Top SEO Trends for 2023

Heading into 2023, search engine optimization (SEO) continues to be one of the most effective digital marketing strategies available to businesses. 61% of B2B marketers state that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative, and 70% say that SEO generates more sales than pay-per-click marketing.

Creating high-quality content, improving your website’s EAT signals (expertise, authority, and trust), and focusing on fast loading times will always be essential for appearing on search engine results pages(SERPs). That said, new trends are constantly emerging as the market shifts, and Google updates its algorithm. 

To keep your website competitive, you’ll need to stay up-to-date on the latest SEO trends and SEO predictions. Reading this article is a great start, but if you need help navigating the complex world of digital marketing, hiring a professional SEO agency will give you expert insight for optimizing your website.

Now, let’s take a look at the most important SEO trends for 2023. 

Top 5 SEO Trends for 2023

• Mobile-first indexing
• Optimizing for voice search
• Featured snippets
• Online shopping
• Video marketing 

1. Mobile-first Indexing

Topping the list of 2023 SEO trends is the importance of your website’s mobile version. Mobile-first indexing means that Google now predominantly crawls the mobile version of websites for indexing and ranking. 

Although this has been around for a few years, and some may now consider it a part of life rather than a hot topic, the reality is, in 2023, if you aren’t putting as much or more focus on the mobile version of your website, then your SEO strategy will underperform.

With roughly 60% of Google searches coming from mobile devices, it is more important than ever to have a website that is optimized for mobile and tablet viewing. Here are some tips to improve the mobile version of your website:

• Make sure the mobile version loads quickly
• Ensure the content is the same on all versions
• Check the placement of ads
• Make sure images and videos are high quality, formatted correctly, and have the same structured data, titles, captions, and text as the desktop version

2. Optimizing for Voice Search 

In 2019, a study found that 21% of respondents used voice search on a weekly basis. That number has been steadily rising over the years, a trend that is expected to continue through 2023. 

Google has recognized the importance of this growth. They recently announced the launch of LaMDA and MUM, two artificial intelligence models designed to improve understanding of spoken language and long-form, natural-sounding queries. 

To keep up with the voice search phenomenon, your content marketing strategy should include a focus on optimizing for this conversational style of search. Optimize for voice searches by targeting your content in a more refined way. This includes:

• Using phrasing more common in natural languages, like including questions in headings or focusing on long-tail keywords
• Providing short answers to questions related to keywords
• Considering local vernacular

3. Featured Snippets

With the rise of featured snippets, being the #1 result on Google is no longer the gold standard for SEO.

You can’t miss Google’s featured snippets–the quick answers and frequently asked questions that pop up before any search results. They are the first thing users see, they generate the most user engagement, and they account for more than 40% of responses to voice searches.

Featured snippets aren’t going anywhere, so it’s important to understand how to put them to use. 

• Think carefully about the question you are trying to answer 
• Use Google’s autocomplete or “people also ask for” to help think of relevant keywords to target
• Make sure you have the correct structured data to appear in search results

4. The Evolution of Online Shopping

People love to shop online. That’s nothing new, but some important innovations will change the way people shop online. 

Google is working on ways to improve the shopping experience, trying to make itself the go-to middleman between buyer and merchant. A few of the steps it has taken are eliminating commission fees, making it free for sellers, and expanding its partnership with Shopify.

Then there’s the Shopping Graph, an AI model developed by Google to help buyers find the products they’re looking for by considering information like:

• Price
• Reviews
• Website
• Inventory
• Videos

Finally, users can now search for products using image search technology that allows them to search for items found in screenshots through Google Lens.

All of this highlights the growing importance for eCommerce businesses to include keyword-rich product listings as well as relevant text captions and titles on images featured on their website. 

5. Video Marketing

Last but not least on our list is the power of video marketing. Videos have always been an effective SEO strategy. You are 53 times more likely to land on the front page of Google if you include a video on your website, and customers are 10 times more likely to interact with a video than a block of text. 

Today, this is all more relevant than ever with the immense popularity of short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. There is a lot to gain by including video marketing as a part of your SEO strategy.

Relevant to this is Google’s unveiling of two new features to help users find information through videos: Clip markup and Seek markup. 

These markups help point users to timestamps in your video that contain relevant information and help Google understand how your URL works. Make the most of these markups by including detailed descriptions and relevant keywords. 

Keep up with SEO trends in 2023 and beyond

This list of 2023 SEO predictions will help you keep your website up-to-date with the ever-evolving Google algorithm. Most of these tips are on-page SEO strategies, but there is more to learn to improve your off-page SEO as well.

For many businesses, the best way to keep up with the latest SEO trends is to seek help from an SEO agency with a team of experts — like Consultus Digital.

SEO is just one part of an effective digital marketing strategy, and Consultus can help you improve your company’s SEO, navigate your Google and Facebook Ads, manage your company’s reputation, and more. Contact Consultus for a free marketing plan and find out how we can help you grow.