other words, Google is a crazy influential search engine, and many brands develop their sites around them for that reason. To keep users happy and coming back, Google is constantly adjusting its algorithm to bring you the most relevant results.
Google is a big fan of sites that follow their example and update often—i.e., around 2 or 3 times a week. It’s a sure way to get Google’s crawlers to add you to their search engine’s database, or index. And as you may already know, indexing is huge for SEO and boosting search rankings.
If you’re looking for a little quick housekeeping to appease the Google algorithm and index, start with some tried-and-true internal link building. And if you’re feeling ambitious, you can use Google Search Console to edit or clear out negative keywords. Doing so can mean the difference between landing on page 20 of the search results and page one.
2. Search Methods Are Becoming More Inclusive
The ways that we can search are expanding to make Google more accessible for all. Is your site compatible with both of the following for 2021?
Voice Search
Over 40% of the U.S. uses voice search. That number is only growing as technology grows more advanced and Google is able to better curate voice search results. Since we ask Siri and Alexa questions differently from how we type queries into search engines, your SEO strategy needs to be built to match.
Not sure where to start? Conduct some keyword research and get a sense of your customers’ FAQs. From there, answer those very questions in your written content the same way a customer would ask them in voice search. And be sure to keep your Google My Business page updated in the event a customer wants to call you while still, say, keeping their hands on the wheel!
Handicap Accessibility
More than 25% of adults in the U.S. live with some sort of disability. And many of those disabilities, such as being blind or hard of hearing, limit accessibility online. In a world where so many of us take web browsing for granted, that’s a darn shame.
How can you make your site more accessible from an SEO angle? One option is to add alt text to images with the appropriate keywords and phrases. This helps users who would otherwise use Braille and gets you some major cred with search engines. Just be sure to describe said images with detail and clarity. For more guidance, check out the section of this blog post where we talk about adding metadata to images.
3. You (Mostly) Can’t Go Wrong With More Content
Remember what we said earlier about updating frequently? That signals to your customers that your brand is both authoritative and alert. Besides this, more content means more opportunities to weave in the right keywords and phrases.
Now, for the catch: while SEO keywords certainly matter to Google, the quality of the information you post is even more critical. In other words, a slew of keywords and keyword phrases are nothing if the content surrounding it is mediocre.
The last thing you want to do is look like a spam account, so research what your customers want to know, write strong content for it, and fact check your assertions regularly. You’ll soar to the top of those search results for your efforts.
The Sky’s the Limit for SEO in 2021
It’s not too late to start seeing the web traffic you want in 2021. Partner with us to reshuffle your SEO strategy and champion Google’s fickle algorithm once and for all. You’ll be glad you did.