The debate as to whether Search Engine Optimization is as effective as a digital marketing strategy is still very much hot and alive. No wonder many online businesses tend to see pure video content as their most favored marketing technique. But is SEO no longer as effective as many people think?
SEO isn’t just about ranking your website to the top spot of a search engine or driving a random avalanche of traffic to your website. SEO is the bedrock on which other marketing techniques rest. SEO is a complete strategy that helps you understand your target audience in terms of what they want and how to provide them with what they want through the creation of top-quality content.
If you’re already contemplating discarding SEO as a marketing technique, you may need to see these statistics about the importance of SEO:
First, there are some basic statistics that you should know before writing off SEO as a marketing technique:
- Global search engine optimization stats indicate that backlinking as a strategy accounts for 90% of organic traffic to authority sites.
- Direct website traffic, Bounce rate, Dwell time, and pages per session are the top ranking tools used by Google.
- 80% of online retail purchases are a product of online research.
- 70% of online marketers still rank SEO as the best resource for sales generation and lead conversion.
- Up to 40% of global consumers use the internet to shop and find services from local businesses in their area.
Going by the above statistics, it’s true that SEO has come to stay and SEO still remains the surest way to improve your brand awareness. As it was back in the pasts years, and up to 2022 or years to come, knowing what works in SEO techniques and what doesn’t work is vital knowledge you must have to excel in the ever-changing SEO world. To make this simple for you, we have created a round-up of the most effective and ever-green SEO strategies in 2022 that’ll win you the top spot of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
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4 SEO Strategies for 2022
Voice Search
Gone are the days when internet users perform a search on the internet by only typing their queries into the search bar of the search engines. With the advancement in technology, voice search has become most consumers’ favorite way of conducting a search on the internet. You may be surprised to find out popular voice search has become among online consumers.
Based on statistics, about 80% of online consumers prefer conducting their search using voice search as opposed to the manual search method. And the most interesting of it is that only 10% of online-savvy internet users are ignorant of voice activation. In case you don’t already what voice search is all about, it’s a technology that lets the user perform a search on the internet, a website, or an application by using a voice command.
In other words, rather than using a manual search, a voice command is employed in conducting a search on the internet. This advanced feature of voice recognition first became apparent on smartphones thereby serving as a replacement for the search bar or manual search.
With the emergence of various voice assistant products like Google Voice Search, Cortana, Alexa with Amazon Echo, etc., it’s no news that voice search has come to stay, if not fast overtaking other ways of performing a search on the internet.
More so, the rate at which voice-enabled devices such as car stereos, desktop computers, tablets, and household appliances are fast emerging in the market in 2021, gives credence to the fact that for any business to remain relevant in the eye of the competitive business world beyond 2021, such a business must be ready to incorporate voice search into its marketing strategies.
Mobile-Friendly SEO
If you’ve been following up on SEO trends and happenings around the web, you probably have heard about Google’s announcement of its rolling out mobile-friendly update. With this, you should understand how serious Google is when it comes to offering its users high-quality services. Since Google, like every other business, is in the business to make a profit and stay relevant into the foreseeable future, it’s ready to do everything at its disposal to make that goal met.
Apart from Google’s involvement in this, there are so many other reasons buttressing the rationale behind optimizing your website for mobile users. Going by SEO stats, it shows that up to 81% of the world population own smartphones, not to even mention the fact that about 60% of online traffic comes from mobile devices. Without being told, you already know what this fact is driving at it shows how indispensable optimizing your website for mobile is in 2022 and beyond.
Additionally, the fact that voice search first appeared on smartphones and that more people are going mobile these days, shows you need a mobile-friendly design to maintain a competitive edge in your industry. And the good thing about having mobile-friendly SEO for your website is that it enhances user experience thereby increasing dwell time and reducing the bounce rate of your site.
Ultimately, the rationale behind SEO is to have a resource that users find friendly and useful for them. And optimizing your mobile SEO will not only help you achieve that, but it’ll also make users see your brand as a reliable, relevant, and authority resource they can rely on any day any time.
Quality Content
If there is one SEO strategy that we can boldly say will last the test of time, it is nothing but having quality content on your website. No wonder content has always been said to be the king. Going down the history line, we can say content has remained at the top of all other SEO strategies since 2015 and it’ll most likely continue to be so for as long as the internet remains. The bottom line is you shouldn’t joke with your content marketing strategy. It determines your chances of increasing your conversion rate. The more high-quality your content is, the more your result will be.
Video Content
Without a doubt, video content marketing has become one of the fastest-growing strategies that will most likely stay beyond 2021. The mind-blowing stats showing up to 90% of modern marketers shifting their attention towards video content are a clear indication that video content will guarantee the highest ROI (Return on Investment). And to further buttress this, the results you’re likely to get from video content marketing can be out at up to 70% of more leads and 54% more of brand awareness.
And more interestingly, if you consider the fact that about 80% of consumers subscribe to the fact that they make a purchase of any product only after watching a video on social media. Plus an estimate shows that in 2022 over 80% of internet traffic are will be generated from video streaming. So if you care about staying on top of the competition, you already know how important video content marketing is.
Wrapping Up
To think that SEO is no longer effective is utterly a misconception and far from the truth. For SEO to be effective you must make sure you’re employing the right strategy. When you miss the right strategy, you’re bound to fail. So, stick with our four SEO strategies highlighted above, and you will make the most out of your SEO efforts.
