The Top 10 Important SEO Techniques of 2021
Important SEO Techniques of 2021
- Understand Your Site’s Core Web Vitals
- Optimize for Google Passage Ranking
- Focus on Featured Snippets
- Learn the EAT Principle
- Support Long-Tail Keyword Phrases
- Create New Content
- Update Old Content
- Focus on User Experience
- Don’t Forget About Images
- Build Up Your Backlinks
The hardest part about SEO is its fluidity. Google updates its algorithm 500-600 times a day. That means there’s at least one update every single day of the day. Yea SEO specialists who consecrate their whole life’s work to figuring out rank criteria still end up scratching their heads at the end of the day.
It’s insoluble to keep track of all the changes. Don’t waste your time with that. But if you stay in the know about some of the biggest trends and SEO hows of 2021, you’ll be ahead above your competition. We know that 75 of the hunt nowise go past the first express of hunt results. So it’s essential to figure out how to beat these algorithm updates and remain on the first express of hunt machine operate expresses.
To help keep you from constantly refreshing Google’s update messenger, we put together this list of the top 10 important SEO strategies of 2021.
1. Understand Your Locus’s Core Web Vitals
Core web vitals might be a new SEO term you haven’t heard of. But in 2021, it’s essential you familiarize yourself with what these mean, and the metric marks behind them. In May, Google will roll out Go-between Experience, a new algorithm that ranks go-betweens hung off of its core web vital scores.
So what are core web vitals? Google defines them as a set of grades that measure speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. We dig a little deeper into what core web vitals mean in this post but presently’s a quick recap.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - Measures page speed. This is the time it takes for a page’s main content to load. The ideal LCP is 2.5 seconds or faster.
- First Input Delay (FID) - Measures page responsiveness. This is the time it takes for a page to become interactive. The ideal FID is less than 100 ms.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - Measures visual stability. This is the amount of unexpected layout shift of visual page content. The ideal CLS is less than .1.
Now that you know what you should be measuring for, how do you measure it? Google has modernized multifold of its breathing tools to include core web vitals extent capabilities. Each of these tools offers reports that give details and perceptivity into the health of your core web vital criteria. Consider spending some time in each of these platforms and familiarizing yourself with these reports, and how you might be equal to enrich your scores before the new go-between experience update goes live.
- Google Search Console
- PageSpeed Insights
- Lighthouse
- Chrome DevTools
- Chrome UX Report
- Web Vitals Extension
2. Optimize for Google Passage Ranking
In October of 2020, Google launched what they call Passage ranking where individual passages on web go-betweens can be ranked along with the whole go-between itself. Why does this matter? This means that Google can pull out sections from a go-between yea if that go-between is covering a different motive than what's displaying in the SERP.
For instance, say you wrote a blog post on social media marketing, covering a variety of different aspects within social media marketing, ditto as tools, strategy, marks, networks, etc. Your go-between might rank for the keyword social media marketing tools, yea though you may not have optimized for that keyword. Because Google sees a material passage about social media marketing tools in your post, it’s indexing that specific passage.
3. Focus on Featured Particles
Featured particles, if not before, should run a part of your strategy in 2021. Also known as the holy grail of quest, featured particles appear in position zero, or at the very top of the SERP messenger in a foursquare box.
Sure, you can’t name the content shown in a featured article, but you can optimize your content so it’s more likely to appear in a featured article. Presently are countable recommendations.
Long Term Keywords
According to SEMrush, the longer words in a hunt query, the forward chance it'll return a featured granule. Only4.3 of single word keywords took in a featured granule as compared to 17 of keywords made up of 5 words, and55.5 of keywords made of 10 words.
Use Questions
Any content you write should be created with stoner intent in mind. Most hourly, when people search Google they use queries in the form of questions. So writing content with these questions and answers in mind will set you up to earn more featured scruples.
SEMrush plant question words, “ why”, “ do” and “ can” return the most featured scruples, whereas the word “ where” started the least volume of featured scruples.
Format Wisely
There are four different types of featured dribble formats paragraph, list, table, and tape. When you write your content, keep these different formats in mind. Also, keep in mind the purpose of a featured dribble. Google wants to display information freely and distinctly to hunt looking for a fast answer. So format for the speed anthology.
That’s not to say you can’t have long paragraphs of manual within your posts, but keep that content after your featured granule picture. This should be short, clear, and to the point.
4. Learn the EAT Principle
The EAT principle can help you master long-term SEO success, despite Google’s constantly changing algorithm. Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? But what in the world is EAT?
EAT stands for expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. It’s essentially the measurement of your brand’s reputation on the web. Google ranks more established, brand authentic, and trustworthy sites higher than those unknown.
5. Support Multiple Long-Tail Keyword Phrases
With every algorithm update that Google releases, the search engine becomes more advanced. Now, Google has announced that it can understand relevant subtopics of a specific keyword. For example, if you were to search “home exercise equipment”, Google now understands that “budget equipment”, “premium picks”, or “small space ideas” are relevant subtopics, and SERPs will display a wider range of results.
What does this mean for SEO? There will be a lot more competition for shorter-tail keywords. But if you utilize long-tail keywords or more specific keywords with three words or more, you’ll have a higher chance of seeing your domain on top results when you check website ranking for the relevant phrase and possibly related phrases as well.
Here’s an example. If you're trying to rank for “custom branded apparel”, maybe your title, meta description, and URL include that phrase, but you also incorporate “logo jackets for companies”, “ branded sweatshirts and shirts”, and “sweaters for businesses” into your content as well. This helps you rank for a variety of different search queries and lets Google know that custom branded apparel is related to these other long-tail keywords too.
6. Create New Content
This might seem kind of obvious, but sometimes marketers get too caught up in the details of their on page SEO, and neglect to focus on creating new quality content for searchers. Keep in mind that over 4.4 million blog posts are published every day. So if you're not producing new content on a regular basis, it’s pretty easy to fall behind.
When you create new content you also have a chance to optimize for today’s SEO best practices on the first go. Focus on page titles, content headers, subheads, image alt text, and the new keywords you targeting.
Fresh content is also seen by users as more valuable than old content. When people are searching for an answer to a question, they often look at the date for relevance. If your posts all have old dates and outdated information, they will quickly skip over to the next search results.
Finally, freshness is a ranking factor in and of itself. The more you publish, the more frequently Google will index your pages, and the more quickly your content will rank.
7. Update Old Content
Though you may be busy creating new content, you can’t neglect to update your old content. This is an essential SEO technique of 2021. If you're only publishing new content, your old content will fall off the map and become irrelevant. Since you probably invested a lot of time into those old posts, don’t miss out on the opportunity they could offer.
One of the easiest ways to go back and refresh old content is by doing a link audit. Find and fix any external links that are broken or outdated. This not only improves your user experience but keeps you from being penalized by Google for having too many broken links
8. Focus on User Experience
Honestly, when it comes to SEO, every tactic should somehow relate to improving user experience. That’s what SEO is all about. In 2021, this will be more important than ever before.
After all, the new focus on core web vitals is all about user experience. But on top of that, Google also takes into account bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through percentage. The goal is to have a user click on your result, spend time clicking on different pages, and spend at least 3 minutes on your site. ( source )
Here are some factors to consider when analyzing your user experience:
- Mobile-friendliness - does your site have a mobile responsive design?
- Navigation - is it easy for users to find other pages on your site?
- Page speed - does it take forever for your site to load?
- Interactivity - do you have features on your site that get users to interact with your content?
- Content quality - do you have typos, broken links, or just plain poor content?
9. Don’t Forget About Images
Over 20% of all U.S. web searches happen on Google Images. So to conquer SEO in 2021, it’s essential to know how to optimize any images for search.
Start by making sure any images you use are high quality and relevant to your keyword. It should be clear to users what your content is about just by looking at your image.
Always make sure you're compressing any images you use before uploading them to your site. Remember, Google is looking at page speed as a ranking factor. Images make up 21% of a total webpage’s weight, which means even just one large image can slow down a fast site. Squoosh is an easy and free tool you can use to quickly compress your images.
10. Build Up Your Backlinks
Backlinks are the heart of SEO. You really can’t have a solid SEO strategy in 2021 and still ignore building high-quality links back to your site.
Why? Backlinks are a critical way to build brand authority. And we’ve already determined that in 2021, expertise, authority and trustworthiness will be more important than ever. When a site, with already established reputable authority, links back to your site, your EAT factor is boosted, and thus Google sees your site as a valid answer for searchers.
We put together a whole guide on how to build up your backlink strategy. From email templates to the do’s and don’ts of link building, learn more about how to build backlinks effectively. Here are some quick tips:
- Focus on quality over quantity - the domain authority of your linker is more important than the number of links you have.
- Consider guest blogging.
- Use online forums to share your content and reach out to people in your industry.
- Leverage social media by sharing valuable content and reaching out to others about backlinking to your own site.
- Find unlinked mentions and turn them into links
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