5 Essential corporate SEO Trends To Watch In 2022

Are you planning your corporate SEO strategy for 2022? Then, don’t miss these five important trends you should have on the horizon.

It’s no surprise that SEO is now at the heart of every company. With its ability to feed insights about consumer behaviour and customer intent, this area has become one of most significant importance in terms of a cost-effective strategy and critical data for understanding how different industries operate on an organisational level.

The need for big data has never been more critical. As it currently stands, businesses are trying their best just so you can have relevant product offerings when searching online – something which they will be looking through before making any purchases or decisions whatsoever.

In this article, we identify five key trends and areas of opportunity to watch for in 2022.

The Big Picture for Corporate SEO For 2022

Corporate SEO involves managing SEO at a scale; typically, it’s the organisations with large websites and a wide variety of products and services.

Large brands with multiple departments and infrastructures are typical examples of companies utilising corporate SEO and implementing core principles.

Corporate SEO also involves planning and strategy and alignment with the long-term goals of the business goals and objectives.

In 2022, we believe this will involve:

• Improving cross-channel and broader departmental collaboration.
• Advancing workflow and reporting processes.
• Utilising data and insights in real-time.
• Embracing and working with AI technology and automation.

Challenges with corporate SEO can vary from business to business. However, commonality has been found in areas such as internal collaboration and broader digital marketing integration.

With that in mind, let’s look at five key areas of focus to consider as you plan your SEO strategy for the year ahead.

Keeping Pace With Search Updates, Best Practices, And Search Engine Algorithms

Many changes are happening with SEO; Google has been making updates at such an alarming rate that you can’t help but feel anxious about what might happen next.

One challenge any marketer faces is adapting within their industry or niche, anticipating potential future developments, and understanding how these technologies will affect SEO strategies in the long term.

For SEO marketers, updates and algorithmic change is a double-edged sword that includes:

• Reacting, fixing, and optimising – taking action.
• Translating the business impact to the organisation.

The need for technical SEO has never been more intense. With the Page Experience update and Core Web Vitals, 2021 was a banner year in terms of all things search engine optimisation!

Google’s introduction of its Multitask Unified Model (MUM) will mean SEO marketers in all digital disciplines have intent queries factored into content types to reduce poor quality content being discoverable.

Content And The Need For Contextual Relevance

In particular, the focus on proving trustworthy and credible content became vital for SEO professionals looking to show business impact in the form of brand value and revenue.

With such a velocity of change, corporate SEOs need to turn to technology to help them keep track of change, respond, and take action.

The best way to stay ahead of the updates changes is to take a proactive approach towards content and technical SEO with Core Web Vitals.

We would suggest that you focus on:

• Content creation. Focus on pages and category content (especially for eCommerce sites).
• The health and structure of your website, including navigation and architecture.
• Pages and load speed for mobile and desktop.
• Technology, real-time insights, and automation.

Increases In The Adoption Of Automation

According to a PwC survey, this year, 52% (from a survey base of 1000) of businesses have prioritised the adoption of AI.

For some SEO companies, especially those managing via multiple solutions, word automation has been seen as a threat to their job.

However, the reality of this has shown it’s the other way around. Automation is already helping leading brands and businesses keep pace with change.

Beyond helping save resources by taking care of routine and repetitive tasks, automation also helps free up time to focus on creativity, strategy, and digital alignment.

A human can’t process all the data at their disposal. So instead, let technology help detect, predetermine and fix, when and where appropriate. 

In 2022, we would suggest that you look toward automation to help at three levels:

Monitoring and detection 

• Spotting anomalies in SERPS results.
• Regular reporting on rankings and traffic.
• Regular reporting on links and backlink profiles.
• SEO audits.

Manual SEO 

• We are gathering data at a regular interval.
• Advanced keyword intent research.
• Link sourcing.
• Content optimisation.

 Insights and automated action 

• Analysis of larger data sets in real-time.
• Content and multiple site audits.
• Website error fixes and linking.
• Decision-making in real-time.

The Increasing Importance Of Data As Business Intelligence 

Trends in consumer preferences and behaviours are reflected in how searches are done. 

Likewise, digital innovations and content creation trends are reflected in search.

As a result, we are seeing a rise in the use and importance of search data as a source of vital business intelligence.

According to Salesforce, over half of marketers believe data and intelligence are the most critical driving marketing performance.

SEO data collected and analysed at scale can give you a much more extensive range of insights into the consumer. 

It can help can with the understanding of:

• Trending product interests 
• Needs and frustrations 
• Product preferences 
• Immediacy for the product or service

Search Intelligence can help businesses to pinpoint what matters most to them and their industry accurately. 

According to a poll of 750 search and digital marketers conducted by BrightEdge, 79% o0f business owners believe that search data is or will be part of their ongoing SEO strategy.

For 33% of those, it is a crucial input into multiple business strategies.

In 2022, corporate SEO needs to get better at showcasing value from business intelligence insights to drive business benefits across their organisation. For example:

• Improving brand awareness.
• Providing product marketing feedback and insights for future launches.
• Building inbound and outbound lead generation campaigns.
• Providing sales teams on market trends.
• Fuelling content and digital teams on intent and SERP/content types.
• Working with PR teams on media and article and link optimisation.

Further Integration With Paid Search And Digital 

SEO campaigns can’t work in isolation. So that you meet your business objectives and goals, you must integrate your strategies with the other digital teams.

SEO and PPC synergy used to be an unavoidable conflict; however, with over 80% of search traffic coming from SEO and PPC, there can be no conflict to:

• Utilise SEO insights to inform PPC.
• Utilise PPC to fill immediate (short-term) gaps for high-value keywords and pages.
• Boost local and mobile-first performance with SEO and PPC.
• Share insights across both channels and with digital stakeholders.

In 2022, make sure SEO and PPC are tightly aligned to maximise visibility and discovery in the search engines. This helps appeal to the specific needs of high-intent searchers and the personas that matter.

SEO is shifting to be the central point of digital campaigns because Insights can fuel strategies across email, display, voice, and video.

The Provision Of Total Experiences And Services 

SEO extends beyond just the ongoing optimisation. It evolves cross-departmental management, business acumen, and the managing up of results across a whole organisation.

Corporate SEO involves the management of experiences that can span:

• Recruiting and retention of staff.
• Control of the workforce.
• Adoption and use of technology.
• Professional advisory services.
• Internal and external account management.
• Optimisation of multiple digital experiences and assets.

In 2022, corporate SEO will involve a deeper focus on:

• Training and Certification of SEO, content, and digital across organisations.
• CEO, CMO, and SEO alignment on goals and outcomes.
• Technology and platform training and management.
• Evangelism of results, both internally and externally.
• Greater collaboration with the IT departments.

Many businesses can do this by building an internal SEO process of excellence.

Conclusion

We believe that 2022 will be a year with the most significant opportunities for corporate SEO.

New opportunities will open up as numerous search entry points grow, ranging from intelligent TV sets and connected devices to smartphones.

We will see a shift in companies adopting typical behaviour and intent analysis to meet consumers’ needs and align with internal business objectives. 

In 2022, consumers will expect seamless online experiences, and SEO companies will need to find new ways to move faster:

• Keeping on top of technical optimisation and content quality, and cadence.
• Utilising business intelligence at their disposal – across the whole enterprise.
• Focusing on the total user experience – across all parts of the customer journey.
• Embracing automation – to scale operations and improve efficiency.

Hopefully, all the above will help guide your enterprise SEO success in 2022!

Are you ready to smash it online? 

Euphoric is a specialist digital marketing agency based in West Sussex. We have a reputation as an agency that consistently delivers high rankings and sustainable results with our SEO marketing strategies. 

We would love to chat if you would like to discuss how Euphoric can help you with your SEO strategies.