Ranking factors in SEO Trends for 2023

Relevance and quality of content
User experience and website performance
Mobile-friendliness and responsiveness
Domain authority and backlinks
Social signals and engagement
Local SEO and presence
Structured data and schema markup
Keyword optimization and search intent
User-generated content and reviews
Freshness and timeliness of content.

Why Domain authority and backlinks are still important?

Backlinks and domain authority are still significant since they are reliable indications of the value and authority of a website.

Backlinks show the caliber and quantity of websites linking to a specific site, whereas domain authority assesses a website’s capacity to rank on search engines.

A website’s exposure and traffic can be increased by having a high domain authority and a significant number of high-quality backlinks, as both variables are taken into account by search engines when evaluating a website’s ranking. Additionally, a website’s credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of both search engines and users can be increased by having a high domain authority and quality backlinks, which can assist establish a website as a reliable and authoritative source of information.

There is a catch: backlinks are being dismantled by the Google Search Engine algorithm as a ranking factor.

Funnel vs Flywheel

The SEO trends for 2023 contain the whole process.

While these two leads magnets are aimed to attract customers and create conversions, the Funnel is a one-touch approach.

Flywheel focus on keeping the customer around, by providing them with product or services before and afterward. Keep that in mind for your SEO strategy in year 2023.

Are backlinks considered as ranking factor by Google?

Yes, backlinks are considered a ranking factor by Google today, but that is changing. Backlinks are links from other websites that point to a specific webpage on your website. Google uses these links as a signal of the quality and relevance of your website, and uses this information to determine your ranking in search results. Having high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites can help improve your ranking and visibility in search results.

The main change here is how Google is qualifying the backlink source. Keep reading.

AI Content is spam? What Google says about it?

Google does not consider AI-generated content to be spam. In fact, Google’s algorithms are designed to identify and rank high-quality content, regardless of whether it was created by a human or an AI. However, Google does warn that AI-generated content may not always be accurate or relevant, and recommends that users carefully evaluate any AI-generated content before using it. Read more about Google Friendly AI Content.

Until November 2022 all AI Content providers that we check didn’t provide satisfactory results until the new ChatGPT was made public. We will update this SEO Trends and Predictions for 2023 guide, if something new arises.

ChatGPT looks very promising and of course, we recommend always double check the content. At the end of the day what is important is to provide the website visitor with fresh, useful, and coherent content.

How to improve UX in websites and e-commerce for SEO trends for 2023?

UX still is a very important ranking factor, check these tips to improve your website. Are you thinking to start an online store? This tips are for you.

Make the website simple to use and navigate. Use easy-to-understand menus, organized menus with labels, and calls to action that are crystal plain.
Website mobile device optimization: make sure the website is responsive and functions well on all gadgets, such as smartphones and tablets.
Check to see how fast the website loads. Utilize effective code, limit the use of large photos and videos, and optimize the website.
Create a visually appealing and engaging website. Use crisp photos and videos, eye-catching colors and typefaces, and unified design elements all around the page.
Information should be brief and straightforward. To assist consumers in making educated decisions, utilize clear, concise language and offer pertinent, helpful information.
Provide excellent client service. Please make sure that clients can reach you easily for help and that you respond to their inquiries politely and immediately.
Utilize search and filtering capabilities to assist consumers in finding what they are looking for. Give customers the option to filter results using a search bar and pertinent criteria like category, price, and others.
Make the checkout process quick and secure while providing customers with a range of payment options, allowing them to pay using their preferred method, and making sure the checkout flow is straightforward and secure.

What is search intent?

Search intent is the purpose or goal behind a user’s search query on a search engine. It refers to the specific information or action that the user is looking for, and can be categorized as informational, transactional, or navigational. Understanding and catering to the search intent of users can help improve the relevance and effectiveness of search results, and provide a better user experience.

Keywords vs Entities?

We’ll still be using keywords for our SEO strategies for 2023, but there is a core change happening right now in the Google search engine, and I believe it is related to finally dismantling of the backlinks as a ranking factor.

If you think about it, this is like the inverse process, instead of having a whole authoritativeness system based on how many links are pointing to our website, the new metaphor will be a system where Google defines and control the list of websites with high authoritativeness, which means the algorithm really needs to understand the content in a granular way up to the level of entities structured in a knowledge graph.

How can I determine the search intent of my website visitors?

To define the search intent on a website it is necessary to understand the language and phrasing that your website visitors typically use when searching the internet for your products or services. You should check the search data and keyword trends, as well as conducting user research to learn about their typical search behaviors and goals.
After gathering this information, the website content should be optimized to match the language and phrasing of these common search queries, as well as to provide relevant and useful content that addresses the users’ specific needs and goals.
Keep track of your website visitors’ behavior and actions, such as how long they spend on a page and how many pages they visit.
Gain direct insight into your website visitors’ search intent by conducting surveys or asking them feedback.

SEO Predictions for 2023

Our main SEO prediction for 2023 is a more continuous flow of AI Tools for SEO, as for Web Design.

The incredible great reception ChatGPT has received in a short time just can only mean one thing, ChatGPT will get better and better, in the sense of avoiding Google’s strict guidelines for content creation.

Google will keep losing ground, by the hands of TikTok and ChatGPT.

Google Search Console and SERP

Apart of all this new wave of Artificial Intelligence influence, one tool that is silently getting better is the Google Search Console and the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). I believe Google will push more and more new features mainly motivated for the TikTok and OpenAI ChatGPT threats.

Google SEO tools, by subscription or by data consumption

Google Search Engine need to improve their users experience by providing to SEO experts the best tools to rank useful content, and at the same time making their algorithm’s anti spam update more efficient.

However, Google Search need to keep up their profits via Google Ads on the SERP. This sounds paradoxical, specially by the fact people are still not clicking on ads in the SERP as Google expects to.

In fact almost 25.6 % of Google searches on desktop (17.3 % on mobile) end in zero clicks at all. In your Google Search Console you may need to carry this handicap for accuracy of your projections.

Google launch AI SEO tools

The possibly new AI SEO-rich features of any Google tool as Google Search Console or/and Google Analytics will be competing directly with the Google Ads team. Of course, this is more complex than that but it gives you a guide of what you can at least expect from Google: a possible monetization of their SEO tools.

One possible strategy for Google is to include a snippet in the SERP to show results from a conversational AI tool (like ChatGPT-X or the Google AI tool). That would be nice for Google users but not so good for SEO or website owners.

Let’s not forget who is Google, a private company that has a business model and a profit to report. In that sense, when Google talks about UX is about the UX of their own users / customers. Only after the click on the SERP link (Organic or through SEM) is when that Google customer becomes a visitor to our website.

Entities taking the ranking space

One of the things I observe about TikTok is they value more the user behavioral data through indirect actions like time on video or how fast user scroll, instead of through direct actions like a click on the interface (a “like” for example).

Google also tracks their user’s indirect behavioral data regarding what happens in the SERP. When Google adds snippets and boxes in the SERP it not only gives more information to its users but also gathers more indirect behavioral data.

On the other hand, entities are helping Google categorize the information on websites and internal and external links by “understanding” the content, and by keeping a curated list of real-life authority websites (like Wikipedia or government sites). As I say above, Entities are giving Google an alternative approach to authoritativeness, instead of the current backlinks strategy.

The point is Google is very close to re-writing the whole index (and ranking) with an entities strategy, which in one part will make the keywords use obsolete in some sense and give Google an ultra capacity to understand the search experience as a conversation, similar to ChatGPT-3 or superior. This can happens in the first phase let’s say.

The second phase will be when Google integrates the richer behavioral data of the SERP with the feedback from the conversational experience to provide a perfect search answer. Answer time should be short (to compete with ChatGPT-X), which will reduce the time on the SERP and the Google Ads attention as well.

SERP will evolve in the future, Google Ads, and SEO as well.

I can imagine a SERP with a main big box with Google Ads, a medium size box with AI answers, and a small box with “results from the web”. SEO won’t disappear, it will be much more competitive, in a ranking space based on how Google AI systems understand the content entities and not how an algorithm ranks keywords.

SERP improvements, for Google

Some months ago Google started to launch new SERP features, snippets, and boxes with rich information about the search intention. From the point of view of Google, the Google’s user experience will be better, but that user may ending no clicking on ads or organic links, which means our user, our website user is not passing through by clicking the link on SERP.

In summary, the SERP improvements are not good news for SEO, unless we learn how to implement changes in our websites to appears on those rich snippets and boxes on the SERP.

SEO and Data Analytics companies in danger

The companies that provide SEO and Data Analytics services (like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc.) are in the most important moment of their existence. ChatGPT powerful language modeling capability can output the information SEO experts may need for their strategies, like keyword extraction, and synthesize and structure text based on a group of keywords or entities.

If the next version of ChatGPT has access to the Internet for sure it can determine your website competitors and the keywords around it. That will be devastating for these companies.

AI conversational Search, everywhere

When ChatGPT 3 arrived a couple of weeks ago, Google Search team was shocked by a red alert from Google. Google itself is still testing their proper conversational AI tool, similar to ChatGPT, which they may release it to the public early than expected.

For a number of years, Google has made investments in the advancement of chatbot and AI technology. They even produced this chatbot that might compete directly with ChatGPT. In actuality, Google researchers developed the technology that underlies OpenAI’s chatbot.
If that is not enough to disrupt the Search Engine landscape, there is a possible alliance between OpenAI and Microsoft to create a Search Engine, and some rumors of Apple creating their own as well.

If you think ChatGPT-3 is a powerful tool, ChatGPT-4 will be a “monster” and the experience will be “mind-blowing”.

Will ChatGPT or the Google AI Conversational tool disrupt their own Google Ads business (keywords business) on the SERP?, modifying the way SEO is done? Those are some of the issues we need to follow very closely in year 2023.

What we know for now is that SEO copy writing activities are already disrupted, and more creative task like the writing of high converting copy will eventually be disrupted very soon.

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SEO Trends and Predictions for 2023