Today’s eCom marketplace is only getting more and more competitive. But with 82% of businesses reporting that SEO had a positive impact on their overall marketing performance and goals in 2022, you have to admit there's something of value there.
Still, SEO remains an elusive mechanism to some as 90.63% of pages on the Internet get no organic traffic from Google. Somehow that doesn't even seem possible in today's day and age.
But, by implementing the right SEO strategies and keeping up with top SEO trends, you can make sure your eCommerce business taps into that coveted 9.37% while remaining ahead of the competition in 2023. Keep reading for our Top 10 Takeaways from this year's SEO Trends & Predictions.
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Search engine optimization, or SEO, has only grown with each passing year, proving without a doubt that this cost-effective digital marketing strategy can effectively increase visibility while offering your eCommerce business long-term benefits.
82% of Conductor survey respondents reported SEO had a positive impact on marketing performance and goals in 2022.
So it's no wonder that the demand for SEO success will only continue through 2023 and beyond. But with that comes Google's intensified volatility when it comes to filtering out the cream of the crop in its search engine results.
With faster rollouts, overlapping updates, and transitioning away from traditional ranking factors, Google will likely be shifting its priorities when it comes to search engine rankings.
And this makes it especially important for businesses like yours to stay as on top of SEO trends as possible. This means following SEO best practices like no keyword stuffing, using targeted keywords strategically, including and validating schema markup, image optimization, and more.
But if all of this sounds like way too much for you to keep track of, then it might be time to work with an SEO company that can keep the search engines happy for you.
Ultimately, with a search algorithm that's ever-evolving, SEO success will become ever more advanced and fleeting. But if you're able to keep up with best SEO practices as rolled out by Google and its search engine ranking qualifications - whether on your own or with a team of SEO experts - then you'll be sure to reap the rewards.
Creating content has become synonymous with living in the 21st Century. And businesses, both big and small, have witnessed just how effective content marketing is when combined with a proper SEO strategy.
92% of survey respondents reported content marketing had a positive impact on marketing performance and goals in 2022.
But with that said, we'd be remiss not to acknowledge the prevalence of AI that will inevitably be ushered in by the demand for content in the first place.
While the ChatGPT craze has plenty of folks across various industries worried about its potential effects, companies are still straddling the fence to see just how beneficial AI content creation can actually be.
With businesses looking to cut costs wherever they can, it's likely that larger corporations may replace their investments in content writers or marketers and replace them with AI technology while measuring how their target audience responds.
But this isn't to say that ChatGPT is an all-dominating force altogether. Instead, when it comes to SEO trends and shifting strategies, it's likely that AI technology will remain in its exploratory stages throughout 2023.
This way, business leaders and even SEOs can see how these machines truly perform when it comes to generating relevant content.
Signs may be pointing toward another recession in 2023. But considering just how powerful SEO has proved itself to be, it's likely that companies, both big and small, won't be willing to compromise the gains they've seen from positive SEO trends.
With that said, you may see companies start to shift their budgets around in an effort to allocate more funds toward an SEO strategy that can deliver a high return. But there is some discrepancy as to whether organic or paid search results will win the battle of the budget.
SEO experts ranked Organic Search as the #1 lead generation channel for 2022 while leaders ranked Paid Search as the #1 lead generation channel for 2022.
Paid Search still remains one of the easiest channels for business leaders to measure ROI. But this unfortunately leaves leaders with a massive blindspot when it comes to acknowledging the true SEO insights and ROI this marketing strategy has to offer.
If anything, this statistic shows us that there's a desperate need for clearer communication and reporting between SEOs and business leaders. Whether it's understanding search intent more clearly or writing proper alt texts, having SEOs on your team will deeply enhance your business's performance gains.
Big tech organizations have seen some massive layoffs as of late. And those kinds of cut costs are likely to continue throughout 2023.
Luckily for SEO, costs may only be adjusted to make for increased allocation as search results have continually shown time and time again their value in boosting web pages and driving organic traffic.
SEO & content marketing budget allocation is expected to increase while paid media budget allocation is expected to decrease.
Another reason why paid media investments may see a downward trend is due to surging CPC rates. With highly competitive keywords running rampant, companies are recognizing just how difficult it's become to justify what little ROI paid ads have to offer.
With more focus on search engine algorithms, companies are finding there to be a better payoff with a successful SEO strategy, which is good news for SEOs overall!
Bonus: 12 Ways To Find New Customers And Increase Sales
While the majority of these trends are seeing a conservative fiscal budget for the impending year(s), that's not to say that companies don't still have their eye set on some gargantuan goals.
79% of marketers reported goals would increase for 2023, despite overall marketing budgets remaining flat.
Essentially what's being predicted here is a "Do Less With More" mentality. During these times of economic uncertainty, business leaders are merely looking for improved results with no change in total spending.
So it only makes sense that leaders will want to not only identify but maximize efforts toward channels with the highest ROI. While this might sound like great news for SEOs, there's a bit of a caveat.
Companies shifting their focus to search engines sounds like a great deal. But search engines are also recognizing this play.
In turn, they’re making changes to the overall playing field, making the prospect of ranking high in search results even more difficult than before.
Of course, search engine crawlers are always looking for the same things: no keyword stuffing, but enough relevant keywords to come up in multiple search queries, a web page with local SEO schema markup, and some core web vitals to boot.
But with the "Do More With Less" mentality, SEOs will have to double down on their efforts to earn those better rankings, which may cause them to feel the heat from both business leaders and search engines.
Doing more with less means that SEOs will need to come up with some hard-hitting, impactful strategies. And one of the ways both SEOs and business leaders are identifying this competitive edge is through a sector of SEO that's currently lacking in most modern technologies.
Forward-thinking organizations recognize that a strong technical SEO foundation will become a key differentiator to increase overall organic visibility.
While most SEO technologies are concerned with how to create content that will rank well in the search results, technical SEO remains a sect of search engine algorithms that must be tapped into and catered toward.
With all signs pointing toward increased investment in technical SEO, leaders are hoping that such efforts will allow them to better analyze, monitor, and implement improvements accordingly while increasing their visibility across mobile search results, visual search results, web pages, and more.
For SEO novices, technical SEO can seem entirely out of reach as it requires a comprehensive level of expertise. And that's why, when looking for an SEO company to work with, you'll want to access a business that's been doing this type of work for years.
At Up Inc., we've managed to help companies increase sales, dominate organic and visual search, create content with semantically-related keywords, and attract more customers, all while racking up 35+ years of experience.
From 2020-2021, we managed to 35x one luxury beauty company's organic visitor growth, resulting in 605 unique organic sales in 10 months and ranking them for 6,500 keywords in Google's Top 100 results.
Whether you're looking to dominate local search results, implement schema markup, or simply tackle your target keywords, we're the company that can help you achieve those goals and more.
Whether you're creating content or working on your core web vitals, there's always one goal lurking in the background of each task: improving the customer or user experience.
Improving customer and user experience was ranked as one of the top two SEO priorities by marketing leaders and SEOs.
And this really should come as no surprise. Throughout 2020 and 2021, multiple industries saw an increase in users’ preference to interact with brands, find answers to their problems, and make purchases online.
Living in the digital age means that mobile searches can both give you the answer to that one actor's name and also allow you to press a button that gets a package delivered to your door.
Improving customer and user experience will rely on improving technical SEO and increasing brand awareness. And page experience will become an even more significant ranking factor than it already is.
In every effort to optimize your eCommerce business, always keep your target audience at the forefront of your mind.
Some people may consider SEO and content creation as two separate entities. But marketers are finding more and more overlap between the two, urging them to combine these efforts to make for a much more impactful strategy.
86% of marketers reported SEO had a positive impact on content marketing efforts over the last 12 months.
While SEO and content marketing share the same driving factors, companies have rarely decided to break down the barriers between the two.
In fact, only 14% of enterprise organizations reported SEO sits with the content team.
But those within that 14% have discovered that aligning SEO with content throughout every stage of the content planning process has actually proven beneficial to their overall marketing campaign.
Taking this merger a step further, some companies have committed to a deeper relationship with SEOs, namely by halting their outsourcing efforts.
59% of enterprise businesses reported having an entirely in-house SEO team in 2022.
That means the majority of enterprise businesses are operating with their own in-house experts. While these businesses are likely larger corporations that can afford such a team, that's not to say that smaller businesses can't reap the benefits of an SEO team by their side.
Having worked with clients from luxury beauty brands to small wellness companies, our SEO team is versed in both local SEO and global SEO to meet your business's needs. So don't think the top dog corporations have a monopoly on those target keywords.
With the right SEO company by your side, you can start playing in the big leagues.
With so much information out there on the Internet, it was only a matter of time before consumers started to get weary of the information they consume, namely weary of where that information is coming from and how dependable that information truly is.
With that shift in consciousness, industry leaders are beginning to respond with their own unique strategies.
For 2023, forward-thinking marketers will increase investments in research report creation and resources to translate these data-driven insights into digestible, engaging social media posts.
Data from 2022 has shown leaders that eBooks, Blog Posts, and even Press Releases are now viewed as less reliable content formats, namely because anyone can produce them.
So, instead, users are opting for more data-driven content with robust research to back up their claims over blogs with only surface-level insights. In short, users want to see the proof behind the results.
It's one thing to preach that certain things are best practice recommendations. Now, users want you to prove it.
Earlier, we mentioned how AI technology would inevitably be explored for its potential benefits throughout 2023 and beyond. But that's not to say that AI isn't already capable of taking on more menial tasks like keyword research and topic generation.
In fact, 1 in 4 marketers believe topic generation and research support will be the most significant role AI/ML play in content marketing in 2023.
Tedious tasks like data analysis, keyword research, and topic generation can easily be taken over, or at least influenced by, AI technologies. But this is not to say that AI is dominating once and for all.
If anything, it's predicted that AI innovations like ChatGPT will become more valuable tools to inform SEOs and content marketers. Besides, with a greater demand for SEOs and content marketers to do more with less, such technologies will prove vital to the ever-growing demands of the digital marketplace.
That being said, if you're thinking that AI can take over completely, you might want to think again. While larger corporations may be exploring this idea in 2023, measuring the potential benefits and ROI, it's unwise to view ChatGPT without its limitations.
Keeping up with these trends, whether in local SEO or global SEO, is integral for your eCommerce business to thrive. But if you're not sure how to proceed, then you'll want to work with an SEO company that comes with a proven track record of successful results.
Only then can you rest easy knowing that your SEO goals are being met by the experts who've studied these trends for decades. From meta descriptions to featured snippets, our expert team is here to arm you with the best SEO strategies there are.
The future of SEO in 2023 is certainly bright and extremely busy. But following these trends and predictions will help you navigate the ever-evolving terrain that is digital marketing in the 21st Century.
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Up Inc. eCommerce Agency is a digital marketing agency based in Los Angeles, CA. Founded in 2021, Up Inc. specializes in eCommerce, generating growth for brands by focusing on visibility, customer loyalty, and digital revenue. For more SEO tips and industry insights, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
