2020 What a year! History is changing around us and Google too. This year has undergone various challenges and industry transformations. And Google that consistently revamps its search algorithms seems no different in this ever-changing world.
In the past few years, there have been many significant search algorithm updates as Google always keeps us on our toes.
The coming year will not be the same as 2020. The internet is buzzing on Google Search Algorithm Updates 2021. Page experience update, AMP, and E-A-T are the SEO trends which are going to affect the future of SEO in 2021. How should you customize your search engine optimization strategy in this search game?
Let’s dive into each of these updates and analyze what changes will likely impact SEO and your business results.
1. Core Web Vitals: Google’s Next Ranking Factor
Core Web Vitals are Google’s recent ranking factor and is likely to become predominant in the next year.
These terms describe how a web page works and appears on a user’s device. Though there is a lot to learn about Core Web Vitals, they boil down to the below three main issues on your webpages.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – It deals with the loading speed and how fast the page appears on the screen.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – This is the measurement of how much the content of a page jumps while loading content: mostly videos, or when the page gets too slow and become unusable.
- First Input Delay (FID) – It is the reaction time of the page to the first user input after they click, tap or press any buttons or keys.
How Core Web Vitals Will Affect SEO Ranking
Google’s own data showcases that for the pages which meet the essential requirements of Core Web Vitals; visitors are 24% less likely to leave the website.
Twenty-four percent is getting 24% more traffic without doing anything, simply by making your website more user-friendly.
While some SEO experts believe that the whole Page Experience update is not so important and could even deviate from the main goal of communication and storytelling.
But Core Web Vitals can influence the SEO practices in serious ways. For example, in part of image optimization, <decoding=async> attribute in the <img> tag is used to reduce the page loading speed. Wikipedia on majority of its pages has a dedicated space for images created ahead of time.
Now with CLS being officially announced as a ranking factor, practices will change the plans of SEO experts and digital marketing agencies. And if you are practicing technical SEO, Core Web Vitals can change the way you work in unexpected ways.
2. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Page): Really AMPlify your SEO?
The AMP’s importance in search results is an open discussion. AMP is an effective idea to create websites that load as fast as possible on across mobile devices.
But this year, Google announced that there is finally no need to create AMP pages to gain the “Top Stories” SERP feature.
This is a huge step for anyone who is trying to occupy as many SERP features as they can for their websites.
Will AMP Influence Your Site Ranking?
As Google has clearly said that AMP is not a ranking factor now, your SEO plan 2021 will be easier and simpler to design.
However, the “Top Stories” SERP feature was a huge benefit for any news agency with a website, Why? It is as easy to understand as how much of the page is occupied by the “Top Stories” results.
This reveals that for a few years, news websites were essentially forced into using AMP to get into the “Top Stories” SERP feature on mobile.
Additionally, excluding AMP from ranking factors will save resources that companies and digital agencies were using to create SMP supported webpages.
So, it’s good news for SEO 2021.
3. E-A-T : Need to Create Content That Google Wants?
E-A-T is Expertise, Authority, and Trust- the three factors coming from Google’s Search Quality Guidelines. It is used to measure how much trustability should be placed in a brand or a website. As Google wants to offer its users the best experience possible, so it promotes websites that fulfil expertise, authority and trust parameters.
How E-A-T will impact rankings?
Not much.
No doubt, Google’s Search Quality Guidelines give valuable insights to improve search ranking process. However, E-A-T is still among lesser-important factors you should be focusing on.
As Google says E-A-T is not itself a ranking factor.
However, in practice, we often find the YMYL, refer to “Your Money Your Life”, are the websites which can directly affect a person’s life and aren’t expected to offer false information. Google deems as YMYL sites are education, legal, health, current events, news, or government information.
The problem is here that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are not simply interpreted by the search algorithms, which only understand codes.
So E-A-T is not something that is going to the part of your day-to-day seo practices. But if your seo team has free time, you can certainly include this.
CONCLUSION
As analyzing the above three major changes in Google’s search algorithms, the Core Web Vitals seems to be the most influential factor that will affect SEO in 2021.
Search is a highly dynamic field-what worked few weeks ago may not work today, and what works today may not work tomorrow for most of us.
Therefore, it’s essential to keep our hand on the pulse of SEO updates and changes occurring time-to-time. With consistent effort by following updated SEO guidelines, it will be easy for you to reduce the gap and able to implement the best SEO trends in marketing strategies.
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