1 – Content and semantics

Precise answers to occupy the zero position

Content is and will undoubtedly remain one of the decisive ranking factors for Google in 2021.

This can be explained quite easily: to present ever more satisfactory results to its users, the dominant engine analyzes the web pages that it indexes and selects those that contain the most relevant information.

They can be different texts responding to a given theme or directly specific answers to questions asked more and more by Internet users who use search engines.

To appear at the top of search results (SERP), you can first try to reach the famous zero position , granted to websites that respond very clearly to a request.

Respond to the intent of the query

However, it does not spare you from treating your subjects in depth, quite the contrary. Analyzes show that the pages with the most textual content are the ones most likely to rank favorably. An SEO consultant from the United States reported that the number one pages in 2019 on Google averaged 1,925 words. But it is not a question of filling, in other words in the world of web / SEO copywriters of “embroidering”. To have an opportunity to raise your site to the very first position, it is essential that you structure your message properly, so that it is interpreted correctly by the search engines . The use of subtitles (h2, h3…) is in this sense predominant.

You also need to write a text that is as lexically rich as it is fun to read. If the majority of Internet users land on your web page but leave it very quickly, the engine will rightly assume that you are failing to arouse their curiosity. 

In short, real in-depth work! Think about query intentions first when determining the next content to produce as part of your SEO strategy .

If, despite these efforts, you fail to dislodge top competitors on qualified audience keywords, you will still attract leads with the long tail.

content marketing

2 – Local SEO

In 2021, local SEO will be another SEO trend, regardless of the outcome of the health crisis. The mainstream media did not fail to echo it, the e-commerce market was among the winners of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, in particular when the authorities declared the so-called shops closed. “Non-essential”. This situation has prompted many companies to learn about Click and Collect. We are not only referring to restaurateurs but to e-merchants in general.

Companies were able to continue to promote their offers to their usual customers but also to arouse the attention of new prospects, in particular Internet users determined to help merchants established in their municipality to the detriment of e-commerce giants, Amazon in the lead. .

It is classically recommended to professionals who target a local population to optimize their Google My Business account as well as to obtain the famous local quotes. However, these audiences should not stop at that and only that! They also have an interest in acquiring new backlinks from geographically close pages (ideally domains) . For example, a real estate agency in Courbevoie should seek links from media in Ile-de-France or from companies based in Hauts-de-Seine.

Writing geolocated content is also widely recommended . For a hotel, this may mean presenting activities to be practiced around the establishment. A builder in the construction industry has the opportunity to publish a new page each time after the delivery of a work. He presents the project in detail and mentions the city and the district.

local seo

3 – Mobile and user experience

A site optimized for mobile terminals

If you haven’t worried about mobile SEO optimization thus far, now is the time to get started! Note that nearly 9 out of 10 Internet users use their phone to search the web. However, it will not be easy to enjoy optimal visibility in the SERPs in 2021. This year, the Californian engine will induct mobile-first indexing in March.

When its robots discover the new content published on each website, they will analyze it as mobile users perceive it. We are ignoring the precise consequences of mobile-first indexing at the time of this writing. But it’s a safe bet that platforms not suitable for mobile devices are even more penalized. If the pages of your website load too slowly and / or if your content is not displayed accurately on the screens of Internet users, you too will have all the trouble in the world to benefit from an advantageous referencing.

Ideally, you should have a Responsive Design site , thereby eliminating the problem of duplicate content faced by companies with a Desktop version and a mobile version.

To make sure you’re taking the right approach, check out the usability report on Google Search Console and take your platform to Google’s mobile optimization test . Among the actions that make it possible to lighten the weight of the pages, there is the use of illustrations in SVG format .

Essential web signals

Spring 2021 will also be an opportunity for the most used engine in the West to place even more emphasis on UX, the user experience, through what he calls Core Web Vitals.(or essential web signals in French). In addition to loading performance, Google will now consider two new aspects to rank its results. On the one hand, this is interactivity, translated by a metric, the First Input Delay, aimed at quantifying the expectations of users when a page does not respond. On the other hand, it’s the Cumulative Layout Shift metric, which measures the frequency with which visitors experience unexpected layout changes. The lower these two metrics, the more optimal the user experience is depending on the engine. Conversely, if they have high scores, Internet users are more likely to leave the site quickly, favoring the bounce rate, a non-negligible indicator for SEO performance.

mobile traffic

4 – Video and voice search

This year, video consumption will once again explode all records! On the one hand, demand continues to grow thanks to ever faster mobile connections. On the other hand, there are more content producers from more and more varied fields. It is enough to be convinced of it to observe the number of media but also of companies which recently ventured on Twitch, platform initially reserved for the enthusiasts of video games.

In addition, 2021 will again be placed under the sign of voice search. The democratization of smartphones, Google Home / Amazon Echo type household assistants and an improvement in the understanding of so-called conversational queries should help popularize voice search on the dominant engine. Voice search is already the trifle of one in four searches and its weight is expected to increase further in the future.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.