In the field of orthodontic marketing, search engine optimization is king. SEO is responsible for higher rankings on search engines like Google, which means more website visits and higher conversion rates. These systems are constantly evolving to make it easier for users to find the answers to all their questions, but it takes an SEO professional to learn the tools to rank after each new update. To keep up with the changes and stay at the top of the results page, here are the top 2022 SEO trends you should know.
Core Web Vitals
The Gist: A clean, functional, and user-friendly web interface often makes the difference between ranking well and not ranking at all.
How long would you wait for a web page to load? Four seconds? Five seconds? According to recent studies, nearly half of all web users will leave a website that doesn’t load in three seconds or less. While it’s clear that a high-performing website is the key to keeping your audience’s attention, remember that speed and usability affect more than just your user experience – they also affect your search engine rankings.
Google’s crawlers are constantly looking for performance indicators to decide where to rank you in their search results. These indicators make up what we call Core Web Vitals, which include stats like load time, working links, functional pages, and overall usability. Not only do malfunctioning websites turn away potential patients, but they also discourage Google from sending its users to your website in the future. The bottom line is this: slow-moving or poorly functioning websites can tank your rankings, and low-ranking websites fail to bring in new business.
Healthy Core Web Vitals are essential to your website’s rankings. At Neon Canvas, our team takes on the challenge of creating healthy, clean, and high-functioning sites by auditing each client’s website twice per month. By taking a frequent inventory of our sites’ Core Web Vitals, we work constantly to improve their user experience. In turn, Google rewards our sites with rankings increases.
Video Content
The Gist: Video really did kill the radio star, and it’s coming for the top SEO slot next.
The rise of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels makes one thing clear: web users are consuming more online video content than ever before. In fact, video content is expected to make up a whopping 82% of all global IP traffic by the end of 2022.
That’s because visual content is highly adaptable and easy for users to consume. Videos engage nearly all of a user’s senses in a short amount of time, giving them the information they need to know about your service or product while keeping them entertained.
To keep up with this 2022 SEO trend, Neon Canvas takes an integrated approach to marketing that maximizes the use of visual aids without sacrificing site speed or functionality. Every one of our clients receives an on-site photoshoot highlighting the best of your dental or orthodontic practice’s office. We feature these photos and videos on your personalized website and Google ads, helping your site rank higher for SEO.
High-Quality Backlinks
The Gist: High-quality backlinks alone can propel a website’s domain trust and authority to skyrocket your new domain rankings.
If you’re a fan of the occasional political drama, you know that promising social connections are the keys to a successful career in TV politics. It’s all about who you know, and the better your connections are, the better you’re perceived by your constituents.
The politics of SEO aren’t much different, and it all comes down to effective backlinks. Backlinks are links from one website to another. When another high-ranking source cites your content on their website, this signals to Google’s crawlers that you’ve got a high-quality site, too. The more that other high-quality sources cite your content on their own websites, the higher your website will rank in SEO.
Don’t confuse quantity with quality, however! Too many backlinks from low-ranking websites can have the opposite effect, leaving you guilty by association.
Since day one, our Neon Canvas team has positioned backlinks as one of the strongest SEO tools in our arsenal. We use a series of enterprise-level tools backed by human attention to detail that helps us build the highest quality citations, links, and bios.
Feature Questions
The Gist: Featuring conversational questions within website content is taking the SEO lead in 2022.
It’s been a while since we searched online using caveman keywords like “2022” + “SEO” to ask the more natural question, “What 2022 SEO trends should I know?” Humans don’t think in keywords, and search engines like Google are rapidly evolving more natural communication styles to make it easier for web surfers to find the information they’re looking for.
As Google gets better at answering conversational queries, SEO is following suit. Adding questions to your website flags Google to let them know that you’ve already answered the exact question their searchers are asking – and that you have the best search result on the web.
Recently, Google has begun highlighting these keyword-based questions using an answer key called a featured snippet. Featured snippets appear above all other search results 99% of the time and emphasize the answer to the searcher’s question. They’re so important that no less than 77.6% of questions beginning with the word “why” populate a featured snippet at the top of the result page.
Keywords are still extremely important to SEO, but they should drive your content in a more natural way. To keep up with this 2022 SEO trend, consider adding questions to your website’s content. Sprinkle keyword-based questions into headings or even create an FAQ page – you’ll thank us later.
Schema Markup
The Gist: This behind-the-scenes code helps search engines understand what your pages are about, giving you the SEO bump you’re looking for.
Imagine that an individual approaches you to ask for directions to your local grocery store. The only problem? They don’t speak English. You try to answer their question, but it requires a lot of energy to explain – and by the time you figure out how to tell them, someone who speaks their language has already given them the directions they needed.
Search engines have their own language, too, and you’ll rank better for SEO if you know how to speak to them. These bots operate using the language of computer coding, and successful SEO professionals understand how to use code to communicate with them through a process called schema markup.
By focusing on schema, our Neon Canvas team gives search engine crawlers specific coded instructions for navigating your website and locating the information they’re looking for. Google then uses our schema markup to create rich snippets that make your site more attractive to users and help you rank higher in the search results. Now we’re speaking Google’s language!
Rank Higher for SEO with Neon Canvas
As search engines get better at locating quality content, it’s becoming easier for high-quality websites to gain SEO traction, even if they’re newer. Successful SEO strategy comes down to quality over quantity, which means websites can improve their rankings as long as they focus on providing expert long-form content with structured SEO and backlink campaigns.
Neon Canvas stays on top of SEO trends to provide our clients with the best websites possible. With our always-optimizing approach, we systematically update each of our sites to keep them at the forefront of all SEO trends so you rank well and connect with the right audience.
Looking to improve your business’s website? Contact us for your free content audit to find out how we can boost your SEO today!