Best Practices for SEO in 2022

Are you sitting in an SEO stalemate? Search engine companies release new information all the time, and everyone has their own interpretation of the data. Here’s what we’ve found are the best practices for SEO in 2022.

A lot more goes into your search ranking than just a keyword or two. In 2021, IMPACT reported that “Google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites.” It can feel pretty intimidating to make sure your website is falling into a fraction of those factors, especially when the game is changing every day. Let’s go over a few trends we think will be sticking around for a while. 

Creating New Long-Form Content

Despite what we’ve been led to believe, attention spans aren’t decreasing. That statistic about how a person’s attention span is shorter than a goldfish? Yeah, that stems from an unreliable source and isn’t actually backed by research. Dr. Gemma Briggs, a psychology lecturer at Open University, stated in an interview that the attention we place on a topic is “very much task-dependent. How much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is.”

So what are you assuming your readers can or can’t handle?

Don’t feel pressured to keep your written content confined to a word count glass ceiling. Expand on topics that matter and let your posts stand on their own merit. True long-form content refers to content you publish that’s longer than 2,000 words. And multiple studies have shown that long-form content outperforms shorter articles—as long as it hits Google’s E-A-T criteria. E.A.T. is the three main benchmarks for ranking well:

• Expertise
• Authority
• Trust

One study analyzed over one million random articles and found that research-backed content and opinion-forming journalism are the only two content types that “have a strong positive correlation of shares and links.” Padding content with descriptive rambling and fillers can discredit your work. This isn’t Build-A-Bear. Filling Your work with fluff makes it less effective. Showcase your brand’s expertise in your niche to build credibility.

Building Trust

While trust is a very sensitive topic—not to mention ethically ambiguous in the still-emerging, ever-evolving tech industry—it’s also not difficult to generate.

The first step is to include an author page. Author pages are linked to articles, blog posts, and any content published by the creator, eliminating any authorship ambiguity. They see the source and the experience to back what you’re saying. 

Another way to build trust is to make sure your site is secure. HTTPS includes an SSL certificate, which means your website will be faster, more secure, and notifies the page viewer if the site has this certificate or not. This can be a make-or-break deal for visitors because if they see that the site isn’t secure, they know that their personal information is at risk. This is especially true if you’re asking them to share their contact information or sign up for a newsletter. 

Deep Linking

Another big and relatively new tool is Google’s Passage Ranking. Launched in February 2021, this indexing technique allows search engines to better understand a webpage’s content and provide better hits for a search engine’s results page. Internal links to other content generated by your site are helpful. But you can also try linking a specific phrase to a paragraph that zooms in on the subject.

According to Cobuild Lab, “Google no longer just looks at strings of words. It is about analyzing the context of the query and trying to understand the user’s search intent.” Using this anchor-text feature will also help search engines better understand what information provides users with applicable results.

Update Existing Content

Let’s say there’s an old blog post you felt really passionate about and readers really loved it. But it’s run its course, and traffic is slowing down. It’s time for a refresh.

Updating links on previously published articles shows that you’re an active SEO-er and on-trend within your niche landscape. Another great option is to create videos for old posts. If content is king, video is that other king who lives in the castle down the road. And it’s time for you two to join forces. 

Rather than wrack your brain for completely unique best practices for SEO to include in your platform, create new media. Not only does this make you accessible to readers with disabilities, but it also reaches those who prefer to engage in a different way. Include a transcript of your videos that can be turned into a blog post or article with proper formatting, infographics, screenshots, and links.

Make Your Pages Mobile Accessible

Did you know that 73% of your site visitors will come via mobile by 2025? While the desktop or laptop computer is still a powerful tool and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, it’s important that your website translates easily from a desktop version to a mobile-friendly viewer.

Additionally, given the improvements with voice-to-text communication and vocal detection, voice searches are expected to increase. Make sure prospective visitors don’t miss your content and search engines return applicable results by focusing on the right long-tail keywords. People use abbreviations when they type but not when they talk. Include variations of your taglines, meta descriptions, and image captions while avoiding repetition and stuffing (which can get you flagged).

Play Into Your Physical Location

One of the biggest ways to increase traffic to your site is by listing your company’s address. While the internet is supposed to be some mythical ether, including your address tethers your site to a specific geographical region. In the footer of your website, list your address, even if it’s just the city and state.

This helps engineers, bots, and search engines locate you so the next time a user searches something like “ballet slippers for men” and selects “near me,” you’ll have ballet slippers ready for them.

On Your Mark: Starting Your SEO Marathon 

If you’re trying to learn more about increasing traffic to your website, it can feel like asking for complicated directions in an already crowded sports stadium. But you don’t have to start every new tactic immediately. Focus on one of these best practices for SEO and implement more as you grow. A step on the right track is better than sitting search-stagnant.