Digital Marketing in 2021
As we enter the second year of COVID-19 digital marketing has never been more important. While COVID-19 upended business activity all over the world, at Insiteful Solutions, based in Markham, Ontario, we were lucky to be in the position to pivot quickly to help all of our clients restructure their websites and make sure that they all had e-commerce capability for their businesses. As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts we also made sure our client’s SEO programs were up to date and responsive to worldwide events.
With the complexity and strain that COVID-19 has caused, it can be easy for companies and their marketing teams to forget about the vital role SEOs and the role they play in the success of your business. But now more than ever we are encouraging all of our clients to re-dedicate energy and resources to Search Engine Optimization. Maintaining and building your company’s online presence is the most important aspect of digital marketing in 2021; by positioning your company at the top of the search engine results pages you will save marketing dollars and further your company’s brand.
Successful Search Engine Optimization programs take time and dedication, at Insiteful Solutions we are experts in SEO optimization and have helped hundreds of clients achieve superior rankings across all search engines. Every year the algorithm’s for Google and other search engines evolve and digital marketers have to keep up with these changes. At Insiteful Solutions, we design our SEO strategies based on data-driven results and make sure our clients are always at the forefront of industry trends.
For 2021 these are the main areas we are focusing on for our clients.
Mobile-First Indexing
Without a doubt, mobile-first indexing on Google is the most important thing for digital marketers to focus on. What is mobile-first indexing? Simply, Google has announced that instead of using desktop search engines to rank websites they will instead use a website’s mobile ranking. This is a massive shift in SEO’s, the original change was scheduled to take place in September of 2020 but this change has been moved to March of 2021. If you have an older website then you will 100% need to make sure it is mobile friendly. All new websites we work on are designed to work on mobile phones as well as desktops. If you have an older site and you haven’t made this change (it is estimated nearly 30% of sites aren’t ready for the March 2021 deadline), then your company may be in for a rude awakening. Even if your company is the #1 ranked site on Google for your industry – without a mobile friendly site your ranking could literally plummet overnight. Why is Google Doing This? It is estimated that by 2020 there were 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide, and the forecast for 2021 is that purchases made on mobile phones will exceed $1 trillion. The incredible global reliance on mobile phones has changed the way Google does business.
Local Google Rankings
Google has also made a pledge to improve customer service and part of that is supplying users with localized SEO results. So, if for example, you are in downtown Toronto and you are searching for a florist, Google will automatically send you results based on your geographic location. This means that it is imperative that your company make sure that you are located on Google Maps and that you optimize your listing by including all the basic information for your company (name, address, phone number etc.) making sure to include the keywords related to your business.
User Engagement
Another major change for Google will be how they gauge user engagement. Keywords have been the main way that websites can increase their ranking. In the near future that method of manipulating the algorithm, by repeating keywords over and over again in the content of your website, will no longer work. Instead, the algorithms will be looking for how you engage users to your website. Visitors clicking on embedded videos or clicking to pages within your website can help engage users and have them stay longer, this will help with the new Google SEO algorithm. Having users like, link and share parts of your website content will also assist your digital presence and SEO Google ranking.
Passages
Last October Google made the shift that instead of indexing just pages they would also index passages within the page. Previously in a 20 paragraph page, the 18th or 19th paragraph might not even register for Google’s index. But now Google is searching for more than just keywords, they are looking for meaningful passages where questions are answered and vital information is shared. This means that more attention is going to need to be paid to the written content of your website.
Artificial Intelligence for your SEO
Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950s and is a term that actually covers numerous technologies. In a simple definition, Artificial Intelligence allows machines to perform specific tasks on the same level or better than humans. You may not realize it but if you use Siri or Alexa you are using Artificial Intelligence. When you receive recommendations from Amazon or your favourite streaming service that is another form of Artificial Intelligence which evaluates your past activity and then with this data recommends other purchases or programs. In 2021 Artificial Intelligence will continue to influence how users engage with websites and will be used to help serve up answers to queries in the search engine of your website. Artificial Intelligence powered SEO tools will be used by companies to determine and define website content, increase search traffic and manage local and global listings.
Insiteful Solutions is dedicated to helping existing and new clients grow their business and respond to global changes, COVID-19 related or otherwise. If you haven’t prepared your company’s website for Google’s upcoming mobile indexing change we highly recommend you get in touch with us to do this as soon as possible. Insiteful Solutions can help you with all of your Digital Marketing and SEO and website needs – get in touch today so we can get started. 905-947-8235 or you can use our Contact Us Form