Ep 27: SEO In 2021

How is SEO going to evolve in 2021? That’s what we’re talking about today on Marketing in 10.

Hey everybody, Jim Lastinger here. Welcome to another episode of Marketing in 10. So last week I talked through my paid ads predictions for 2021. So this week I’m going to do the same thing for SEO.

SEO is evolving just as much as paid advertising and maybe even more so. Last year we saw Google continue its push you favor larger, more authoritative sites and I don’t expect that trend to slow down anytime soon. So think about it from Google’s standpoint. Would you feel safer showing content from a well known, larger brand at the top of your search results page or something from an unknown site that happened to do a better job of on-page SEO for a particular keyword? Google is going to continue favoring sites with more authority, which can mean more history, more brand awareness, credentialed authors on certain types of sites, et cetera. The more authority your site has the better off you’ll be. So I think that we’ll continue to see Google head down that direction.

And kind of along with what we’ve seen the last few years, I think that are going to be two to three more core algorithm updates. So, core algorithm updates are the large updates that Google rolls out a few times a year, that bring very broad, sweeping changes to the SERPs. The most recent update back in December was a big one that affected lots of industries and we still don’t have a really clear idea of exactly what changed or what you can do to mitigate it. So, it’s a good idea to always keep a watch on your overall rankings, whether you do that through free tools like Search Console or a paid tool like Semrush, which is what I recommend.

Okay. Next prediction. I think low quality content, or content that’s just written for length, will start to lose steam. One of my favorite examples here, have you ever looked at a food blog trying to find a recipe for something and you have to scroll through a thousand words of low quality, poorly written copy before you actually get to the recipe? Those things are done purely for SEO reasons and it’s not actually beneficial to the reader.

So Google’s mantra is to favor sites that users would love and would find useful and beneficial. So, I would expect to see sites like this start to get less visibility. Filling a blog post with a hundred adjectives like amazing, delicious, out of this world, in flavor town, is an SEO. That’s an affront to the English language.

That’s what I’m predicting for SEO in 21. That’s all for this week’s episode. I’ll be back soon with another of Marketing in 10. Until then take care.