Many elements of online marketing remain relatively stable as time proceeds, and there are others where changes happen almost daily, and one that most certainly fits in that latter category is search engine optimisation, aka SEO. SEO is the umbrella name for numerous tactics and strategies that aim to boost the search engine rankings of websites and the pages therein.

Google is the undoubted leader in search engines, with over 85% of online searches taking place there. It follows that when it comes to which search engine almost all SEO strategies are aimed towards, it is almost always Google.

Google’s dominance of the search engines means that when it makes changes to its algorithms, changes the rules for rankings, and introduces an update then everyone associated with SEO sits up and pays attention. This is a constant process because Google tries 24/7, 365 days a year, to improve the quality of its search engine results for its users.

The practical impact that has on SEO is that many tactics and strategies that might be effective one day, can about turn overnight if a Google update decides that rather than being a positive ranking factor it is now either neutral or even worse, a negative.

As a result, SEO is in continual flux with optimisation trends coming and going based on what Google’s algorithm currently seeks within websites to deem them worthy of ranking highly. Every year new trends appear or grow more significant, and others diminish or even disappear. As for SEO trends that you should be looking for in 2023, here are nine of the most important.

Conversational Search Terms

Google relentlessly strives to make a user’s search experience such that they find the most relevant result quickly when they enter a search term, including voice searches. To improve its results, Google, therefore, places much emphasis on understanding human dialogue.

To this end, it uses ‘LaMDA’ (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), which is a protocol that seeks to learn and understand human conversational language and from this Google uses it to better understand the true intent of searches inputted, especially voice searches. To take advantage of this, your keyword research should include conversational search terms.