Top Digital Services Outsourcing Trends in 2021 [Outsourcing Statistics]

Over the years, outsourcing has benefited businesses in different ways. From giving them access to a wider range of talent to saving expenses, this practice helped organizations make their functioning more efficient. Outsourcing is going to be a great cost-cutting measure for companies in the global market in 2021.

Looking at some of the top digital services outsourcing trends in 2021 that will produce more digital transformation than the last decade, one question comes to mind. Will core digital services like SEO and PPC still dominate the global market, or will the world see new digital services and technologies emerge and take the lead? Let us dig that out here.

Trend 1. SEO

Outsourcing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best and potent digital service to scale the business growth. 70% to 80% of users focus on organic results and avoid paid listings.

Top SEO trends to watch in 2021

• Impact of artificial intelligence in SEO: Google’s AI algorithm plays the main role in Google’s ranking factors for SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) results. The algorithm called RankBrain is going to improve, making AI a top SEO trend.
• Voice search impact on search queries: About 55% estimated households might own a smart speaker by 2022. Keywords are the main factor to consider to optimize the voice search.

• Mobile-friendliness impacts search rankings: By 2025, nearly about 73% of internet users will access the internet by mobile devices. 

• Long content will help improve SERPs: According to the State of Content Marketing Report, 3000-plus word log content will drive three times more traffic and almost four times more shares. Long-form content also achieves 3.5 times more backlink than the content of 901 to 1200 words average length.

• Featured snippets will become more prominent: Featured snippets are a sort of shortcut to gain prominence in Google. They are rolled out in 2017 that drives a significant amount of traffic from competitors.

• Predictive search tends to improve: Google Discover was rolled out in 2017 that introduced a new kind of search that doesn’t require a user query that already has more than 800 million active users. 

• Video content is an effective SEO strategy: Video content is estimated to surpass all other content forms in terms of consumption, predicted by Cisco. YouTube solely claims 1 billion users.
• More importance to semantically related keywords: Semantic search and intent optimization will gain more prominence in the future. 

Other SEO trends to watch are- image optimization, local search listings, data & analytics.

Trend 2. PPC

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. Many businesses are using PPC because of its effective results. Paid search ads are estimated to improve brand awareness by 80%. Some PPC statistics are given below:

• About 17% of marketers utilize PPC ads to generate leads.
• About 45% of small businesses invest in PPC advertising to improve visibility and generate leads.
• About 64% of the brands are planning to increase their investment in PPC in 2021, while 40% of brands think that their PPC budget is not that high where it is to be needed.
• By 2022, search advertising is expected to reach $132 billion, while search advertising on mobile is expected to reach $146 billion by 2023. 
• 49% of users click on text ads which is the most popular type of PPC.
• About 63% of users are most likely to click on paid search ads on Google, while 15% of users are likely to click on Amazon, 9% on YouTube, and 5% on Bing.

Top PPC trends to watch in 2021

• PPC automation: It is one of the biggest trends in PPC advertising. By 2021, the market size of process automation is expected to increase from 71.5% to 83.2%.

• Artificial intelligence: By 2030, the impact of AI on its economy is expected to reach $15.7 trillion. 

• Video ads and PPC: About 82% of business and consumer internet traffic will emerge from videos by 2022. 

• Ads Data Hub: Mainly due to security concerns, Google will stop allowing third-party pixel tracking on YouTube from 2020, and Google will rely more on Ads Data Hub.

• Smart Bidding: It works to generate new leads and customers, to get the best ROI, and helps in increasing conversion rate.

Other PPC trends are- YouTube masthead on TV screens, Smart Segmentation & Google AdMob, Voice Search, Virtual Reality Ads, Alternative PPC platforms (Quora, AdRoll, LinkedIn, Amazon, Bing).

Trend 3. SEM

General SEM trends and statistics in 2021 are-

• Local SEM drives significant serious traffic. Each month about 49% of companies gather over 1000 views off their Google My Business listing.

• SEM builds trust in brands; about 88% of respondents say that they would trust online ratings and reviews more than a personal recommendation.

• Video drives more traffic to the site and is 52 times more likely to appear on the first Google SERP. 

• Voice search is performed by more and more users. In the last ten years, the number of voice searches has increased by 3400%.

• Content drives quality leads. 67% of direct traffic is produced by companies with blogs, while it produces 97% more linkbacks and 434% more indexed pages.

• Improved quality content increases traffic to bogs and is seen to generate potential conversions by 2000%.

Top 2021 SEM trends to look out

• Amazon’s rise as a paid advertising giant.
• Responsive search ads for increased optimization
• The evolution of Cookieless future
• CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
• Customer-Centric Strategy to dominate the ROAS (Return On As Spend) centric strategy

Trend 4. Web Design

Website design is the topmost priority as a visitor only takes 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about the website, 94% of which are design-related. In 2021, Google announced that the page experience would become a ranking factor. The top web design trends are- 

• Photography with graphics: The users of the website spend 5.94 seconds on average looking at the main page. About 66% of users would rather engage with a site that is beautifully designed than a simple and plain one. On the other end of the spectrum, around 38% of website visitors will stop engaging with the site if the design is unattractive.

• Bold fonts: If the text is scannable, the website is seen to score 47% higher in usability. By 2021, bold fonts will be potent for the website design. Brands like Apple, Google, and Twitter are using large and bold fonts to leave a good impact on users.

• Visual Hierarchy: Nearly 38% of visitors leave the page if the content or layout is unattractive. Users spend about 80% of their time looking at the left side of the page. About 64% of the users prefer the company’s contact information on the homepage, and about 36% of people click on the logo to get back to the home page.

• Personalized and localized content: About 54% of users prefer personal experience, and about 59% of buyers prefer real-time deals. About 74% of the users stop engaging if the content isn’t personalized.

• Mobile-focused eCommerce: About 70% of mobile searches lead to action. 

• Faster website load speeds: About 40% of users stop engaging if the site takes longer than 3 seconds to load. 

It is impossible to predict how many digital service providers and relevant companies will outsource. However, through the outsourcing statistics, it is evident that SEO, PPC, SEM, and web design are going to be the major players in the industry. It is safe to say the number of companies choosing to outsource is very high and will further increase in the coming years.