SEO Trends to Follow in 2023

Trends, especially search engine optimization (SEO), come and go for everything. After all, algorithms and people's interests change all the time. Thus, it makes sense to see what's trending and keep up with that.

What is SEO exactly, and why is it so important? What trends should people follow in 2023? This article is here to answer those questions and more. So, here are some SEO trends to follow in 2023.

What is SEO?

For those who don’t know, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s a digital marketing tool crucial for every business owner and affiliate marketer.

SEO has many elements that are constantly evolving. These elements are:

Keywords
Content
Local and off-page SEO
Search engine marketing

Why Is SEO Important?

SEO is a valuable tool for brand awareness, which brings in more money for businesses and affiliate marketers. It can also build relationships and position people as authoritative and trustworthy within their fields.

Additionally, SEO is excellent at increasing visibility, making consumers more likely to find a business or affiliate marketer on search engines. The higher someone ranks on a result page, the more likely it is that consumers will notice and click on their website, giving them more traffic.

If a consumer visits an affiliate marketer's website and likes what they see, they might buy something from that affiliate marketer. Thus, the affiliate marketer will get more authority within their field and more money. It's a win-win situation for everyone!

Trends for 2023:

After defining SEO and explaining why it’s important, it’s time to look at the SEO trends any business owner or affiliate marketer should follow in 2023.

Trend One: Online Shopping

The world is advancing into a technological society, and shopping has become a huge deal online. At the end of 2021, over two billion people around the world shopped online. That’s a lot of people!

With that many people shopping online, many search engines and websites are improving their online shopping experiences for their consumers. Some websites do this by getting rid of commission fees and letting businesses sell things there for free.

Google even has an AI-enhanced model called the Shopping Graph, which understands the different product and brand types and how they relate to each other. It considers things such as:

The price
The website
The reviews
The SKU and inventory data
The videos

The Shopping Graph delivers the most relevant products to consumers with this information. It even lets people search for things with screenshots.

Those wishing to optimize this trend for 2023 must create product listings rich in keywords because Google determines the product listing’s relevancy to search queries with this information.

Make sure to add relevant keywords all over the page, so they pop up in relevant searches. It also helps to put keywords in the alternative tags on photos so that Google can “read” them.

Trend Two: Image Optimization

Though some websites have been clear about the best practices for website image optimization, only a few people take this seriously. The affiliate marketer must look at their images and see how they score on optimization meters.

Websites should be accessible to everyone, and images play a vital role for those with visual disabilities and impairments.

Images aren’t just for visually conveying ideas. They’re used for obtaining information, shopping online, and much more.

Those who wish to optimize this trend for 2023 must conduct image audits on their websites to identify what they need to do to increase their score on optimization meters. Some actions they can take are:

Serving images in next-gen formats
Compressing images
Naming each file appropriately with correct keywords
Giving every image original alt text

Trend Three: Video Marketing

More than 50% of consumers use videos for buying products. This makes sense since the internet has become a more visual place in recent years. That’s why making videos part of an SEO strategy is essential.

Some websites, like Google, are launching features for consumers to find information more quickly via videos. These new features are:

Clip markups that enable people to highlight a video’s key points for consumers to hop there.
Seek markups that tell Google how the structure of someone’s URL works, allowing it to automatically display a video’s key moments and link within a particular point.

These two features let affiliate marketers optimize their videos to pop up in search results for more competitive and relevant terms.

Those who wish to optimize this trend for 2023 must incorporate videos into their websites. People consume 88% more time on websites with videos. Thus, incorporating them can boost a website's traffic, rankings, and engagement.

For clip-and-seek markups, make sure to use detailed markups rich in keywords. For example, don’t label markups as “Tip One” or “Tip Two.” Instead, label them as whatever field-related steps themselves.

These markups will give affiliate marketers a better chance of ranking in relevant searches and increasing engagement with their videos.

Trend Four: Featured Snippets

Suppose someone’s going to see a movie in the theater. Right before the main movie starts, they see a snippet of another movie related to the main one. That snippet might get that person interested in seeing that movie when it comes out. That’s how a featured snippet is supposed to work.

For those who don't know, featured snippets are the result boxes often seen above real search results. They're often used to give a little sneak peek of what a consumer is searching for – like that sneak peek to the other movie right before the main one.

Featured snippets take many forms, including:

How-to’s
FAQs
Some bulleted lists
Some single sentences

Featured snippets are great detours to the search results’ top without having to make long-form content, especially when it comes to valuable information. If an affiliate marketer offers something consumers often search for, they’re qualified to have a featured snippet.

Those who wish to optimize this trend for 2023 must carefully think about searchers, their intentions, and how they would search.

When considering that information, the affiliate marketer should focus their content on questions. A search engine’s autocomplete section is lovely for finding valuable keywords and topics.

After using those sections, it’s best to see if the content has the right schema markup for search results. Some websites will test schema markups on someone’s website.

For those who don't know, a schema markup allows search engines to better crawl and understand the information on someone's website to provide better consumer results.

Trend Five: Semantically Related Keywords

Google’s algorithm has become increasingly advanced in how it interprets searches with search intent, related keywords, and semantics that play a role in what consumers see on search results.

In the past, search engines looked at strings of text to match keywords. Nowadays, search is more intuitive and relevant than ever.

Recently, Google launched the Multitask Unified Model, an AI able to discern intent and emotion from searches in more than 75 languages, playing a future role in search.

Those who wish to optimize this trend for 2023 must focus on topic clusters rather than one keyword. The affiliate marketer should create ideal consumer personas to grab with their content. Some ways to do so are:

Writing for them
Answering their questions
Using semantically related keywords and phrases

To best get this result, it's ideal for the affiliate marketer to put themselves in the consumer's shoes. One way they can do so is by combining keywords and lists resonating with their consumers. This different keyword research approach can boost their website engagement and earn them more money.

Conclusion

The best SEO trends to use in 2023 include focusing on online shopping, image optimization, video marketing, featured snippets, and semantically related keywords.