SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an ever-evolving beast. Back in the day, it was all about keywords and on-page stuff. But things have changed. You may be wondering: What are the current SEO trends in 2023? And if you want direct answers, then let’s cut right to the chase. The current SEO metagame is really about:
- Freshness scoring
- Backlinking
- Digital footprint
- Mobile-first UIX
- Loading speed
That’s really about it – the ultimate keys to ranking high on Google search results.
You’ll notice the absence of some usual suspects such as meta-tagging, keyword research, keyword density count, and other such on-page items.
Consider the following points:
Keyword research/targeting is but the minimum cost of entry requirement.
Any site with a decent amount of text is already performing keyword ‘targeting’ whether you like it or not. The real question is one of accuracy. Obviously, your targeted keyword should be worth the focus. Going for long-tail keywords certainly makes it easier, but all things being equal (as every site is invariably targeting keywords anyway), then this isn’t exactly a strong ranking factor. You will need to rely on things that other webmasters usually overlook. Hence the focus is on freshness, backlinks, digital footprints, mobile-first, and loading speed. Generally speaking, those are issues that are way harder to deal with and thus create the differential variance for complex search ranking to work.
Keyword density calculations are not as important anymore.
If your website write-ups are choke-full of core keywords, without supporting LSI terms, then this is a mistake. A site selling leather goods may over-target core keywords such as “high-quality leather shoes”, for example – common, boring, and typical targeting. Google may detect this as ‘trying too hard to play the game’, a.k.a over-targeting. In contrast, another site containing various supporting keywords related to leather goods such as “textured”, “emblazoned”, “full grain”, or “trifold” will actually perform better. Google tries hard to detect if you are playing too much into the keyword game. So the idea is to make your site organically written. With much less pandering to the machine. A tempting notion indeed. However, we now have LSI keyword detectors to try and outsmart the AI even in this regard. Ultimately SEO is based on software, and there will always be people who prefer to science the hell out of it rather than ‘doing things normally’. Juggle on both sides. We should understand the science behind it. But there is no need to get robotic.
Most technical on-page stuff is abusable.
This is probably the biggest reason why Google is moving away from focusing on ‘technical’ on-page optimizations (such as meta-tagging or keyword densities) and towards criteria that can truly differentiate the gems from the mediocre. And this is more easily done via the weightage of the 5 items listed way above in this article. You’ll find that those items are not as easily manipulated as you could with on-page stuff. Think about it: If Google depended primarily on tagging, keyword density, or any technical SEO setup then it would be entirely open to abuse. On-page items are abusable, but not so much with external dependencies such as backlinks, or having to exert consistent effort such as freshness scoring.
Word on the street is that you could possibly get everything else entirely wrong and Google will actually auto-correct it for you. For example, didn’t perform any tagging? keyword targeting slightly off? no submission of robots or sitemap files? Well. Guess what, it’s actually kinda OK. Sort of… provided you perform the 5 items mentioned above to perfection. I’m not telling you to slack on the on-page technical stuff. I am just telling you it isn’t as important as you think it is. The meta-game has shifted. Search is powered by expandingly powerful AI. And it is using metrics that are increasingly harder to ‘cheat’.
Again, more important are these items below:
Core SEO Trends in 2023
Freshness scoring
Basically how often you update your site. If it’s rotten and smelly and totally unfresh then don’t expect it to rank. This is probably the only on-page item that you can 100% control, that is able to stand up to other powerful criteria such as backlinking.
Backlinking
This is about how many other sites are linking to your site. A major ranking factor, and a huge topic in itself. When Google popped into the scene ages ago, quickly overtaking all other search engines by leaps and bounds, it introduced several core features. Backlinking was one of them.
Digital footprint
We’re talking about your business activity on the world wide web. Yep. Believe it or not, Google knows all about your business presence and activity on the internet. It no longer detects “keywords”, it detects entities. So it’s not detecting “Amazing Widget Company” as a mere string of binary digits, but rather recording it as an entity that exists somewhere, doing something, and taking into account the total ‘trend’ or activities of your business entity online. It is able to connect entities to their respective properties such as social media, forums, listings, etc. The machine determines which entity commands more presence in any given industry. And considers this when it calculates your ranking.
Mobile-first UIX
In 2015 Google released a revolutionary core update. It is called the Mobile update, and you can probably guess its objective. It recalibrated to focus on the mobile experience, first and foremost, as a priority factor when ranking. Yet many webmasters still focus on the desktop/laptop experience. Mobile-first isn’t new. It’s just that mobile UIX is less understood maybe? Scrutinize your site on the mobile experience first. Sounds crazy but desktop optimizations can wait.
Loading speed
Page loading speed is the culmination of many things. From render-blocking javascript (usually caused by inefficient plugins or codes), hosting resources, image optimizations, gzip compression, browser-caching, content delivery network, etc. It’s a whole load of stuff put together. Speed is a major ranking factor for all the right reasons: because visitors prefer fast sites, google prefers happy visitors, and it takes a whole load of effort to get your site working fast. Something that not every webmaster can stomach. Thus only the best ones rise up as they should.
Hope this helps.