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.

1. Modern SEO
   • Izabela Janczak (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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.

10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.