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SEO Trends in 2023 (Interview)

Dec 6th, 2022 by Angel Wu

We interviewed Flavio Longato, CEO of Gipfel Marketing and SEO expert, to gain insight into his perspective on SEO trends of 2023 as well as to learn from his expertise in how to optimize publications and PDFs. Flavio has over a decade of experience advising online platforms on search engine optimization. He is based on lake Luzern in the heart of Switzerland and is the founder and CEO of Gipfel Marketing, a boutique marketing agency specializing solely in search engine optimization (SEO). Prior to this, Flavio was Head of Acquisition and SEO for Smallpdf.com, and worked at Ifolor.ch, Experteer.de, and various other platforms.

Profile photo of Flavio Longato, CEO of Gipfel Marketing
Hi Flavio, what do you think are some major changes we can expect in SEO in 2023?

The biggest challenge for search engines is being able to index all of the content on the internet. This requires a tremendous amount of resources and is costly. I believe that search engines will target spammy, low-quality websites and content that is generated via AI that adds no value to the conversation. Because of this, I believe that 2023 will be the year of “cleaning up the internet” in the eyes of search engines.

In 2022, there were many algorithm updates, but most importantly, the focus was on content quality with the “helpful content” update.

Why is Google focused on this?

The primary reason is, of course, to answer the user queries as effectively as possible and spammy content goes against this. Google’s main concern is that they will not find high value content when crawling.

Additionally, crawling and indexing content takes a considerable amount of resources and power. If search engines are to remain efficient, then they must prioritize what content they should crawl and index. This saves them money and releases resources for more important sites.

What should we plan to focus on or stay away from? 

Focusing on content quality is definitely something you should continue to work on in the coming years.

“Category pages have lower visibility, search engines do NOT like linking from one RP (results page) to another

Stay away from long-text content pieces that add no value to the user, for example:

  • Having a long predefined keyword count goal is irrelevant. Focus instead on answering the query as quickly, directly, and efficiently as possible

  • Get to the point above the fold, then go more into detail as you write your content

Focus less on cluster/category pages and more on actual content: I’ve seen a big shift in 2022 for entity listing pages i.e. category/taxonomy lists. Simply put, search engines don’t want to link from one list of results (their own) to another list. They want to direct users to a specific page. Consider this when designing your content funnel.

“Write content for your user and not search engines”

Reviews are a big thing for Google, and they heavily penalize websites with manipulated product/service reviews to gain authority and relevance. Don’t fake this or try to manipulate your reviews.

What do you predict to be some important trends for next year?
  1. Updates to content quality via AI

  2. Google’s Link Spam Update

  3. Updates to automated generated content

Why do you think the above will be trends for next year?

As mentioned previously, crawling and indexing are expensive, and the internet is growing considerably faster than search engines can scale up. The only logical conclusion is to create “limitations” so that authoritative content gets indexed first.

Do you have any quick tips or suggestions for our creators to keep in mind when creating and publishing their content on Issuu?

Authority is everything for search engines: When you write content for your website, try to become an authority in your topic.

  • Only write about a specific topic sitewide: For example, if you are a travel blogger, go more specifically to a certain place or travel type. General content will not work anymore as search engines prefer the authority of the topic.

  • Guest post your content on other websites with authority. Use your name, image, and link to an about page on your website.

  • Keep the website clean. If you are using WordPress, consider using caching plugins and tools like cloud flare to make the content faster worldwide.

  • Do keyword research every time you write your content, and make sure that there are keywords in the slug (url name), H1 (on the page title), and meta title. Include variants of it within the content and headers.

Can you optimize digital publications for SEO, and how should our creators go about that? 

Search engines and publishers have a love-hate relationship with PDFs. This is because search engines will index PDFs. However, they do it in a way that fundamentally destroys any real value to the publisher.

Why are PDFs bad for publishers?

Because they index the PDF directly and NOT the page where they are being published.

What does this mean for publishers?

This means that often you won’t serve any ads with your content or your document will not be counted in your analytics solution as PDF files do not contain tracking cookies and cannot run ad services.

Image of a Google search for example.pdf showing that a pdf ranks but not the landing page.
Thanks for joining us, Flavio.
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