It’s the start of a new decade, a decade which promises new beginnings. The new decade will see new businesses spurring up, businesses who would be fighting to make a name and place for themselves in the competitive market. It will become more and more important for businesses to grab the reader’s attention and make a place for themselves. In this digital competitive world it will be very crucial for businesses to stay on top of the latest SEO trends, so that they are able to meet the requirements set by search engines for ranking websites. So what is SEO? SEO means Search Engine Optimization, it is a process in which websites, web pages and its content is ranked by search engines using keywords and content optimization.
Why is SEO important in 2020?
Every year Google, the largest and most popular search engine, makes a number of changes to its search algorithms. Though most of the changes incorporated are minor, they could end up impacting your website’s search engine ranking. So how will SEO change in 2020? Let us see.
Below mentioned are 10 important SEO trends to look forward to in 2020:
1. Voice search
With the growing popularity of artificial intelligence and chatbots on websites over the years, voice search has now become the latest entrant and is fast becoming popular. It is one of the most important SEO trends in 2020. With the introduction of advanced technology like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant etc. The users are now fast preferring voice searches over other options. With the growing population of mobile users, there has been a huge growth in the number of voice searches too. There were only 33 million voice searches in 2017, by the end of first quarter of 2019, the number of voice searches jumped and around 42% of the online users had started using voice search.
What you should do? Most of the voice based search queries are specific and detailed and long-tailed as the users are expecting an accurate answer for their query. Bullet lists will help increase your chances of ranking on search engines for voice queries. Note that most voice queries are local, hence work towards optimizing optimizing your website for local on page SEO.
2. BERT Update
In December 2019, Google rolled out the BERT Update. This roll out resulted in most websites being negatively impacted. Under the BERT update, Google plans to focus primarily on the quality of the content of your webpage or website. Therefore the automatic focus on keywords, relevancy of the content and the intent of the user.
Many SEO Experts believe that Google will be checking the reputation of a website using the YMYL (Your Money Your Life) and EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) factors.
How can you prepare For BERT Update
- Creating content which can provide direct answers to the user’s search query. For example, if a user searches “home remedies for bloating”, then google will rank those pages on top which will clearly mention “tips or home remedies for bloating or gas”.
- Search engines can no longer be fooled by adding more keywords to the content, even if they are relevant or not. It is time to start focusing on the relevance of the content.
- The content will be checked for sentences and phrases under the BERT update, hence it would be important for you to back the website with relevant content specific questions of the searcher.
3. Technical SEO and UI/UX factors
Most websites while focusing on the basic SEO overlook the technical SEO and UI/UX factors. Overlooking these aspects can be harmful for your website. One of the SEO trends 2020 is to make your website look renewed by using the best UI/UX. The latest SEO trend is to design your website after considering the site structure. Work on both the on page and off page SEO to get the best results.
SEO Friendly UI/UX
Search engines consider whether your webpage is UI/UX friendly while determining the ranking of your website. Search engines are no longer ranking contents on basis of few queries, it is now important to have a user friendly page to improve your rankings.
How can you improve the UI/UX in order boost your SEO:
- Keep an eye on your bounce rate and find out reasons if you have a high bounce rate. You may be experiencing high bounce rate due to use of unrelated keywords in the content, slow loading speed, or page errors.
- Keep a check on how long your viewers stay on the page. If the wait time is low, you will need to check the page elements and undertake the A/B testing to determine how well the elements are performing.
- Work on the headings, create headings which can interest and entice the viewer to further read the content.
- Keep the site’s navigation simple and easy to follow. Introduce a navigation menu on all pages and add a search bar, so that the viewers can find what they are looking for easily.
4. Relevant content
The Google Algorithm Updates show that just by adding keywords to the content without any relevance will have a negative impact on the conversion and search engine rankings. In 2020 Google aims to focus completely on content and how relevant it is. This is the most important SEO trend for the year.
What should you do to generate relevant content which can help you rise your search engine rankings?
- Identifying the target audience and creating content to meet their requirements.
- Introducing keywords at important SEO spots like in the Meta descriptions, Meta titles, alt tags, etc.
- Try something new, try adding long-tail keywords. The ideal content for your website is one that which has a balance of both short-tail and long-tail keywords.
- Introduce synonyms or related keywords to your content, the help rank the page on different keywords.
5. Featured snippets
What is a Featured Snippet? It is the summation of an answer for any search query. This featured snippet is displayed by Google on the top of the SERP result. Google has been displaying them for the last few years, which have resulted in quite a few changes to the Google’s search engine result page. Around half of the searches result in no clicks as the users are able to get answers to the queries directly from SERPs. A study of around 2 million featured snippets showed that featured snippet end up receiving more traffic as compared to the first ranked search result. If you want your website to also to feature in the snippets, then try to focus your content on question-based search queries and keywords. This is one SEO trend which you should try to follow to improve your Ranking and place in the search results.
6. Length of the Content
SEO trends 2020 not only focus on the quality and the relevance of the content but also on the length of the content. So if you want to improve your rankings, you will not only need to work on the quality but also the quality of the content. In recent days there have been a lot of discussions to determine the ideal length of a blog post. Research shows that if you consider the top 10 results for blog search, the average length is of these blogs is minimum 2000 words. It proves that web pages having a lot of high-quality content earn higher rankings, leading to higher visibility. However it is important to remember that your content should be able to expansively answer the queries raised by the users. Lengthy blogs or content help in increasing the session time of the viewer, which helps in improving your ranking.
7. Mobile indexing
Since 2018, mobile indexing came into the picture, wherein websites along with their mobile versions were welcomed together and found a place on the search engine ranking system. With the growing dependence on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, it is very important for a website to have AMP version compatibility to survive the tough competition.
Some of the top Mobile SEO Practices
Below mentioned are some of mobile SEO practices which can help improve your SEO:
- Optimizing the website pages to AMP, by increasing your mobile page speed. The speed can be improved by leveraging on the reduced redirects, caching of the browser and applying smaller codes.
- Adding special effects to the mobile page with the help of HTML 5 and avoid using heavy plugins like flash as small screens do not support their functioning.
- Designing mobile responsive pages for better UI/UX.
8. Loading speed of the pages
Time is money. People no longer have the patience to wait for your page to load. If your website has a slow loading speed, then the viewer will exit your page. It is rightly said that your first impression is the last impression, so if your viewer experiences a long waiting time while your page loads, you have already made a negative impression. Therefore the latest SEO trends focuses on optimizing your loading speeds.
PageSpeed Insights by Google Developers can help you determine the current page speed score of your website, so that you can start making the required changes and improvements to your website.
Some tips on how to improve your page loading speed:
- Try using the compressed form of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files on your website. The files above 150 bytes should be compressed.
- Reduce the number of redirects, this will stop the visitors from having to face additional waiting time.
- Leverage the browser caching
- Use a CDN for distributing your content delivery load
- Optimize the images, and ensure they are of the right format and size.
9. Programming
The latest SEO trends suggest that you should use programming languages like Python and R, which can help in eliminating tasks which are time-consuming and unwanted.
With the help of SEO automation you will be able to harness the power of marketing fundamentals like branding, storytelling, understanding and listening to your target audience and offering them useful and on time responses. It can help you create great customer experiences and providing customers with content they are looking for. Programming will help improving SEO.
10. Leveraging Influencers
Engagement metrics help in determining if your content is effective or not. Though Google has not stated it, it is known that Google measures the engagement metrics of your website to evaluate the quality of your content and then rank it accordingly.
Some of the few engagement metrics which are very important in deciding your search rankings are bounce rate, the dwell time, return visits, number of click to call requests, comments and social shares. Influencers play a crucial role in boosting the SEO strategy of any business. The influencers have a direct and positive effect on engagement metrics. If you hire an influencers or partner with them, they can help in increasing your content reach and generating more traffic to your website. Influencers can also help in building useful backlinks. Backlinks are one of the most important factors used by Google for evaluating a web page’s ranking.
Investing in influencer marketing, will not only increase your brand awareness and help in generation of leads, but it will also boost your search engine rankings.
Are you looking to implement a SEO strategy for your website? Velocity Consultancy is a Mumbai based SEO Company offering cost effective website promotion services to our clients globally. We carry a result driven approach in order to achieve Top Search Engine rankings for our clients. Our technical expertise for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with planning is custom-made and unique for each project helping us to ensure good ranking results to our client’s website promotional campaigns. Velocity Consultancy can help you in creating the best websites which can offer you the best balance between SEO and the latest trends in designing.