Trends Shaping The Future Of Local SEO In 2022

 What is the future of Local SEO? Let’s take a look at the trends shaping where your business shows up in local search results.

Human behavior continues to evolve with every passing minute, especially search behavior.

Local SEO is at the top of this online evolution. Over the last year, with more and more people reverting to the online world for most of their needs, Search Engine Optimization witnessed massive changes and upgrades. 

Keyword research became the heart of online business development, and there was a shift in focus metrics. Google began prioritizing visual stability, interactivity, and loading as the core web vitals. These were the three domains to measure a website’s success in delivering the best user experience.

But as you can read, these metrics are “were” already. After running their analysis on practical grounds, Google and other leading companies have come up with even better deductions to improve user experience. And these deductions will be leading the SEO practices of 2022. 

Let’s check out what these are:

What is local SEO VS SEO?

Are you clear about the difference between local SEO and SEO?

Well, if not, let’s get a quick recap.

SEO refers to the traditional SEO practices that help your business rank on top globally. On the contrary, Local SEO refers to SEO practices that help your business rank on top in a specific region.

Say if you’ve got a physical location for your business and you wish to acquire more traffic from your nearby areas or your city (both physically and virtually), then you’ve to go for local SEO.

The visible difference between the two concepts is of intent. The practices in implementation are similar to one another but differ in highly specific domains. For example, a business that wishes to get traffic from all around the world will create a work-for-all web copy. The phone numbers and FAQs you find on their pages will work for you whether you’re in the USA or Korea.

On the contrary, businesses that target local audiences have pages similar to that of The 215 Guys, which is a Philadelphia SEO company.

Although they offer SEO services for all, their prime target is the businesses in Philadelphia. Here’s how we figured:

They’ve kept their content relevant to their location and used the relevant keywords!

Local SEO Trends 2022

Now, let’s take a look at the future of local SEO looks like in 2022.

1. Content Relevancy will level up by 10x.

2021 witnessed some strict measures in terms of content. It seems like Google will be taking even more strict measures in 2022.

Any content with irrelevant titles, headings, content, and links will be identified and removed. Basically, Google is introducing RankBrain, which is an incorporation of Artificial intelligence in the search engine’s mechanism. With improvised filtering, Google will only push highly-relevant content on top.

The content should be relevant, comprehensive, and detailed. It should be truly value-adding, and so long-form content is likely to take over. You should begin investing in content that extends from 1000-5000 words. Plus, the content should be divided into several sections under H1, H2, and H3.

2. Voice search will become the go-to search mechanism.

The up-gradation of SEO practices in previous times has brought the world to the conclusion that mobility has no limit. With every easing feature that comes to the table, we want something even easier.

So, for one-word search and long-tail keywords, we are now moving towards voice search. Although voice search will also operate employing keywords, it eliminates the typing process and demands that businesses should now prepare for this new mode of search. It’s time to pick keywords from our daily conversations.

3. Google’s bringing custom search results.

As mentioned earlier, Google is working on relevancy. It’s working on relevancy on the whole as well as on the individual levels. Search engines will not only extract out the most useful results as per your search. Instead, they will extract out results relevant to your search term, as well as your search history and indexed virtual persona. In this case, proper intent identification and link-building can both help businesses boost their local SEO. 

4. Video Content will dominate.

Platforms like TikTok and YouTube are dominating other social media apps. Instagram reels are more effective than carousel posts or text posts. A short video on LinkedIn will get you better engagement than an image-supported research post. And according to Statista, 27 percent of people spend about ten hours per week watching videos.

Why? Well, that’s because video content is more engaging and less time-consuming. Your audience can multi-task while acquiring the information they need from your page. Visual information delivery is quicker and easier than having your audience read and process the information themselves. For that very reason, we see video content dominating local SEO in 2022. It’s time you begin investing in short videos that quickly and clearly communicate you to the audience.

Final Words

If you’re starting from scratch and find it difficult to navigate your way concerning the trends above, then you should get in touch with a good SEO service provider. In case you’re located in Philadelphia or its whereabouts, we confidently recommend The 215 Guys. When it comes to the future of local SEO, you want to make sure that your approach is relevant and your team knows what it’s doing. 

If you read this post from other parts of the world, we suggest you use SEO to your advantage and search for the best SEO service provider in your region.