It might not come as a surprise that people have been spending more time online as a result of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Yet, as we enter into a post-Covid world consumer online habits will change dramatically. Re-evaluating your SEO strategy now can help cement your place in the search results for the terms which really matter. This can help you to generate revenue and enable your business to grow.
We’ve put together a list of post-Covid SEO trends that will be highly beneficial to be aware of as we return to the ‘new normal’…
Ensuring your content is optimised for mobiles
We’ve mentioned it before and we’re mentioning it again, it is crucial that you make your content mobile-friendly.
This year, Google is rolling out an algorithm update which will mean that user-friendly websites will rank higher than sites that aren’t user-friendly following the update. If you don’t take action to improve your website’s user experience, you will see traffic plummet as your ranking goes down.
To help make sure your page is user-friendly, read our blog on the 4 easy ways to prepare your website for The 2021 Google Page Experience update, here: https://wordpress-86005-894356.cloudwaysapps.com/4-ways-to-prepare-for-google-page-experience-update/
Online shopping is here to stay
Like we said, time spent online has boomed which means time spent online shopping has also increased. Evidence of this shift can be seen in how Shopify reported a 47% growth in sales compared to last year.
This online growth however, also means increased competition and that is especially true in the case of SEO. This means that your content has to be relevant. Getting SEO right today is more important than ever.
Using promotions is a good way to stand out and grab customer attention, especially as people watch what they are spending after the economic impact of the pandemic takes its toll.
Featured snippets will become more prominent
Targeting featured snippets is not a new SEO strategy. For several years now, SEO professionals have shared common best practices since featured snippets were rolled out back in 2017. Yet during Lockdown, Google started prioritising high-quality educational, authoritative, and trustworthy content over traditional SEO factors like keyword density. This means it’s now highly important to create content that answers very specific questions relevant to your audience.
Scoring a featured snippet can get your content high up on results pages and steal traffic from competitor sites.
To create snippets that are relevant to your audience and likely to be prioritised by Google, focus on question-based queries that they are likely to search for and any popular keywords that come up time and time again. You can use the Google search function “people also ask” for inspiration.
Online learning and video tutorials
Lockdown was the ideal time for all kinds of e-learning. Due to being confined to our homes, many people took to the internet to search for online learning via guides and video tutorials. A report from Statistica revealed that 2020 experienced the biggest year-on-year growth of E-learning related Google search terms during the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK. Phrases such as ‘free online learning’ and ‘teaching online’ saw the highest increases.
A company that provides such online courses is Upskill People – who we’ve helped develop and refresh their branding. On their website, we teamed visuals with a concise and engaging copy style to clearly communicate the company’s learning content. Read our case study to learn more.
With people becoming accustomed to this content, it is likely that there will continue to be this demand for online learning once the pandemic has moved on. For this reason, incorporating tutorials or other learning based terms and phrases into your SEO strategy is still a good idea moving forward.
Voice technology will impact what people are searching
Voice technology has come a long way in recent years, with gadgets such as the Amazon Alexa and Google Home becoming more and more popular.
This means that people are not always typing their queries into a search engine but saying them out loud instead. In-turn, the keywords you use in your SEO strategy need to be considered. Try thinking about common phrases people use in everyday conversation and not abbreviations that are usually typed into a search bar.
For example“post-Covid SEO trends” would likely be said out loud as “what are the SEO trends predicted for after Covid”.
Semantically related keywords will gain prominence
People, and how people search for things on the internet, will be a central theme for most SEO trends after Covid. In terms of search engines, “semantic search” is how search engines use all the data they can to determine the context, intent and meaning they need to serve up the most relevant and complete results possible.
Doing consumer research and making your content answer customer questions is highly important when focusing on semantic search. What’s more, developing your content for people, rather than for search engines is something you should keep at the forefront of your mind. Doing so can help to allow people to quickly get the very best and relevant search results.
We hope this list has shared some insight into what SEO trends to expect as the world slowly returns to its normal post-Covid self. By implementing a good mix of these SEO trends into your strategy, this will benefit your website traffic and online visibility.
