4 Biggest Challenges In SEO In 2021
One of the constant things about the dynamic field of search engine optimization (SEO) is change. The SEO landscape tends to change every year.
You may be witnessing high traffic through search engines, and all of a sudden, the traffic comes crashing down due to a change in the search engine algorithm.
Google is constantly looking to improve the experience of search engines users. Which is why it constantly makes changes to how pages are displayed in the search results.
Let’s look at some of the biggest challenges facing website owners in optimizing their sites for search engines today.
1. Localized Search
Google had reported that four out of five users carry out local searches. Most users look for local companies with the intent to purchase. However, optimizing for local search requires a deep understanding of the factors that affect the local ranking of a website.
One of the main factors that affect local ranking is the relevance of your business to the search query. Search engines need to know if your website is relevant to users. You need to provide detailed information about your company such as location, services offered, and the type of customer you serve.
You need to provide complete information about your company profile in Google’s My Business. The information must be detailed and accurate.
In addition, you should also optimize your website for keywords that relate to the location of the business. For instance, the keyword ‘… near me’ has been gaining traction in 2021. People are looking for businesses that are located nearby. You need to optimize for this and other location-specific keywords to improve the local visibility of your website.
Another piece of advice to optimize your website for local search is to use Google’s free Structured Data Markup Helper tool. This tool lets you help the Google bot better understand data presented on the website. You can create tags to highlight information that local users will find helpful.
2. Visual Search Optimization
Visual search has also been gaining prominence for SEO. People look for images when finding out information about products or services.
Billions of people today make Google Image Search. You will greatly improve the visibility of your website by optimizing your images for search ranking. To optimize your images for search ranking, you should include keywords in the meta tags. You should also include images in the sitemaps.
Giving the right textual context to images helps search engines to better understand your content. They will rank the website for the keywords included in the description.
3. Voice Search Optimization
Voice search is expected to rise as more people purchase devices such as Amazon Echo. In 2017, 13 percent of American households had a smart speaker. And the number is expected to increase to 55 percent by 2022.
Optimizing a website for voice search is challenging. The reason is that voice search follows a more natural language as opposed to text search. For instance, users type, ‘vitamin B complex pills’, but would never ask a question using the words. They might ask, “give me a list of companies that sell vitamin b complex pills”. You need to think about the interrogative statements that people might ask when optimizing the website.
Long-term keywords are recommended for optimizing the website for voice search. You should use long-tail keywords that people may include in their questions. Also, you must include question phrases that start with when, what, where, how, and why. This will not only let you rank for search engine queries but also featured snippets. You can get ideas for questions by entering keywords on the Answer the Public website.
4. Index Management Issues
One of the common SEO issues faced by professional Huntsville SEO experts is dealing with indexing issues. Problems with indexing can result in a decrease in the rank of a website.
A site audit is recommended to resolve index issues. This can be performed by typing site: URL in the search engine. It will display an index of your web pages on Google.
You need to make sure there are no duplicate or empty pages as they negatively affect the rankings. Adding a no-index tag will result in Google removing the page from the search engine results.
But an issue with Google bot is that it does not immediately remove a site when you add a no-index tag. The pages will be displayed until the bots recrawl the site. But the damage will be done. So, you need to use Google’s URL Removal Tool to delete pages from the search engine’s index.
4. Dealing With AI
Search engines are increasingly relying on machine learning algorithms or artificial intelligence (AI) to process search queries.
Google now relies on BERT in analyzing most search queries. Moreover, it uses RankBrain to show results in response to queries. The use of AI allows the search engine to understand words in the context of surrounding words. But it has made SEO more abstract and challenging for website owners.
An expert Huntsville SEO professional can perform advanced analysis such as cluster analysis and trend analysis for optimizing a website for search engines.
Final Remarks
Gone are the days when all it took to attain top-page rankings in search engines was to stuff your website with keywords. You will have to invest a lot of time, money, and effort to attain and maintain top rankings on search engines.
Search engine algorithms updates present novel challenges for website owners in ranking their website. You must adjust to the changes quickly to ensure that your website ranking is not hit.
Staying up-to-date with search engine algorithm changes, news, and the latest features is critical to make the best of the opportunities to rank your website. This can be particularly challenging for small business owners who have to deal with logistics, marketing, and other aspects of the business. The help of an SEO professional proves invaluable in this scenario.
We can help you improve your website ranking for various high-impression keywords. Contact us today if you want professional SEO services in Huntsville, AL.
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