Let’s be honest: we are all looking forward to a better, being-able-to-move-out-of-the-house-freely, and safer 2021. With almost the entire 2020 under COVID-19 blanket, we have seen Internet trends becoming viral and businesses thriving online. 

The markets are changing – from internal to the Internet and from selling to SEO selling. And since SEO is primarily the key to the locked up progress of the businesses around the Internet, it is rather essential to understand how SEO will unfold in 2021. Read on to learn more about this:

• Stage light focuses on UX, please. 

A delightful web experience is the greatest success online. UX or user experience is all about People. The better, faster, and smoother experience they get from browsing through your website or social media page, the more likely they are to return to it and probably make a purchase. Therefore, it is important to let UX take lead and let other elements perform in sync with it. 

Better accessibility, faster page loading speed, easy-to-find navigation, good user interface accountability, mobile-friendly operations, no annoying pop-ups, etc. are some of the major components a marketer should focus on while designing a good UX. This would not only result in better customer experience and retention but also help your page rank higher. 

• Semantic Search 

Let’s break down the two. Semantic essentially refers to being related to “meaning in language or logic.” It is the study of words and their relationships and the contextual form of words. 

Search is one of the essential elements of SEO because without typing in what you are looking for, you are likely to get lost in a never-ending database of information. 

Thus, semantic search is the new focus that a marketer must place his/her attention on. This element helps to serve the most relevant content to users and helps the page perform better. This is how engines bring together the most pertinent information on the search engine result page (SERP).

• Search Intent > Keywords 

The Google algorithm can now interpret conversations and their intent. Say, for example, it can predict the entire meaning of a sentence to purchase a product or a nearby location or a particular function in Google Drive. This has become more important in coming times because with the advanced technology; Google search engine is facilitated with voice commands and assistants like Alexa. People freely talk to these AI platforms will provide a seamless touch-free User Experience that will generate a more excellent value than resorting to searching intents via keywords.

What can a marketer do to align with these goals?

• Writing content that pleases and aids your target customers 
• Providing your customers with a developed set of FAQs around the topics they are most likely to need help in.
• Consider the major intents and work accordingly 
• Heavy research on the type of intent your customers are likely to showcase.

• Customer Analytics and Retention 

Analytics is the new king in the kingdom of data. In a world where numerous data is crunched every second, analyzing this data to your optimum resort will become the most significant asset a marketer can possess. 2021 is all about behavioral analysis – understanding what the customer is doing, what the customer prefers, what the customer likes seeing often, what engages a customer, what does/doesn’t lead to a purchase, etc. Applying this knowledge into your business will help gain an upper edge by providing your customer precisely what they’re looking for and helping them wherever they get stuck.

• Focus: Building a Brand and Optimising Graphics 

Your brand’s primary goal is to communicate to your target audience. 2021 is all about doing that in the right way – to let your audience know what your brand is about, what products or services you cater to, what are the offers in the store, etc. 

One of the most critical factors that go a long way is Graphics. How attractive or deceptive your brand looks is determined by how well designed and thought out your graphics are. Optimizing your graphics knowledge and skills will help you stay ahead of your competitors and give you an edge in attracting your target audience. 

2021 is not just about your website. It is also about tiny yet important elements like graphics in your website and social media handles that will prove to make a massive difference in the long run. 

• Automation 

AI, Automation, Big Data, and Robotics are a few terms we only heard and fancied before a few years ago. But as times are moving relatively fast, these terms are predicted to more or less determine how the internet will function and evolve. Alexa and Siri have pretty much ruled our hearts and homes, and thanks to more Automation, companies and businesses are also expected to adopt similar functions. Voice assistants and voice search functions, Speak to Type functions, etc., are more and more active as people become more familiar with automation. 

• Quality Content Rules 

Let’s rewind a few years back when #hashtags came into play. It was new, short, exciting, and that made it go viral. Quality content rules and will continue to rule in 2021. SEO is all about understanding what is most relevant to be showcased when a user searched for something. This relevance is most optimized via channelling quality content to reach out to maximum customers. 

• Videos, Videos, and More Videos 

Instagram feed was taken over by its IGTV (Instagram Tv) feature. After that gained immense popularity, a new feature is into a play called Reels, 30 second short videos that are viral all across the platform – from celebrities to stand up comedians, from artists to dancers, from news reporters to sports players. The new year is expected to be more about the short videos’ virality rather than the traditional mediums of posts or blogs. People are now transforming their interests from reading to watching, and thus, videos will continue to flood SERP. Therefore, marketers can prefer to market/ promote their businesses via videos as it would work better along with both Google algorithm as well as SEO. 

These were the top 8 SEO trends that every marketer must note and know to stay in the game.