SEO Google Tips for 2022

Although Google updates its algorithm 500 to 600 times a year, it’s unrealistic to expect you could consistently keep up with these updates and adapt your SEO efforts accordingly. It’s impossible to keep track of all these changes, especially considering most of them are so minute, so how can you ensure you’re not only up to date but can beat the algorithms to remain on the first page of the search results? A new year presents the perfect opportunity to re-evaluate and refine your strategies so they can be more targeted and impactful to set you up for sustained success.

To help you stay up to date with Google’s ever-changing algorithm and SEO ranking factors, keep these SEO tips in mind as you create your digital marketing strategy for the new year.

Google title rewrites

Google title rewrites are one of the most important SEO tips this year. Title rewrites have been one of the hottest SEO topics in 2022, as a variety of studies have shown that Google is rewriting 60%-80% of a site’s titles. Most of these changes were to titles with 70 characters or more and titles with five characters or less (source). There seems to be a sweet spot for title length that Google prefers, so do an audit of all your titles to ensure they land in this range.

FAQ Schema

FAQ Schema is a specialized markup containing a list of questions and answers that can be added to a webpage’s code. Google then “reads” it and uses it to generate a rich snippet. There are two places to include FAQ Schema on your site – on dedicated FAQ pages and on pages with a FAQ section. What makes FAQ Shema so important to consider is the fact that it’s easy to implement, and a variety of sites can qualify for it. Additionally, it can help you generate higher quality leads and improve your SEO ranking.

Author pages

If you weren’t already aware, Google has recently given some new Schema-based structure data advice. The search engine now recommends including a link to an author’s bio page in the Article structured data to help it correctly identify the author for an article, eliminating ambiguity. By helping Google disambiguate the correct author this way, its confidence in the page’s content and topic relevance increases, resulting in better visibility.

Avoid “fluff”

All content on your website should be purposeful, relevant, and informative. While what is considered “fluff” can vary depending on your specific product/service and industry, it’s typically understood to be content that does not add to a user’s experience and is simply taking up space on a page. “Fluff” is one of those things that you can’t necessarily define, but you know it when you see it. Keeping this kind of content on your website can be detrimental to your SEO ranking, especially considering Google seems to be rewarding sites that provide visitors with direct and concise answers to their queries. You may want to get in the habit of performing a content audit at the beginning of every year to evaluate what needs to be removed, updated, or repurposed.

Internal link optimization

Internal linking is one of the biggest SEO tips that affect your SEO success. They connect your content, help Google understand the structure of your website, and help you establish a hierarchy you can use to give the most important pages more link value. If you only have a handful of quality external links, don’t worry. While you obviously need links to rank in SEO, quantity isn’t as important as quality. You can make the most out of the links you have by enhancing your internal link optimization. The new year presents the perfect opportunity to do an internal link optimization audit and figure out how to best leverage the internal links you have.

Want more SEO tips to help your efforts reach new heights in 2022? Or maybe you need a digital marketing firm that’s intimately familiar with Google’s algorithm to help you take advantage of the changes. Regardless, contact the experts at SocialSEO today so we can help you be more visible and attract more of the customers and revenue you want!