We’re all familiar with the saying that the only constant in life is change, and search engine optimisation is no different. Here are some emerging SEO trends and technologies, as well as insights on how to utilise them in campaigns.
#1 – SEO A/B Testing
You’re probably familiar with user A/B testing and the benefits of this process, from higher conversion rates and reduced bounce rates to content improvements and increased user engagement, but SEO A/B testing is a little different!
In this process, you’re using Googlebots rather than human users, and you are showing them the same web page, testing elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, main headings, new content, or schema mark-up to see how the bots react.
By knowing how the bots see your pages, content and SEO elements, you can more accurately target opportunities for improvements that boost organic traffic. And this tech is very effective, with the giant Etsy seeing rapid results just days after testing and implementing SEO treatments on title tags alone.
#2 – Automated Content Optimisation
Content optimisation is a lengthy and time-consuming process, but automation is making inroads here too.
New SEO technologies on the market can take the keywords you want to write on and automatically call up existing pages that rank the highest for that type of content, as well as all the stats, user questions and more that you can use to create high-quality content. Once done, you can run your content through the tool to see where it ranks and where improvements can be made.
Other tools can even create detailed SEO content briefs for copywriters that focus content production on meeting search intent head on.
#3 – Automated Content Creation
This technology takes this automation process one step further, using machine learning to generate content that many users cannot distinguish from human-generated content. Still in its very early stages, GPT-3 technology went viral after posting automatically-generated content on Reddit that users couldn’t distinguish from user-generated content.
While this is no replacement for human generated content, it can be a helpful tool in creating draft content and standardised content that doesn’t require a human touch.
#4 – Natural Language Processing
This was a major breakthrough in 2019 for Google’s search algorithm technology, known as the BERT algorithm update. This allows the search algorithm to understand and recognise a word in a sentence by understanding the context around that word. This means big changes for keyword methodology, no longer relying solely on matching specific keywords from searches with keywords in content, but also looking at the user’s intent behind their search.
Essentially, it is able to understand and process natural language in a similar way to how we do in conversations. For example, if I type in a query about baking a chocolate cake, I’m much more likely to get highly ranked recipes in my search results rather than information on what chocolate cake is or where I can buy one – the algorithm recognises that my search intent is to find a recipe, even though I didn’t use that specific keyword.
The most important takeaway from this tech is to recognise that understanding the customer and the issues they are facing is absolutely critical, and that content needs to reflect this accurately and consistently. Write human answers that provide human solutions if you want to rank.
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