8 SEO and content trends to keep in mind

SEO evolves very quickly and, along with it, the techniques for ranking better. To help you see things more clearly, we have listed the 8 trends that could well impact your SEO and content strategy.

Analyzing these trends is essential in order to:

anticipate changes,
position yourself ahead of your competitors,
improve the profitability of your content!

To identify them, we relied on the latest publication from Search Engine Journal, “The State of SEO: Insights, Opportunities, Threats”, as well as the challenges faced by our clients.

🤓💡 In this article, we also provide content to help you dig deeper into the various topics. Insights from our SEO experts will give you tips and quick wins you can put into practice right now!

In addition: if you want to build a high-performing SEO content strategy this year, check out our report on the state of SEO content in 2023!

1. Strategic priorities: a focus on UX and content

9% of SEO professionals want to focus on on-page factors. It is the second area after search intent (10.4%) and ahead of UX (9.7%).

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Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/state-of-seo-2021-research/417545/

In 2023, content remains a safe bet for increasing traffic and generating leads. For several years now, and particularly following the health crisis, content has made it possible to maintain the conversation with your audience and to develop business opportunities. It is a lever that is, and will remain, essential in the coming years for generating traffic and leads.

To be seen by your audience and Google as THE leading brand in your market, the goal will be to succeed in producing content that is more relevant than your competitors’. This is an objective you absolutely must meet, since the search engine’s expectations regarding content keep rising. With every update to its algorithms, Google improves its understanding of user queries in order to find THE content that will perfectly answer the searcher’s query.

google algorithm update history

As for UX and on-page experience rules (SXO), these criteria were already very important in 2022. They therefore remain so for 2023. They are an integral part of the Core Web Vitals, three indicators that measure the quality of the user experience:

LCP for Largest Contentful Paint, which relates in particular to the loading speed of the website’s pages.
FID for First Input Delay, i.e. the delay in the user’s interaction with the page.
CLS for Cumulative Layout Shift, which measures the accessibility of the content.

To improve your web performance, you can find a method provided by Google that can be summed up in three steps:

Assess the health of the site and identify critical points.
Debug and optimize the Core Web Vitals indicators.
Monitor performance and avoid regressions.

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Source: https://web.dev/vitals-tools-workflow/

In order to surface the best content in its results pages, Google will continue to emphasize on-page criteria, namely:

Technical criteria: URL optimization, tags, presence of a sitemap, a consistent internal linking structure, etc.
Editorial criteria: content optimization based on targeted keywords, headings, content structure, etc.

🤓💡 Dig deeper into the topic with our experts:

2. The main ranking factors

25% of SEO professionals observe that the depth and precision of content are essential ranking factors, just after user behavior – click-through rate, bounce rate, time on site – (31%) and on-page optimizations (33%).

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Note that user behavior is not really a ranking factor for Google. But elements such as bounce rate, CTR or session time must be taken into account in order to offer content that is better structured for the audience and readable for bots. This is what will above all help improve the visibility of your pages.

We have also produced a report on the state of SEO content in 2023. Through these 18 key points, you will understand how Google behaves toward your content and get advice for improving your SEO strategy. To carry out this study, we relied on the analysis of 520,000 optimized pieces of content. Download it for free!

3. Emerging SEO factors to watch

In first place is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (11.3%). In the field of SEO and content, it is true that NLP technologies are accelerating and revolutionizing content creation. GPT-3 is the one that has generated a lot of buzz lately, as it is considered THE most advanced language model on the market. It makes it possible to create so-called “natural” content with writing similar to a human’s.

At Semji, we are well placed to know this, since we harness an AI trained specifically for SEO to help writers produce ultra-high-performing editorial content more quickly. Whether AI Chat or brief automation, our users draw on this AI to be sure they are producing content that will capture more traffic and engagement.

If you would like to discover Semji’s AI Chat, request your personalized demo right now!

🤓💡 Dig deeper into the topic with our experts:

10.8% of SEO professionals believe that Core Web Vitals will be among the most important emerging factors in search over the coming years.

Next, search marketers identify the E-E-A-T criteria (10.2%) as emerging factors.

When it comes to content, the E-E-A-T criteria (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) allow Google to distinguish reliable, high-quality content. They are particularly relevant to professional media outlets, health websites, and legal information.

Even though the E-E-A-T criteria do not have a direct impact on a website’s ranking, they are nonetheless taken into account and assessed by Google’s Search Quality Raters. Tasked by Google with analyzing and evaluating the quality of organic results, these individuals help refine the quality of Google’s results. To improve a site’s performance, it will therefore be crucial to strengthen its EAT profile and create content with high added value.

🤓💡 Dig deeper into the topic with our experts:

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4. Ranking, the main metric for measuring performance

15% of SEO professionals use keyword ranking to measure the performance of their content, followed by the number of pages viewed per session (12.4%) and the number of conversions (9%).

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Indeed, a page’s ranking marks the effectiveness of the SEO strategy and makes it possible to capture traffic and engagement, the main expectations of clients in this field.

To rank well, your challenge here will be to carry out a proper analysis of the SERP (results page). Understanding it well will allow you to offer THE content that will make the difference and secure maximum visibility.

The key takeaway here is that the pages Google surfaces can be informational, transactional, or both. It is up to you to see whether your content meets searchers’ expectations for the query while providing more relevant information than your competitors.

🤓💡 Dig deeper into the topic with our experts:

5. Improving SEO results

58.7% of SEO professionals consider that their SEO results (probably their traffic and revenue) have improved over the past 12 months, versus 21.3% who observe stagnation and 20.1% a decline in their results.

Illustration: SEJ4

This improvement in results is due to several factors. First of all, the health crisis, which considerably increased the use of digital and therefore generated many more searches and, consequently, more visits and conversions!

SEO and marketing professionals had to adapt to this exponential demand from internet users by optimizing or producing new content. To get the most out of these tactics and achieve SEO results, the challenge will be to provide content that is more relevant to your audience and to Google.

The right reflex to adopt starting today is to take into account users’ search intent, i.e. the reasons why users carry out a search. To do this, it is essential to analyze Google’s results pages, whose algorithm highlights the main expectations of internet users.

Example: for the query “electric car”, the results pages display both informational and transactional content. Google therefore interprets users’ search intent in two ways: there are those who want to learn more about the features of electric cars and those who want to find offers to get one.

Informational content nevertheless dominates the SERP, which means that for this query, Google considers that the majority of internet users are looking for information.

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To rank for “electric car”, you will therefore have every interest in offering informational content.

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6. The major threats to SEO

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Over the next two years, the main threats to SEO would essentially be linked to:

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

AI is currently the subject of much debate, particularly when it comes to content creation. Will it definitively replace writers? What impact will automatically generated content have on SEO and Content Marketing? How will Google react to a potential influx of content?

At Semji, we prefer to see AI as an opportunity rather than a threat. Thanks to our platform, AI serves the writer and helps speed up the writing process while improving knowledge of readers’ expectations. Semji’s AI also offers a fine-grained analysis of the competition, in order to be sure of offering content that is relevant and truly original. It is the perfect balance between SEO, editorial and creativity.

🤓💡 Dig deeper into the topic with our experts:

Google updates

Notably the arrival of Google MUM: the search engine is carrying out more and more updates to its algorithms. Between 2012 and 2020, the number of changes increased by more than 635%, which makes SERPs particularly changeable and volatile. Nevertheless, tools exist to assess this volatility, such as Semrush Sensor, SEOgre, etc.

To monitor the performance of your content following a Google update, Semji can also help you. By measuring the performance of each piece of your content, the platform allows you to identify any fluctuations, refresh your optimizations and hold on to your rankings over the long term!

7. A strong need for support with content strategy

Among the services most requested by clients, content strategy (31.3%) comes in first place, followed by keyword strategy (30.8%) and web design (25.5%).

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In this case, content strategy and keyword strategy go hand in hand. It is necessary to know which keywords to target in order to allocate your efforts and produce content that generates a business impact.

These statistics demonstrate the weight of content in SEO and the growing awareness over the past ten years of its importance for generating traffic and qualified leads.

Moreover, still according to the same study, 31% of clients want to be supported by SEO experts.

This is a phenomenon explained both by the business contribution of organic search, which enables long-term growth, but also by the rapid changes (Google updates, SERP fluctuations, aggressive competition, etc.) that make actions more complex. SEO also requires significant effort and a need for internal and external resources to be sure of adopting the right tactics, maximizing results and getting a return on the investment it represents.

The need for support is precisely what we observe among our users.

Depending on their challenges, some companies need more in-depth support with an SEO expert. That is why Semji offers a Custom plan that provides associated services to accelerate the SEO growth of content. In particular, we offer technical audits, the creation of editorial strategies, training, and support across the various SEO pillars. To find out more, book an appointment with Semji.

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8. An SEO budget that is increasing for most companies

53.2% of SEO budgets increased over the past 12 months, 26.9% stayed the same and 19.9% decreased. As an example, the Search Engine Journal study specifies that the average SEO budget for a client is between $1,000 and $5,000 per month.

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Measuring ROI is necessary to justify the actions carried out in content strategy and unlock budgets for this lever. However, it is not always easy to obtain. You may, for example, use several analytics sources that can complicate the reporting of this data. It will therefore be crucial to equip yourself with a tool to centralize all your KPIs and track the SEO gains generated by your content.

What if it were time to equip yourself with an SEO solution like Semji? It will allow you to improve the effectiveness of your SEO strategy and maximize the ROI of your content. Request a personalized demo right now!