One minute you think you’ve got Google all figured out, and the next they push a change to their algorithm that blows your old strategy out of the water. It’s a fast-paced digital world that is dripping with content, so business owners who want to stay on top need to understand current trends and how they affect their marketing plan.
Digital Marketing Trends for 2021 and Beyond
Mobile-First Indexing
Well over half of all Google searches come from mobile devices. Our search engine overlords have emphasized mobile-friendly websites for years already, but they recently became the default.
This means that when Google is indexing your website to determine your place in search results, it’s going to look for your mobile site before it looks for the desktop version. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, your rankings in SERPs are going to take a hit.
While you can have a separate mobile site or use a plugin to make your site mobile-friendly, it’s best to build from the ground up with a responsive design that adapts to whatever device is being used. Mobile design is no longer a secondary concern; it’s now your primary objective.
You can check to see if your site is mobile friendly simply by entering your URL into this tool.
Reviews Are a Big Deal
Would you care to take a guess as to how many people use online reviews when choosing a local business?
There’s variation between industries, but it’s around 90 percent. Reviews in all the right places (who are we kidding, Google is king here too) have become an especially important factor both for customers and search engines. Too few reviews or a poor rating can not only deter a customer from giving your business a chance, but eliminate you from search results completely.
Video Content Is All the Rage
People love videos, so much so that 87 percent of people say video is their preferred form of content. Video content gets 1,200 percent more shares than text and images combined.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. While that might be true, some experts estimate that one minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words online.
Even if it’s a simple walkthrough of your office or an introduction, video builds trust, and more customers will visit your website after viewing a video. Incorporate videos into your site, on your home page, in your blogs, and on social media channels and then watch the leads come pouring in.
Create videos about your team, your community, and your industry and post them to YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Use Featured Snippets
Have you ever searched for a recipe and found the instructions conveniently featured in a box at the top of the results page? That’s a featured snippet, and you just proved they work!
But if you give away the content before they go to your site, where is the value? Featured snippets are very trustworthy to users, who can already see that your site has exactly what they are looking for, which is why they account for more than 35 percent of clicks on SERPs!
If ranking #1 is good, then ranking #0 (where snippets are technically ranked) is even better. All you need to do is produce the right kind of content, positioned to answer a question, and then share it on your blog.
While it’s a bit technical, you can learn how to use structured data to make search engines love you so much that they put you above the search results without having to pay them a nickel!
Update Your Digital Marketing Strategies
In the Internet Age, things change fast. Billboards and radio spots are less useful than a viral Facebook post, and yellow pages have gone the way of the dinosaur. A website that utilizes the newest tools to align with your marketing strategy can attract more traffic, more leads, and more customers.
