The best practices of search engine optimization are always changing, which means that your business needs to change their strategy with each new update that Google makes to its algorithms. Semrush offers insights into these updates to help inform you how you should approach your content strategy:
Embrace these topics to encourage more search traffic
From 2020 to 2022, all search traffic grew by 4%. According to the data when broken down by industry, travel and leisure saw the greatest increase in search (20%). Then it was followed by food and restaurants (12%), financial services (11%) and logistics (9%). Only online education (-8%) and education (-5%) saw a negative trend.
While these trends offer insight into topics that may be worth folding into your content strategy, it’s important to embrace these categories holistically. When creating a social media ad or google ad make sure when craft content around these categories it makes sense. It should not be disingenuous to the core function of what your content or what your business is trying to communicate or sell. Google and other search engines evaluate rankings based on a domain’s entire site architecture. The best way to engage with trending topics is to integrate them into your entire ecosystem using a tool or agency with SEO services to determine what keywords you want to rank for.
How many keywords are effective and how long should they be?
As Semrush and other SEO tools became more popular “keyword stuffing” became a too popular tactic to use and eventually became ineffective. Since then, search engines tweaked their keyword crawlers to identify these opportunists and keep their content from floating to page 1 of search results. The Semrush study referenced the company’s database of 160 million keywords and rankings for U.S.-based website to determine what number of keywords performed best in search. Overwhelming majority (83%) of unique queries contained five words or fewer, with 3-5-word queries comprising 67.1% and 1-2- word queries making up 15.9%.
The study demonstrates the popularity of what are called “short-tail keywords” with over 94% of all searches contained between one and five words. Semrush points out that short-term keywords aren’t always the best phrases to include, however longer-tail keywords over five words are often more highly targeted to the niche topic your audience is searching for. Longer-tail keywords can also be more likely to generate conversions, or actions that searchers take on your site like signing up for a consultation, buying a product, etc.
Why your keywords should answer a question
The study also points out that 60% of unique search terms seek an answer a specific question or query, aka “informational intent.” The author of the study informs us that informational queries, e.g. ‘coffee calories,’ tend to be more nuanced than most, in that the same topic or search intent can be phrased in a number of different ways to trigger specific results.
“Commercial and transactional queries tend to rely on other factors without the extra details you might find in informational queries. For example, a parent may search for ‘pants for kids,’ but may be less likely to search for ‘blue pants for an average height 10-year-old.’
“By contrast, most informational pages don’t have the filters you might find on, say, an apparel store’s product category pages, so the user needs to be much more specific with often lengthier queries and more unique keywords. The sheer number of informational keywords becomes clearer when you put the intent categories into the context of market share.”
In conclusion, think about how your content can include phrases from one to five words, the shorter the better. Also, ensure that the search phrase points to a specific question or need that your content offers a solution to.
Create a SEO strategy with these trends today. Call 248.528.3600.