SEO continues to drive a large portion of web traffic, and keeping up with Google’s updates plus user behavior over time is the key to a successful SEO strategy. When it comes to the newest SEO trends in 2022, Google is focusing on learning user intent and being able to interpret language conversationally.
BERT To MUM
BERT, or Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, was a new system implemented by Google in 2019 that was a huge improvement upon its ability to walk the line between the words in a search query and the intent of it. It came about as voice search grew exponentially more popular, and enabled Google to improve its user experience for those who were speaking to Google rather than simply typing in a phrase or word.
However, Google moves quickly, and it appears we are moving on from BERT to MUM, or Multitask United Model. According to their Head of Search, “Google’s new Natural Language Processing Model is 1,000 times more powerful and can multitask in order to unlock information in new ways.”
The versatility of MUM means that moving forward, SEOs will need to provide more context on images, video, and multimedia elements that users will soon be able to search. Google’s goal is for users to be able to do things like take a picture of a laptop and ask “How much processing power does this laptop have?” With MUM, Google will be able to answer that, along with blogs about laptop processing power.
eCommerce Stores on Google Shopping
Until recently, Google Shopping was a basic platform that allowed users to look at products and click through to a retailer’s website to buy. With the immense growth of more popular platforms like Shopify and Amazon, Google has welcomed the challenge of building a robust shopping platform with open arms.
Brand new features like account-linking for retailers to offer their return shoppers loyalty deals, product carousels for related search queries, highlighted discount codes, and a specialized section for affordable products when the search query involves words like “affordable” and “cheap.”
This makes it inexcusable for eCommerce stores to not be all in on Google Shopping heading into 2022.
Core Web Vitals
We covered core web vitals earlier in the year, but they’re so important that we’ll remind you again. Google has made it very clear that their new core web vitals report is going to play a huge role in SEO moving forward, and they all have to do with page experience for the user.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the speed at which a page’s main content is loaded completely and ready for user interaction. Google will flag a page if it’s LCP is over 2.5 seconds.
- First Input Delay (FID): Measures how quickly users are able to interact with your page after landing on it. Google recommends an FID of under 100ms.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how often users experienced unexpected layout changes. CLS should be under 0.1.
By focusing on the experience your user has once they get on the page, you can gain some free brownie points with Google without even worrying about your content.
Are you ready to take on the SEO landscape in 2022? ShoreSite Web Designs has an SEO team to help guide you through it. Contact us today!
