SEO Tactics for 2024
As the goal posts move - so do we
SEO… SOS!
The web is constantly evolving, so your SEO strategy needs to keep pace as well. Keep doing the same things year after year, and the competition will start to eat away at your rankings, but what SEO tactics will help you stay one step ahead in 2022? Here are four SEO methods you can use in your content marketing strategy today.
Artificial Intelligence
If you pay attention to SEO and content creation in general, you are probably used to seeing headlines related to the growing influence of artificial intelligence on SEO.
Google’s RankBrain raised a few eyebrows, which is their new AI they are ‘teaching’ how to rank content. Apart from telling us that RankBrain should make the internet a better place, Google didn’t reveal anything much at all about how RankBrain will perform its magic.
However, most experts agree that RankBrain will put a lot of weight on user experience. Therefore, key analytics to focus on will be click-through rate and time spent on site. Re-evaluate your content strategy. Are you posting useful, informative content that visitors will hang around to read or view?
More Long-Form Content
There’s an increasing trend for Google to favour long-form content over shorter articles, but it will depend a lot on your audience and what they want to know. A few years ago, the average word count for first-page search results for a given search phrase was around 750-words. Today, that figure is more like 1,800+ words.
Your visitors likely won’t want to wade through a 1,500-word post extolling the virtues of red socks. However, they might appreciate some detail about choosing the best running shoes for a 10K marathon.
Not every post you publish needs to be a lengthy one. But, if the subject warrants some detail and the search intent suggests your readers will read every word or watch a video to the end, then long-form content will only help in your SEO efforts. In general, though, use as many words as it takes to solve the searcher’s problem or help with their pain points, and you will be on the right track.
Update and Revise Old Blog Posts
Google loves serving its users with the latest, most up-to-date information. Revisiting your older posts and ensuring the content is still relevant for today’s audience is a great way to satisfy Google and stay on the front page in 2022. Update your posts, revise the content, or add new material to ensure they continue to add value. Don’t forget to share your latest content with your audiences on social media channels and your email list as well.
Take Advantage of Semantic SEO
Hummingbird was an update to Google’s algorithm that helps it understand what your page is about. Before Hummingbird, the algorithm mainly focused on analysing the keywords you included in your text. Naturally, black hat SEO enthusiasts used this feature to their advantage by stuffing their pages with keywords without regard for the user experience.
Hummingbird created a much more intelligent algorithm that can now understand what your topic is about. You can optimise your posts around this feature by using keywords as you usually would but also discuss relevant subtopics using latent semantic keywords in subheadings and throughout your text.
The term “latent semantic keyword” is a fancy way to describe words that are not your keyword but are closely related and will be of interest to your audience. Tools like LSIGraph can help you find a bunch of subtopics for a given keyword phrase.
