Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the driving force behind digital marketing for nearly all businesses today. So, finding the right SEO services is paramount for people new to online marketing or to website owners that have an underperforming online presence.

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As the digital-based business market expands rapidly, gaining notice amid growing competition becomes more difficult. 

The end goal for all businesses is gaining your brand online visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs). 

To contextualise the importance of SEO, it will only stop being important when people stop using the internet and browsers to search for businesses, goods, products and services; that is a very long way away!

So we are not going to look at overall SEO strategies; you can see other articles on our blog, such as SEO: A Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimisation and Marketing, to see the structure and basics of SEO.

We will focus on specific SEO traits applicable in 2022 and 2023 due to industry updates that needed to be incorporated into SEO this year to keep ahead of the pack.

If you’re running a WordPress website, you need to make sure you’re doing everything you can to optimize it for search engines. That’s where WordPress SEO services come in. A good WordPress SEO Company will help you make sure that your site is properly configured for search engine optimization, and they can also help you with keyword research, link building, content writing, and other things that can help your site rank higher in search results.

So let's take a closer look.

Why SEO Is Important For Any Digital Marketing Campaign

Table of Contents

  • Essential Elements For Local and National SEO
  • Why Strategy Matters
  • SEO Industry Updates
  • User Experience
  • Semantic Searches
  • Google's Core Web Vitals 
  • SUMMARY 

Essential Elements For Local and National SEO

Here are a few to start: 

  • Website Upload Speed and Performance
  • Quality Engaging Content 
  • Mobile Responsiveness
  • Various Technical SEO Elements (H1, H2, metadata)
  • Plus many more...

Why Strategy Matters

2022 has been about strategy and optimisation. With this, there are two distinct SEO aspects:

  • Technical SEO 
  • Creative SEO

Technical SEO

This form of SEO sets you up for success on the SERPs. Complying with SEO Best Practices is essential to attain and sustain website traffic. 

Source: Semrush.com

Creative SEO

This form of SEO refers to your creative content, imagery, videos, infographics and aspects that are relevant to visitors to your site to help increase brand awareness.

Here is where optimisations come in. Optimising improves a vital ranking factor with Google; User Experience (UX). In addition, you are helping search engines index your content and web pages correctly to assist with online visibility; that's what SEO is all about!

If you have a website, it's not good if no one can see it! 

SEO Industry Updates

With the rapid expansion of digital markets expedited by the global pandemic and significant Google updates to its algorithm, 2021, you could say, was a watershed moment in the internet's existence so far. 

Many in digital marketing will attest that it increased SEO's prominence and importance. 

SEO is at the crossroads between marketing and technology, enhancing a user-based approach. 

Moreover, SEO has become essential to many brick-and-mortar businesses worldwide, increasing their location awareness and bottom line. 

User Experience

As we touched on earlier, UX is now a vital cog in the ranking wheel for Google. Some say it is the most important factor they have focused on during the past couple of years. 

Regardless of how much technical SEO you conduct, if your website is delivering poor UX, you won't rank high; it's that SIMPLE!

User Experience Factors

  • Time Spent on the Site
  • Bounce Rates (Numerous Factors)
  • Load-up Speed
  • Click-throughs (Both Internal and External) by the User
  • Backlink Profile

A noticeable change in users' behavioural patterns during and post-pandemic has been people are looking for information; they want to learn.  

So taking the bullet list above to execute those to Google's liking you:

  • Make your Design and Images Modern and Appealing
  • Generate Informative, Engaging Content
  • Include Topics Relevant to your Industry (not just you)
  • Organise your Site Structure for Click-Throughs
  • Use Credible Sources for External Links 

Once you have those in order and optimised, your UX will be of a standard where the rest of your technical SEO can boost you even further up the rankings. 

Take a look at our article on User Experience in detail. 

Semantic Searches

Under the technical SEO banner, semantic search has come to the fore. 

Google has been pursuing a higher, more integrated level of searching for many years, going all the way back to the 'Hummingbird update' in 2013.

They wanted the search engine to go above and beyond just crawling for keywords. 

As you will have noticed, the implementation of 'Artificial Intelligence (AI)' and 'Voice recognition' was the start of bridging technology and the English language (initially) to push these forward, including 'voice-to-text' and other spin-off advancements. 

This trend has undoubtedly changed and continues to change how all of us now find information. So for writers and marketers alike, it is imperative to check on developments in SEO periodically. 

Google's Core Web Vitals 

Core Web Vitals played a significant role this year and will in 2023. They act as an extension of UX. 

Google's launch of the update of their Page Experience last year was BIG NEWS in digital marketing. Many business owners and marketers alike experienced unknown ranking changes.  

This was due to the update's focus being more on core web vital metrics. The update focused on three main metrics:

  • Loading
  • Visual Stability
  • Interactivity

Google expanded their experience elements that changed its ranking factors. Once this happens, you needed to adjust accordingly to fall back in line and see your results return to normal. 

New Metrics

  • Mobile-Friendly Analysis
  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) 
  • Visual Stability using Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
  • Interactivity using First Input Delay (FID)
  • Zero Deceptive Content
  • HTTPS to be Added for User's Security

With the update playing an integral role in 2022 of how their crawlers firstly index then rank each of your web pages, you or the SEO services team you may be using must constantly monitor these metrics.  

You have many analytical tools available to monitor these, such as Google Analytics, Semrush analytics, Moz analytics and many others.  

If you are not working with outsourced SEO services, then the first place to start is with a website audit. 

 If you aren't sure what this means for your website, consider conducting an SEO audit. 

Our guide will help you to identify where your metrics are not in line with what Google wants and give you the rankings you seek. 

SUMMARY 

SEO remains at the wheel, driving organic SEO results for all businesses looking for local and national exposure and visibility. Take a look at the SEO audit mentioned above. If you don't fully understand how to fix the issues that the audit will find, look for 'SEO services near me' on Google and find someone in your area who understands the marketplace to assist you. Good luck for the rest of the year and beyond.