2022 has almost gone. It’s time to prepare your eCommerce site for 2023. Many digital entrepreneurs have claimed about having been dropped in search results after Google Spam Report updates. We scanned the web for new SEO trends in eCommerce, emerging ranking factors and recommendations to neutralize effects of new search rules. In this article, we’ll share some ideas on how to optimize your content and ads to rank higher with search results.
Trend #1. Organic search beats paid ads
Search engine ad revenue declines. The biggest giant Google showed an income increase by only 4.25% in 2022.
Microsoft Bing revenue increased by 16%. This share is not very high either. Experts forecast budget cuts on paid promotion in 2023. The future trend is to focus on organic search or making your ads look more natural (‘Sponsored’ label instead of ad). Ad campaigns are the first thing businesses would save on during the financial crisis. Moreover, Google Spam Update report introduced new rules of the game. Based on the new algorithms, any site that contains too many gray backlinks, not original content, or spammed products will be decreased in search.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #1??
Fill your site with quality content which originality is close to 100%, use more expert articles and original content writers’ works. Try to bring more value to users, don’t populate your web space with low-quality spammy articles.
Trend #2 E-E-A-T, Experience – Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness
This is an evergreen formula that will bring you more traffic from organic search. In principle, this is almost about the
This SEO trend is a successor of an evergreen formula E-A-T (Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trust) announced by Google back in 2018. In general, both principles are almost about the same as above – content originality. Original valuable content can be written only by an expert or an enthusiast in the area of interest. E-E-A-T factors are affected by credibility of sources you refer to in your materials and relevance of the content to what a site is about. Also, the new trend makes it almost mandatory to develop your expertise and show it to your audience and search engines to rank higher. Take part in conferences and trade shows in your industry, host meetings and events, share your activity on social media to promote your brand and grow your website audience.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #2?
If you are for instance an e-grocery store, collaborate with restaurants and chefs-influencers or food bloggers, use backlinking to contribute to your site’s authoritativeness. Insert links to Wikipedia, a trusted source, to increase trustworthiness. Or, any other well-known expert platform, which is close to your business area and well-trusted on the web. Try to be that knowledge source that people would refer to.
Trend #3 AI usage for copywriting
With the onset of Artificial Intelligence, there came many affordable AI tools like Jasper capable of writing original content quickly and well enough. However, while artificial content creators can be used from time to time, they won’t replace humans. Again, to bring more organic search results, you should bring some value to readers. That is just what AI cannot do till the moment. AI can generate a grammatically correct piece of content but with no added value to users. It may rephrase sentences but will not bring new ideas.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #3?
So, is it even worth using AI for copywriting? Well, you can still apply new technologies but don’t overuse them. Stick to an 80/20 formula: 80% of original quality content, 20% of AI. When using AI tools, correct the output test to add more value for users.
Trend #4 Google Shopping
Google’s initiative of uniting eCommerce businesses under its umbrella has a long run. While it steals clicks from the eCommerce sites themselves, it nevertheless has a potential to promote some local businesses. The search engine is now bigger than just a tool to find things. With Google Shopping, it becomes a digital environment for shoppers that aggregates products, their descriptions, and reviews. It cannot sell goods directly to consumers. Instead, it points to eCommerce sites where these products are offered.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #4?
For eCommerce site owners, it is recommended to improve the SEO strategy by adding Google Shopping features. You will drop in organic search, but these clicks won’t go to your competitors who use Google Shopping.
Trend #5 Visual search
Google Lens is not a novelty. Visual search became even more popular after the pandemic when people weren’t able to go out very often for shopping. The visual search can really bring you more visitors from the organic search. For example, your audience is women who are looking for a nice dress. They have a picture of what they want to buy, but don’t know where to find it. They place a picture in the search bar, and voila – a list of dresses with the links to the sites selling them.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #5?
To monetize this trend, use more quality images on your site so that the search could be more precise. To save on the space and keep your site speed high, apply the WebPage format. Create your own pictures, don’t overuse the stock ones, as it also affects the search rankings and your brand image. Ensure the images are properly sized for different devices. For this, your site should be responsive (in CS-Cart, this feature is provided by default, the same is with the themes).
Trend #6 Voice Search
When applying voice search for your eCommerce store, you provide customers with an opportunity to search for products without manual typing. Potential customers may mispronounce the name of the product or the brand they are looking for. Apart from the voice search convenience, it is capable of reducing zero search results due to mistakes in pronunciation.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #6?
Consider an opportunity to connect a voice assistant to your store. Optimize features for voices to make them more efficient. Connect your store to a voice assistant like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Amazon’s Alexa. By doing so, you allow voice search queries to work for your eCommerce business the same way as a regular search.
Trend #7 Entity-based search
Google understands what your site is about with the help of its algorithms. The search engine checks the user behavior based on entities. The tool analyzes the meaningful terms on a page to define the subject. With the development of these algorithms, it is of no use to focus on keywords. One said that keywords are just strings, when entities are terms. The entity-based SEO strategy should pay attention to how relevant a query (entity) is to a certain location.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #7?
To capitalize on this, make your entities more meaningful. Run your Google Business Profile. Populate it with accurate data so that Google could learn more about your business and show your site where it is relevant. Encourage customers to review your site more often.
Trend #8 Old content updates
This SEO trend is about saving your efforts on writing new content. To apply the future trend, you should dedicate more time to creating an evergreen piece of content that you could update overtime.
What can you do here? Think about writing longreads to cover more aspects of interest with your audience. In 2023, the benchmark would be 3000-3500 per article according to our studies.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #8?
It is a good idea not to publish a new article on the same subject again from year to year. Instead of writing a Black Friday post every year, consider supplementing it to refresh the content.
Trend #9 Localization on SEO
More and more results are geo-referenced. For example, if you are in Vietnam, the search engine will first respond to queries in Vietnamese.
A peculiarity of localization by country is that informational queries (like “What is VSEO?”) made in the language of the user location usually reach the TOP region queries. More interesting things began to appear in deep localization for a specific city or a region. If you enter the query “Where to buy a laptop?”, stores from your city of location will be shown first. For some queries with a significant number of offers, Google will even point out particular stores near you.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #9?
The current trend is to add city and country to the search hints along with the request. For commercial queries, the trend is to add a tooltip “Near me” (for example, “Buy laptop near me”). The user sees answers for the city where he or she is located. Well, do not forget about changing the SERP for commercial queries: your potential customer will see a map and offers from Google Shopping, also tied to the user’s location.
Trend #10 SERP Optimization
Search engine result pages (SERPs) are web pages that search engines show as a response to a user query. In the context of SEO, your eCommerce site visibility in the SERPs is a competitive advantage. So, it is vital to include SERP optimization and especially featured snippets (a part of Google SERP) in your SEO strategy. Google is adding more and more blocks to SERPs. It means that to rank higher, you need to somehow convey the user’s query relevant data to the search engine.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #10?
So, you need to pay more attention to micro-markup (Schema.org) to improve SERPs. Consider what blocks appearing in the SERP are relevant to your business. Connect your site to Google Shopping or add a profile to Google Business. Run a community on Facebook or get reviews on popular sites like G2.
Trend #11 Switching from UA to Google Analytics 4
Google announced a mandatory transition from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) that needs to be accomplished in July, 2023. For eCommerce businesses it means that they should dedicate more time to study the new tool and rebuild the way of collecting analytics data to comply with the SEO future trend.
How to strengthen your SEO strategy with Trend #11?
What can you do here? Start migration to the new marketing tool early. By doing so, you have less chances to lose your rankings and save time getting accustomed to the new tool.
Key Takeaways
The SEO strategy-2023 for eCommerce businesses can be briefly summarized as: “Be original and precise!” With the focus on original quality texts, photos and images, you won’t lose your Google rankings even amid the recent Google Spam Report updates. Don’t overuse AI tools and apply the power of local queries with Google Shopping and Google Business Profile to strengthen your positions in the local search. And if you want to optimize your site in terms of its overall architecture, we’re here to help.
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