10 SEO Trends You Should Leverage in 2023

In 2023, SEO should be a key component of your digital marketing strategy. Including it in your marketing mix will help you build awareness and loyalty with your audiences. But to do that, you’ll need to rise above your competition with an effective and comprehensive SEO strategy that capitalizes on SEO trends for 2023. To help you develop that strategy, we looked at trends like artificial intelligence, voice search, and mobile-first indexing to develop the following list of 10 SEO trends you should leverage in 2023.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural language processing (NLP) is one of the top SEO trends right now. According to IBM, Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that helps computers understand text and speech in the same way humans can. NLP combines rule-based human language models with machine learning to help computers process the sentiment and intent of written or spoken human language.

Google’s search algorithm has an NLP called BERT that learns how to surface more relevant search results based on human language and intent. Since Google leverages this artificial intelligence in its algorithm, it’s important to use keywords and phrases that mimic natural human language as you’re optimizing your content for search in 2023. You can find that type of language with keyword research, but you want to make sure you’re using these terms naturally and not engaging in keyword stuffing when you weave them into your content.

Another way to learn natural language humans use to find content is by using artificial intelligence in products like Coveo. Coveo uses NLP and machine learning to better understand user intent and relevant keywords your audiences use to find content on your website. With insights gleaned from NLP, you can tailor your SEO to user intent, which will improve clickthrough rates from search and your site’s overall user experience.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Another top SEO trend is artificial intelligence. NLP is a kind of AI, but AI itself has other exciting applications for SEO in 2023. You can use AI to analyze large amounts of data, uncover insights about search intent, and automate time-consuming tasks such as keyword research and content optimization. With AI-based tools like SEMRush for keyword research and Surfer SEO for content optimization, your team can save valuable time on SEO research and analysis. That way you’ll have more time to optimize your content for search engines and achieve the maximum SEO benefit from it.

3. Mobile-First Indexing

Google primarily uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking, a process called mobile-first indexing. While Google says you don’t need to have a mobile site to be included in search results, they strongly recommend it. Their best practices prioritize the mobile user experience when they rank your site, so it’s critical to optimize your content for mobile devices. If Google crawls your site and sees that your content doesn’t render effectively on mobile, the Google algorithm will negatively impact your search rankings. And if users find your site while searching from a mobile device but aren’t enticed to click through or quickly abandon your site due to a bad user experience, that will also lower your rankings in search results.

4. Voice Search

According to Techjury.net, 40% of all internet searches in the U.S. are voice-based, and 40% of adults use voice search daily. So, voice search is extremely popular. Its use is only expected to increase in 2023 as more people leverage it through virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa or on smart voice devices like Google Home or Amazon Echo. You should optimize for voice search by creating content with natural language patterns. You should also leverage structured data markup and rich snippets to provide helpful information for users searching with voice-enabled devices. Having this markup will make your results more likely to surface as the top response to questions your audiences are asking with their voice searches.

5. Structured Data

Structured data isn’t new, but as we just mentioned, you can use it to help optimize your content for voice search. You can also use it to optimize for standard text searches in 2023. So, if you’re not taking advantage of it as part of your technical SEO, you’re missing out! Structured data is page markup that makes it easier for search engines to understand how your content fits into the context of a topic. Implementing it will make search engines more likely to display your site’s content to audiences who are searching for the topics you specialize in.

6. Page Loading Speed (User Experience)

With the rise of voice search, audiences have proven that they want relevant content in as few steps as possible. That’s why it’s more important than ever to make sure your website’s pages load fast. Use testing tools like Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights to optimize your site for technical SEO, so its pages load as fast as possible. Your audiences don’t want to wait around for what they need—so if you can deliver results quickly, then you’ll be ahead of the curve in 2023.

7. Quality Content (Content Strategy)

Search engines have gotten better at determining what’s quality content and what isn’t. Investing time into your content strategy and creating truly valuable, informative, and engaging content that resonates with your target audiences—not just keyword-stuffed articles—will be essential in 2023. Quality content will lead to increased clickthrough rates from search results and increased engagement with your site. It will also please search engines too. Based on these strong engagement metrics, they’ll see your content as high-quality, and they’ll be more likely to rank your site higher in search results.

8. Mobile Optimization

Oberlo says that 60% of web traffic in November 2022 came from mobile devices, which is up over 50% from a decade ago. With each year, more and more people are accessing the internet from their phones or tablets, so you need to ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices in 2023. This means having a responsive design and making sure your website’s pages load as fast as possible when users perform mobile searches to find your website.

9. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)

Just as it has been in the past, in 2023, SEO will depend on having a website that’s credible and trustworthy. Search engine algorithms factor in your website’s expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness when ranking it. So, make sure to create content with experts in your industry and focus on building strong, lasting relationships with your readers.

10. Video for SEO

Videos are becoming more popular as a part of content strategy and as an SEO tool because they’re another way to boost engagement, brand awareness, and page visibility. Incorporating relevant keywords into your video titles and descriptions is a way to attract new audiences who are interested in the topics you regularly discuss. Create high-quality videos that convey your message succinctly to engage your audiences. Provide transcriptions of them to get additional SEO benefits from the content in them and to offer more accessible content for all your audiences.

These are the top SEO trends for 2023. If correctly leveraged, these 2023 SEO trends can help boost your website’s visibility and rankings. Want to discuss what specific SEO trends you should leverage in 2023? Let’s talk.