What Matters Now in SEO & Where to Focus Next
Where should you focus your SEO strategy next? Discover emerging trends and ranking factors from the State of SEO 2021 survey report.
What are the emergent factors you can leverage to get ahead of the competition?
You might have guessed that many feel that Core Web Vitals is the predominant emerging factor that will impact SEO.
But what other up-and-coming factors should you pay attention to, and where are the differences in priorities between B2B and B2C niches and agency vs. in-house brands?
Having insight into what is coming down the line in SEO and which areas to watch enables you to build them into your strategies for the coming year.
Read on to find out:
- What are the most important factors for ranking?
- Emergent SEO trends and factors.
- What SEO professionals are focusing on for the next 12 months.
What are the Most Important Factors for Ranking?
Ranking factors are a contentious issue! There are varying opinions across social media about what impacts ranking and what doesn’t, including the validity of studies trying to measure ranking factors.
Correlation or causation – it’s the eternal question.
We asked our audience of SEO professionals what they thought had the most impact on ranking.
These results are a reflection of what 2,800 working SEO professionals have experienced over the last 12 months.
| Ranking Factor | Percent | Volume | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | On-page (meta titles/descriptions, H1) | 23.8% | 763 |
| 2 | Organic user behavior (CTR, bounce, time on site) | 30.9% | 720 |
| 3 | Depth & accuracy of content | 24.6% | 572 |
| 4 | Structured data (schema) | 21.1% | 490 |
| 5 | Content freshness | 19.0% | 442 |
| 6 | Mobile-friendliness | 17.9% | 417 |
| 7 | Brand awareness | 17.8% | 413 |
| 8 | Topic relevance | 17.5% | 406 |
| 9 | Links | 17.4% | 404 |
| 10 | Site speed | 13.8% | 320 |
| 11 | Internal linking | 13.7% | 318 |
| 12 | Domain authority | 12.4% | 289 |
| 13 | Site security (HTTPS) | 11.9% | 278 |
| 14 | EAT | 9.4% | 218 |
| 15 | Social signals | 7.1% | 164 |
The most important factors for ranking are still considered to be meta titles, descriptions, and H1s on the page.
Over a third of respondents thought on-page factors were the most important factor for ranking.
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