We have actually created this Important Guide to SEO for 2022 and beyond particularly for marketers, web managers, and executives who know they need much better results from their Google rankings but aren’t rather sure how to do it. This guide was produced to get you headed in the right instructions.

SEO represents SEO. The objective of SEO is to broaden a business’s visibility in natural search results. It assists organizations to rank more pages greater in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). As a result, these efforts drive more visitors to the business’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which causes more clients and more revenue.

How Does SEO Work?

SEO works by enhancing a site’s material, performing keyword research studies, and making incoming links to increase that material’s ranking and the site’s exposure. While you can typically see results work on the SERP once the website has been crawled and indexed by a search engine, SEO efforts can take months to totally materialize.

Mobile First

With over 55% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, Google has actually implemented mobile-first indexing. This implies it prioritizes indexing of the mobile version of sites over their desktop variation.

If you still have two versions of your site, you should enhance your mobile variation. Even better, change to a single version that’s mobile-friendly, mobile enhanced, or mobile responsive. So, what’s the distinction?

Mobile friendly. This is a slimmed-down mobile variation of your website. It just shrinks the size of the desktop variation. This isn’t the best alternative as you could end up with page aspects like buttons and menus that look cramped.

Mobile enhanced. This variation works best on mobile. It normally features a single-column layout, basic navigation, and an uncluttered style. However, when viewed on a desktop, it could look too simple.

Mobile responsive. This is a lot more versatile as the style scales reformats, and reorganizes based on the device and screen size. This suggests it ought to look good on any kind of mobile and desktop device.

Making your website mobile responsive increases the opportunities for users to read your content and explore your site. This in turn improves your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

Keyword Research and Selection

We talked previously about on-page SEO which’s precisely where keyword methods come into play. What keywords do we believe our constituents or clients will be searching on to discover our content? However even better, what research study can we do to verify what keywords individuals are already using to find material like ours? There are lots of tools that you can use to do your preliminary keyword research.

On-Page Optimization

Make it easy for online search engines to understand your website and recognize which content pertains to users. This is done through content optimization. These are some of the elements you should optimize:

Title tag. The title for each page or post itself does have an effect on natural rankings. However, it plays a more vital role in click-through rates (CTR), which in turn affects SEO. It must be clear to users what the content is about and must be catchy adequate to get them to click.

Meta description. This is the description that appears under the title in search results. If you do not compose and enhance it, Google will immediately show the first paragraph of your page, which may not be descriptive. Comparable to title tags, meta descriptions do not assist with rankings but increase CTRs.

Header tags. Your headings and subheadings must be formatted into H1 to H6 header tags. They make it simpler for readers to rapidly review the structure of your page. And they supply keyword-rich context for online search engines.

Images. Including visual elements like pictures, charts, and illustrations develops a better user experience. Ensure you provide detailed titles to your images and consist of alt text. This helps improve your SEO, specifically on Google Image Search.

Backlinks

Backlinks stay among the most critical SEO ranking factors. PageRank, which is based largely on backlinks, is Google’s original ranking algorithm. The more websites that link to your assistance establish your authority. This is a signal to Google that it needs to rank you greater in search queries. Here are some best practices for building backlinks:

Don’t buy backlinks. Google will punish your site. If you purchase from backlinking services, your website might get banned.

Focus on quality, not amount. It’s much better to have a few backlinks from relied-on and authoritative websites rather than from various low-grade and low-traffic sites. Make sure you get backlinks from associated websites.

Check the links. As much as possible, the link’s anchor text ought to include your target keyword, and that it is a “do follow” link. Otherwise, if the link has the “no follow” tag attached, search engines will ignore it.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Ads has a bug that won’t let you add exact match keywords right now. Google added a new Shops section to the mobile search results. Google AdSense reenabled the related search experiments feature after 8 months. Google says you can ignore “toxic” links. Google said keyword density still not a thing in 2022. And I posted the weekly video recap – it was a slow week – finally.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Search News Buzz Video Recap: Bing’s IndexNow For WordPress, Google SEO Topics, Links In 2022 & More
  It was a slow start to 2022 but I guess that is welcomed by most of you – I have my January 2022 Google webmaster report live, if you took off at all…
• Google Adds Shops Section To Search Results
  Google has recently added a new section to the mobile search results named “Shops.” This was first spotted by Khushal Bherwani on Twitter and we got confirmation from Google that this was indeed new at Search Engine Land yesterday.
• Trying To Adds Exact Match Keywords To Google Ads? Google Says Nope, We’re Adding Broad Match Keywords
  Drew Cannon posted on Twitter a screenshot of him adding new exact match keywords to his Google Ads campaigns and then Google informing him that no, despite wanting exact match – we’re going to be going with broad match. There is a not that says “broad match keywords are on and keywords will be saved as broad match.”
• Google AdSense Resumes Related Search Experiments After 8 Months
  Google has resumed the AdSense related search Custom search style experiments after pausing it back 8-months ago in May 2021. Google said “we’d like to inform you that as of January 6, 2022, we’ve re-enabled your ability to create Related search Custom search style experiments in your AdSense account.”
• Google: Keyword Density Still Not An SEO Search Ranking Factor
  So it is now 2022 and some folks are asking if keyword density is an SEO Google search ranking factor. The answer is still no, according to John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google.
• Google: Ignore Toxic Links, Some Tools Make The Wrong Assumptions
  Google’s John Mueller said it again, when it comes to “toxic links” you can ignore them. If you are losing sleep at night over them and it makes you sleep better, you can disavow the links – but you don’t have to – John Mueller said just ignore them and move on.
• Googler Dancing On The Google NYC Rooftop
  Here is a video I made into a GIF of a Google product manager dancing on a rooftop at the Google New York City office the other day. He said on Instagram “

Other Great Search Threads:

• We used to have a Sofa in the office. We loved it, Gary in particular. Then the facility team took it away. 1/?, Martin Splitt on Twitter
• You’d think ⁦@GoogleMyBiz⁩ would use the app update as an opportunity to rename the app Google Business Profiles – guess next time. https://t.co/4RMfa4AyU0, Barry Schwartz on Twitter
• Are standalone Gmail campaigns officially dead? Haven’t served an impression since December 11th. Help article (below) directs to Discovery campaigns now. #ppcchat https://t.co/ObuYMGhzqN, Greg on Twitter
• ​​Share content from the YouTube mobile app to YouTube Kids, Google YouTube for Families Community
• I don’t think that does anything for SEO, but it’s also not a problem. It’s a common HTML pattern: linking to different parts of the same page, for example from a table of contents on to, John Mueller on Twitter
• Quick Personal Update: Graduating from Google Analytics It seems January 2022 is seeing a lot of people take on new roles. That includes me. After 7+ years as a Google Analytics Advocate, I have a new role (which I’ll tell you, Louis Gray on Twitter
• Reminder: Google AdWords API will Sunset April 2022, Switch to Ads API, WebmasterWorld
• The new Google Partners program is giving out $600 (vs $100) free ad credit to new account. https://t.co/asxcrxXBmm #ppcchat https://t.co/tZobJbUc65, Duane Brown on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Other Search

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, you can follow us on Facebook and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.

It was a slow start to 2022 but I guess that is welcomed by most of you – I have my January 2022 Google webmaster report live, if you took off at all, you will want to read it and catch up there. Microsoft Bing released a WordPress plugin to easy allow WordPress sites to add IndexNow capabilities. Google Search Console products rich results report has been updated. Google said different languages quality on your site can impact other language sections on your site. Google said pages that look like error pages can be considered soft 404s and drop out of the index. Google said stock levels should not impact your rankings. Google said there is no need to nofollow internal links to pages that have affiliate links on them. Google said you can ignore link reports that show “toxic” links. Google said keyword density is still not a thing in 2022. Google may be showing more web stories in the top stories carousel. If you work for a dealership, you can list your cars for sale in Google local results. Google is testing a read full answer button in the people also ask. Google is testing a blue search bar header. Google is also testing a new design for visual stories and trending searches on Google Discover. Are you trying to add exact match keywords to your Google Ads campaigns and Google is saying no, they will be added as broad match? Also, Google’s John Mueller on New Years was helping SEOs and site owners. Google AdSense has resumed the related search experiments after eight months, it was suppose to be paused for only two months. And if you want to help sponsor those vlogs, go to patreon.com/barryschwartz. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or your favorite podcast player to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe on YouTube or subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important for any publisher. In today’s oversaturated landscape and consistent modification of algorithms, it’s essential to focus on the ideal suggestions and utilize the best strategy to increase natural traffic.

Usage Internal Linking

We formerly spoke about the value of internal and external links. By the way, we simply utilized one!

Internal links help to connect various pages within your website using pertinent keywords. It can be a big chance for SEO due to the fact that generally, traffic isn’t distributed throughout all pages uniformly, leaving a lot of pages orphaned.

For instance, Spencer Haws ran an experiment on his site to understand how internal links benefit rankings. After including internal links to 47 articles (with no content update), 76.6% of the posts saw improved positions in Google. Outstanding, right?

Focus on a Specific Topic

Online search engines want to point individuals toward the most authoritative and right outcomes. So, if you’re an expert in a particular subject that you want to explore, your site’s material needs to show that. Want to share your recipes with the world? Then food needs to be your site’s focus. Do not mix pancake material with, say, metalworking. After all, it’s not likely that your website is an enormous international corporation or a large news organization that requires to be all things to all individuals.

Specificity is likewise key. If you’re an angler with an excellent perspective on fly fishing, as opposed to deep-sea angling, that’s what your site should be about. Lean into what you bring to the table; it’ll help your web presence.

Focus on UX

Google introduced the new main ranking update Core Web Vitals in June 2021. Typically, Google’s core updates are about the material. However, this time it’s all about the user experience (UX).

Core Web Vitals are page experience signals that determine the UX for your site by taking a look at 3 main things:

the site’s packing speed;
stability;
interactiveness and responsiveness.

Why is Google doing that?

Well, Google aims to provide its users the best experience and engagement across different gadgets. In fact, mobile signals are the most important with Google’s switch to 100% mobile-first indexing because March 2021.

Develop Quality Content on a Consistent Basis

Material quality elements into SEO, too. For instance, a blog site about cars and truck engines needs to respond to questions or illuminate niche topics. Rather than rambling on about engines, it’s finest to go in-depth with information-packed short articles, such as “The 5 Fundamentals of Transmission Repair” or “Things You Might Not Know About Carburetor Cleaning.”

Online search engines focus on websites with fresh, changing content. You don’t want to copy and paste material from another website. In fact, search engines will penalize your website for that. Focus on premium, initial material.

In addition, you require to upgrade your site regularly, whether that’s in the form of brand-new posts, art, or products. Visitors desire a reason to go back to your site or share your material to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other social media networks. Search engine spiders aspire to check out fresh content, too.

At the beginning of December, Google rolled out an algorithm update that is proving to be the most significant update to local search in several years. The search giant confirmed the update last week. In its typical understated fashion, Google described the update as “a rebalancing of various factors we consider in generating local search results.”

The three factors determining rankings for local searches are: proximity, relevance, and prominence. While Google doesn’t disclose the precise weighting of each factor, it is evident that with the rebalancing, proximity is taking on greater weight. These changes could impact your business listing in local search.

While Google has not announced changes to its guidelines for local search optimization, the update does not change the company’s goals around local search, but rather focuses on improving the quality of local search results. In simple terms, it is achieving this improvement by increasing the weight of proximity in its ranking.

Previously, the relevance of a business listing to the search terms played a greater role in determining the top rankings in local search results. Too often, this meant the SERP would return a search result even if the business was not close to the searcher’s location.

By giving more favor to proximity, the update helps to combat efforts to game the previous algorithm, especially by less-than-local businesses that were appearing in the local SERPs. Over time, more businesses have been able to manipulate their content to win local rankings for searches that, in reality, are geographically distant from the business’ actual location. Following this update, businesses that are in close proximity to the searcher are seeing an improved presence in the SERP, while businesses further away from the searcher are seeing a decline in local share of voice.

While the algorithm update’s emphasis on proximity is the headline, Google’s longstanding, closely related secondary goal of fighting spam is underlined by another observation: we are seeing a reversal, to some degree, in the share of voice for keyword-optimized business names to businesses without keywords in their names. Google has not released any special guidance on this point, but its guidelines against keyword stuffing provide some insight.

All of this is happening concurrently with an update to the local 3-pack results and map design in the SERP. The new design for desktop search places the results on the left side of the page with a new square map to the right of the results. Because it’s being rolled out alongside the algorithm update, it’s not entirely clear yet what impact the design change is having on results.

Key Takeaways

Google’s latest algorithm update for local search is placing greater weight on proximity as a ranking factor. The rebalancing effort is already impacting search results: prominent and relevant business listings that are further away geographically from the searcher are declining in search rank, while closer, relevant businesses with previously less prominence are ranking higher. Reduced consideration for keywords in the business name is additionally protecting the SERP against attempts to game the system.

Going forward, businesses that rely on patronage from local customers have an improved opportunity to reach those customers and should invest the time and effort to optimize their business listings. On the other hand, businesses that were previously performing well in local searches happening relatively far away from their locations will need to recalibrate and find new ways to serve customers in further away locations.

For digital marketers who work in e-commerce or retail, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the most important days of the year. These two days represent the kickoff of the holiday shopping season, and many brands offer special deals and incentives for their customers, leading to higher sales volumes, site traffic and activity. And with 2021 predicted to be the highest retail holiday season on record, we wanted to look at the early data to see what happened.

At BrightEdge, we were curious to see if there are discernable changes in how Google is treating searches on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and how they are treated in the weeks prior to and after the events. This insight could reveal whether there are experiences that are best served on transactional days. We have been tracking 500 e-commerce related keywords (including informational, navigational and transactional intents) over the course of the last month to get a sense of how results fluctuated to accommodate the shoppers on these days. While we did not see any dramatic swings with share of voice, we do see some interesting fluctuations this year.

Here are some insights we gathered:

• Amazon’s dominance is less apparent in the heat of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

For the 500 keywords we measured, we saw Amazon’s share of voice in organic results decline while during the two days, we saw brands like Apple, Nintendo and Healthline see an increase in their organic presence.

• Regular web results get more diverse as the holiday season kicks into gear

As we move into the holiday season, we are seeing more players gain market share in organic, with the “other” category up almost 5% from where it was during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

• Informational content still matters

As shopping continues, contrary to what we may have expected, we saw Wikipedia’s visibility in organic results increase. This could be due to a rise in shopping feeds and paid results requiring organic to fulfill more informational needs during these times. Interestingly, Wikipedia’s increase in visibility is almost the mirror of what we are seeing with Amazon.

When we looked at the types of pages that were preferred, we did not see dramatic fluctuations, but there are a few movements that align to what we saw with share of voice.

• Category pages continue to dominate e-commerce

If you joined our webinar, Critical Shifts in E-Commerce: Preparing for the 2021 Holiday Season, you heard us discuss the importance of category pages. Based on the data, we see category pages are only gaining prominence as holiday shopping is in full swing.

• The homepage continues to lose ground

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we saw homepages give ground to article and product pages in search engine results pages. While this was not a dramatic shift, it was enough to suggest that richer and deeper experiences do incrementally better during peak shopping periods. If you are launching new products or running promotions, a big splash on your homepage is great, but you need to make sure those deals are prominent on your category and product pages as well, because those may be the pages your customer sees on a search result in lieu of your homepage.

• Article and product pages are losing steam following Cyber Monday

While slight and incremental, it is interesting to note that coming out of the peak days, the page types we see being less prominent are product and article pages. This is interesting to note because we see the category level pages rise in nearly the same proportion. This anecdotally suggests that in the height of shopping seasons, the more of a rewarding category level experience you can provide, the more likely you will be rewarded in organic results. This makes sense in conjunction with what we see with share of voice as well, where brands like Nintendo and Apple are offering popular products this season and win with category-level pages related to those products.

It was also interesting to see the before, during and after aspects across site types. We were curious what schema was the most prominent for pages during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Schema is a markup language that helps search engines understand the context of the content it is crawling (so instead of a series of numbers, schema can be used to tell a crawler that this is a time or date). The results suggested a lot of page structure information, but also some revealing insights as to what is and is not being conveyed by the winners this year.

• Site architecture schema doesn’t translate to higher rankings

At the very least we’re seeing winners in e-commerce are giving context of who they are, but it isn’t a direct correlation to better rankings. Fewer winners in the top 3 positions are declaring the site type and organization schema than those occupying the lower third of the results.

• FAQ schema is more present with higher ranking pages

Unlike architectural content, we do see FAQ schema more likely to be present in the top 3 rankings than in the lower third for the keywords we evaluated. This supports a key observation we’ve made: searchers favor a richer shopping experience as evidenced by the predominance of category pages, fewer homepages, and more brands winning on the peak shopping days. In that vein of richer shopping experiences, it would also follow that easy access to answers about the products creates a positive experience. If you have FAQ content, even if it links out to a separate page, ensure that it is easily identifiable by the search engines on these pages.

• Product schema is still important

Per what we observed with the slight increase in Wikipedia’s share of voice during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we suspect that could impact how much product schema was present in the top 3 results. We do note that outside of structural schema, it is the most prominent type we encountered in rankings 4 through 10. Ensure product schema is incorporated in both your category pages and product pages to help engines understand the context of the content.

Ultimately there are hundreds, if not thousands of factors that will determine how and why a page ranks in a certain position for a particular keyword for a given user. But looking at the macro conditions, we do see some slight variations in how results are treated before, during and after peak shopping times. For e-commerce, it appears critical that you focus on the shopping experience your category page offers by providing useful answers to customer questions while making it easy to get into products they may be shopping for.We hope you had a successful kickoff to the holiday shopping season and wish you a great return in Q4!

Despite the ever-changing nature of search engine algorithms, organic traffic remains one of the most stable and valuable sources of leads and customers for businesses. Research published by Milestone showed that search engines, through a mixture of generic and local results, accounted for 69% of all digital traffic from January 2020 to June 2021. 

As you look towards 2022, it’s essential to recognize the need for a structured, research-based approach to SEO that accounts for a broad set of ranking factors. In this post, you’ll learn about five considerations that will be of central importance in the coming year.  

Google’s market share sat at 87% in September 2021. As such, this article will focus on the acknowledged giant of the industry. That said, a well-rounded strategy will also impact rankings in secondary search engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, etc.  

Let’s dig in.  

1. Expertise, Authority, and Trust (EAT) 

The acronym “EAT” refers to a bundle of three ranking factors used to determine the quality of content on a site: expertise, authority, and trust. Included in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, EAT is also cited among the most significant ranking variables in the widely-respected SEO Periodic Table published by Search Engine Land. 

Various experts have echoed this position. Google’s Public Search Liaison Danny Sullivan tweeted, “We…use a variety of signals as a proxy to tell if content seems to match E-A-T as humans would assess it.” 

Here’s a brief overview of each factor: 

• Expertise – Expertise refers to the accuracy, timeliness, and depth of content. Hiring established experts, regularly auditing your site, and including author bios are all examples of ways to boost expertise.  
• Authority – Generally speaking, authority refers to the quality and quantity of citations to content, typically in the form of links and social media shares. The centrality of authority highlights the relevance of content promotion in 2022.  
• Trust – Trust typically refers to the overall perception of your brand and website. Brand authority, past adherence to quality standards, and references from high-tier domains all likely come into play.  

Google’s BERT (2019) and MUM (2021) updates reflect Google’s commitment to providing users with highly relevant content based on limited keyword information. Companies that focus on maximizing EAT factors will find themselves best placed to meet Google’s content quality criteria.  

2. Desktop Page Experience (UX-Driven SEO) and Core Web Vitals 

Google’s “page experience update” is one of the biggest algorithm changes of 2021 and is expected to have lasting ramifications well into and after 2022. Google announced that it would finish adding page experience ranking signals to desktop sites by February 2022. 

Google describes the update in the following way: “Page experience is a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.” 

In addition to several other factors, the update targets three aspects of user experience, collectively called “Core Web Vitals”: largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift. Ensuring that these on-site elements are accounted for will mean that user experience is optimized beyond EAT-based ranking criteria.  

3. Link Building and Citations 

Link building is still a key ranking factor and one of Google’s oldest and most foundational ways of establishing a site’s reputation. The counterparts of links for local businesses are citations.  

Link building is an essential part of any SEO strategy, and there are no signs that this will change going into 2022. Three factors are relevant when taking an active approach to link-building (which will typically take the form of outreach): 

• Quality – Links from high-quality, trusted sites carry much greater weight than low-quality alternatives.  
• Quantity – Generally speaking, the more links you can acquire, the better.  
• Anchor text – You should aim to build a diverse and relevant anchor text profile.  

For citations in business directories, which are a key ranking factor for local businesses, the same principles apply.  

4. Spam, Cloaking, Stuffing, Low-Quality Links and Other “Toxins” 

Google has renewed its efforts to discount sites that rely on “spammy” optimization strategies. November 2021 saw a spam-related update. And this has been preceded by several algorithm rollouts targeting low-quality content, like the June and July core updates.  

Deceptive SEO tactics are referred to as “toxins” and constitute questionable practices that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.  

There are five strategies that you should take particular care to avoid: 

• Cloaking – Showing content to search engines that is different from what users see.  
• Keyword stuffing – Overloading your content with keywords.  
• Link schemes – Link schemes involve paying for links on third-party sites. Invariably, these sites are of a low quality.  
• Duplicate content – Don’t repost content that you do not have rights to. If you are using duplicate content, add the proper canonical tags.  
• Ad-heavy site design – User experience is primary. Don’t overload your website with ads and promotional materials.  

Given the expected significance of EAT factors in 2022, poor quality content should also be considered as something to avoid as a priority.  

5. Voice Search 

Google’s emphasis on voice search comes on the heels of increased user activity in regards to IoT (Internet of Things) devices. And while voice search hasn’t dominated in the way that many predicted several years ago, data from Adobe Analytics clearly shows that the use of voice-based interfaces is growing.  

In September 2021, Google announced the release of its “latest research breakthrough,” which took the form of advanced voice technology LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). LaMDA is notable because it signifies Google’s efforts to further streamline search results based on changing user habits.  

Structuring content to include featured snippets, targeting long-tail keywords (especially local terms), and optimizing for mobile are all ways of catering to the increasing number of voice searches.  

Conclusion 

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that nothing about SEO is constant. The reality, however, is that ranking factors change much more gradually than many businesses assume.  

The fundamental criteria of user-focused site design, high-quality content, and citation-based trust have remained largely unaltered since the earliest days of Google’s presence on the web.   

As you build your SEO strategy, it is important to keep this in mind. While specific technical priorities may change, properly laid groundwork that prioritizes customer experience above all else will ensure success over the long term – in 2022 and well beyond.  

 
 
 
 
 

Thank you for everyone who joined our State of SEO webinar in mid-November; we welcome you to access the on-demand recording at your convenience. We wanted to use this webinar as an opportunity to engage and see how the community was feeling about various aspects of SEO as we all plan for 2022. We appreciate everyone who participated in the interactive webinar – full results of the polls can be found in this 2021 State of SEO blog post.

We received a lot of questions throughout the webinar and unfortunately due to the volume of content being presented, we weren’t able to have a proper Q&A. We want to address some of the questions that seemed to have common themes here. If we weren’t able to address any questions or concerns you have going into next year, we encourage you to reach out to your BrightEdge Customer Success Manager so we can help you and your organization have the best 2022 possible!

There were three themes that we identified in the questions, so let’s look at those now!

1. What specifically were the 3 spam updates in 2021 targeting?

Google doesn’t typically get into specifics about what each spam update addresses each year. Based on what we have been able to uncover and what the community has flagged as pertinent to the updates, there does appear to be some areas that these updates were designed to help with. As you may have expected, they are right in line with many of the other initiatives Google has undertaken in 2021!

With the Summer update, the details Google gave implied that this was a global update that would impact web and image results. In its communication to webmasters during the rollout, Google shared its general webmaster guidelines and when we look at those in conjunction with spam updates in the prior year, we believe this spam update was primarily focused around eliminated automated and scraped content.

We did not see significant shifts one way or another (while this spam update rolled out, Google also had Core updates over the Summer which may have impacted your results, rather than a spam update). We did not see significant changes in sites being targeted looking at Black Hat resources which leads us to believe the targeting nature of that update was no different than the trajectory Google is on. If you are scraping or automating content you may see those pages suffer from that update.

The November update is early to say for sure, and we aren’t registering significant movements in rankings this month, but we are seeing chatter that webmasters are being impacted. There were not any specific updates to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines on what is considered spam, which suggests no new types of spam are being targeting. Based on those conversations, it appears this update has impacted sites that are using cloaking in order to inject links into their sites. We have no hard data on this, but as always, we believe the best policy is to ensure your tactics and strategies fall within Google’s guidelines.

2. Since the quality of content is king, is it still necessary to have long articles if shorter content is more relevant?

One of the things we discussed about 2021 advancements was that it suggested Google is interested in finding ways to make content useful without its format being a barrier to the user. This means that updates like Passage Based Indexing and bigger initiatives like MUM could sort of democratize content, so regardless of how you did a search, Google can distill a useful answer for you by drawing on content from multiple formats, languages and origins. Pretty cool stuff!

We actually believe these advancements should allow you to focus even more on what’s most relevant for your direct customer. For example, if you are creating a page that’s all about caring for your lawn mower, you probably will need to cover a lot of ground – from cleaning it, to replacing parts, to general upkeep etc. This update should allow Google to decipher and surface the specific parts of that content that is relevant without you having to factor that into how you design that content (the UX, readability, and how you break the content out should be based on building a good experience for the audience).

On the flip side, and more to the spirit of the question, if you are creating a spec sheet for a set of speakers, and you’ve leveraged schema to provide context for what the page is about, that is probably more relevant to your customer than long form content that would require them to read passages about all things speakers before they can see what wattage the speakers are!

These updates should allow you to think in those terms rather than whether the format will be rank-able in SERPs. That said, it’s still critical to pay attention to what Google is treating as quality content and what intentions it believes users have when they are doing searches!

3. Is there any particular preparation you suggest we should take for SEO markup on pages behind a paywall?

Paywall content has long been a challenge for SEOs. There are ways of surfacing this content to engines which could be construed as a form of cloaking if you are not communicating to Google what the site is. Fortunately, this is pretty easy to do. There’s a schema for that!

Google’s official recommendation for paywall content is to either meter the content (I.e., allow a certain amount of free content until you ask for a registration), or use a lead-in, which essentially lets the user see the first couple paragraphs to get a sense of what the article is about, and then require them to subscribe to read the full article. In both cases, you can allow Google to crawl the full depth of the articles.

Regardless of which approach you take, you need to signal to Google that this is paywall content, so it isn’t perceived as cloaking or misleading the engine. You can do this with schema. Per Google’s guidelines, this will help ensure Google can differentiate between content targeting subscribers and cloaking to deceive engines on the pages’ intent.

It remains to be seen how this could change or evolve with the advent of Passage Based Indexing and the launch of MUM, but based on prior advancements, we expect the guidelines and transparency in communicating to Google what the pages’ intention is to remain intact.

There is a lot to think about for next year. We look forward to partnering with you and helping you see more value out of organic search in 2022 than ever before!

When it comes to leveraging keywords in SEO, there’s more to it than simply selecting words and plugging them into a webpage. Search engines are now more intuitive when it comes to understanding and ranking content on the web. Where previously the authority of a topic could be determined by how many times a keyword was used on a webpage, search engines now consider the context of a keyword (i.e., how the keyword is being used and for which purposes).

When we consider the context of a keyword, we are considering the keyword’s search intent, or user intent. Understanding keyword search intent is highly valuable when creating content for the website; by doing so, you can ensure you are creating content that is useful and relevant to your target audience’s needs.

What is Search Intent?

Search intent is the user or audience’s purpose of a specific online search. Keywords can carry different meanings (i.e., “race” as in “marathon race” vs. “ethnicity”), so search engines use search intent to understand and deliver results they think the audience is looking for. Again, search engines understand search intent because they address the context of a keyword, not just the definition itself.

This context includes factors such as on-page headings (H1s, H2s), internal and external links, anchor text of links, images, and image alt text. These factors inform search engines on how a keyword is being used and defined.

For example, the webpage “What to Eat on Race Day” optimizes subheadings (H2s) to include terms such as “marathon”, “carbs” and “pre-race” to inform search engines of the context the keywords “race” and “race day”. 

The page also includes an image of a marathon runner with alt text to describe the image with relevant terms (e.g., “energy drinks” + “carbs” + “race day”).

Pages that gain the most visibility and attract the most site visitors for a specific keyword in specific context begin to earn authority for that keyword (i.e., it is understood by search engines to be the most relevant and authoritative result for that keyword in that context), and will garner a top spot on the search engine results page.

The 4 Types of Search Intent

There are 4 common types of search intent:

1. Informational Search Intent: this is when a user is looking for information, such as definitions and explanations. The results for these search intents are usually How-To, What, and Why types of evergreen content (e.g., Wikipedia pages, blog posts, and instructional videos).

Examples: “what is tomato sauce?,” “types of beer,” “history of Spain”

2. Navigational Search Intent: users with this search intent want to go to a specific place, such as a site or a physical location, or even a specific spot on a webpage

Examples: “YouTube,” “Starbucks,” “compare electricity pricing”

3. Transactional Search Intent: this search intent signals someone who wants to complete a transaction of some kind. Usually, the user already has a specific idea in mind (branding, product, pricing, etc.) more than any other type of search intent and is ready to convert or make a purchase.

Examples: “water bottles,” “AAA batteries,” “Apple tablets”

4. Commercial Search Intent: this type of search intent is to investigate or research something with the aim of eventually completing a transaction of some kind. The difference between transactional search intent and commercial search intent is customer readiness. With transactional search intent, the customer is ready to transact now, as where with commercial search intent, the customer intends to transact at some point in the near future. This is also distinct from informational search intent, which usually aims to find evergreen content that doesn’t have a time limit or seasonality. Keywords with commercial search intent usually contain qualifiers such as “discount,” “deals,” “best,” or a date.