SEO Trends 2025: What’s New, Upcoming Updates, And More

2025 is here! And with the new year comes new SEO trends 2025 that will dominate the search engines. If you want your website to rank high and reach the right people, ensure you know and implement the following SEO trends for 2025.

SEO in 2025 :

AI and Machine Learning (ML)

AI and ML are unstoppable; they are going to be an integral part of many industries, technologies, and practices – this includes SEO. Here are some ways AI and ML will be a part of future SEO techniques:

• AI-powered content management systems (CMSs) will make creating, editing, publishing, and posting extremely easy.
• Repetitive, time-consuming tasks in SEO will become a thing of the past with AI completely taking over.
• 67% of businesses already using AI and ML for content creation have reported higher engagement in SEO owing to enhanced content quality.
• Content and SEO strategies made with AI have a 38% better conversion rate compared to previously made strategies.
• Predictive analytics that run on AI and ML will help businesses make a website that will rank better on the search engines.
• With AI already being integrated into search engines, website and blog posts made using AI and ML will rank higher and drive more traffic.

Voice Search Optimizations (VSO)

Why type when you can simply ask? VSO is going to be huge in 2025 with many websites being optimized for voice search. With 55.2% Gen Z, 65% Millennials, and 52% Gen X users using voice commands daily, optimization is going to take these numbers upward. A big surprise here is that seniors above the age of 65 are also increasing their numbers for voice searches, which is highly convenient for their generation as it is fast and removes the tedious task of typing your search. Therefore, through the use of schema markup, mobile-first design, improved local SEO, analytics, and the use of longtail keywords, SEO will be earring up for appearing higher in voice searches.

Video SEO

For the past few years, videos have been gaining a lot of traction on the internet. With websites like YouTube and Instagram grabbing the attention of most mobile users, businesses have begun to realize how important videos are. They are now an important part of SEO strategy as many businesses have even started their own channels on YouTube and other platforms for backlinking. The same videos are also integrated into the websites to increase the time people spend on websites.

One of the major SEO trends in 2025 is going to be video SEO. Keywords will be used in the video, titles, and meta descriptions. Thumbnails will be optimized to increase engagement. Mobile optimization will further attract viewers’ attention, and video-friendly schema markup will help search engines push your video to relevant viewers.

E.E.A.T.

The search engine mantra for 2025 is going to be quality over quantity, and for that, you need to look at the E.E.A.T. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. And here’s what they mean:

Experience – Search engines will evaluate the source from where the content is coming and will rank it accordingly. For example, a customer writing a review of a restaurant where they have dined at will fare better than a generic review. This is because the search engine will check the customer’s location check-in, the original pictures they have uploaded of the food, and such factors while pushing their review over others.

Expertise– The expertise of the content creator will be the deciding factors for this. For example, a medical blog written by a qualified doctor will get a bigger push than a medical blog written by a content writer.

Authoritativeness – The website or content creator’s authority will be a factor for this parameter. Say an insurance blog site related to a certified insurance company, will have more authority over other unaffiliated sources.

Trustworthiness– If your website is secure, has complete, updated information, clear guidelines and policies, genuine feedback and reviews, your website will have a high trustworthiness on the search engines.

Users’ Experience Signals

SEOs will have to pay more attention to users’ experience signals to score high in a search engine’s ranking. Though these parameters have been around for the longest time, they will be of renewed importance to these foundational attributes for a good website. Some of these users’ experience signals are:

• Click-through Rate
• Dwell Time
• Bounce Rate
• Mobile Friendliness
• Page Load Speed
• Readability
• Internal Linking
• Content Relevance

Zero-Click Search Results

Imagine getting your query answered without having to click on a link and running through the whole page. Well, this is becoming a reality with upcoming SEO updates in 2025 with zero click search results. Users get instant access to the information they want right on the search page as the search engine features the content from your website as an answer to the user query. This is going to be a major achievement SEOs will be targeted as the website will get more traffic and visibility.

Different Types of Zero Click Results

• Featured Snippet – This is a summarized form of content that directly answers the query by the user. It could be paragraphs, pointers, tables, instructions, etc.
• Local Packs – This will appear for localized searches. Whenever the user looks for something with “near me”, listings and maps with details will appear.
• Live Results – Whenever a significant live event is ongoing, the SERP will directly display the latest info about the event like a live scoreboard of a sporting event.
• Knowledge Panels – The panel will have factual data about the user query, most likely in the case of a celebrity or a brand.
• People Also Ask – While the snippet will directly answer the query, this section will further display additional information related to the original query.
• Calculators and Conversion Tools – A calculator or a conversion tool will appear if the user searches for something like euros to dollars, pounds to kilograms, etc.
• Weather – Accurate information on the user’s local weather will appear. Users can also look at the weather in other parts of the world.

Increased Importance of Local SEO

70% of people who use mobiles search for local businesses on their phones and buy from them. Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri are also used mostly to search local businesses. More businesses are now targeting keywords containing “near me” and “nearby”. So, it’s safe to assume that local SEO is in. Google has also released a bunch of tools and updates that hyper-focus on local businesses. Therefore, to boost local SEO, your 2025 SEO strategy should include:

• Localized Content Marketing
• Focus on Google Business Profiles
• Zero Click Search Results
• Social Media Integration
• AI and Voice Search Optimization

Upcoming SEO Algorithm Updates in 2025

Google’s Core Web Vitals Update

One of the most important future SEO techniques for 2025 is going to be Google’s core web vitals update. These updates focus on a website’s performance metrics that are aimed at improving user experience. The three main areas to focus on are loading, interactivity, and visual stability. In loading, the heaviest component of a website should load faster than 2.5 seconds. In interactivity, the responsiveness of the page is checked, and the ideal time should be less than 100 milliseconds. Visual stability checks how fast a page’s layout shifts while loading. These factors now have a direct impact on page rankings and Google pushes websites that do well on these metrics.

AI-driven Search

Did you notice that when you search for something in Google, an AI section pops up right on the main page containing the information you need? However, the information could be a hit or a miss because using AI-driven search is still somewhat new. But in 2025, all searches will be fully AI-driven. Using technologies like BERT, MUM, and RankBrain, there will be a focus on the relevance of content, contextual SEO, and natural language processing. Therefore, instead of the usual links, once you make a search in the search engine, you will also get information about your search, reducing the need for clicking on links and opening additional pages.

Passage Indexing

Sometimes looking for information on a niche subject is as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack. This Google algorithm update sorts out the hay, finds the information the user is looking for, and displays it to them. Here’s how the algorithm works:

• Google does a granular content analysis by breaking down the information on the page into sections or passages.
• Then each passage is matched with the query and assigned a relevance score. The higher the score, the better the ranking.
• The passage is then displayed in the snippet form on the search page for the user to read without having to visit the website.

This update, aimed at future SEO techniques for 2025, encourages content creators to create high-quality content with clearly defined sections by using H2 and H3 structures, tables, bullet points, and short paragraphs. SEO are encouraged to use accurate keywords, including longtail keywords that help Google understand the context and relevance of the page.

Mobile First Indexing

In 2025, 70% of the internet traffic is going to come from mobile devices. So, it only makes sense for SEO to focus on mobile-first indexing. Google has a special smartphone crawler that crawls all mobile websites and uses their features as the primary source to give the website a ranking on the searches. If there is no mobile site available, then the desktop site will be used as the primary source. However, the rankings will be lower compared to those using mobile sites. Hence the name mobile-first. This is going to be one of the biggest SEO trends in 2025.

User Intent

The new updates to Google’s algorithm now categorize user intent into four main types of intent. They are:

• Informational Intent – When the user is looking for information.
• Navigational Intent – When the user is looking for a specific site, product, or service.
• Commercial Investigation Intent – When the user only wants to browse and do research but not make a transaction.
• Transactional Intent – The user wants to subscribe to a service or wants to buy a product.

When you do a search, a lot of gears are turning in Google’s algorithm. There are many technologies that are powering it. Therefore, if you want your website to rank, you have to include intent in your SEO strategy, create content, and use keywords accordingly.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

INP are the interactions a user has with a website in the form of keyboard inputs. Taps, clicks, etc. One of the most frustrating things for any user is poor interaction with the website. In an age where bandwidths are increasing and digital devices are becoming faster and more powerful, there’s absolutely no excuse for your website to deliver poor interaction. The ideal number where Google wants your INP to be is less than 200 milliseconds. 200 to 500 means you must start working on it and anything above 500 milliseconds is going to get you a poor ranking from Google. Improving your website’s INP has to be on your SEO strategies for 2025. Here’s how to do it:

• Reduce main thread blocking
• Update your UI to be efficient
• Improve JavaScript execution
• Optimize rendering pipeline
• Improve input handlers

Site Reputation Abuse

Many businesses were getting away with site reputation abuse. Not anymore! Google’s new update to its algorithm will now check for site reputation abuse. No more fake reviews and ratings, no more multiple spam accounts, no more buying fake reviews, no more fake link-building and black-hat SEO tricks. Businesses now won’t even be able to create similar-looking fake websites to steal trust, traffic, and data. Here’s how Google is tackling the issue:

• Google’s Spam Brain program and other advanced AI tools are keeping a close watch and are handing out punishments quickly.
• Punishments include deindexing the website from searches, demotions in ranking, and penalties.
• Google is also removing fake reviews and ratings on Google Reviews on a large scale.

SEO Chatter in 2025

The Role of Structured Data & Schema Markup

For all the SEO strategies for 2025 to be successful, structured data and schema markup is going to play a key role. All future SEO is going to be about providing structured, contextually accurate data to the user’s search query, and for this, structured data & schema markup is going to be the foundation. Here’s how:

Rich Snippet – One of the most prominent features of the search engine is going to be the rich snippet. Structured data will allow the search engine to understand the content on the website and feature it as a snippet whenever a user asks a query related to it.

E.E.A.T. – Every requirement for the website to meet E.E.A.T. standards can be enhanced through the schema markup.

AI, ML, and NLP – Since AI, ML, and NLP are going to be an integral part of search engines, structured data, and schema markups work great with these technologies, allowing them to properly contextualize your content.

Voice Search – When your website has structured data, voice queries, powered by AI assistants, can easily search and match with the content and present it to the user.

The following are the structured data and schemas your website should have if you want to be in tune with the SEO developments for 2025:

• Product Schema – Ideal for eCommerce websites.
• Event Schema – For highlighting events, dates, locations, and times.
• Video Schema – When your website features videos.
• FAQ Schema – When you want your FAQs to appear in a search result.
• Review Schema – For the website’s reviews to be featured prominently.
• Organization and Local Business Schema – Ideal for local SEO.
• How-To Schema – Perfect for instructional and tutorial content.

As per a test conducted by local SEO experts on a dataset that included around 8000+ websites, a comparison was made between the top 10 search results for a keyword search of more than 50 phrases related to fashion industry with 250 + websites evaluated for the impact of core web vitals on their ranking, the following results were derived:

Key Findings:

1. Performance Metrics of Top-Ranking Websites

• Top 3 Rankings:
• Websites in the top 3 positions demonstrated Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) speeds of 1.8–2.2 seconds, staying within Google’s benchmark of 2.5 seconds. This provides users with a quick and seamless experience.
• Rankings 4–10:

The average LCP for this group ranged from 2.5–3.2 seconds—still competitive but noticeably slower than the top 3.

2. Visual Stability Across Rankings

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):

Most websites, regardless of ranking, maintained a CLS score ≤ 0.1, meeting Google’s standards for visual stability. This indicates that while layout stability is important, it may not be the key differentiator between rankings.

Partner with the right digital marketing company like Tru Performance Digital to always stay on top of all the modern SEO trends and best practices and ensure all your websites are up to the mark. Connect with us today to learn more SEO strategies for 2025 and how we can leverage them to boost your website’s ranking.