SEO Trends 2023

If you’ve kept up with the latest changes in SEO/search engine optimisation, 2023 is not going to bring you much that’s different. That is, if you consider SEO to just be the process of optimising websites to rank well on Google search only. 

On that front, in 2022 there was a turn towards the increasingly human. Google is cleverer and more adaptable than it’s ever been, and the way you can tell is through the ever-more complicated laundry list of how you rank there. 

In 2023, not much has changed. This article will address all those evolutions, but we’ll be taking a step further – or rather, a step back.

What is a search engine, really?

Search engines have shifted from essentially being a website directory to being a place where you get your answers directly without having to go beyond the results page. With this redefinition, we need to expand our criteria for what a search engine actually is. 

Is Amazon a search engine? TikTok? Instagram? Twitter?

In short, yes they are.

Here’s what Google’s Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan had to say recently: 

“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram.”

If a significant enough portion of users on that platform are searching, then it is a search engine – albeit for a more limited range of results in either content or format than something like Google, which endeavours to provide everything. And this is likely why Google is likely losing market share to these platforms. The internet is so vast that it’s nearly impossible to understand a searcher’s intent completely, even if Google gets extremely close to that.

The result is a number of platforms upgrading their search functionality to provide what their users want more easily, and keep them engaged. This means that if brands want attention, they can’t just run a few Google Search campaigns or invest in SEO. They need to expand their strategies to account for new patterns in user behaviour.

With all of this in mind, here are the main trends and advice you should keep in mind when thinking of SEO in broad terms during 2023. 

Trend 1: Great content is still King

Fine, this one isn’t really a trend. It’s more a reminder that no matter what trends come and go, there is no replacement for great content. A strong SEO strategy still requires diligent and in-depth research, excellent planning, and detailed execution. This is true no matter the platform – be it Google, YouTube, TikTok, or any other search engine, the cream always rises to the top (of search result pages).

If there’s any trend from a content point of view that should be especially highlighted here, it’s video.

This should come as a surprise to no-one. The internet is increasingly turning towards video: YouTube’s (and now TikTok’s) astronomical rise to one of the most used social media platforms has also kicked off a chain of prioritising video over static imagery and posts – and SEO is no different. Look up anything on any given search engine, and very often the first few results will be clips or videos. In 2023, this is going to only grow more prevalent as Tiktok continues to legitimise itself as the brand platform of choice for brands looking to build communities, and as other social media platforms follow suit. 

That being said, it’s worth keeping an eye on TikTok following its ban from India and ongoing troubles in relation to its data gathering practices that could see it banned in more major markets such as the US. It will definitely be interesting to see which platforms will step in to fill the void, should this happen.

Statistics:

• The number of comments, views, shares, and “likes” have a strong correlation with higher YouTube rankings. (Backlinko)
• Video was the primary form of content being created in 2022, followed by blogs (used by more than half of marketing teams), and images (HubSpot).
• Although 32% of people say they are overwhelmed by the amount of content available, a majority (44%) say they typically consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a vendor (DemandGen).

As a brand, how can I use this trend?

Create great content. Sounds simple, and it is. Mostly.

Understand the needs and wants of your target audience and what they search for, and create content that answers those needs better than the competition. And we’re not just talking about video – this applies across the board, from written content, to video, to podcasts. With search trends indicating that Google is no longer the only search game in town, it only makes sense to diversify and expand your online presence as a brand to keep up with this change in user behaviour.

A note about AI and content generation

By the way, if you saw ChatGPT and saw a tool that can write SEO-ready content for you within minutes, don’t get your hopes up. Google is already on top of this thanks to its August 2022 helpful content update that will “ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results”. Basically, Google will consider content taken wholesale from an AI writing tool as spam. Your content needs a human touch, and probably always will. AI models like ChatGPT provide a starting point for content, but never an end product – at least not for SEO. Not yet, at least.

A note about AI language models and search

Speaking of ChatGPT, Google isn’t taking the news of an AI language model that can easily and clearly answer queries without users needing to click on any links very well. While ChatGPT has some limitations at the moment, many have come to the conclusion that as it grows and develops, it will definitely become a major competitor to Google Search. A fact that Google is now keenly aware of. 

In fact, Google founders and parent company shareholders Larry Page & Sergej Brin are taking a more hands on approach to providing their advice to solve this particular issue – something they do not do very often, so you know the company is really concerned. We should definitely expect some major announcements from Google about AI search tools in their next Google I/O event, happening in May. 

The impact of a ChatGPT-esque tool making its way to Google Search is still relatively unknown, but it could mark the largest shakeup in the SEO world in a long time. If less and less people are clicking on links, what’s the point?

Trend 2: Mobile First

Websites in 2023 are going to rank based primarily on the mobile version of their content rather than the desktop version; this heralds a change in the way that people are using search to answer their queries. As more and more people use mobile phones, especially out and on the go, it’s become far more relevant to rank web-pages based on the way they showcase and load on mobile devices. 

This doesn’t mean that desktop ranking is going anywhere. It just means that having a strong mobile experience will bump you higher up on the list of where you are. You don’t need to fully-replicate your site on mobile, but you do need your site to load quickly and with a good UI on mobile – and given that your consumers almost absolutely use their phones or tablets as their primary device, you need to take advantage of the shift now.

Statistics: 

• 96.41% of all Google searches happen on mobile devices. 
• 91% of the global population has smartphones.
• 62.06% of all website traffic comes from people using mobile devices.

As a brand, how do I use this trend?

Pay attention to your mobile site. Creating a web page for your brand and making it look beautiful, and work great on desktop, is critical if you want to attract the kind of attention that will lead to lasting returns – however, just having a good web page that you rarely update to reflect the changes doesn’t help anyone. To truly capitalise on the way that Google’s changing, you need to keep up with the way that it’s changing – and that means adapting your web page to reflect best practices. 

In this case: faster web pages, and taking the time to implement AMP, Google’s faster mobile experience, into your web pages. 

Trend 3: Zero-click Content and Featured Snippets

A good search engine experience is a short one. At least, that’s what Google thinks. That means that over the past few years, Google has done everything they can to provide answers to search queries as quickly as humanly (machine-ly?) possible. This has manifested itself in ‘featured snippets’. The bit of text that rises above all search results and provides the most direct answer to the search query. It’s also represented in the data and information displayed on the right hand side of results.

This means that in order to rise to the top of search results, a website doesn’t necessarily need to rank at no. 1. They just need to answer a search query as simply and easily as possible.

Statistics

• Less than half of Google searches result in a click
• 50% of a mobile screen is covered with a featured snippet.
• 19% of SERPs have featured snippets.

As a brand, how can I use this trend?

When creating searchable content, make sure to answer as many commonly searched questions as possible – in the form of an FAQs section, for example. The answer itself shouldn’t be longer than a couple of sentences, too. Also, always make sure your content is dated – studies have shown that most featured snippets come from content not older than a couple of years.

Google SEO Trends from 2022 that are here to stay:

Most of what we wrote in 2022 still has a lot of room left to grow. Here’s what’s sticking around.

Core Web Vitals 

This isn’t really a trend so much as the natural progression of technology making changes that businesses will need to keep up with. Core Web Vitals is the answer to the way the web is changing: it charts the way your website loads, how your website reacts to input from a user, and how stable your web visuals are. Essentially, it’s how your website ranks in Google’s algorithm from a technical perspective – and it’s as important as content for ranking well. Given that the internet has become increasingly competitive, with a much greater emphasis placed on ranking well, Core Web Vitals are only going to become even more important as time goes by. 

EAT

Expertise. Authoritativeness. Trustworthiness. Content that heavily features all three is content that is going to rank well, and it stands to reason that in the internet era of fake news and misinformation, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are two of the most fundamental facets of any content going forward, and consumers will actively seek out an opinion to their queries that is rooted in fact. The wide scale deranking of misinformation is also playing a part to retain this trend well beyond 2023. 

What changes are coming to Google?

Future AI projects aside, Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm to maintain its position as the number one search engine in the world, which means new features come to Google often. Here are a few of Google’s features that should get more attention in the coming months. 

RankBrain

RankBrain, a core component of Google’s algorithm, uses machine learning to find the best results for whatever queries are plugged into it. It follows on from other AI advancements in the field, where Google first supplies RankBrain with data from several sources and then moves into teaching it over time how to replicate the way humans think when it comes to producing search results to a query. 

In other words, a big part of RankBrain is figuring out the searcher’s true intent, and thus giving more accurate results to whoever is searching. Google’s algorithm is becoming sophisticated in its own right, but finding results on the internet for what you’re looking for can sometimes be a bit hit and miss if you’re not very obvious with your search intent. Adding artificial intelligence is a way of combating those occasional missed results.

BERT

The Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers model, or BERT, is a method of training artificial intelligence software to respond to queries in a far more human way. BERT and AI Platform training are two of Google’s greatest investments into the future, and with Google setting the terms for search, we’re likely to see a greater shift towards artificial intelligence training as a result. BERT is initially trained on large pieces of text, then training results are applied to tasks that require natural language processing, such as answering questions. 

Google has been interested in leveraging AI in order to improve the way its search engine functions, and so we’ll likely see more developments on AI in the near future. This is not so much a trend as another natural progression: with search engine algorithms hitting the peak of what they can achieve, now the onus is to exceed what’s capable through AI. This has now been supercharged by the arrival of other AI language models that could be taking share of mind within the search space away from standard search engines.

Conclusion

The position of SEO today has changed drastically from what it was at the beginning, and we’re only going to see it change further before the year is out. What started as a way of ranking on a search engine was further complicated by the introduction of an algorithm, changing rules, new platforms, and the increasing importance of searcher intent – and it’s not going to go away. 

The only thing you can do is keep up. 

And if you’re struggling to do that, we’re here to help you.

The post SEO Trends for Brands in 2023: Beyond Google appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

What is SEO and why is it important in Malta?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about increasing the quality and quantity of user traffic a website receives from organic search results. Basically, SEO is every effort you make towards your website ranking at the top of Google Search results for relevant search terms. For most businesses in Malta SEO is normally something they’ve heard of, but haven’t looked into properly, or brushed it off as an unnecessary marketing expense that they can do without. This results in a huge amount of missed opportunities. Here’s why.

Think about the way you research and purchase a product. We’re willing to bet that most of the time, your journey starts with a Google search. You’re either researching the product type, a specific brand or perhaps you already know what you want. You might just be looking for a website that delivers to your country. 

With that in mind, think about just how many purchasing journeys in your industry are started each day. How many of those is your business missing out on because your website isn’t optimised for SEO, and not appearing at the top of search results?

Another reason that for businesses in Malta SEO is a must is because of international competition. More and more businesses are looking overseas for customers thanks to the boom in eCommerce and the shift to remote work. This means that many businesses are less limited by geographic locations and can offer their services more broadly. This is where SEO efforts & Google Search results become essential. If you can rank well against all your competitors, including international ones, you’re guaranteeing that a large number of potential customers will find you organically.

SEO Services by Switch

At Switch, we understand that your website’s performance can make or break your company’s goals in a number of ways. While we can help you build a beautiful website, it would essentially be worthless without a steady stream of high-quality traffic. That’s where our SEO services come in.

Optimising your website to attract high-intent users from search is one of the first things we suggest. A large percentage of business leaders underestimate the power of SEO in Malta. And in doing so, miss one of the most effective ways of generating leads.

We get this done through a specific process that’s tailored to each of our clients. In the following paragraphs, we’ll take you through what the steps we take usually are. We’ll talk about why each step is so important, and what sets us apart from others in the field. You can also learn more about the importance of SEO in a little more detail if that’s what you’re looking for. Especially about how it can affect your brand’s trust & authority.

If you’re ready to talk about how to introduce SEO into your business, click here and let’s get the ball rolling. Otherwise, keep reading!

How Switch handles SEO in Malta

Context

Understanding the Industry

Before even looking at your website, we study the context of your business and its place within your industry. This is where we will need the majority of your input. At the end of the day, you know your industry and business better than anyone. During the process of onboarding a new client, we also set our research team loose. Their task is to gather every shred of information they can from all the sources available.

Audience Identification

One cannot really understand an industry without also analysing the market that it serves in-depth. Audiences can range from an entire country’s worth of purchasers to a handful of individuals responsible for purchases within organisations. Each audience that we identify always requires a unique approach, as they always differ in their behaviour and interests. Accurately understanding what attracts the right audience is already half the SEO content battle won.

Competitor Analysis

As part of our research, we deep-dive into all marketing being done by all local & international competitors in your industry. This usually results in an understanding of audiences that are currently already being targeted. Along with those that are currently left out and might be worth communicating to. When appropriate, we also analyse overseas players in the industry for further industry insights.

Website Technical Audit

Consistently high-ranking websites are created and optimised in a very particular way. This allows Search Engines like Google to easily scan them to understand their structure and content. The result of this scan judges whether they’re high-quality enough to rank well on search result pages. If your website was not built with SEO in mind, it may be lacking in certain key technical SEO areas, stifling performance.

We’ll perform an in-depth analysis of your website, then highlight and prioritise changes that would greatly improve SEO performance. Suggested adjustments can be related to any of the following:

• Indexing errors
• Low-quality content
• Incorrect Robots.txt usage
• Mobile page issues
• Structured data errors
• Inaccurate metadata
• No internal link optimisation
• Lack of https security
• Slow page speed
• Duplicate content
• Broken links

Content Strategy & Production

Keyword Research

With a strong foundation of research and knowledge of the industry, we can now begin our keyword research. Using cutting-edge industry tools, we determine which attainable keywords are most relevant to your business. These will also depend on what resources we have at our disposal. This is where our creativity and industry knowledge shines.

Attempting to rank for the most obvious industry keywords is a tempting idea, however, it’s usually an extremely expensive endeavour. Many-a-time there are other keyword opportunities hiding beneath the surface. These would allow us to capture specific parts of the market with significantly less effort and required resources. Capturing ancillary keywords gives a website just starting to optimise for SEO the chance to begin collecting useful traffic, while also building its authority through great content.

Effective, Long-lasting Content

Putting all the research and technical jargon aside, you still need excellent content to be able to attract your target audience. At Switch, we are a multidisciplinary team of writers, designers, illustrators, photographers, video specialists, and audio dabblers. We’re happy to push ideas around and see how they grow and flourish as each mind adds something to the story. 

With a broad and eclectic set of sources of inspiration and an unusual way of connecting the dots, we’re known for creating work that’s beautifully innovative.

Authority & Link Building

Ranking well in competitive keyword landscapes also depends on the number of times other websites have linked to yours. We call these backlinks. The more backlinks you have, the more authority you have in Google’s mind. And the more highly you’ll rank for a given keyword. Google also takes into account other factors, such as your social media presence and online conversations about your brand.

Building quality backlinks and authority is extremely important, but it’s also a complicated process. One of the most challenging but effective ways of building backlinks is to create content that other websites want to link to. The more authority the website that has linked to you has, the more valuable the link.

Through our content strategy and keyword research, we’ll identify the absolute best opportunities available to build these links. With time and effort, ranking for more and more competitive and valuable keywords will become easier.

Optimisation & Reporting

Just like any other marketing campaign, reporting and analysis of results is an essential part of the process. Here’s how:

• Keeping constant track of our progress on each individual keyword we’re attempting to rank for.
• Monitoring the performance of each piece of content we produce, along with what the competition is actively doing.
• Using a combination of our years of experience and the industry tools available to us.

Through an extensive set-up process, we’ll also make sure to be constantly analysing the behaviour of the traffic we’re drawing. This way, we make sure we’re pulling in the intended audience. At the end of the day, getting huge amounts of traffic is useless if nobody is converting into paying clients. Regardless of the results, we will always aim to boost the conversion rate of all the traffic we send to your website through a live content strategy and constant keyword research.

What are the benefits of SEO?

Matching user intent to useful content.

The whole point of a search engine is simple. It takes what people are searching for, scours the internet for it, then provides the closest matches. That may be the mother of all oversimplifications, but that’s the basic gist. This happens really quickly, and it happens literally billions of times per day.

If you want a little more detail on how search engines (mostly Google) have gotten this done over the years, take a look at this video by Google themselves.

With all that context in mind, SEO is basically the act of making it as likely as possible for a search engine to pick your website when someone searches a term that’s relevant to your business.

Quality Traffic

Digital marketing efforts are often measured in clicks. Your marketing team might give you a report on a particular campaign and hail it a success because it generated so many of them. 

But this begs the question – how many of those clicks were actually worth anything?

The click is only the midway point of the journey towards a conversion. If your campaigns generate 1,000s of clicks, but 95% of those clicking users never got past your homepage, how successful are they?

This is the most obvious reason for investing in SEO, and, in turn, investing in traffic from organic search results. Think about your own behaviour. If you’ve Googled something and clicked on a result you found interesting, you’re going to give a decent look at that website. Especially if the site has what you’re looking for.

Trust & Awareness

If a website ranks at the top of Google search results for a relevant query, that result alone provides it with some level of authority and credibility. You’re much more likely to trust a website that occupies the spot usually kept by Wikipedia. Then, if that website ranked #1, the user clicked, then had a positive experience, a relationship has been formed. Even if it’s the first time that particular user is interacting with that brand.

If SEO is properly implemented on a website, it will achieve high rankings on a number of relevant industry keywords. Then, it can enjoy a flow of organic traffic and leads without having spent a single cent on paid digital advertising.

As we’re explaining above, it’s obviously not something that can be achieved at the drop of a hat. It requires technical knowledge, a sound strategy, the means to produce great content, and a little bit of grit.

Does your business need SEO services?

If you have (or need) a website which will generate leads/purchases with the right traffic sent to it, then you definitely need SEO services. If you had to take potential leads and spread them out on a scale from cold to hot, the majority of leads that are generated through SEO are definitely on the hot end due to their intent. And what business doesn’t need more hot leads?

For businesses that want to be ahead of the curve in Malta SEO is a no-brainer. That’s because of a combination of competition from overseas markets, along with the apathetic approach to SEO that many local businesses suffer from. If you’re ready to take the next step and are looking for a guide, click here.

Free SEO Audit

Still unsure whether your website needs an SEO strategy? Why not start with finding out where your website stands from a technical SEO point of view? Just fill in the form below to get a free, no-strings-attached audit of your site, sent straight to your email.

SEO Trends in 2022

If you want to read about the very latest trends dominating SEO in 2022, and how they will affect your SEO efforts in Malta, click below.

Further Reading

If you’d like to learn more about SEO, here’s a list of articles we’ve put together at Switch on the subject. These are based on our decades of experience, and include tried and tested tips & suggestions. We hope you find them useful.

Planning 2022: SEO

Local SEO in Malta: 3 Essential Tips to Get Started

Why Writing for SEO in 2021 is Bad SEO Advice

Is SEO worth it for you? Here’s how to find out.

SEO Trends 2022: More Human

The post SEO Malta: A Complete Guide appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Let’s face it, most B2B SMBs around the world get by without a huge amount of marketing. 

At least, for a while. 

CEOs and Business Development staff of such companies are normally responsible for the bulk of new leads, which are generated through specific sales tactics, or, more often, networking and word-of-mouth.

These methods of lead generation are 100% legitimate and have stood the test of time, but precisely because of this, many B2B companies don’t tend to look at other potential sources of leads – one of those being SEO.

What is SEO for B2B?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of adjusting and building your website to give it the best chance of appearing at the top of search engine results pages for target search terms.

So, for example, if someone is searching for agricultural supplies in their city, and you are a supplier of agricultural supplies, you want to be one of the first few results in google when someone types “agricultural supplies city name”.

From a technical point of view, this process is exactly the same for B2B companies as it is for B2C, but there are key differences from a strategic point of view.

B2B SEO vs B2C SEO: Audience Size

Naturally, the number of individuals searching for B2B services is much smaller than any equivalent B2C service. For example, according to Ahrefs, the search term ‘home security’ is searched over 50,000 times per month, while ‘office security’ is only searched 1,600 times per month. And while there is likely much less business competition on the B2B front, the audience size is still extremely small.

Take your own B2B business as an example.

Realistically, how many individuals within your ideal target audience really exist? And how many of these could potentially be looking for your services at any given moment? That number is probably relatively small in comparison to what most B2C brands need to consider. And while this narrows down the range of content ideas that you can create, it does help us focus on what’s important.

All of this means that the content that B2B companies should aim to create for SEO needs to be very specific, both in terms of its content, and in terms of the audience it’s attempting to address.

The first step in this entire process is to brainstorm and identify the audiences that are most likely to be actively searching for the services your B2B company provides. For example, a marketing agency would look at business owners, chief marketing officers, and business development managers as their primary audience.

Keyword Research

After we’ve identified our audience, we need to take a few steps in their shoes. In order to place ourselves in the right position, at the right time, we need to try and understand our audience’s search behaviour. 

This is where a full keyword research exercise would take place.

This process involves brainstorming of possible search terms that reflect an intent to engage in the services we provide. 

In other words, our  example marketing agency would probably pinpoint ‘marketing agency services’ or ‘social media marketing services’ as two of their primary keywords. 

With these two keywords in mind, we can use specialised keyword research software to identify the amount of individuals searching for those terms in specific locations, and we can also identify other keywords that are similar or related to those primary keywords.

The goal is to end up with a healthy set of primary keywords that we can base our website content on.

Technical Setup

Ideally, before you move on to actually creating or modifying the visible content on your website, it’s a good idea to make sure that your site is SEO-friendly on a technical level. This means running a diagnostic test on your website in order to find out if there are any flaws or errors that might prevent it from ranking on search engines in the future.

These errors can be any of the following:

• ​​Indexing errors
• Low-quality content
• Incorrect Robots.txt usage
• Mobile page issues
• Structured data errors
• Inaccurate metadata
• No internal link optimisation
• Lack of https security
• Slow page speed
• Duplicate content
• Broken links

For a quick understanding of where your website lies on this front, you can run a test that’s been designed and provided directly by Google. Simply enter your website’s URL and run the test here. The results should give you an indication of what problems your website might be facing from an overall performance point of view – all of which may be preventing the site from ranking on search results.

If the results of that test aren’t painting a pretty picture, then we’d definitely recommend getting in touch with your web developer to try and mitigate some of those issues. An even better solution would be to engage a technical SEO expert to help guide your web developer to make overall adjustments to the site that would help any future SEO efforts reach their full potential.

On-Page Optimisation

On-page optimisation is a process through which the main pages of a company website are analysed and adjusted in order to have a better chance to rank on search engine results. By ‘main pages’ we’re talking about the home page, services page, about us page, contact us page, etc. 

Very often, while the content itself conveys the intent of the website owner well, there could be various issues that may be preventing these pages from appearing higher on search engine results. 

For example, it is advisable to take one of the primary keywords that we identified during the keyword research phase of the process and use it as the foundation of a particular page. For example, if we’re aiming to rank for the search term ‘marketing agency’, we need to make sure that our homepage uses this search term frequently and in the right places.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Proper heading and title tag structure
• Image alt text
• Primary keyword frequency
• URL optimisation
• Meta description optimisation
• Synonym-rich content

This applies to all major pages, and this process will definitely help elevate the position of any website on search rankings, if done well.

Content Marketing: Create Value

Once all of the above steps are completed, it’s time to put together a long-term B2B content marketing strategy. Still using the results from the keyword research exercise done earlier, we can now create new content on the website that will bring value to our target audiences. 

The content can take multiple forms, including blogs and articles, videos, interviews, podcasts, and more. What you produce depends heavily on the type of audiences you’re trying to reach, and the financial commitment you can make towards these efforts. 

That said, it is always essential to keep your target audience in mind – it’s easy to create content that your own peers and colleagues will find interesting, but that’s not necessarily what your target audience is looking for. In most cases, those looking for your services are having trouble with it on their own, so creating content that easily and simply breaks down real-world issues and brings value to these individuals is inevitably going to do a lot better.

Ensure that the content you’re creating is actively targeting any of those keywords you’ve identified. It’s also a great idea to tackle the same subject from a multitude of different angles. If you’re offering I.T. services for example, don’t just talk about the specifics of those services – talk about all the different ways they can bring practical benefits to a business owner – always in as much context as possible, without getting bogged down with technical detail.

Not to mention – all this content you’re creating can also be the source of a social media strategy that could not only bring traffic to your website, but also build your business’s reputation in the right circles as a thought leader.

In short, have a plan based on solid research and execute it with as much value as possible.

BONUS: Digital PR

Another way your business could receive an SEO boost is through digital PR. The process is simple, but can bring immense value.

Let’s say that you provide outsourced HR services to SMEs. Using the data that you have available to you, or data that you proactively collect, you can put together industry insights that business leaders would find immensely interesting.

By putting together those insights into an easy-to-access, well-designed piece of content, and getting that content into the press cycle, you can generate a lot of traffic and interest to your website in a short period of time.

Often enough, if that piece of content is of value, then other publications may link to that content on your website, thereby strengthening its authority and helping it rank for keywords surrounding that topic. 

I’ve obviously made this process sound a bit simpler than it often turns out to be, however that’s the gist of it. If done well, it can bring immense value – not only for SEO purposes, but for overall brand reputation within your industry as well.

Wrapping up

In short, SEO for B2B requires an initial investment that may not pay off in the very short term, but it has the potential to bring immense value if taken seriously. At Switch, we’ve replicated the above process for many B2B SMEs to great effect – often doubling or tripling business leads and website traffic within the first year.

If you’re intrigued but not convinced, let’s have a chat about what SEO can bring to your B2B SME – no strings attached.

The post How to Get Started with B2B SEO: SMB Edition appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

The last couple of years have been a rollercoaster for nearly every industry.

Now, it’s time to start looking forward to what’s coming.

How do people expect brands to communicate and act in a post-pandemic world? How has social media interaction between brands and consumers evolved? Is B2B marketing the same old lead-generation story, or has content marketing changed the game? What will the most cutting edge websites look like in the coming years?

All these questions are answered in our Big Book of Trends in 2022.

We put together all our experience, combined it with meticulous research, and put everything together into a number of deep-diving articles on each major area in the marketing industry.

We’ve linked them all at this end of this post, but we’ve put them together into one beautifully designed eBook for you to read at your own pace.

Just fill in the below form, check your email, and you’re all set!

Individual Articles

If you prefer to read the articles individually, just click on the one you want below.

Marketing Trends 2022: The Year of Conflict

Web Design Trends 2022

SEO Trends 2022: More Human

Social Media Trends 2022: The Year of More

Consumer Behaviour in 2022

Brand Trends 2022

B2B Marketing Trends 2022

The post The Big Book of Marketing Trends in 2022 appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Click below for a free PDF version of our overall 2022 marketing trends report.

Intro to SEO Trends 2022

The practice of SEO has been the equivalent of a cat-and-mouse game for years now. SEO experts are basically just trying to keep up with Google’s latest updates, and always trying to figure out how to stay ahead of the algorithm game. 

That was true for 2021, and will continue to be true into 2022. 

But the direction Google has been steering its ship towards for many years now is clear – make search more helpful to humans through AI. Here’s a list of SEO trends that you’ll definitely need to be aware of if you want your business to make the most out of SEO in 2022.

Not an SEO practitioner? Read this first

We’ll be getting into a few technical details throughout the article, so here’s a very short Cliffs Notes version of what you can expect in the rest of this article. If you want to get straight into the nitty-gritty, skip this part.

1. Familiarise yourself with Google I/O – it’s a yearly event where Google announces changes to the way search works. This year’s edition reinforces what we already know – content that follows EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) will continue to win.
2. Write content that answers questions, so it has a good chance of appearing on Featured Snippets in search result pages. Quick, snappy, clear answers to common questions.
3. Look up what Google Shopping is if you sell things online. Thank us later.
4.  Get in touch with your Web Developers and ask them how your website’s Core Web Vitals are doing and make sure your website works well on mobile.
5. Create lots and lots of good video content that your audience will find useful, and make sure you clip-mark it.
6. Wean yourself off of third-party cookies for advertising purposes. Start finding ways to build your own first-party data using SEO.

Trend 1: Google is working on understanding context across data formats

The way someone asks a question and the way they type a query into the Google Search bar have always been a little different. Ever since the introduction of voice assistants though, Google has understood that their definition of a search term needed to broaden. 

Over the past few years, they’ve developed their AI to understand longer and more complex searches that come from voice users. 

They’re now taking that to the next level with something called the Multitask United Model, which they showed off during Google I/O 2021. In more understandable terms, MUM is an AI model that focuses on natural language analysis – it basically tries to understand the meaning and intent of human language beyond face value, and provides contextually accurate results based on that analysis.

It’s also capable of generating responses while drawing information from multiple sources and formats of information, even across different languages. What we’re trying to say here is that Google is attempting to consolidate all the data it already has, and make complex search terms that seem more conversational in nature possible to search.

Imagine asking Google whether your hiking boots are good enough for taking on Mount Fuji by snapping a photo of them and just asking. Google would then take the data from the photo, and give you a definitive yes or no answer, along with information about the best hiking gear for Mount Fuji. That’s the level of helpfulness Google is trying to reach using MUM.

So what does MUM mean for SEO practitioners? 

Will it be a game changer? Not necessarily. The exact way MUM will be drawing information from the internet is yet to be determined, but if it’s anything similar to previous AI models, there will be a continued emphasis on EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). 

So keep creating content that other humans will find genuinely helpful. Use visuals, videos, long-form content if you want to rank well, and make sure your website is technically up to Google’s standards – more on that later.

All this was announced at Google I/O 2021 – a yearly event where the company shows off its latest developments across their products – including Search. Taking a look at the developments that Google announces is essential for any SEO practitioner to stay updated with what’s coming. And it is genuinely insightful.

We’ll be discussing more of what was announced at Google I/O 2021 later in this article.

Here’s a compressed version of the event if you’re interested:

Trend 2: Featured Snippets & Passages

As part of Google’s shift towards answer-based search results, featured snippets and excerpts are being rolled out globally. In Google’s ideal world, every search term has a definitive answer that it can provide with confidence – that’s what the featured snippet tries to accomplish.

As an SEO practitioner, you might find it difficult to rank your page for a highly competitive, broad keyword, but through well-written, answer-based content, an excerpt of your page could be used to answer a long-tail search term – essentially leapfrogging higher ranking and more authoritative pages. 

So make sure that you’re using your titles and headings in a way that allows Google to easily understand the content of your page, and easily lift passages to answer commonly asked questions. 

In the above screenshot, the website that provided information in a clear, simple, step-by-step format that directly answered the question posed by the search term was placed in the featured snippet. The website itself didn’t even rank in the first page of results for the search term!

As a bonus, featured snippets are also the answers that Google Assistant provides users who are using Voice Search.

Google has said that 7% of all search terms will include a featured snippet once it rolls out globally, so this is definitely something to keep in mind when creating your content. 

Trend 3: Google Shopping: Real-time Product Data

The evolution of online shopping was given the equivalent of a can of Popeye’s spinach during the pandemic, and Google has taken note, and adapted. Thanks to their existing infrastructure, Google is capable of drawing data from across the web to provide extremely accurate recommendations based on search terms.

Using partnerships with global eCommerce providers such as Shopify, along with a huge amount of data straight from retailers, Google Shopping offers product results based on a number of different factors such as availability, reviews, loyalty schemes, and prices. They also removed the fees and commissions that previously existed to use their platform to make it more accessible to smaller businesses.

They call the underlying AI model Google Shopping Graph.

Google is in a unique position in terms of eCommerce. If its shopping platform truly takes off, it could even pose a threat to some of the online retail giants that don’t want to play ball with them. If the item you’re searching for on Google shows up on the search results page with the best available deal from across the internet, why would you bother going to Amazon?

If it’s not present already, make sure you’re looking into the Google Shopping platform for your eCommerce site, otherwise you could be seriously missing out in 2022. 

Trend 4: Core Web Vitals & UX Optimisation

As the pool of data and websites has become richer over time, Google Search has become pickier. For example, if your website has excellent content, but loads very slowly on mobile, you’re likely to get shunned by the search engine. 

In order to judge your website from a technical point of view, Google is adding something they call ‘Page Experience’ to the list of factors that can have an impact on whether or not your website ranks well on search result pages.

Google defines ‘Page Experience’ as: 

“a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.”

What are these signals you ask? Well, there are 4.

Core Web Vitals

The most important is Core Web Vitals, which measures 3 main metrics on your website. These are:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This measures loading performance. Google recommends aiming for an LCP under 2.5 seconds after a page starts to load.
• First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. Google recommends an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. Google recommends a CLS score of less than 0.1.

The above may or may not sound like technical jargon to you, but in plain English, Google is measuring:

• How fast your website loads
• How quickly it responds to input by the user
• How stable your website’s visuals are (in other words, it measures whether elements on screen are moving around way more than they should)

If you’re not entirely sure how your website is performing on these fronts, you can follow Google’s own instructions (warning, more technical jargon incoming) or ask your web developer to look into it. The scores you’ll want for each of these metrics are as follows:

If you want a quick idea of your website’s technical health from Google’s perspective, you can also run a quick PageSpeed Insights report. 

Mobile Friendly

This isn’t exactly 2022-worthy news, but it bears repeating. Your website needs to work well on mobile, otherwise it’s useless to a huge percentage of your potential traffic. Google knows this, and will penalise your website severely in its search rankings if you ignore it.

Not sure whether your website is really mobile friendly or not? Fear not, Google has another test you can run that you can show to your web developer.

HTTPS

The third factor that makes up Google’s Page Experience rating is security. You need to make sure your website has a security certificate. In plain English, just make sure your website has that little security lock next to the URL on Chrome.

This one.

If that little lock isn’t there, you need to give an earful to your web developer, cos this is pretty basic.

Intrusive Interstitials

The last element that affects your website’s Page Experience is ‘No Intrusive Interstitials’. Google loves its jargon doesn’t it?

Don’t you hate it when you load a website that seems to have the exact information you need, but as soon as you enter the site, a bunch of pop-ups and banners appear trying to get you to sign up to their newsletter? 

Well, it turns out that Google doesn’t like that either. So make sure your content isn’t getting hidden behind a bunch of annoying crap as soon as the website loads. This applies for desktop, but especially for mobile, where the lack of screen real estate makes these issues more obvious.

That said, your page won’t be penalised for pop-ups that are legally required, such as cookie usage notices or age verification notices.

Don’t do this.

Trend 5: Suggested Clips & Key Moments

You have most likely noticed recently that video results are turning up more and more often at the top of search results over the past few months. That’s because Google understands that sometimes, the answer people are looking for is best explained visually, using a relevant video.

For example, let’s say I’m an aspiring musician, and I want to quickly get an example of how to pluck a cello. More than likely, I’d take that exact term: ‘how to pluck a cello’ and run it through Google search. Just a few months ago, I would have been given a set of search results, and maybe some video options as well.

Now, though, Google takes it a step further through ‘Clip Suggestions’. Not only does a video appear at the top of my search result page, but a particular clip is selected, showing me exactly what I’m looking for. See for yourself:

If I click on that option, I’m taken to the video itself (not YouTube, just the video), and the suggested clip begins playing.

In the past, this YouTube channel would have likely never really been close to ranking this high up on a search result page. But Google is flexing its video muscles by including more search functionality into its YouTube infrastructure. By analysing the video visuals and audio, Google is able to understand what exactly is happening in the video, and whether it would be valuable to someone who is searching.

A while ago, a feature was added to YouTube videos called ‘Key Moments’, where video creators could essentially bookmark, or segment, their videos. This way, just by mousing over the video, you could get a quick idea of what’s in the video itself.

Extremely useful for those who like to watch YouTube videos, right? Not only. Google is using this extra data gathered from the video creators to provide even more detailed, and specific information on Google Search results.

The screenshot above is from a video review of the latest Apple laptop. Most likely, this video is the absolute best way of getting a quick but in-depth understanding of this product. So if I search for ‘m1 max macbook pro review’ on Google, this is what shows up:

Not only does the video itself show up first, but Google also provides me with a breakdown of exactly what’s in the video, using the Key Moments feature mentioned earlier.

So what’s the lesson for SEO practitioners? Well, thus far, video has mostly been a ‘nice-to-have’ in the SEO world. Now though, with Google giving more value to video results, video is going to be a ‘must-have’ sooner rather than later. Not only should you have videos that accompany your text content, but ideally you’re also creating high-quality, standalone videos that thoroughly answer the questions your audience is asking.

Trend 6: SEO will be essential for first-party data

With the slow, drawn out death of the third-party cookie, you could be forgiven for having a relatively lackadaisical approach to building your own audience database. After all, we’ve been successfully targeting new users through paid formats such as Google Display and Facebook Ads for years now.

The problem is that it’s not sustainable in today’s social climate. People are resisting having their personal data used for advertising purposes, and with good reason. While most advertisers are just trying to sell their products to people they hope might be interested in them, recent events have shown that ultra-targeted advertising can be weaponised for more nefarious purposes. Plus, a lot of people don’t like big tech companies they don’t trust holding so much of their data.

So, in a this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things move, tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. are being forced into giving up some of their ability to sell their users’ data to advertisers.

This means that, as a (hopefully) non-malicious advertiser, you’re going to have to fend for yourself if you want to target new interested users and build conversions. 

SEO is definitely one of the best tools for that job. 

For example, by creating content that is genuinely useful and interesting to your target audience, you can generate a database of interested users through email sign-ups. 

Say you have an excellent piece of content about the Marketing Trends of 2022. You publish it online, but it’s a pretty long, but valuable piece, so you also offer an option to your audience to download a specifically designed PDF so they can read it at their own pace. In exchange for the PDF, you ask for an email address.

If your piece of content is good enough, and you’ve built a solid reputation with your audience, most people would gladly provide their email address because they know they won’t regret it later on as they’re emptying their spam folder. 

That’s the way you can leverage SEO to build a first-party database. But, doing that takes a lot of time and effort. And even though the death of the cookie is still a while away, you need to start building that database. Yesterday.

To Wrap Up

The evolution of Google Search, and by association, the SEO industry, has been slow, but steady. Every update seems to add a little bit more of what humans are looking for, rather than what an algorithm would. 

What’s great about this is that, even though there are less ‘hacks’ and quick wins to be had, it means that it should be easier than ever for genuinely good, human-focused content to rise to the top of search results. The difficulty lies in creating that content, rather than getting it to rank.

We hope these 2022 SEO trends help any practitioner on their way to creating genuinely useful content for their audiences. If you have any questions or would just like to have a chat about SEO, drop us a line.

In the meantime, happy ranking.

Want to read more marketing trends for 2022?

Here are a few more resources we’ve put together, with more on the way:

Web Design Trends 2022

Marketing Trends 2022: The Year of Conflict

Seven Regional Marketing Trends We Want To See More Of

Social Media Trends 2022: The Year of More

B2B Marketing Trends 2022

The post SEO Trends 2022: More Human appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

It requires commitment to a strategy. 

That strategy needs to be rock solid from the start.

Social media or display advertising campaigns are very transient. They can be set-up in a matter of minutes and can also be stopped with the click of a button. It’s all relatively immediate. 

SEO is not. 

Once you’ve committed to an SEO plan, it’s essential that you stick to it, because results reveal themselves significantly more slowly. 

And changing tacks midway through the year will slow you down. 

A lot.

However, the results can be phenomenal.

68% of all internet experiences start with a search engine. 

The effort you put into SEO is worth it. If you’re not present, you could be missing out on two-thirds of your potential audience. 

What to do before 2022

There are countless excellent guides available online that will take you through the process of getting yourself set-up with SEO. 

But sometimes they’re long. Informative, but a bit tedious. 

Before you set out on your SEO journey, we’re going to lay out the foundations that you’ll need to really get it right. Most of these have relatively little to do with the technical side of SEO, but are absolutely essential to your success on search result pages.

1. Get your KPIs sorted

If you read our most recent article in the Planning for 2022 series, we discussed goals & KPIs. There, we go into detail about how important it is to know exactly what you’re measuring and why. 

Both from a business and a technical perspective.

Depending on your business type, the ultimate goal you might want to achieve with your SEO efforts can differ wildly. eCommerce sites need sales, content sites need quality traffic, B2B sites need leads. 

So figure out the key one or two metrics that your business needs to grow and hold on to them. Make sure that every other number you measure is ultimately going to affect that golden KPI.

2. Identify core audiences

Hopefully you’ve done this already at some point during your marketing efforts, but if not, you’ll definitely need them for SEO. Understanding who your core audiences are and how they behave in relation to your business is essential. Make sure you have demographics that are primarily based on behaviour and customer journey rather than age and gender. You’ll see why in just a minute.

Once you have a shortlist of these audiences, you can move on to the next step. 

3. Keyword research

We could write several articles on the subject, but here are the basics. Go through each of your customer personas and begin writing as many possible search terms as you can. Start with broad search terms that cover as many relevant categories as possible, then get into slightly longer keywords that are a little more specific. You’ll need to make sure people actually do search these terms. For that, you’ll need a tool such as this one.

Once you’ve created your list, start filtering by volume and keyword difficulty. You should end up with a list of valuable keywords that are exactly relevant to your audience in relation to your business.

4. Work on the content plan

Take a look at which websites are already ranking at the top for the keywords you’ve chosen. What sort of content do they offer? Based on the fact that they’re at the top, that’s the sort of content that Google thinks searchers want. So you’ll basically have to do better. 

Take a good look at your own landing pages and spend your resources on making those pages that absolute best that they can be from a content perspective. Always keep in mind that Google will lift your rankings if it provides real value to those who are searching. 

5. Look at the technical side

Is your website loading fast enough? Is it up to the high standards that Google has been imposing on websites to rank well? Are your main services pages optimised with the right keywords?

 If you don’t have the individual knowledge to answer these questions, get in touch with people who do. You can have the absolute best content targeted towards the most relevant keywords, but if it takes 15 seconds for your homepage to load on mobile, you’re in deep trouble. 

Getting all of the above sorted out is no mean feat. SEO takes time, patience, and resources, but there is absolutely no doubt that it’s worth it. It’s been proven time and time again that organic search traffic is the most valuable. 

So get cracking.

The post Planning 2022: SEO appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Or it takes the right moment at the right time with the right word. 

With Google, both apply. 

‘Just Google It’

It started with social media. Originally, ‘googling’ was coined for the Google Friends network, when Google was still a cached webpage on Stanford’s systems. Larry Page signed off with the phrase ‘have fun, and keep Googling!’, and nearly a quarter of a century later, we use ‘google’ instead of ‘look it up’, instead of ‘search engine’, and instead of ‘find out yourself’. 

Similar to Skype (or now, Facetime) and Hoover, Google has ourobouros’d itself: it is not longer referring to a search engine but to a way of thinking, and by extension, to the way we think about things through Google. 

And that way of thinking has changed us, from how we shop to how we find things. 

Googling It: The Beginning

The interesting thing about Google is that it has been mythologised as the first search engine. 

It wasn’t. Google wasn’t even the second or third: it hit roughly 8 years after the first search engine went online, and ten years after the invention of the Internet. 

What Google did better than any of the earlier search engines was ranking. AskJeeves and AltaVista were much bigger search engines at the time, but they delivered web page results according to relevance. Those results didn’t always have what you were looking for: they were just the first results that used the most keywords to what you were looking for. 

But people don’t always look for exactly what they type. 

Sometimes, they look for an answer that can’t be put into words. Not exactly. Not how they need it to be. 

So what Google did was change the way they delivered search results. Instead of basing how pages ranked depending on relevance, they ranked pages by popularity – by how many people had visited those pages, spent time on those pages, what they took away from those pages. 

The early Internet of the 90s wasn’t an organised font of knowledge, as it is now. It was a collection of pages, loosely collated into something forming a database. Before Google, finding what you were looking for was as much luck as it was curation, sometimes more. 

Changing the way they delivered search results was a small thing. 

It was enough to change us. 

How Google Changed the World

People have always been curious. They’ve always wanted to know things, no matter how irrelevant to their lives those kinds of things are; it’s the thrill of knowing that draws. 

Google makes it easier to know. You don’t need to skim past a lot of other data to look something up. If you ask Google, ‘what’s the best Italian restaurant in Malta?’, it’ll give you links to the definitively best Italian restaurants in Malta.

That immediacy is what elevated Google from a search engine to a verb. 

Google gives us the answers, fast and accurate. We don’t need to think for ourselves anymore, not really – why troubleshoot a problem when Google can tell you exactly what to do? 

For retail, this has been the biggest challenge and the biggest benefit. 

Retail pages that rank highly enough on Google reap the benefits of being first-to-mind. They also need to work hard to stay updated and active, otherwise other pages will elbow their way in. Balancing that popularity could – and is – a full time job in itself. 

The Problem with Google

The fundamental problem with Google is that it filters our information. Whatever is most attractive to Google is what you get. 

Some might consider that biased. 

It’s really just inevitable. 

Google made it easier for us to find the information we’re looking for. To be able to do that, there has to be a ranking system in place. Without those metrics, the web is just a library with no index, and you’re armed with a pencil, a notebook, and half an hour to find your way around. 

But Google is also a human product. It isn’t infallible. False and fraudulent claims are common. Your page could just get lost in the mire, drowned out by louder pages offering semi-realistic goals. Now that Google had introduced its fact check feature, this is a rarer occurrence, but it’s still something to keep in mind. Some pages are just louder than others. 

Getting Around with Google

You need to learn to game the system. 

That means SEO. It means keeping your page on Google updated. It means working with Google updates, not against them. It means voice search. It means search, in general. 

Google is an excellent tool for any business to use. Whether or not you’re using it well enough to get the results you want is what you need to think about. 

Here’s five tips to help you figure out if what you’re doing works: 

1. Use Google Analytics. They’re available for free to everyone, and they’re the best non-secret secret about ranking well on Google. People tend to forget they exist, which is a shame: used properly, Google Analytics can increase your conversion rates substantially. 
2. Register with Google My Business. Especially important if you’re starting a new business, Google My Business can help make sure that people can find your business by adding a location pin. It integrates with Google Maps, making it easier for your consumers to find you when they’re on the cusp of making a purchase decision. 
3. Optimise your site’s speed. Google ranks by popularity. Part of that popularity is determined by site speed. Using a speedy hosting service and minimising the amount of HTTPS requests on your website will help your site load faster, which means people won’t click out of that website before it’s finished loading. Considering 29% of mobile users will switch to another site if it loads slowly, it’s beneficial to have a quick-loading site for more than one reason.
4. Use keywords. Research what keywords are relevant to your business. Make sure those keywords feature in headings, page titles, and URLs. People who are looking for something will use specific keywords for a reason; use that reason. 
5. Stay updated with Google. Maybe it’s overkill, but if you know what’s going to happen, you can stay ahead of the curve. Google updates their policies and algorithms often enough that you can definitely count on at least one throwing you a curveball. The way to mitigate it is to monitor Google – closely. And often.

Recently there’s been discussions about cutting down Google’s monopoly on information. 

It’s unlikely to go forward. 

Google, as a business is too big and too entrenched in day to day life to actually fail, but it could change rapidly to avoid the criticism levelled at it by companies, governments, and the population. When that happens, much like the death of the cookie, the way we look up information will change too. 

Stay aware. 

Or, if you’re busy, hire a watchdog to stay aware for you. 

That works too. 

The post How Google Changed The Way We Do Things appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Local SEO is the process of optimising your brand’s presence on search engines to get more attention from those who are geographically close. You might wonder, what’s the difference between Local SEO in Malta and just, regular SEO? Malta is so small, Local SEO is just regular SEO, right? Wrong. The difference lies in the way the efforts manifest themselves on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). 

For example, I’m writing this blog in Swieqi. The below are the results from a “restaurants near me” search I just did on my laptop. (That search term gets around 500 searches per month in Malta, by the way.)

You’ll undoubtedly notice that the majority of the space isn’t taken up by the standard search results – the two at the very bottom. Rather, the page is dominated by the section above, called the Google Snack Pack. It takes your exact location, then finds the top 3 local business listings most relevant to your query, and displays their info to you, along with a helpful map to show their exact locations. 

On mobile, it’s a similar story.

And that’s important. Around 40% of all search results in Malta over the last 12 months have originated from mobile devices.

These Snack Pack results pop up every single time there’s a “near me” search, and also whenever there’s a Service in Location search, such as “plumber in Birkirkara”, “coffee shop in Sliema”, or even simply “supermarket malta”. Don’t ignore it – a study has shown that these results claim 33% of all SERP clicks.

Does your business need Local SEO in Malta?

If you sell absolutely anything in a physical shop, or provide a service in a moderately competitive local market, then absolutely, yes. If your business relies on B2B leads, especially in a growing remote-working market, then local SEO might not be as important. 

Local SEO is absolutely essential during touristic high seasons too. Statistics show us that more searches happen on desktop overall, but you can be sure that the overwhelming majority of tourists aren’t lugging their laptop around to search for restaurants.

What can you do to get started?

The quickest way to get up and running would obviously be to secure the services of SEO specialists with knowledge of the local market. That said, here are 3 things you can do right now that will start giving you results relatively quickly.

Get yourself onto Google My Business

This is probably the most important step you can take to get started with local SEO. The direct benefits of having a well-optimised Google My Business account fair outweigh the effort required to create it. The most obvious gains being visibility on the snack pack results, along with visibility on Google Maps. If someone searches for your brand name directly, a Knowledge panel will show up on the SERP with the exact information you provide on your My Business account.

It will even allow Google to confidently provide specific information about your business, for even more ease of use for the searcher.

Setting up your brand’s profile on Google My Business is a relatively simple process. Get it done today.

Understand what people are searching for

Having a comprehensive list of search terms that your business would be relevant for is important. These search terms will allow you to make basic optimisations to your website to give you the best possible chance to appear in common search results. 

The most basic way to get an idea of what people search for in your industry is to take a look at Google’s auto-complete suggestions.

Another way of quickly building basic keywords is to brainstorm all possible Services in Location terms we mentioned earlier.

Here’s an easy tool to get you started if you don’t know where to begin.

With these keywords in hand, take a good hard look at all of your brand’s online touchpoints. Are most of the search terms covered in the content of your website? Do the service categories you chose on Google My Business adequately represent all the search possibilities?

Get your online presence in sync

Many businesses in Malta have a few or all of the following:

• Website
• Facebook Page
• Instagram Page
• LinkedIn Page
• Business listings (yellow, findit, etc.)
• Google My Business
• TripAdvisor (or industry equivalent)
• Official business directories

All of these platforms contain basic information about the business such as name, contact details, location, website, etc. The more of these ‘citations’ as they’re known, the more confidently Google will serve that information on the SERP. If you have multiple citations that contradict each other, that’s going to do more harm than good. Every once in a while, make sure you audit every possible presence your business has online to make sure all the information is still relevant.

Is there more?

Yes. A lot more.

But by completing these first 3 steps, you already give your business a fighting chance. If your particular industry is relatively saturated, these efforts are probably not enough. 

You’ll likely need to restructure your website to take advantage of the benefits of technical and On-Page SEO. Your current website might not be mobile-friendly. Your business might benefit from creating excellent content that might build traffic to your site. Building backlinks from high-authority sites is what you might need to get over the hump.

All that said, these first 3 steps are essential. If you want to take your Local SEO efforts to the next level, you know where to find us.

The post Local SEO in Malta: 3 Essential Steps to Get Started appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

This SEO tip uses intelligence coming straight from the horse’s mouth – i.e. the source of the data is coming from Google itself – specifically Google Search Console.

Google Search Console, formerly part of Google WebMasters, is a toolset that offers quite a lot of insight into the way that Google’s search engine algorithms interact with your website – specifically your website’s content and the way that organic search traffic is arriving at your website. 

The idea behind this tip is to reverse engineer the search queries which are arriving at your website – and then tailor your content to the user intent behind those queries.

(Proviso: for this trick to work, you already need to have some traffic coming from organic search)

How do you decipher user intent?

In Google Search Console under Performance > Search Results you can see what queries are sending traffic to your website. The Queries tab provides a lot of intelligence. By skimming through the queries, you should immediately see some patterns of user search intent emerging. What you see is also an accurate reflection of your best content marketing work.

Here’s an example. We worked on a content marketing piece that compares two pieces of software for one of our clients. Through Google Search Console we can see which search queries led to that particular page, as seen below. (N.B. The red & blue boxes represent the two pieces of software that we were comparing directly in our piece of content.)

It’s clear from this set of data that we’re clearly covering the intent of those searching for a direct comparison between the two. However, our digging shouldn’t stop there. We’ve satisfied the user intent of these individuals, but there may be others that arrived at our page through search queries that may provide us with hints to improve our content.

In the above screenshot, which is taken from the same search queries list as the one before it, we can make a couple of interesting observations. Several individuals have searched for the comparison of the two pieces of software, but for a different use case than the one we covered in our content. There’s also a cohort of individuals looking for a 3-way comparison with another, newer product that’s come on the market.

Using this information, there are several paths we can take to improve traffic, and fulfill user intent in a more complete way. Firstly, we can improve the content of the original piece of content to cover these queries. Or, if appropriate, we can create a companion piece that would link directly to the existing one.

Based on this lesson, here’s a list of things to keep in mind when performing this exercise with your, or your clients’’, sites.

The following are guidelines, rather than rules but they’ve worked for us

1. First and foremost, make sure your content is answering the users’ search intent exactly. If you can expand your content to hit all aspects of that intent, so much the better.

2. Use MORE of the keywords that are being searched for within that content. Whilst expanding the content on the user search intent, drop a few more keywords around the search queries.

3. Add more images and use search phrases as part of the name of the image, and in the image alt and description.

4. If possible – add a YouTube video that is also tuned towards the users’ search intent. If it doesn’t exist – create it yourself!

5. Tune your H1 title to the search query which is generating the most hits in this case.

6. Tune your meta description and meta keywords to the user’s search intent. If there are missing keywords, try to include them.

7. Be prudent – don’t overstuff your content with keywords – just make sure you have killer content for the user’s search intent.

If you do this for both the content that is generating good CTRs and especially for that content which is not generating good CTRs, you should be able to get a very good organic traffic boost.

This won’t happen overnight of course, but working in conjunction with your other SEO efforts, you should see your organic traffic climbing steadily. We’ve seen instances where the organic traffic increased by more than 30% using these techniques.

As always, also work on retaining the increased traffic. Make it easy for your new visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter or at least follow you on social media. 

Hope this helps you out!

The post Growth hacking: Analyse user intent to see search traffic shoot (Updated 2021) appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

SEO, one of the most fundamental aspects of modern marketing, has been around since 1994.

A lot has happened in the years since then. 

The internet has gotten faster, websites smarter, search engines more like AI than algorithms. The techniques historically used for SEO in 2000 are not viable in 2021, when search engines have become so complicated that there are entire courses taught on how to capitalise on search engine optimisation, and IT professionals who freelance as SEO experts. 

Most of the advice given is sound. You should use keywords. You should write content at length, ideally at more length than your competition, but only if you have enough to talk about. The easiest way to a search engine’s heart is through its algorithm. 

But there’s one thing we struggle to agree with, the advice that sneaks into every SEO blog as an underlying mantra: you should write for SEO. 

Respectfully: no. 

You should write for people. 

What’s the difference?

Writing for SEO is writing for a machine. 

Writing for people is writing for people. 

When you write for SEO, you’re writing to play to the strengths of an algorithm: how many keywords, how much length, when should you break for a paragraph, how often should you repeat your keyword length. Done carefully, SEO writing turns out a little bland, but serviceable. 

Done poorly, SEO writing is difficult to read at best, and completely unintelligible at worst. 

So why was it ever done?

It’s important to look at SEO writing in context. 

At the start of writing for SEO, a lot less was known about how search engine optimisation worked, and the algorithms powering those search engines weren’t as powerful as they are now.

Also keep in mind that most of the SEO advice you got was from people who worked very hard on figuring out correlation between what they saw on pages that ranked. But we all know that correlation and causation are two very different things.

The internet then went on to have a boom of rapidfire escalation and improvement that scientists are still trying to charter. The same internet that was around in the 2000s bears no similarities to what we’re using now. 

Ultimately, writing for SEO was not bad advice at the start of learning how to write for SEO. Now that we know better, and the search engines have advanced greatly, the definition of writing for SEO has changed. 

You can, of course, still use the old rules: stuff your content full of keywords to rank, formulate your sentences to make it easier for Google, structure your content around the idea that the search engine will do the work for you.

We have a different idea. 

You should write for people. 

Why write for people?

Your content isn’t going to be read by the search engine. 

It’s going to be read by your audience, most of whom is made up of humans, that (we assume) are not an algorithm. Please disregard if they are. 

When you write for people, you’re writing content that is readable, easy to understand, and fun. Content that will get shared. Content that will get linked back to you. Content that people will talk about with their friends. 

Great content and typical SEO rules don’t really go together, and even Google has started to understand that and to adapt that to their search engine algorithm. 

Think about it this way: if you’re going to read a long blog post – 5000 words, at a minimum a 15 minute investment – do you want it to be repetitive, dry, and a little bland?

Or do you want it to be fun?

Do you want that blog to make you think?

Do you want to share that blog with others, get their opinions on it, talk about it with your coworkers?

We like content that reads like music. It’s what we try to write ourselves, and what we look for in other blogs, and what we like reading. 

That is content that is written for people. 

So, what do I do?

Okay, so you still need to rank, and your page still needs visitors. 

There’s a middle ground there. 

Write your content for people. Make it as fun as you like, make it the kind of blog people share, make writing it the most enjoyable exercise you can make it to be. 

But plan it with SEO in mind. 

Top five tips for writing for people, planning for SEO

It sounds hard, on paper: writing for people while also writing for a machine while also making sure to make it sound like you’re writing for people. And it is hard, but there’s a few ways you can make it easier on yourself. 

1. Think about search intent. When you’re Googling the answer to a question – for example, which coffee shop stocks a particular brand of coffee – you’re going to phrase it in a particular way. That needs to be the backbone of whatever you’re writing. 
2. Write your content first. Put the keywords in later. Your content is what’s going to keep people on the page, so it needs to be what takes priority. On your second round of edits, go through it again, see where you can work in a keyword or two which will add value to your piece. 
3. Answer a question. Looping back into the first point about search intent, any good piece of content will have an answer in it, whether or not it’s the answer the buyer is looking for. An answer will keep people coming back, will keep people reading, will keep them interested. 
4. Add visuals. Visuals are important. Visuals break up text on the page, and make it seem manageable, so if you’re writing at length, giving your reader a break to absorb the information helps. It also makes the blog post seem far shorter. 
5. Check what Google is doing. Google is in the process of updating and improving all of its services. To write blogs that take advantage of current SEO practice, you need to know what Google is doing with its SEO algorithms. 

There’s more to think about when it comes to SEO, but it’s technicalities, little things that can be fixed in post or in editing. 

What matters is how you write. 

Write for people, and people will read. 

Write for a machine, and the machine will have a field day – but that’s not going to keep your audience on your page. 

Unless your audience is robots. 

Then you should definitely write for robots. 

The post Why Writing for SEO in 2021 Is Bad SEO Advice appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.