SEO in 2021 – User Experience is the New SEO

Jan 22, 2021 | Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website

In recent years, mobile devices have taken over as the main way users browse the internet. With Google focusing in on page experience by bringing it to mobile, it’s never been more important to optimize your website for mobile users.

In 2021, optimizing your website is more than just page speed, we’re talking about the overall mobile experience of your website. How quickly can users find what they are looking for? How easy is it for them to understand the content of a page without scrolling too much? No matter what industry you’re in, if your website experience is not optimized for mobile, you’re going to lose to your competitors in the long run.

This shift to page experience also means many traditional SEO tactics and guidelines become less important. Going forward, instead of focusing on hitting specific metrics you heard would improve your rankings, think about if what you’re creating will answer the user’s question quickly.

Many people are trained that a piece of content should be 500, 1000, even 2000 or more words for Google to rank it well when a user is searching for that topic. With user experience being a huge ranking factor now, it will not matter how long your content is as long as it gives the user what they’re searching for quickly. Keep this in mind when you’re creating content going forward, what is the best way you can provide the answer to a users question? Sometimes it might be a very through article, it could also be an animated gif or video teaching a topic, or even an easily shareable infographic.

Promoting your content has also changed. Previously when content creators would release a new article, they’d rush out to build as many backlinks as they could to help boost their rankings. Recently, we’re actually seeing this hurt many people’s rankings. It has become much more effective to release and promote your content organically and let the traffic build itself than to build tons of backlinks from day one.

Rankings Will Be A Roller Coaster Ride

Google is always adding new tools to their Search platform that allow users to access the information or service they’re looking for without clicking on any result. These as well as paid results move even the top-ranking organic results down the page making them less likely to be clicked on by a user.

Most people strive to be in the top ten spots, with the assumption that if they are in the top ten they will be on the first page. While this used to be true, some queries now have as few as seven organic results on the first page making higher positioning more valuable than ever.

This doesn’t mean you should panic if you’re rankings are currently down. With Google implementing so many changes, your rankings will go up and down constantly. Even if you do the right things your rankings could still go down in the short term. However, if you continue to do the right things and you focus on putting the user experience first, your rankings and traffic will grow over time. It’s important to not be worried about your rankings day-to-day, fluctuation is the new normal.

Pro Tip: Focusing On Niches

It’s going to be more challenging than ever to break through the competition for top keywords when ranking your website in 2021. With over a billion blogs and websites throughout the internet, Google is looking to give top positions to authority websites more than ever. The best approach, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, is to focus on your niche and your area.

By focusing in on your niche and area, you’re able to produce much more well-versed and detailed content around that niche. Doing this consistently makes you more likely to be seen as an authority by Google and achieve much better rankings.

Follow Us For More Marketing Tips!

More from Impressive Media Group

Do I Need a Website for my Business? Yes, Now More Than Ever

Do I Need a Website for my Business? Yes, Now More Than Ever

Regardless of the industry, these days a website is a necessity for your business. The world no longer relies on phone books and newspapers to find what they're looking for. As early as 2011, 59% of consumers primarily used the internet to find local businesses. That...

Our Experts Are Ready To Help Take Your Business to The Next Level!

Let’s get in touch! You can also call us anytime at (215) 206-9053