Which are the best SEO strategies of 2020?
As online competition continues to increase and new websites are being launched, the SEO Strategy you followed in 2019 is no longer the ones you will use in 2020. SEO keeps evolving and therefore, it’s time to rethink and invest in the latest SEO. Your SEO strategies and your Website must move with the time to meet specific requirements set by search engines like Google. SEO strategy becomes very important in 2020 as your prospects and customers need to find you in search engine results. This blog is intended at guiding you through the best SEO Strategies in 2020 and beyond.
So, let’s dive into the Top 10 SEO Strategies ruling in 2020.
1. Snippets Decide Search Clicks
In recent years Google has revised and improved its search results to deliver a better experience to its millions of users. Finally, Google programmed its bots to bring up with the essence of content like the Featured Snippets which we receive today. Since then, most search engine professionals started to pay special attention to format the content in a way that it includes search snippets.
Now, if you search for something specific in Google, it will mostly come up with Featured Snippets which usually appear above the number 1 organic result. Now, if you want to really take advantage of this feature and drive more clicks to your website, start providing clear answers to commonly asked questions on your website.
Google evaluates Featured Snippets and boosts them to the top depending on their quality. Featured Snippets present a great opportunity for content creators as it helps generate more organic traffic. Therefore, don’t take this trend lightly as it has the ability to get your content get on top and generate clicks.
2. Voice Search Dominates
With the evolution of smartphones and its growing usage has made voice search popular. People find it more useful when it gives the freedom not to type the search term. Although voice search was released in 2012 it didn’t gain much popularity. But later with the introduction of home voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Samsung Smart TV, Voice Pod, etc made it much popular.
Today, we know so much more about the technology and, thanks to schema.org, it enables search engines to understand your content. If you add Schema Markup to your HTML, Search engines improve the way your page displays in SERP’s. It will enhance the rich snippets displayed beneath the page title.
Therefore, learn how to implement voice search into your SEO strategy. With voice search short keywords become irrelevant and conversational language becomes more relevant. If you know how to optimize your website for voice search, it will help you generate more organic traffic to your website.
3. Secure Websites Gain Preference
Although don’t have much to do with SEO, users safety is another trend which is very important. If a user doesn’t feel safe while visiting a website/ web page, especially when it requires them to enter their personal data, then, they’re likely to leave it quickly. Usually, the Chrome window gives the user a “Not Secure” warning when a user visits an insecure website. If the user is aware of using an unsecured website, they may decide not to proceed with your page. It results in increased bounce rates which would adversely affect your Google ranking in the organic search listing.
Therefore, it’s very important for a website to make it secure for the user by purchasing an SSL certificate and enabling HTTPS protocol. HTTPS shown on the left side of any website address bar means “the website offers the user a secure connection – both encrypted and authenticated. HTTPS also prevent intruders from tampering with the communications between your websites and your users’ browser. Google gives more preference to the sites that have enabled HTTPS.
4. Artificial Intelligence Continues to Win
Since the evolution of artificial intelligence, it has created a pioneering evolution in SEO.
In 2015, RankBrain was introduced. It is the machine-based search algorithm that helps Google push more relevant results to users.
In 2019 October, the Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding (BERT), was introduced by Google as another step of artificial intelligence learning. In the history of search, it is considered as one of the biggest leaps forward. BERT, which is Google’s neural network-based technique for natural language processing is important because it deals with the basics of how people search.
It is designed for Google’s search engines only to have a better understanding of how language is used and to help comprehend the context of individual words within searches. The fact about BERT is, you cannot optimize websites for it, instead, create natural, useful and high-quality content for users.
5. Videos are on Preference
Just as voice searches are more preferred, Videos are becoming much popular than ever before. Studies show that this popularity of videos rises above the preference for watching TV. Here, YouTube becomes the most preferred medium for watching videos.
The current trend shows that millions of internet users especially youngsters prefer videos as a source of information. This is either for academic, DIY or entertainment purposes. Many businesses are now using online videos to get better reach to customers. But, even a simple video doesn’t do the job. This stream has become more competitive than you’ll require quality videos and optimize it with the right keywords in the headline and caption to attract users.
6. CTR and Page Spend Time Becomes Important Ranking Factors
Click-through rates (CTR) on websites and e-mails as well as the average time spent on a webpage by a user becomes more relevant for SEO as internet connections are fast and other resources are readily available.
Both these metrics are important factors to measure the user’s satisfaction level and to calculate the bounce rates. The length of time a user spends on a webpage and the next click made on to another page often considered as a measure of your website’s content quality, the information delivered and other interesting factors. The more time a user spends on a web page, the greater the value search engines give to that particular page. Whereas Click through Rate (CTR) tracks the number of people clicked on a link, the Dwell time is the time a person spends on a page after he/she has clicked on it.
7. High-quality Content is still the King
The online content display is becoming more competitive than ever before. Therefore, creating high-quality content becomes the norm for running effective SEO strategies. Users always look for helpful, relevant and timely content. If people look for an answer to their questions and they find your website as helpful, definitely, they will recommend your website. This is what helps search engines to calculate and push your website up if it gets more traffic.
To create high-quality content, you must very well research on the subject and write in an informative manner. Then, follow a logical structure that makes the content easy to read and navigate to the next. One thing you must avoid is don’t put too much sales-oriented content as people tend to quickly find it and ignore.
What people looking for is informative content delivered in an easy to digestible forms, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, and podcasts etc.
8. User Interface and Experience Matters
Now, you’re confident that your content is very good but, if it doesn’t load properly on your webpage, what will be the result? It affects your user’s satisfaction level and leaves your website for another. Therefore, you have to ensure your website page loading is faster in order not to lose any important business.
Your website loads fast but navigation and understandable features are missing. This will again result in losing your users. All the things that are affecting a smooth user experience such as unclear navigation, illogical buttons, unfamiliar words/jargons etc should be avoided. To avoid such circumstances, put yourselves in the users’ shoes and look at your website. Because quick returning visitors means high bounce rates which will affect your website’s ranking.
9. Content-Length- Fewer Vs Lengthier
Talking about content length- some says people like shorter content as they don’t have time to read and some others say lengthy content helps in gaining visibility.
In either way- content should be of high-quality. However, some users prefer to get all the info they need from the same content. In this way, it helps and that means the content length can exceed the word limits from 500 to 2000 or more.
This is another way to get the users to stay on your page more time and for Google to reward for more organic traffic. All these happen only if the users have the time and the content has quality.
10. Mobile Experience Matters
In 2020, this is all the more relevant since more users are using the internet from their mobile phones. Although this has been demanded past many years still there are many websites which haven’t achieved this level. It will affect your services or products visibility if your website is not optimized for mobile versions. Also, your website won’t be able to compete with others and will be pushed back from search engine visibility.
Conclusion
For businesses irrespective of the industry, SEO is very important today. When I mention SEO it doesn’t limit by the use of keywords but depends on many other factors such as content and all the above-mentioned things.
After all, SEO is around Google and other popular search engines. According to experts, If you continuously learn, you can improve your SEO skills in no time. To win users and gain more search visibility, you’ll have to keep up with these latest SEO strategies in 2020.
Author: Sharafudheen Mangalad
Sharafudheen Mangalad is the managing director of a chain of educational institutions in the UAE. With more than 10 years of experience in the education industry, he successfully runs Edoxi Training Institute in Dubai and Time Training Center Abu Dhabi. He is a strategist and a leader able to steer the company to the most profitable direction while also implementing its vision, mission and long term goals. He always makes sure that his business continues to grow by identifying, developing and implementing the new strategies. He leads his team in alignment with the company’s vision and values while preparing and implementing comprehensive business plans to facilitate achievement.