SEO in 2022

Launched on 7th December 2021, SEO in 2022 was a bold project to capture the strategies for SEO success in 2022.

Recognising the SEO world was entering a period of rapid change, Majestic rejected the tradition of commissioning content based end-of-year predictions. With an eye to the future, they collaborated with David Bain in an ambitious project to capture the art of SEO as it stood in late 2021.

With a focus on real world insight, David interviewed Sixty-Six of the worlds leading SEOs. His leading question "What is your number one actionable tip for 2022?"

SEO in 2022 is a multimedia series, available as a book, podcast and video series.

SECTION 1 EVALUATE

The first section, EVALUATE, contains the first three chapters - 'Modern SEO', 'Strong Foundations', and 'Prioritise' These tips are focusing on the ongoing, key elements of SEO that you can't ignore, year after year. Included are tips on focusing in the areas where are likely to have the biggest impact, how to build a technically sound website in 2022, and how to determine your ongoing strategy - partly based on competitor analysis.

Modern SEO
- Izabela Wisniewska - Get your basics covered first
  
  Before becoming side-tracked by shiny, exciting, new things - let's get started by ensuring that the basics are covered first.
- Natalie Arney - Don't forget the basics - but also make sure you monitor Javascript
  
  Natalie shares a message similar to Izabela's, however, she's also keen to convey the importance of JavaScript monitoring.
- Laura Hogan - Stop being a magpie and focus on what actually moves the needle
  
  It's all-too-easy to spend your time on areas of SEO that don't have the highest levels of impact.
- Alina Ghost - Go Big, Go Bold, Go Against SEO
  
  If you play it too safe in 2022, the competition might just gobble you up!
- Sante J. Achille - Modern SEO is similar to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics
  
  No matter how well you think you can plan your SEO success, you're never going to fully understand the algorithms.
Strong Foundations
- Jono Alderson - Compete on technical quality, and stop re-building things
  
  The best use of your time is to ensure that your site's technical infrastructure is significantly better than that of your competitors.
- Fili Wiese - Rubbish in, Rubbish out
  
  Your natural instinct might be to blame Google's algorithms for your site's ranking declines, but the problem actually lies much closer to home.
- Billie Geena Hyde - Don't leave accessibility out of your SEO Strategy
  
  How much revenue you could be missing out on by not making your site truly accessible in 2022?
- Amel Mehenaoui - Start optimizing for accessibility
  
  Google's algorithms are evolving to consider site accessibility as part of the mix.
- Barry Schwartz - Make the search engine embarrassed that your site isn't ranking for your target terms
  
  Think about your relationship with Google, and its SERP results.
Prioritise
- Kerstin Reichert - Convince your stakeholders to make SEO a priority
  
  SEOs need to be doing a better job of articulating its value.
- Lidia Infante - Benchmark your search market to find the quick wins
  
  The key to SEO success lies in truly understanding who your competitors are and determining their strengths and weaknesses.
- Lukasz Zelezny - SuperGAP analysis: Using your competitor's rankings to guide your SEO success
  
  Use competitors' rankings to identify and select his own target keyword phrases.
- Michael Bonfils - Tailor your SEO content strategy around your first party data
  
  Harness your first party data, to give you an unfair advantage in your content marketing campaigns.
- Kevin Gibbons - Forecast your projected SEO success based upon business metrics
  
  To get greater decision-maker buy-in, SEOs need to start communicating using more conventional business metrics.
- Keith Goode - Prioritise your SEO business funding efforts based upon level of effort, over level of impact
  
  Keith concludes by sharing a formula that he utilises to prioritise his SEO business-funding efforts.

SECTION 2 PLAN

After the evaluation phase, Section 2 looks at how to PLAN your SEO activities for 2022, under the chapters: "Site Structure", "Keyword Research", and "User Behaviour". Here we include tips on how to use schema to educate Google about the uniqueness and specificity of your content, why mapping keywords to personas and user journeys is essential, and how search engines are moving towards gaining a better understanding of user intent.

Site Structure
- Luke Carthy - Have an SEO-friendly taxonomy to maximise traffic to your product listing pages
  
  Many sites are missing out on the opportunity to drive significant volumes of traffic to their product listing pages.
- Jonny Ross - Mark up your website with every bit of Schema that you can
  
  Marking your site up with as much Schema as possible will greatly assist Google in understanding the context of your content.
- Crystal Carter - Use structured data strategically to build SEO resilience in a rapidly changing SERP
  
  Crystal shares a common belief in the importance of structured data and its ability to rapidly, positively impact your site's organic impressions.
- Martha van Berkel - Use structured data to highlight the uniqueness and specificity of your content
  
  Schema provides a wonderful opportunity to educate Google about the uniqueness and specificity of your content.
- Joy Hawkins - Make sure that all your important pages have a square photo near the top of the page
  
  Joy shares a very specific tip about how to use images in your content, and where these images can be displayed in the mobile search results.
- Marcus Tandler - How to deal with index bloat
  
  Manage the content that you want Google to discover - and get rid of the content that doesn't cut the mustard.
Keyword Research
- Paige Hobart - GOOD keyword research has never been more important
  
  Good keyword research is absolutely key to SEO success in 2022.
- Orit Mutznik - Combine keyword research and keyword clusters with your internal linking strategy to increase your page relevancy
  
  Selecting the right keywords and having great internal linking is a winning combination.
- Michael King - Map keywords to personas and user journeys
  
  Mapping keywords to personas and user journeys is a way to hyper-personalise your content and maintain the 'stickiness' of your users.
- Eli Schwartz - Stop focusing on keyword research
  
  Stop spending quite so much time on keywords and start getting to know your actual users.
User Behaviour
- Hellen Benavides - Focus on user experience and SEO success will follow
  
  SEO success starts with users.
- Aiala Icaza Gonzalez - Focus on human behaviour
  
  Understand why your users behave the way that they do, in order to build long-term SEO success.
- Mindy Weinstein - Intent is the direction that the search engines are going in
  
  Search engines are also moving towards gaining a better understanding of user intent.
- Chris Green - Adopt anintent-first mindset
  
  'Intent' is something that you should consider prior to carrying out any SEO activity.
- Helen Pollitt - Employ intent mapping for every core page on your site
  
  Intent mapping should dictate everything about the content, and the user journey, from your landing page through your site.
- Kristina Azarenko - The user experience trend is getting stronger
  
  Kristina shares that the search engine's move towards understanding user experience, and incorporating this signal into its algorithms, is only getting stronger.
- Duane Forrester - Use intent and user experience to grow revenue and increase success
  
  User intent allows you to connect the dots - all the way through from research to purchase.
- Pam Aungst Cronin - The debate is over - mobile UX is officially now part of SEO
  
  Mobile user experience can't be forgotten about in 2022 - now that Google's Core Web Vitals incorporate mobile UX elements.
- Motoko Hunt - Stop reacting to each Google update and instead, pay attention to local audiences
  
  If you don't personalise experiences enough for local audiences, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

SECTION 3: DELIVER

Next up is the DELIVER section, including the chapters "Content Creation", "Links" and "Keep an eye on the SERP". Shared in this section is the fact that your job as an SEO is to help searchers get the answer that they're looking for. Also included are tips arpund how to build high-quality,, original content assets, and why the SERP isn't just the place that sends you traffic - it can also be a wonderful source of competitive intelligence.

Content Creation
- Maret Reutelingsperger - Create topic clusters that talk to each other
  
  It's important to form relationships between the different content pieces that you publish.
- Jo Juliana Turnbull - Combine Tech SEO and Topic Clusters for maximum results
  
  Don't ignore the technical side of things if you're a content-orientated SEO.
- Barry Adams - Create something of value that your competitors can't replicate
  
  Create content that is difficult for your competitors to replicate.
- Heba Said - Never forget that your job is to help searchers get the answers that they're looking for
  
  Your job as an SEO is to help searchers get the answers that they're looking for.
- Brianna Anderson - Answer your customers' questions efficiently
  
  It's essential to answer your customer's questions efficiently - it's not about the volume of content!
- Rejoice Ojiaku - Originality is overrated, don't force it if it doesn't come naturally
  
  You don't have to be completely original with the content that you produce.
- Lily Ray - Focus on actual expertise as part of your content strategy
  
  It can be very effective to incorporate your own personal experience into the content that you create.
- Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR - Focus on semantic SEO and natural language processing
  
  We've already got to a point where we can trust the machines to be producing at least some of the content for us.
Links
- Bill Hartzer - Review the tiered links to your website, and the tiered links to your competitors
  
  Be aware of the links that point to your links, not just the ones that point to you.
- Bibi Raven - Focus on businesses, not content creators, when it comes to link building
  
  Build relationships with other businesses
- Stacey MacNaught - Cut reliance on cold outreach and start thinking about assets that drive inbound links
  
  Build high quality, original content assets - before you try to build links.
Keep an Eye on the SERP
- Omi Sido - Use the SERPs as your best and most up-to-date SEO tool
  
  SERP isn't just the place that sends you traffic - it can also be a wonderful source of competitive intelligence.
- Gus Pelogia - Brand will become a more important part of the user journey, as well as Google's understanding of your company
  
  Incorporate brand building as part of your SEO activities, to maximize the number of clicks you receive from the SERP.
- Jason Barnard - Educate Google about your brand
  
  Brand is key. Communicate what you do to Google as clearly as possible.
- Dre de Vera - Create semantic content using the Google SERPs
  
  Use the Google SERP to design your semantic content strategy.
- Dixon Jones - Do not ignore Passage Indexing
  
  Passage Indexing - understanding which content from your web page is being featured on the SERP, by Google.
- Greg Gifford - Optimize your business for Google Business Profile
  
  Optimize your Google Business Profile
- Maria White - Align your Google Business Profile with SERP features to better serve user search intent
  
  It's important to check SERP, at the same time as optimizing your Google Business Profile.
- Roxana Stingu - Image Search for eCommerce websites is becoming increasingly important
  
  Tips on image optimization, and the traffic opportunities available from image search.

SECTION 4: CANI

Finishing us up is section 4: CANI - CONSTANT and NEVER-ENDING IMPROVEMENT, An SEO's work is never done - and if you ever think it is, that's probably a sign that your competitors are about to surpass you. In this section of 'SEO in 2022', we look at topics such as why you need to be using Google Search Console on a daily basis, how machine learning could improve an SEOs life, and why training the next generation of SEOs is so important.

Analytics and Testing
- Andrew Cock-Starkey - Learn to love Google Analytics
  
  Google Analytics has a lot to offer.
- Olga Zarr - Add Google Search Console to your essential everyday SEO toolkit
  
  Another Google data platform that you need to be using on a regular basis, Google Search Console.
- Emily Potter - If you aren't testing, you need to start - if you are testing, you need to start testing with your CRO team
  
  Get started with SEO testing - and work closely with a CRO team (if you have one).
- Aleyda Solis - Take your SEO to the next level with SEO testing
  
  SEO testing has the potential to take your SEO efforts to a completely different level.
- Luis Rodriguez - Use Agile for SEO testing
  
  Use Agile for SEO testing, in order to work more quickly and collaboratively.
- Dan Petrovic - How to get more clicks without ranking higher
  
  Organic CTR optimization is a very worthwhile activity for SEOs in 2022.
- Antonella Villani - Look beyond the value of the click
  
  Measuring clicks isn't enough. There are other KPIs that SEOs should be tracking.
Next Gen Tech
- Lazarina Stoy - Find opportunities for embedding machine learning into your processes
  
  Too many SEOs are manually doing tasks that could be automated - machine learning could be the answer.
- Nik Ranger - Start getting comfortable with JavaScript rendering
  
  If you aren't comfortable with JavaScript rendering, now's the time to find out more about it.
- Bastian Grimm - Are you prepared for Platform-less, server-less SEO on the edge?
  
  Platform-less, server-less SEO has the potential to make several SEO operations much more efficient.
- Nick Wilsdon - Serverless applications that run on the edge are going to be the future of enterprise SEO deployments
  
  SEO 'on the edge' is a game changer for enterprise SEO deployments.
Pass the Baton
- Si Shangase - Focus on the next generation of SEOs
  
  How can we better support graduate entry into the SEO workplace after two years of Covid disruption and lock downs?

Choose Your Own Learning Style

Book

This is our favourite. Sometimes it's better to sit and relax with a nice book.

The best of our range of interviews is available right now as a physical copy and eBook.

Amazon US Amazon UK

Podcast

Maybe you are more of a listener than a watcher, or prefer to learn while you commute.

The SEO in... Series, featuring SEO in 2022 is available now via all the usual podcast platforms

Spotify Apple Podcasts Audible

Video

If you like to get up-close with your favourite SEO experts, these one-to-one interviews might just be for you. You can access content from the links above, or FREE via Majestic Podcasts. The hub is packed with advice and discussion from SEO experts.

If YouTube is your thing, you can watch all of the SEO in 2022 episodes, FREE, on our dedicated SEO in 2022 playlist.

Conclusion

In the last chapter, Si encouraged you to pass the baton, but you haven't passed the baton yet - you are holding the baton, and you need to decide how to use it.

If you've managed to watch, listen to or read every single piece of advice in 'SEO in 2022' thus far, congratulations. You've absorbed many SEO tips that will hold you in good stead throughout 2022 and beyond.

Which tips are right for you?

But what's next? You need to decide on which tips are right for you, right now - which tips you should run with, and which tips aren't the best use of your time at the moment.

How do you decide? Some may say "It depends". The answer probably lies in a combination between your personal passions and abilities, where you see your career going, what industry you're working in at the moment, the current strengths and weaknesses of your company's SEO, and where your current knowledge gaps are.

A potential route to consider is to take a few of the tips in the book and run with them - don't attempt to try to do everything by yourself, or you won't do a great job at anything.

Why not get started by selecting a single tip from each section of the book and run with that? After you select the tips, learn more about them, and then implement what's suggested in your ongoing SEO strategy, before reviewing their effectiveness.

Of course, the tips that are right for you are unlikely to be the same tips chosen by another SEO - and that's the way that it should be. Nobody's circumstance is exactly the same.

Enterprise SEO example

For example, if you work in an enterprise SEO environment, you may decide to focus on the following four tips:

Kerstin Reichert - Convince your stakeholders to make SEO a priority

Seek to bring decision-makers on board with your SEO strategy. Make sure that all your wonderful ideas actually have a chance of coming to life.
Helen Pollitt - Employ intent mapping for every core page on your site

Intent mapping should dictate everything about the content, and the user journey, from your landing page through your site.
Aleyda Solis - Take your SEO to the next level with SEO testing

SEO testing has the potential to take your SEO efforts to a completely different level.
Nick Wilsdon - Serverless applications that run on the edge are going to be the future of enterprise SEO deployments

The edge is CDNs, or Content Delivery Networks, such as Fastly, Akamai and Cloudflare. SEO teams need to understand how they can start utilising the edge, and the opportunities it provides.

Choose a selection of tips that are right for you.

Everyone is different, and critical advise for one person may be an unnecessary distraction for another. The steps above are just an example of what you may choose to focus on if you happen to work in an enterprise SEO environment, and you've identified that those particular tips are the most valuable ones to be focusing on in your individual situation.

Thank you

However you decide to use the knowledge contained in their book, thank you so much for being part of “SEO in 2022”.

Remember, if you haven't done so already, we would love for you to join in the discussion. Many highlights of the series have been shared on LinkedIn and other social channels. Following the contributors on social channels, and sharing their insight is an awesome way to show appreciation.

If SEO in 2022 has piqued your interest and you would like more, why not follow our socials? You can find us on LinkedIn @Majestic, Bluesky @majestic.com and @Majestic on X (formally Twitter).

In addition to the "SEO in 2022" free video series above, and the "SEO in 2022" book, SEO in 2022 is captured as a part of the ongoing "SEO in…" podcast series. You can find the links to different media hosts of SEO in 2022 below.

Maybe we can even include you as a contributor in a similar, future series? Here's hoping. Don't be a stranger… let's keep the conversation going!

David Bain

Author, 'SEO in 2022'

Founder, CastingCred.com

EXTRA CONTENT | Watch the Launch Event for bonus tips!

On December 7th 2021, we hosted a 4-hour book launch webinar, broadcast live on YouTube.

Thirty-six of the book's contributors joined David Bain, and some of them didn't just talk about their Number One actionable top for SEO in 2022, but they also shared a second (and sometimes a third!) tip for SEO in 2022.

Watch the livestream recording, or read the livestream launch transcript, for even more SEO tips - ones that you won't find in the book.

Watch Read

About David Bain

SEO in 2022 is a collaboration between Majestic, B2B Podcast & Video specialists Casting Cred and the wider SEO community.

Casting Cred Founder, David has published a number of books in the "marketing" genre. In addition to the "SEO in" series of SEO books for Majestic, Davids credits extend to "Digital Marketing in 2017", and "Marketing Now".

David's skills go beyond publishing. He started his first podcast in 2006, building up to the launch of Digital Marketing Radio in 2014. This became a very successful show, generating 20,000 downloads a month and featuring as one of the most popular pod-casts on the topic of "digital marketing".

Discover more about David Bain at DavidBain.com

Also in the Series

SEO in 2022 is the first part of a multi-year series of books and online multimedia. We host a range of interviews and panel events with SEO Experts in our content Library. You may also be interested in the most recent book "SEO in 2025", or the ongoing series of Majestic SEO panel webinars.

If you liked SEO in 2022, try:

SEO in 2025 SEO in 2024 SEO in 2023