2020 SEO Trends-How To Rank Higher in 2020

SEO has formed a significant part of the content marketing strategy for companies in the last few years. The fundamental principle of SEO remains the same. It is about finding methods to easily locate websites and help online searchers get the correct information. However, the tactics involved in optimizing your SEO have been changing with the changing needs of users and the way the internet is used. In fact, every year, the SEO algorithm undergoes some changes and tweaks, and if you want to be on top of the game, you need to know the latest SEO trends.

Let’s find out the trends that will dominate the SEO industry in 2020 and how you can imbibe them into your format.

1. Optimize voice search options

Voice search is the newest trend in the digital world with people speaking into their mobile devices while searching for information instead of typing. Today, people find it cumbersome and tiresome to type keywords to search for information. They would rather talk to their smart devices and get all the required information. This change in search methodology will have a significant impact on your SEO efforts. For example – a user would say, “How do I reach the airport fastest?” instead of typing “fastest route to airport.”

Two things are apparent here- natural phrasing instead of compressed phrases as well as using long-tail keywords. The user has used more words to get the same information that he could have typed in lesser words. However, the ease of speaking is much more than typing. Thus, in terms of SEO, you will need to consider optimizing the content for more natural sounding and long-tail keywords to keep up in the SEO ranking race.

2. High-quality content

In line with the adage- Content is King; the SEO industry also works on similar lines. For a website to be high in ranking by search engines, the content should be immaculate, novel, and useful. In fact, search engines are always enhancing their technologies to reward quality content on the web. Good content has always been important for better SEO ranking but in 2020, you will need both relevant and valuable content. It means that the content should not only satisfy in terms of the relevant keyword searches, but also satisfy user needs. The goal should be more topic-focused than worrying about a single keyword that a page should be targeting.

Also, watch out for content cannibalization. It essentially means that if your website is giving out the same content, but from different angles, your pages might clash with each other in the SEO rankings.

Hence, in 2020, it is time to take a hard look at the quality of content holistically and optimize it for the users and not just the search engines.

3. Mobile-friendly website

People use the internet on an array of gadgets, from laptops, smartphones to tablets, and iPads. Thus, search engines cannot customize search results to only those gadgets with keyboards and a computer screen. In fact, with people constantly on-the-go, it is more likely for a user to use his mobile to search for data. Hence, it is imperative to optimize your website for mobiles.

Content looking the same will not work for both desktops and mobiles as what looks flawless on the former appears slow and sluggish on the latter. Hence, there is an urgent need to re-do the content of your website so that it looks good on multiple screens. It is observed that mobile-optimized content ranks better on any gadget even though it may not be well suited to the website itself.

In fact, Google has come up with Google’s mobile-first index that ranks pages based on the mobile version of pages. The better the page on mobile devices, the higher is the ranking.

4. Enhance site architecture and user experience

Google has always emphasized on the user and the content that best serves the user to get better ranking. Now the algorithms have improved and they get the best content as per the user’s search query. The main idea is to provide a better user experience.

The best way to do this and to boost SEO rankings is to help users find what they are searching for efficiently. This can be done through good navigation and website architecture. The more appealing and easier to navigate your website, the more attractive it is to the users and also to search engines.

The navigation and structure of the site should be easy for users to access the information that they want. The website design should be simple, and information should be readily available. Ideally, users should be able to find any page on the website within 3-4 clicks. It will not only make the users stay longer on the website but also keep them coming back.

5. Focus on different search engine’s ranking algorithms

Till now, Google was the only search engine to get any information. Hence, website content creators were focusing on Google’s ranking algorithms while creating SEO strategies. It still remains the most popular search engine, but now there are some other suitable options. For instance, the Amazon search engine. It is fast catching up with more than 50% shoppers turning to Amazon to fulfill their shopping desire. Even YouTube is gaining popularity with scores of useful contents posted here and users making a bee-line to find relevant videos. It is in fact, the second-largest search engine today.

Thus, in 2020, you will need to shift your SEO focus to other search engines and adapt to their requirements.

6.  Site security

Another integral step to enhance SEO rankings is to make your website completely secure by switching from HTTP to HTTPS. Since 2017, Google has flagged sites as ‘not secure’ if they are not HTTPS as it offers three layers of protection. The three layers include-

• Authentication- It ensures that the user is interacting with the specific site they wanted to, and no other site barges in.
• Encryption- It keeps data safe and conversations private by encrypting the exchanged data.
• Data Integrity- It does not let data get modified on the sly and become corrupt during a transfer

Thus, if someone receives an alert from Google that the page is not secure while searching for content, he is sure not to open that page. Hence, SEO ranking will automatically fall. Also, Google has announced that the security of sites is an integral part of raking in their search algorithm.

7. Optimize site speed

In today’s age, people are impatient and want to have everything at lightning speed. The same holds true while searching for online content. Hence, the loading speed of sites is of great significance for SEO ranking. Also, with mobile browsing gaming prominence, keeping loading times significantly shorter is important. In fact, Google has announced that it will take into consideration page speed for mobile devices in its ranking algorithm.

It is simple to imbibe this through a caching solution and optimizing media files through plugins and tools.

8. Zero-click SERP

The focus will be on visibility in 2020 and not just blue links. In 2019, zero-click searches were huge, and this On-SERP SEO will continue to gain importance in 2020 too.

SERP ( Search engine result pages) are getting increasingly competitive, and one of the most competitive versions is the zero-click searches. It essentially means when the answer is displayed on the search result page itself, and the user can get most of what he is looking for without needing to go further.

On-SERP SEO, hence, means that getting maximum information on Page 1 or the search snippets, which is displayed in the search engine. Thus, one will need to adapt to zero-click searches in 2020.

9. Using videos to rank higher

Initially, it was more about reading content on the web, but now trends are changing, and an increasing number of people prefer watching a video about this content than reading it. In fact, in 2018, about 50% of the total internet users watched an hour of videos online in a week, showing that video is gaining prominence steadily.

Thus, website developers should take heed of this trend and create more videos about their content than just plain text to amp up their SEO ranking. And as they say- a picture is worth a thousand words.

Make your videos more attractive with proper textual information about it along with a thumbnail as we all are drawn towards catchy images.

10. Enhance on-page optimization

Having good on-page optimization is a sure-shot way of improving SEO rankings. To be able to get there you will need to work on-

• Title tags and meta descriptions

It is an accurate description of the content of the web page. It is crucial for SEO as it decides the display title in the search engines and is the first thing a user will view. A meta description is also relevant as it is a snippet of about 155 characters that gives a summary of the content. Search engines show this when the searches for phrase lies within the description. Hence, it needs to match the content and must also have the focus keyword.

• Internal and external link structure

Internal links are hyperlinks of the page you want the reader to go to on your website, while an external link is a link to different sites. The internal links give the search engine an idea about your site structure, and external links to useful content cement your position as a trustworthy brand. Thus, you should have the right combination of both internal and external link structure.

• Schema mark-up

It helps readers and search engines have a clear understanding of your web page content. It also helps in better-looking website display in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). You can add this mark up manually or use tools to enhance Scehma data. This works beautifully for SEO rankings as it improves user experience and makes it easier to skim through your content.

11. Focus on promotion

In today’s competitive age, it is crucial not only to have unique, useful content, but it is equally important to expand your reach in varied formats and to a broader audience. Do not expect organic SEO to do all the work for you. You need to let everyone know how valuable your content is.

You could do so by allowing visitors to share your content easily. Include social sharing icons on all your posts. Also, include relevant social channels for your industry and consistently share your content on different social platforms. The more your content is shared and viewed, the more traffic your website will gain through search engines, which in turn will increase your SEO ranking. Keep to only a few social platforms but be consistent in sharing your content with them and interacting with all your followers.

You can also ask your internal team to spread the word and share the content with their social networks.

Conclusion

SEO is an ongoing marketing technique that will see a lot of changes as the World Wide Web changes. The only way to survive is to be up-to-date with the latest SEO trends. Imbibe some or all of the aforementioned techniques and hacks, into your SEO marketing strategy and get a head-start in maximizing your content in 2020.