5 SEO Factors That Will Get You on Google's Podium in 2022
2021 was undoubtedly a year in which the Google team put the SEO community's ability to quickly adapt the way they think, plan, and execute SEO to the test.
Google pulled three major updates out of its hat, all of which were designed to enhance the user experience. And for seasoned SEO geeks, new updates almost always mean new ranking factors that need to be addressed!
2022 is 100% the year of the consumer, so you obviously need to be ready to deliver top-notch content so you can boost your ranking as much as possible. But how much of an impact do these updates actually have on your website’s ranking on Google? And how can you best prepare to comply with the Googlebot’s new way of evaluating your content?
In this blog post, I’ll try to get you off to a good start by going over the most important new updates and 2022 trends that you should keep a close eye on.
2024 Update: The tips I share in this post are still largely relevant in 2024. But if you’d like even more tips on best practices for 2024, you’ll find an extensive section on this topic in Amplify’s comprehensive SEO guide.
1) UX and page experience as a major ranking factor
Last August, Google rolled out its Page Experience Algorithm. The update will affect several factors related to user experience, notably the Core Web Vitals, which serve as the overall assessment of user experience on a website.
The update was initially applied to the mobile versions of the website and is expected to be applied to desktop searches in late March of this year, when Google rolls out the final part of the update.
That said, we can conclude that user experience will be a key ranking factor.
User experience isn't just about mobile-friendliness and responsiveness. It also involves page speed, interactivity, visual stability, and HTTPS—all of which are important components of the Page Experience Algorithm.
But what can you do to improve your website?
- Conduct an analysis and review of your current design using Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX).
- Focus on user-friendliness and usability if you're redesigning the website.
- Make sure your website is secured with HTTPS.
2) Focus on mobile UX
It is estimated that by 2025, up to 72% of all Internet users will rely exclusively on their mobile devices to access the Internet. That’s why it’s more important than ever to optimize the mobile version of your website.
In March 2021, Google released its long-awaited Mobile-First Indexing (MFI) update. In short, this means that Google now prioritizes the indexing and ranking of mobile-friendly websites.
If we combine this update with their Page Experience Algorithm, we can predict that non-mobile-friendly websites that provide a poor user experience will suffer significant drops in their rankings.
How do you prepare your website for the update?
- Implement a responsive design
- Improve page loading speed on mobile devices, and enable caching and cookies
3) The machine is getting smarter: better answers to complex questions
Last May, Google released its Multitask Unified Model (MUM), a language modeling algorithm that, as Google itself states, is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT (its previous language modeling algorithm).
MUM helps Google extract information from websites that can provide more comprehensive answers to complex questions. This is a major upgrade from their Passage Ranking Update, which they released in 2020, because MUM is multimodal; that is, it can simultaneously understand information from various sources (images, landing pages, videos), thereby providing a more comprehensive answer. It also aims to overcome language barriers.
Google used an example related to MUM:
What can you do to prepare for the MUM update?
- Write high-quality content that includes long-tail keywords and is combined with optimized images and videos
- Add structured data to help Google understand the page
4) Upgrading featured snippets
In addition to the major updates Google has implemented over the past year, there have also been some minor improvements to its algorithms—for example, the Passage Ranking Update.
With the implementation of the Passage Ranking Update, Google indexes not only entire landing pages but also smaller passages from the page—also known as featured snippets.
This is particularly useful for very specific searches and voice searches, as it makes it easier for users to find exactly what they’re looking for. Searches are becoming increasingly targeted over time, and featured snippets will play an increasingly prominent role in search results in the coming years.
What can you do to improve your featured snippets?
- Focus on strengthening your long-tail keywords. Research your audience to find out what information is important to them and what your target audience searches for to find that information.
- Create high-quality content. Always keep your audience and users in mind—not Googlebot.
5) Voice Searches
Thanks to innovations such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, voice search technology is advancing rapidly and has become much more popular in recent years.
Households in Europe are beginning to take notice of smart speakers, and every year the number of smart speakers in households is rising dramatically.
To improve voice search results, focus on long-tail keywords, since voice searches tend to consist of longer combinations of keywords and phrases. When users type into Google instead of using voice search, they tend to shorten their queries.
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Whether you're a generalist or a specialist in marketing, our experts have put together a number of helpful tips for you on our blog.
