With the buzz about AI and replacing humans percolating throughout the industry, is SEO still relevant in 2023? Yes! And more so than ever. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is ever-evolving. As we step into 2023, it’s important for businesses to stay up-to-date with the latest SEO strategies to improve their online visibility and drive traffic to their websites. Although some of these strategies have shown consistent success over the past several years, it’s important to stay informed of the latest developments and trends in the industry to ensure that you’re optimizing your website to its fullest potential.

In this blog post, we’ll be sharing six SEO best practices that you should be implementing in 2023 to stay ahead of the competition and boost your website’s search engine rankings. So, whether you’re a seasoned SEO expert or just getting started, let’s dive in and discover what’s new in the world of SEO.

1. Use AI to Your Advantage

AI, or artificial intelligence, is an efficient tool for SEO for several reasons, but there are cautions to be mindful of. First, let’s talk about the advantages of using AI to help with SEO.

• Speed and Efficiency: AI can process large data sets and provide insights faster than humans can. This can save SEO experts and marketers a lot of time and effort.
• Accurate Predictions: AI algorithms can analyze patterns and predict future outcomes with a high degree of accuracy. This can help SEO experts and marketers make informed decisions about their strategies and optimize their efforts accordingly.
• Competitor Analysis: Knowing what your competitors are doing and what is working for them is an important part of any SEO strategy. AI can do the dirty work for you by keeping a digital eye on the competition and providing valuable feedback and analysis on strategies that are working. This can help SEO experts stay ahead of the curve and optimize their strategies for maximum impact.
• Keyword Research: Finding the right keywords has always been important for ranking a website for what people are searching. Keyword research can be a long a tedious process. However, AI can simplify this process by assisting in identifying the most relevant keywords, variations, and semantically related terms. Using AI can enable SEO experts to create highly focused and efficient campaigns that resonate better with the target audience.
• Automation: Routine tasks that take up a lot of time can be automated with AI. As mentioned, AI can automate keyword research, content optimization, and link building, freeing up time for SEO experts to focus on more strategic tasks.

Cautions When Using AI

With all of the great things that come with AI, there are some cautions to be aware of. Here are just a few.

• As advanced as it is, AI isn’t 100% accurate 100% of the time, it is still learning and can make mistakes. Therefore, it is important to review and verify the information, analysis, and recommendations that AI provides.
• According to John Mueller on Search Engine Land, Google considers AI-generated content spam. Mueller stated, “Content written by AI falls under the category of auto-generated content, which could lead to a manual penalty.” However, since Google heavily uses AI to improve user experiences, many SEOs argue that if you work through the content to provide a good user experience and don’t use it to spam content, then you should be fine. All we are going to say is, to proceed with caution.

2. Optimize for Your Clients

In the past, many websites were optimized to please search engines to achieve higher rankings on search results pages with the goal of generating more traffic. However, it is a far better strategy to optimize your website to meet the needs of your users. To create a good user experience, here are some tips to follow.

• Understand your audience: Before optimizing your website, gain as much understanding about your target audience. Use data analytics tools to gather insights about your audience’s demographics, interests, and online behavior.
• Simplify the navigation: Make sure your website navigation is easy to use and intuitive. Users should be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Use clear and concise language for navigation labels and organize content logically.
• Provide quality content: Provide valuable and relevant content that meets the needs of your audience. Use simple language, break up content into manageable sections, and use visual aids such as images, videos, and other graphics.
• Focus on speed: Website speed is critical for the best user experience. No one likes to wait for a page to load. Google considers a mobile site that takes more than 2 seconds to load as too slow. Google prefers a mobile site to load under 1 second and looks at metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Ensure that your website loads quickly and doesn’t keep users waiting. Optimize images and videos, use caching, and minimize HTTP requests to improve website performance.
• Use responsive design: Over 60% of internet traffic comes from a mobile device. Make sure that your website is optimized for all devices, including mobile, desktops, and tablets. Responsive design ensures that your website looks great and functions well on any device.
• Use clear calls-to-action (CTAs): CTAs are an essential part of turning your site visitors into customers. Use clear and actionable language for your CTAs, and prominently display them in easy-to-find areas. It’s also good to use a few different types of CTAs.
• Test and iterate: Regularly test your website’s usability and user experience to identify areas for improvement. Use A/B testing and user feedback to continually refine and optimize your website for your users.

3. Write Content for Quick Answers (Voice Search)

Optimizing a website for quick answers, including voice search, involves making changes to the website’s content and structure to provide concise and relevant answers to users’ search queries. Quick answers are the featured snippets that appear at the top of the search engine results page, providing an immediate answer to a user’s question.

To optimize a website for quick answers, the website owner should first identify the most common questions their target audience is asking related to their business or industry. Then, they should create content that answers those questions in a clear and concise manner.

Some key strategies for optimizing a website for quick answers include:

• Identifying and targeting long-tail keywords that are commonly used in voice search and featured snippets.
• Structuring the content in a way that is easy to read and understand, with subheadings and bullet points.
• Including relevant images, videos, and other multimedia to enhance the user’s experience and engagement with the content.
• Ensuring that the content is up-to-date and accurate.
• Using schema markup to provide structured data that helps search engines understand the content of the page.

By optimizing a website for quick answers, website owners can increase the visibility of their website in search engine results, attract more traffic, and establish themselves as authoritative sources of information in their industry.

4. Optimize for Mobile First

Mobile-first optimization involves creating a website that is responsive and adapts to different screen sizes and devices. This approach takes into account that mobile devices are becoming the primary device for browsing the internet, and website owners need to ensure that their website is easily accessible and functional on mobile devices.

Some key strategies for optimizing a website for mobile-first include:

• Using a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes.
• Prioritizing the most important content and features for mobile devices and simplifying the user interface.
• Minimizing load times by optimizing images, videos, and other media for mobile devices (decreasing file size, specifying exact image size, and using a mobile-friendly file type).
• Using mobile-specific features such as click-to-call and location-based services.
• Ensuring that the website is easy to navigate with a mobile-friendly menu and clear call-to-action buttons.

By optimizing a website for mobile-first, website owners can improve their search engine rankings, increase engagement and conversions, and provide a better user experience for visitors accessing their website from mobile devices.

5. Include Short Videos About Products or Services

As popular social media apps regularly show us, short video clips get attention. Sometimes that attention goes viral. If a product or service brand is attached to the video, the advertising capabilities are priceless because of viral popularity. Short videos also help users gain a better understanding of products or services much more quickly than reading.

Some of the benefits of including short product or service videos include:

• Improved engagement: Videos are more engaging than text or images alone. By providing a visual representation of a product or service, videos can capture the viewer’s attention and keep them engaged longer, which may increase the chances of them making a purchase or taking action.
• Increased understanding: Videos can help explain complex products or services in a way that is easy to understand. This can be particularly useful for technical or complicated products or services that may be difficult to explain with text alone.
• Improved SEO: Including videos on a website can also improve search engine optimization (SEO). Videos can increase the time spent on a page, which can signal to search engines that the content is valuable and relevant. Additionally, videos can be optimized with keywords and tags to help them rank higher in search results.
• Better conversion rates: According to a study by Hubspot, adding a video to a landing page can increase conversions by 86%. Videos can help build trust with potential customers by providing a more personal and humanized view of a product or service.

6. Optimization for Conversions: Know Your Sales Funnel

A savvy marketer understands the complete customer experience and journey. This creates different sales funnel actions depending on where the customer’s journey is at a given time.

Optimizing a website for conversions means making changes to the website with the goal of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a specific action, such as making a purchase, filling out a contact form, or subscribing to a newsletter.

Conversion optimization involves analyzing website data, identifying areas that may be causing visitors to leave without taking the desired action, and making changes to improve the user experience and encourage visitors to take the desired action.

Some common techniques for optimizing a website for conversions include:

• Simplifying the website design and navigation to make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.
• Using clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs) to encourage visitors to take the desired action.
• Creating landing pages that are specifically designed to convert visitors for a particular product or service.
• Using A/B testing to test different versions of the website and identify which changes are most effective at improving conversion rates.
• Making sure the website is mobile-friendly, as an increasing number of visitors are accessing websites on mobile devices.

The ultimate goal of conversion optimization is to create a website that is optimized to convert visitors into customers, subscribers, or other desired actions. By continuously monitoring and analyzing website data and making changes to improve the user experience, a website can become more effective at achieving its conversion goals.

Final Thoughts

A sales funnel is not a static effort to attract people to a store or website. Instead, it requires continuous and proactive optimization to keep up with current trends. Today, a successful sales funnel must capture and retain consumer attention throughout the entire customer journey. As marketers, it is essential to closely monitor and enhance the customer experience as they navigate the funnel.

Additionally, with the majority of sales funnels beginning on smartphones, creating mobile-first content is crucial to creating a memorable experience. Neglecting to optimize for voice searches can result in losing potential customers. To ensure a far-reaching campaign, keyword research is necessary to find the voice searches potential customers are using.

At Infogenix, we are passionate about search optimization and can improve your sales funnel’s effectiveness. Let us help you create memorable customer journeys. Contact us for a free consultation or visit our website for more information.