Setting Your Sights on 2022

When it comes to tech, SEO improvements, and Google core updates that address the user experience, 2021 was a biggie. And all this forward motion isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Looking forward to advancements in the works is not only exciting but can also help you maximize your ability to hit the ground running and to take advantage of the improvements coming at you. Let’s take a closer look.

Keeping Your Sights on a Multimedia Approach

Google never sleeps, and its latest mega-offering is MUM, which operates right alongside BERT but actually has more juice. MUM is all about multitasking – in fact, it stands for multitask unified model. Rather than staying mum, however, MUM produces natural language in upwards of 75 different languages, and it doesn’t stop there. MUM is primed for both of the following:

• Processing both text and images with remarkable quality
• Honing its ability to move forward with processing both video and audio

These superpowers are likely to shape the way SERPs do business in the not too distant future, and are a step forward in the natural progression of things. It provides a peek into the mobile-first digital zeitgeist that invites users to dynamically interact with content in a more holistic way that requires a more focused approach to SEO.

Prioritizing the Heck out of Multimedia Optimizations in 2022

Google has had an eye toward – and serious dollars invested in – image recognition efforts for some time now, but they’ve been hitting it harder now that image recognition dovetails with good old search. As part of its efforts, Google has been pouring its attention and resources into Google Lens. In 2021, Google Lens already had the uncanny ability to translate text in more than 100 languages through augmented reality and to perform targeted visual searches of screenshots. Next up is adding questions to Lens that have the power to search for both words and images (bringing the future that much closer), all the more relevant in light of Google’s plans to move forward into health markets.

How Google Lens and SEO Get Along

All the following SEO standards will remain as important when it comes to search engines getting the gist of your images:

• Alt-text
• File names and image titles
• Schema markup
• File sizes

Building from here, however, you’ll need to keep a keener eye on composition, which means your SEO efforts will need to focus carefully on not only your images but also how they’re positioned and represented on your site. Ultimately, images that sport clear, concise composition are going to play better with visual search than those that are cluttered, ambiguous, overly complex, or partially obscured.

Getting a Handle on the Matter

To get a better feel for what all of these changes are going to mean for your business, consider:

• A photo of an enamel teapot taken head-on (that features neither the spout nor the handle in profile) garners an interpretation of Tableware object with a ranking of 76 percent certainty when the old school Vision A1 (released in 2015) is used.
• When the same head-on view, however, is run directly through Google Lens, the results come back with enamel teapots, which are just the thing.

This kind of accuracy in terms of visual recognition is going to help you significantly bolster your potential customers’ online journeys. The better and clearer your photos, however, the better your results, which means doing away with the fancy trappings and focusing on a good view of the item in question. When it comes to product listings – especially – it’s better to have clean, spare photos that are SEO appropriate and get the job done (rather than fancy-pants photos that are ready for their closeup on Instagram).

Security and Speed Go Hand in Hand

When it comes to established ranking factors, security and speed are both right up there, and there are a lot of interconnections going on. In fact, when you optimize for server security, you can enhance page performance in terms of overall speed in the process, and both are good things. Google is currently poised to amp up security for search services and products, including enhanced privacy tools. Those sites that have already secured the perimeter (in terms of top-notch security efforts) may find themselves well-positioned to offer an enhanced page experience along with lightning-fast speed.

A Focus on Diversification

Google keeps its eye on the prize and, at the moment, that’s reducing drag when users navigate back and forth from dedicated channels to apps. Along the way, Google is building a niche SERP, and SEO efforts have to keep up. For users, keeping up means a streamlined, organic experience that guides them where they need to be (before they themselves recognize where they need to be half the time). In the process, Google is crunching the data like mad in order to provide users access to a world of highly contextualized information that caters to their unique online needs.

Going International

There are three primary factors that are currently driving international SEO:

• E-commerce without borders – Gone are the days when a business’s physical location was its destiny. More and more brands are going global.
• Not lost in translation – Gone too are the days when electronic translations often amounted to gobbledygook. Better translations open electronic marketing borders.
• MUM’s the word – Google’s current fixation with images is sure to move mountains in terms of international SEO.

Prepare for Blast off With Digital Marketing Experts in Your Corner

Google has its sights on the visuals in 2022, and you’re going to want to pay attention. Fortunately, the marketing pros at The Web Guys have what it takes to help you maximize your customers’ user experience. All you have to do for more information is reach out and give us a call at (317) 805-4933 or contact us today.