The Future Of SEO In 2023 – Insights From Our Team

Every year, search engine giant Google releases updates that dominate how marketers approach their SEO efforts. While there were no major upsets in 2022, some big changes have had a huge influence on how marketers and website owners conduct their SEO.

The rise of AI-written content, a crackdown on spammy SEO practices with the Helpful Content Update, and a renewed focus on user experience have been the SEO trends that have shaped the year. They have got SEO marketers talking about what they can do to enjoy continued search engine success. But what impact have these changes actually had, and what’s in store next year?

With continued financial uncertainty expected for businesses in 2023, staying relevant, keeping your business website high up the SERPs, and leapfrogging your competitors will be the secret to unlocking success next year. But just how do you do that?

We caught up with our Head of SEO, David Farmer, who gave us an overview of the last 12 months and offered his expert predictions for 2023. Let’s dive in!

What Have Been The Biggest SEO Trends This Past Year?

Over the last year, we’ve seen a lot of interest in AI written content – tools such as Jasper, Rytr, and Writesonic have made this more accessible to SEOs. Developers with an interest in SEO are developing their own learning platforms or using third-party APIs such as OpenAI. Whether people like AI-written content or not is a completely different debate, but we do know it’s here to stay.

There has also been an increase in SEO software coming to the forefront that are alternatives to Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz for more niche research and auditing applications. We’ve had demonstrations of multiple new solutions, and we’ve delved into Kickstarter and crowd-funded projects to understand what’s hot and forthcoming.

We’ve even created a few niche tools ourselves to understand the performance of competitor domains better when working on our client’s campaigns. New clients – that work in niche but competitive markets – have seen some of this hard-to-source data in their project proposals.

How Did The SEO Landscape Change In 2022?

Google has, once again, clamped down on spam and low-quality SEO activities. With the Helpful Content Update, we could see a strong signal that getting keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here. and mapping present and correct on websites is more important than ever before. While this is nothing new, there was an overall pattern that websites that are structured correctly saw better position changes than websites that are not so well considered.

2022 showed us to be careful of duplicate contentDuplicate content is content that appears more than once across a single website. Duplicate content can be a sign of poor resource management, low trust, or a lack of quality control., spun pages, and keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. cannibalization and try and consolidate pages, where appropriate, to deliver a better UX, which in turn can deliver better SEO.

Will These Changes Still Be Relevant Looking Forward To 2023?

100% they will! As well as this, we expect Google to continue to turn the screw when looking at content quality and E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).

What Are The Key Trends You Expect To See For The Future of SEO In 2023?

It’s all about search intent.

For information search terms, I think rich data within SERPs will continue to grow and dominate the page so that users are more likely to stay within the Google eco-system rather than visiting individual websites. This means that for SEOs to get clicks, they will need to deliver great relevant content that ticks boxes to win top spots and help Google display this rich data.

For commercial and transactional search terms, Google will display, wherever it can, more ads alongside a sample of featured snippets, pushing ‘organic’ listings down the page. For SEOs, this means the target is no longer simply ‘page 1’, and instead, monitoring the distance from the top of the screen becomes part of measuring top-level performance (a shout out to Nozzle.io for adding this to their reporting tools).

For “Offline” navigational search terms, and as many other blogs have been saying for the last few years, voice search will continue to grow. This is more to do with how technology is changing around us, with tech-savvy cars, drivers, or commuters using Bluetooth connections to load up maps and find destinations.

For “Online” navigational search terms, local citationsA citation is a mention of your company, product, or service in an online publication. Citations increase the ranking of your site on search engines, domain ratings/authority, and review data will continue to build on Google’s E-A-T ratings to deliver the best local business for a service.

In What Ways Do You Think The Current Economic Situation Will Influence SEO Marketing In 2023?

Businesses spend on marketing either because they’re in pain, can see pain coming, or they’re opportunists, and this applies to all marketing activities.

For SEO, I think small businesses will start to invest in Hyper-Local SEO to increase footfall from Navigational Search Terms. B2B suppliers will begin to consider selling and offering their service directly by becoming B2C to make more margin and to capitalize on their Domain Authorities, especially as retailers may start to order fewer goods.

B2C brands will expand out to more niches to get more traffic. The trend of B2B turning to B2C has been growing anyway, and financial uncertainty will only accelerate this as it did in the pandemic.

Why Should Companies Make Investing In SEO A Priority Next Year?

SEO is a solid long-term marketing investment that can build great year-on-year ROI if conducted correctly with a great strategy. For businesses that are in a strong financial position, they may see 2023 as an opportunity to grow beyond their competition.

Will The Helpful Content Update Be More Important Than Ever?

Yes. Google wants to deliver great results, and the Helpful Content Update will continue to help flush out spam and pages that simply don’t belong in the SERPs.

What About AI? Will This Continue To Have Influence In 2023?

Yes. But, as part of the Helpful Content Update, website owners need to make sure their content is dialed into their niche and serves a UX purpose.

What Are Your Top Tips For Keeping Rankings Healthy In 2023?

• Write great value-adding content that gives users what they need to know
• Sit content within websites in a way that ‘makes sense’ rather than shoe-horning content into a blog or secondary section/area to catch certain keywords- fit the content around a solid user experience
• Link to secondary content within the website that helps users build their knowledge on a particular topic
• Link to external websites if you need to prove facts and figures are accurate
• Focus on speed of delivery and content cleanliness over complicated UI and poor-performance HTML mark-up
• Build your domain authority by winning great backlinks from trusted external domains

Final Thoughts

So, you’ve heard what to expect in 2023 here first. According to our experts, the Helpful Content Update is set to have even more influence, and AI is going nowhere. Despite this, clean SEO techniques are the most effective way to counteract these changes. Focus on writing high-quality content that fulfils search intent, gain quality backlinks from trusted external sites, focus on site speed and use internal linking to boost your rankings.

Our SEO specialists have over 20 years of experience across more than 40 industries, which makes them best placed to help you with your business’s SEO in 2023 and beyond. They’ve got their fingers on the pulse when it comes to the latest algorithm changes and how to navigate these to your advantage in the SERPs.

Get the New Year off to a great start by enquiring about our SEO consulting services today!