July 21, 2021

Search engine optimization is an element of marketing that needs attention. In 2021, developing and improving SEO is still relevant to boosting your online presence. As each new decade comes around, many businesses are looking to what changes will be made within the digital world. It’s an ever-developing landscape that needs constant attention. So what practices are worth knowing about when it comes to SEO? Here are five SEO trends that every marketer should know about when growing a successful business. 1. Quality When It Comes To Content Remains Important The phrase ‘content is king’ continues into 2021, perhaps influenced somewhat by the increase in remote working across the world. According to Forbes, global content consumption doubled in 2020 due to so many individuals working from home. However, the quality of content that you produce as a marketer is significant. The sheer amount of content that is shared every day makes it harder to get your site noticed above all the other noise of your competitors. With that being said, it’s important to consider what your audience are looking for and need when it comes to information. A content marketing strategy is therefore essential for 2021. Here are a few objectives to incorporate into this strategy. Buyer Personas Creating buyer personas is an important one because by understanding your target audience, you can tailor the content accordingly. Build a buyer persona where you assess their needs and any pain points they may have. Hire Or Outsource Copywriters Quality shouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg but if you’re wanting quality content, then you need to be flexible with your budget. Hiring experienced copywriters or outsourcing to a marketing agency can be beneficial. What they create will likely be more tailored to your brand’s style and tone of voice, rather than someone with very little knowledge of content writing. Ideally, you want to hire copywriters who specialize in your industry or business niche. Research Search Terms How do you know what your customers want if you’re not looking at what they’re searching for in the first place? Luckily there are plenty of platforms and tools that you can use to see what customers are searching for and that can enable you to tailor the content around that phrase or term. Not only is it important to do this, it’s also good practice to create content that is in a format your users will engage with. Whether that’s visuals like video or infographics to case studies and long-form content. According to Impact, 61% of marketers have mentioned improving SEO and growing organic presence is at the top when it comes to inbound marketing priorities. Content can contribute to this growth. 2. Focus On UX  Businesses across many industries that operate online are focusing more on user experience or UX as it’s known for short. By improving the user experience of the interactions it has with the business, the more likely they’re going to return again and again. The user experience can be impacted at any stage, whether they’re hitting your website for the first time or they’re taking a look for updates on certain web pages. Did you know that 39% of your audience is likely to stop engaging with the content when images don’t load, or the loading time takes too long? They may seem like small inconveniences but they’re enough to negatively change the experience that the user has. Marketers are therefore looking at ways to improve UX. Here are a few suggestions that can improve the user experience for your customers. Testing and monitoring A useful approach to improving user experience is by testing and monitoring certain parts of the site. There are some great capture tools that you can use in order to see the activity on your site like Hotjar for example. Hotjar can be a great tool to observe how your visitors are navigating the site and to help spot any problems that may be impacting the user experience. On the subject of testing and monitoring, it’s important to ensure marketers are working alongside the developers and designers of the site. This collaborative effort will help provide more insight when creating and testing new features. Tracking what’s doing well and what isn’t Not everything you feature on your site is going to do well, so it’s necessary to look at both the strengths and weaknesses that you have on the platform. Offering the best user experience is providing them with something they need and can benefit from. Heat map tools are helpful to see exactly where the hot points are on your site. This usually gives you a good indication of what’s being clicked on and engaged with, and what isn’t. Implementing Responsive Web Design A responsive web design is certainly a great way of retaining an excellent UX because there’s nothing worse than a lack of functionality. It’s also worth thinking about your target audience and what improvements may benefit them when it comes to navigating the site easily. Again, this is where a strong, internal collaboration process is needed between departments. The web designers need insight from the marketing team about what would benefit the customer and developers rely on designers too. Make data entry simple Forms are good to have on your site but avoid overwhelming them with too much data entry. Keeping it simple is going to help them remain engaged on the site instead of simply clicking off too soon. 3. Master local SEO Local SEO has become very important for those users who are looking for local results for their needs. Even though it’s important to focus on SEO in general, there’s a lot of benefit from mastering local SEO as a marketer too. Don’t believe local SEO is relevant? Well, the statistics prove otherwise, with “where to buy” and “near me” mobile queries growing upwards of 200% over the past few years.   There are some simple ways that you can master your local SEO and for