Keeping up with the latest blogging trends will help you maintain and grow your blog’s audience in 2021.
Here are the 9 most important blogging trends shaping online content this year.
#1. Diversity in Media Format
Blogs have traditionally been text based.
But over the last few years, bloggers have been relying more and more on podcasts and videos to connect with their audiences.
This trend will only grow stronger in 2021. Here’s a simple way you can get on board with this trend: make an audio recording of your article and then upload it to your website as a podcast: your visitors will be able to either read your content or listen to an audio version of it.
Some people much prefer listening to reading, so this is a great way to expand your audience.
But don’t stop there!
Once you have an audio version of your article, just add some Powerpoint slides to the audio and you have a YouTube video.
That’s another way to expand your audience
#2. Semantic SEO
Semantic SEO involves targeting topics, not keywords, by including semantically related phrases within your content.
With AI and machine learning, search engine algorithms are no longer focused on keywords but on context. The algorithms look for patterns in the way words cluster together and they use those patterns to understand the topic of your content.
Research your topic well before you begin writing and make sure that you are using all the key terms, synonyms, and related words that occur when people talk about that topic.
#3. Topical Authority
As Google gets smarter about semantics, backlinks will start to play a smaller role in how algorithms determine relevance.
Links from other websites will probably never go away, as a way of measuring relevance. But other factors will start playing a bigger role.
Topical authority is already competing with backlinks as a ranking factor. More and more we’re seeing pages with low domain authority (DA) outranking pages with high DA, simply because those pages cover the topic in more depth and with more authority.
#4. Internal Linking
Bloggers have traditionally been far more focused on earning external backlinks than in building internal links between the pages of their own website. But as topical authority becomes ever more important as an indication of relevance, internal linking will give you a critical advantage in ranking higher in the results. Use internal links to create topic clusters that demonstrate to search engines that your website has topical authority.
#5. Featured Snippets
Ahrefs states “it looks like we’re now in the middle of the featured-snippet-geddon that “SEO astrologists” predicted more than 3 years ago“.
Featured snippets first started appearing in the search results in 2017 and since then they’ve become an ever more important driver of clicks, search engine visibility, and brand building.
And it looks like this trend will continue through 2021.
#6. Number of People Blogging
The number of people blogging in the US has been steadily growing over the last 6 years and with the impact of the pandemic, this trend will continue in 2021.
Image source: Statista
#7. Blogging Platforms
This is a blogging trend that hasn’t changed for years and won’t be changing in 2021. WordPress is still far and away the most popular blogging platform.
- 60.6% of all websites with CMS use WordPress (W3Techs)
- 5.2 of websites with CMS use Joomla, the next most popular CMS after WordPress (W3Techs, 2019)
#8. List-Based Titles
Moz reports that 36% of people prefer list-based headlines. The reason is quite simple: people find lists easier to scan and quicker to read. This is a trend that been around for years and it likely won’t change in 2021.
Image source: Moz
#9. Blog Post Length
Torquemag reports that the average article in Position #1 on Google is just over 2450 words. A preference in the search results for long form content is what you would expect, given the emphasis on topical authority (it’s hard to cover a topic with much authority in less than 2000 words). So this is trend that’s going to stay with us in 2021.
Image source: Torquemag
Summary
The main blogging trends to watch for in 2022 are semantic SEO and topical authority. This means taking the focus off keywords and approaching SEO from the point of view of the topic you are writing about.
How well does your article cover the topic? How well does your website cover the topic? Do you have a pillar post with 5 or 6 supporting posts that deal with subtopics in more detail?
Websites that use a semantic SEO approach with a focus on topical authority will be the winners in 2022.
