The SEO issue like a boomerang returns yearly, but the difference is that it always comes in a slightly different version. Most people think of SEO as a kind of cliché, and it’s associated with keyword positioning. However, this approach and the lack of knowledge of SEO trends updates (they change practically every year) is one of the biggest mistakes made by companies that want to position themselves online and increase the campaign’s success in organic results. And let’s face it, that’s what all the companies that want to achieve high sales care about. What about optimizing websites in the language industry?
Before we get to the point, it’s worth remembering what SEO is. For whatever reason, many people equate SEO with positioning. Although both concepts are related to search results and page position, they are not the same.
We perform search engine optimization (SEO) in several areas:
- content changes – proper placement of keywords, matching the length of content,
- changes in the website code – are intended to improve the technical parameters of the website, its usefulness, and to improve its operation.
Positioning is a process that combines all the activities that make it possible to achieve the best position in the search engine and consists of SEO, content marketing, link building, and analytics.
Expert voice
Search Engine Journal is a portal dedicated to creating the latest news, best guides, and guides to help you find yourself in the SEO world. This year, it published a guide in which 44 industry experts share their observations and describe the top trends that will affect SEO operations in 2022. So let’s see what awaits us and how it relates to the language school industry.
SEO Trends 2022
It turns out that classic activities are not enough to take a high place in search results. Now the first place is taken by impressions of the internet user on her/his shopping path, modern technology, and personal involvement in the appearance of your website on the web. All of this together will have a huge impact on whether your page appears in TOP3, on the first page of the search or on the losing end.
1. User intention
Google has consistently made us aware that your experience is always at the top. What is the change? Recently, the search results in the meta description field display a snippet of text from the page that best matches the query you typed in the search engine.
Keywords are still important, but now in the first place, we have a holistic approach, which is what the whole content creation strategy looks like. Here, many people hearing the word „content” think of texts, whereas it should be remembered that the content can also be a video recording.
The whole should take into account not only the meaning of keywords but also the overall context. Note that although I included „Spanish learning in Madrid” in my query, Google also underlined such words as learn Spanish, Spanish language courses, and Spanish classes.
This is because Google has an algorithm whose AI can decipher the user’s intentions and display pages whose content is of the best quality, and not those that contain the typed phrase. So the times when we were trying to force the keyword phrase 1 to 1, at the expense of the substance of the text are long behind us!
In summary, content scheduling per page should include:
- keywords
- the intentions of the user,
- Your intentions and actions you want to observe on the user’s side.
2. Valuable Content
Although a lot of people expected a breakthrough, Google is constantly focusing on the quality of content, and this year it emphasizes it even more strongly than in previous years. Updates to Google’s algorithms are moving towards the best possible selection of content. What does this involve? Above all, the fact that content should not only be characterized by high quality and substantive message but also be unique.
What does this mean for you? If you are stubbornly writing that you are the best school in the city, you are using modern teaching methods, you are teaching fast, effectively and with passion, then unfortunately I have bad news for you. Your page can be marked by Google as so-called hidden plagiarism. That is, if your content is similar in structure to other content in the same industry or has the same meaning, then you may have a problem indexing the page. This is because Google’s robots may think that there is enough similar content online. As a result, you will not appear in search results or end up on the losing end.
How to prevent this? Bet on what sets you apart, create original content, and avoid vague phrases and topics. This will allow you to better position yourself and reach the people to whom your courses are dedicated. It’s time for originality 😉
3. SERP – local orientation
SERP is nothing more than a page that displays search results to you after you type your search password. If you run a school that works globally, the key to success this year may be local positioning. That is, sites will not necessarily be positioned with the best content, but with one that takes into account content specific to a given location. If you run e.g. a school of the English language and you want to reach people from a specific country, it is worth taking into account local key phrases and thus creating a specific message.
4. Visual Content
What everyone had long expected did happen. The saturation of the repeated visual content caused, that officially the stock photos go into oblivion. This year, websites using their graphics and photos will not only gain in the search results of the graphics but also the standard SERP. Also if you still hesitate to invest in an individual image photo session of yourself and your school, the answer is: definitely yes! Now is the best time for this 😉
In addition to high-quality graphics, it is also important to describe them correctly. In addition to the alternative description, it is useful to include a specific keyword. This will allow the search engine to precisely determine the subject matter of a given image and raise the page position in organic results. Experts say that we are moving in a direction in which Google itself will decide what will bring the best answer to the search phrase – image, video, or website. Therefore, it is worth taking a comprehensive approach to the topic now.
5. Artificial Intelligence
Google continues to emphasize the development of artificial intelligence, and in this respect, nothing is likely to change in the coming years. What does this mean for users? The task of artificial intelligence is to better understand not only the meaning of the phrases typed but also their context.
The better and more accurate you prepare the content for the page, the more likely you are to appear in the first search results.
6. Green SEO
Unfortunately, however, every activity on the Internet also contributes significantly to CO2 emissions, so in the years to come it is expected that attention will be paid to sustainable development and social responsibility, including in the case of search engines. Just as Google informs us about flights leaving the biggest carbon footprint and marks eco-hotels in search engines, so soon we can see the amount of CO2 produced by websites. What is more, it is said that this may become one of the criteria determining the position of the website in the search engine. It’s worth promoting a pro-ecological approach now and focusing on the best-performing web pages. We are living in a time when this trend will be strongly strengthened from year to year.
7. Page indexing
Now, I’ve talked about indexing a little bit above, so let me expand on this a little bit because it’s kind of relevant from the website owner’s point of view. IndexNow is another change that Google has made for us. Until now, we had to wait days, even months, to have new content on the site indexed. This significantly increased latency for positioning results on the web. The solution to this problem is a new feature that allows for immediate indexing of content. There is only one, but…IndexNow is not available for everyone. It can be purchased under a license. However, if someone expects immediate effects, this is an option worth looking at.
8. E-A-T
Another indicator, based on which Google evaluates the quality of the website. The abbreviation stands for:
- E – Expertise
- A – Authoritativeness
- T – Trustworthiness
This indicator will become increasingly important in the coming year. It will help in particular to verify whether the site is a good source of information. How do we use this? You don’t have to do a Ph.D. in a particular field. Just use your content e.g. the blog to indicate that you are a specialist or you work with an expert in a given topic who will write good quality content. And it’s no longer an option, but it’s slowly becoming a foundation.
We hope that you will use this knowledge to prepare even better for the coming semester and raise the results of the enrollment for new courses 😉 If there is any topic that you would like to discuss in our blog soon, please feel free to write in the comments or at marketing@langlion.com.