Top 6 Ways SEO Has Changed In 2022

The frequent flow of Google announcements and its quickly evolving algorithm means that SEO companies in Kuwait need to constantly up their SEO game. Investing your SEO resources and time into the improvement and optimization of your website’s visibility will make it easier for potential consumers to find you on various search engines. In order to continue doing this successfully, closely following trend projections made by industry experts and future-proofing SEO strategies is a must. Sticking to older SEO strategies is not only inhibitory and ineffective to staying competitive in today’s market but can also have a negative impact on your existing SEO tactics.

When planned carefully and correctly, an SEO tactic will always be one of the most cost-effective and impactful investments for your online marketing strategy. Consumers prefer the low invasiveness and high authenticity that comes with organic SEO instruments far over the forced commercialization of paid or promoted material.

In order to help you keep your web traffic and keyword rankings on the same upward trend, we have listed below some of the latest SEO trends of 2022 that you should now start incorporating into your SEO strategy:

1. Content Generation with Artificial Intelligence (AI):

AI-generated content and optimization allows for faster content creation, analysis, and automation than possible at human speeds. Using novel tools like the GPT-3 (third-generation Generative Pre-trained Transformer) machine learning model, content such as topics/titles, paragraphs, and even entire articles can be generated with a few simple inputs. Although AI should not be used to entirely replace human copywriters since there is still room for unnatural phrasing and other obvious errors, it can be effectively utilized to brainstorm new topics, generate original meta tags, and create outlines and first drafts.

Google recently revealed the use of its AI algorithm RankBrain, without sharing any explicit details of its inner workings. SEO experts believe that it analyzes and ranks content based on user experience, which means that click-through rates and the amount of time spent on a website will be the key evaluating factors for content prioritization. This calls for companies to produce relevant content and organize it in a way that is useful and captivating for readers.

2. Voice Search:

Voice-driven searches used to be full of bugs and glitches when they first came out, and very inconvenient to use. However, major improvements in voice technology and its increasing popularity over the past few years gave way to innovations like Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s Siri. We have reached a point where over 50% of queries are being conducted through voice-powered search.

In order to improve your website’s SEO for voice search specifically, you will need to make your website’s content voice scannable. This means using longer phrases and long-tail keywords as well as conversational language.

3. Video Optimization:

YouTube has over a billion users. Other video platforms like TikTok have also seen exponential growth over the last few years. According to Cisco, by the end of 2022, video is projected to constitute about 82% of all global IP traffic. It’s imperative to create optimized video content by using relevant keywords and hashtags in your video channel descriptions. You can also add more meaningful information and increase the value of your videos by using clip markup and seek markup (two newly launched structured data by Google) and enabling closed captioning. These are easy ways to increase the click-through rate to your video via the search results page.

4. Long-Form Content:

Longer content generally tends to rank higher on Google. This might be because long-form content usually involves original research, depth, and expert sourcing, all synonymous with higher quality. But it’s not so much about the word count as it is about keeping your users engaged. Consider breaking up your content into sub-sections to make it more scannable. At the end of the day, providing comprehensive information on your target keywords will inevitably lend you higher keyword rankings.

5. SERP Changes:

A lot of the times, you don’t really have to click into a search result or scroll down for results to find what you’re looking for, courtesy Google’s featured snippets. Google does this so it can give searchers the most relevant information while providing the least amount of content. And so, it has become increasingly important for professional SEO companies in Kuwait to use quality titles and URLs or at least try to get a passage ranked at the top of the SERP.

On the flip side, Google’s Knowledge Graph algorithm has made it crucial for business to fully understand who they are and what audience they wish to serve. Because Google has unimaginable information about you, your search history, your behavior, and your social media presence, it can easily scale up personalized knowledge graphs, requiring brands to optimize their digital presence such that Google ends up featuring them exactly the way that they want to be featured.

Finally, Google has also slowly increased its focus on the localization of content. Try creating not just country-specific but area-specific pages to portray some local relevance in your content.

6. E-A-T:

Google’s EAT principle which stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, once again idealizes quality of content as a key ranking factor. Content need not only be unique and relevant to what your audience is looking for but should also conform to the format that they prefer. Sources should be responsibly cited, and auto-generated content and paid link campaigns should be avoided. Hiring subject matter experts or at least passionate writers is very important, but even offering well-researched information and backing your claims with useful stats can go a long way. Buyer personas are integral to this process; they will help you understand and create content that is valuable and interesting to your target audience.

SEO today is no more just a marketing strategy. It has become vital to the sustainability of your website and the scalability of your business. And its constant evolution and growth has made it more complex than ever. This means not just stuffing your content with keywords but actually creating high-quality and consequently high-ranking content. Now that you’re more familiar with the latest SEO trends, it’s time to prep your site for the future. If you’re unsure about where to start, get in touch with our Local SEO experts in Kuwait at Design Master, one of the best website optimization company in Kuwait and a top SEO company in Kuwait.