In SEO, fluidity is the hardest part. Approximately 500-600 changes are made to Google’s algorithm every year. This means, it’s at least one update a day, every day of the year. Even SEO specialists who spend their lives figuring out rank criteria still scratch their heads at the end of the day.
Keeping track of all the changes is impossible. Don’t waste your time on that. If you stay on top of some of the biggest trends and SEO techniques of 2022, you’ll be way ahead of your competition. 75% of searchers never look past the first page of search results. In order to stay on the first page of search engine result pages, you’ll need to figure out how to beat these algorithm updates.
Our list of the top 5 important SEO techniques for 2022 will keep you from constantly refreshing Google’s update page.
SEO Technique 1: Understand the Web Vitals of Your Site
The term core web vitals might be new to you. But it’s important that you understand what they mean and the metric benchmarks behind them by 2022. Google will launch Page Experience in May, a new ranking algorithm based on its core web vital scores.
What are the core web vitals? In Google’s definition, they are a set of metrics that measure speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Here’s a quick recap of what core web vitals are.
- The Largest Contentful Portion (LCP) is a page speed measurement tool. When a page’s main content loads, this is how long it takes. 2.5 seconds is the ideal LCP.
- The First Input Delay (FID) measures the responsiveness of the page. An interactive page takes this long to load. It is ideal to keep FID below 100 ms.
- Calculative Layout Shift (CLS) – Measures visual stability. This is the percentage of unexpected layout shifts in visual page content. A CLS of .1 is ideal.
Now that you know what you should be measuring, how do you do it? Many of Google’s existing tools have been updated to include core web vitals measurement capabilities. These tools provide detailed reports on the health of your web vital metrics.
Take the time to familiarize yourself with these platforms before the new page experience update is live and learn about these reports.
- Google Search Console
- PageSpeed Insights
- Lighthouse
- Chrome DevTools
- Chrome UX Report
- Web Vitals Extension
SEO Technique 2: Optimize your Google Passage Ranking
Google ranks individual passages on web pages along with the entire page. What does this mean? The benefit of this is that Google is able to pull out parts of a page, even if the part of the page is related to a topic other than what appears in the SERP.
Imagine you wrote a blog post covering a variety of different aspects of social media marketing, such as tools, strategy, metrics, networks, etc. You might rank for social media marketing tools, even though you may not have optimized for that keyword. Due to a relevant passage about social media marketing tools in your post, Google is indexing that passage.
You can optimize for Google’s Passage ranking by creating an easy-to-read blog post and a user-friendly site. Focus on creating clear sections within your posts. Include keywords as headings for these sections. The content within these sections should be clear and focused on the subtopic within. Imagine it as a blog post within a blog post. In addition to being relevant to your main topic, these sections should make sense contextually on their own.
SEO Technique 3: Featured Snippets
You need to start implementing featured snippets in your strategy in 2022, if you haven’t already. Featured snippets appear in position zero, or at the top of the SERPs, in a rectangular box.
Yes, you can’t choose the content shown in a featured snippet, but you can optimize your content so that it’s more likely to appear in one. Listed below are a few recommendations:
Long Term Keywords
One-word keywords generated 4.3% featured snippets compared to 17% for 5-word keywords, and 55.5% for 10-word keywords.
Questionnaires on Use
Whenever you write content, you should keep the user’s intent in mind. Searches on Google are often conducted as questions. By writing with these questions and answers in mind, you will increase your chances of earning featured snippets.
Use the right format
Featured snippets can be in four different types of formats: paragraphs, lists, tables, or videos. Keep these different formats in mind when writing your content.
SEO Technique 4: Focus on the user experience
When it comes to SEO, every strategy should somehow improve the user experience. SEO is all about that. This will be more important than ever before in 2022.
Ultimately, it’s all about user experience that is the focus of core web vitals. Furthermore, Google also takes into account bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through rate. You want the user to click on your result, click on different pages, and spend at least three minutes on your site.
Consider these factors when analyzing your user experience:
- Is your site mobile-friendly? Does it have a responsive design?
- Is your site’s navigation easy for users to use?
- How fast does your site load? Does it take forever to load?
- Can your visitors interact with the content on your site?
- Do you have typos, broken links, or just plain bad content?
Increasing the number of users who stay on your site by improving some of these aspects will result in more sales. As a result, Google will rank your site and the corresponding pages higher in SERPs.
Good user experience makes all the difference.
SEO Technique 5: Build your backlinks
The heart of SEO is backlinks. Building high quality links back to your site is an essential part of any solid SEO strategy in 2022.
How come? Brand authority is built through backlinks. We’ve already determined that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness will be even more important in 2022. Your EAT factor is boosted when a reputable authority site links back to your site, and thus Google perceives your site as a valid answer.
We have put together an entire guide on how to build up your backlink strategy. From email templates to do’s and don’ts of link building, learn how to build backlinks effectively. Here are a few quick tips:
- Put quality over quantity – the domain authority of your linker is more important than the number of links.
- Guest blogging could be an option.
- Share your content on online forums and connect with people in your industry.
- Share valuable content on social media and reach out to others to get backlinks to your site.
- Turn unlinked mentions into links.
Boost your search engine optimization efforts in 2022 with these important techniques
Google’s algorithm changes are impossible to stay on top of. It’s helpful to keep up with the latest trends, but still difficult for a busy marketer. Optimizing for people is the most important SEO technique to keep in mind at all times.
Don’t try to write content for search engines. People and experiences are at the center of every SEO technique and trick in 2022. Spend your time and energy developing high quality content that answers and informs your target audience. SEO strategies are built on this principle. Use the important SEO techniques of 2022 to refine, tweak, and optimize your efforts.