Do you know what the best thing about SEO is? The element of surprise and unpredictability. You cannot always guess what is going to happen next. Which trend will fade away, which best practice will longer be the one, or which rule will fall out is never confirmed. So, the most you can do is follow all the current best SEO practices, abide by the existing white hat SEO rules, and keep yourself up to date with new SEO trends, and that’s pretty much everything you can do.

The market is so unstable that an SEO expert who hibernates for a year and then wakes up can notice a culture clash. The things that operated in 2019 broke down in 2020 before functioning again in 2021. Of course, some SEO trends from 2021 may continue into 2023. This is true because certain things will endure as long as the SEO industry does. As a result, a lot is going on in the world of SEO, and you need to stay on top to ensure that you control the situation (rankings).

I’ll go through a few of the hottest SEO trends for 2023 in this blog, so you can be ready for whatever comes your way.

2023 SEO Trends to Watch Out For

User Intent Matters The Most

Among the most popular trends for 2023 is user intent, which is here to stay for a very long time. Search intent and user behavior are constantly evolving. They use Google, Bing, or other search engines to look up information or study a subject more broadly. Businesses and customers profit when firms know what users are looking for and offer them information that satisfies their needs. As the algorithms advance, you must abandon classic SEO techniques with little to no relevance today. Instead, you should focus more on search intent.

Businesses may produce competitive content that the internet audience wants to consume by closely monitoring search inquiries. Google will become more adept at recognizing when people are asking for professional guidance and will give preference to information that complies with the EAT requirements. Only when you fully comprehend what users are looking for will you be able to dominate search in 2023. In marketing your brand, goods, and services, you will increasingly need to meet your audiences’ needs. It entails refraining from requiring people to register on your website, displaying unwanted pop-up windows, or sending them to registration pages.

In addition to comprehending what the users want, you should also see the preferred content type (video content, blogs, podcasts, infographics, etc.) and deliver by that preference. You will better comprehend the search phrase they used to find your content and the on-site search terms for each page they have already visited on your website. In this way, you can tie this data aggregation to the content journey.

Content Quality over Quantity

Now, Google doesn’t care how many blogs you publish but how you solve a problem through your content. Google has previously stated that you should ensure that published and indexed content is excellent in quality. You’ll have a 2023-ready SEO plan if you make this your slogan for SEO.

But why is this taking place? Many people primarily engage in short-term SEO initiatives to obtain links and visibility from digital PR, add a ton of content, or focus on specific technical SEO improvements. These are good for temporary victories, but they are not long-term fixes. The MUM and BERT updates make it crucial to create original content on niche subjects not covered by other websites.

Instead of adding a ton of generic content to the website, investigate the general interests of the target market, group those entities according to the topic, and rank them according to how closely they relate to the company’s objectives. You must concentrate on the material that sets you apart from the competition and draw attention to your area of expertise.

Although SEO experts have long focused on content, these modifications will make it simpler to argue that content quality is something that warrants attention. You must concentrate on producing factual and helpful information to succeed post-paradigm. The well-known websites for their expertise in the topic matter they are targeting will be the big winners.

Local SEO

Google is definitely pushing for highly localized search engine results, so we anticipate that local companies will gain more momentum from the search engine. It means now is the time to focus on creating authentic, high-quality reviews for Google My Business, Yelp, Pilot, and other review sites. In recent months, localized rather than global content and companies have benefited from search results. This indicates that Google aims to highlight outcomes for its users. For instance, the outcomes I receive for the search “best shoe brand” in the US and UK differ. It is so because the websites that are popular in the US do not, at least not immediately, benefit the UK audience.

However, while having more authority than UK equivalents, it does not rank. Although this is a broad example, Google is also using location-based search results to alter search results at the local scale, in addition to the Map pack. To ensure that Google doesn’t omit to rank your website better, moving ahead, websites that wish to attract local audiences should add the address with city, state, and country.

SEO Automation

SEO automation techniques have already begun and will extend further over time. We’ll see more automation as more Python-savvy SEO specialists worldwide emerge. Automated technical audits, competitive analysis, outreach, and content creation will prevail. Automating technical audits will become more “smart” by using machine learning to categorize technical faults according to content type. Additionally, I think that SEO automation should be used by marketers to ensure quality. Implementing real-time SEO validation and alerting systems within our platforms would help us either prevent issues from arising in the first place or track them down in real-time to prevent disastrous SEO failures.

Enterprise SEO specialists are working with ever-larger, and more complicated sites as the change rate in SEO has been increasing tremendously. Better automation is increasingly turning from a “nice to have” to a must to close gaps in technology, skills, and resources and scale execution.

Shortening the time between data capture, insights, and execution is difficult. SEO specialists (and their technologies) will need to significantly increase their investment in creating automation in the coming year. Edge technologies, AI-driven analysis, and highly customized intelligent alerts are all ways to deploy changes more quickly.

Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing

ML and NLP are going to strengthen SEO processes. Google’s growth of multi-modal search indicates that search journeys instead of specific inquiries are receiving more attention. More comprehensive content has a greater chance of ranking on the long tail keywords than it previously did, according to Google’s shift towards extracting subtopics from lengthier pages (passage indexing). It also suggests the necessity of gathering first-party data and putting it in a data store like BigQuery so you may use it for optimizations. Scaling the production of solid content that is structured to rank will require using this data collection, figuring out how to combine it with developments in natural language generation, and grasping the connections between entities and keywords.

Mobile First Experience

Since Google made mobile-friendliness a recognized ranking feature in 2015, it has been a pillar of SEO. However, since Google introduced mobile-first indexing in 2019, optimizing your content for mobile devices has become even more critical. As opposed to the desktop version, which is considered the “secondary” version, the search engine now prioritizes mobile versions of websites for ranking content. Many people were not surprised by this change because it is predicted that by 2025, roughly 75% of internet users will only access the internet through mobile devices. Because more people are using mobile devices to access the internet, you must ensure that your content is designed with these consumers in mind.

IndexNow

Search engines employ the open-source IndexNow engine to find fresh content. It includes using the push method as opposed to the traditional pull method. Therefore, the API delivers this information to the search engines whenever a website connected with IndexNow API updates its content, deletes a post, or publishes a new one. Microsoft created the IndexNow API in October 2021. IndexNow is supported by the search engines Yandex and Bing already. The search engines may avoid excessive crawl load owing to IndexNow’s speedier indexing, which makes the entire process more efficient. A Google spokesman has now confirmed that Google is joining IndexNow. They evaluate the protocol’s effectiveness to see if it enhances Google’s sustainability initiatives. Pages that haven’t been updated shouldn’t be crawled again by the crawler (Google bots). But that’s not really occurring right now. It would save a lot of server energy if Google could crawl only newly updated pages. For example, a website updates its blog content often but rarely updates its about us page. If the bots know which pages to crawl and which to avoid, it will save a lot of energy.

Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness

Google has stressed numerous times how important content quality is for good ranking. Businesses frequently ask what Google means by “excellent content,” nevertheless, as a result of this. The EAT principle, which stands for expertise, Authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, should be kept in mind when attempting to raise the quality of your content for SEO purposes. Businesses should be aware of this while creating content for their website because Google uses these characteristics to decide whether a web page offers quality content.

Buyer personas are crucial to assist you in understanding better the kind of content your target audience values and to guarantee that you are producing high-quality content. Buyer personas are now essential to effective SEO since they can assist companies in producing content that is engaging for readers and formatted in a way that appeals to their target market. Additionally, you must consider EAT when you create your content. Verify that any claims you make are supported by data and facts, and include links to reliable sources. The EAT principle’s requirements can all be met by including authoritative links in your material.

Multitask United Model (MUM)

Utilizing cutting-edge AI, Google has been making significant efforts to raise search result quality. With the introduction of RankBrain in 2015, followed by BERT in 2019, and now MUM (Multitask United Model), Google is ushering in another era of SEO. It is 1,000 times more efficient than BERT, and because it can multitask, it can interpret text, videos, and photos in 75 languages to provide users with the answers to difficult search questions. To deliver related (most correct) answers, MUM will combine various search query elements and attempt to grasp the sentiments, context, entities, and, most crucially, the user intent.

Although Google is still evaluating MUM, it is soon anticipated to leave the testing grounds and integrate into the Google Search ecosystem. The dominant search engine provider needs to notify us about its inclusion, just as when BERT was introduced. However, before doing that, Webmasters need to know how it can affect search. Even though we have no idea, the community has offered a few ideas. You might see a different set of outcomes, an enhanced version of Google Answers that compiles all available data to provide consumers with the precise answers they need. This might lead to more search results with 0 clicks, which is already happening.

Utilize schema markup. The structured data on each website feed Google’s Knowledge Graph, where it gets all this information.

Longform content will become increasingly important since pages that can satisfy a sizable portion of the consumers’ information needs will rank highly.

Leave keyword stuffing behind. Put more emphasis on organic content that speaks to the audience’s concerns.

The MUM’s potential power is currently unknown. However, it’s preferable to make the text readable and straightforward. Jargon-filled content decreases the likelihood that MUM will find it relevant.

Passage Indexing

When indexing websites and webpages, passage indexing will now use the NLP feature to understand the context of each section. It means that even if a particular piece (or passages) discussed in your article is buried deep within the scope of the main topic, it will now appear in search results for pertinent search queries. It is an internal ranking system that will significantly influence the SERP results. It’s pretty much a given that the Passage Indexing Ranking Algorithm will favor websites with highly structured content. This also implies that Google will put more effort into raising the ranking of comprehensive material in 2023.

A comprehensive content strategy typically examines a subject in-depth and makes an effort to respond to the pertinent queries raised by the target audience. Additionally, Passage Indexing will have a significant impact on the outcomes of question-based and long-tailed searches. This makes sense because a focused question necessitates an exhaustive search for the appropriate response. With Passage Indexing, Google is explicitly attempting to accomplish this.

Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA)

Another language model that was developed in 2021 is LaMDA. In 2023, it will significantly impact search, mainly searches conducted using Google Assistants. LaMDA, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, establishes new standards for discussions with natural AI. Obtaining information from Google’s Knowledge Graph may make discussions seem natural. LaMDA is made to have an ongoing discussion with consumers without constantly repeating the exact details. It is a transformer-based model and can be taught to read words, comprehend how sentences are put together, and anticipate what word will follow next. As opposed to more generic responses, Google has focused on teaching it to deliver sensible and focused responses.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is a collection of three essential page experience metrics that give Google information about the user experiences of various websites.

The Three Core Web Vital Elements are:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
2. First Input Delay (FID)
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CIS)

Google has been using Core Web Vitals since May 2021 to rank pages. The impact, however, will only be felt by mobile search results, Google stated in a later revelation made in December 2021 via Core Web Vitals FAQs. 

Core Web Vitals had the SEO world in a panic with their introduction. You might already be familiar with Google’s goal for webmasters to give users an improved page experience. This was done to ensure that any visitor who arrived at a page from a Google search result wouldn’t leave the page owing to a bad user experience. Core web vitals were added to the Page Experience Algorithm to determine page ranking. They will combine the current Page Experience signals, including HTTPS, intrusive pop-ups, mobile friendliness, and safe browsing. It should be emphasized that Core Web Vitals won’t be the main factor used to determine how pages rank on SERP. Google claims that even if a website doesn’t adhere to Web Vitals guidelines, it will still rank web pages with quality links and content and links.

Structured Data for Videos

Seek Markup and Clip Markup are the two new structured data markups that will enable video content to appear in the search results with the crucial parts launched by Google. The Key Moments option is currently accessible for YouTube-hosted videos. Any platform that plays video in the future can gain from utilizing these markups. These two markups are a godsend if you want to boost your video CTR on the search results page.

The Seek markup is an automated method of informing Google Search about the timestamps in your films. Seek Video markup instructs Google on how a URL structure functions so that Google may automatically display significant moments found in your video.

The Clip Markup manually informs Google about them. You should manually instruct Google on what date and label to use when presenting the crucial moments for Clip Markup to work. This data must be integrated into the Video Object component of the structured data by incorporating these necessary features.

Scalability

Focus on improving scalability in your SEO services if you intend to outperform your competition in 2023. A set of notifications should be put up to track any major changes, such as ranking your keyphrases, URL alterations, or content modifications. Create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for additional duties you cannot automate.

Conclusion

Although SEO is still essential to ranking your website, it is constantly changing and becoming more complicated. More than just stuffing your content with keywords won’t help you stay current; you’ll need to be intentional and produce high-quality content that will perform well in Google’s algorithms. If keeping up with the most recent SEO developments feels daunting, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for suggestions on how to best optimize your content for SEO.

These are a few top SEO trends that have been most prevalent in 2023. You should set up a strategy to track what is and isn’t functioning as SEO gains importance.