18 Jun Top SEO Trends for 2020 That You Need to Know and Implement
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Top SEO Trends for 2020 That You Need to Know and Implement
Google makes constant changes to its search engine algorithms, and with new businesses arising on the market, it’s hard to stay high in search result rankings. This is where the importance of staying up to date with the latest SEO trends come in handy.
We all know that websites need to meet specific criteria to be picked up by Google’s algorithm and to rank high. But, with these criteria always changing you cannot rest easy. So, let’s take a look at the top SEO trends for 2020 that you need to know and implement on your site.
SEO trends worth embracing
1). Voice search commands
It is no secret that voice search queries are becoming increasingly popular. With the arrival of Google Home, Siri, Cortana, and Alexa, more and more users are turning over to these voice search assistants. And it’s no wonder, speaking aloud queries comes naturally to people, rather than typing them out. It’s faster and more organic.
With voice search queries people tend to formulate them exactly in the same fashion as they would to another human being. For example: “Where is the nearest Supermarket?”, whereas if they were to type down the same request, they would more than likely just write: “nearest supermarket”. What does this say to us?
That we need to start using long-tail keywords to assimilate this new way of submitting requests. By doing this, we will be more likely to appear on the search results. A final tip is to optimise your site for local SEO as a high number of voice queries are local.
2). Featured snippet domination
For a couple of years now featured snippets have been the centre of attention of user search queries because they appear in what is called “Position 0”. This position ranks even higher than paid ad results, so what is a featured snippet?
A featured snippet is a summarised answer to a search query. According to a study conducted by Ahref, featured snippets drive more traffic than the first organic search result. To turn this to your advantage, try to include more question-based search queries as well as keywords.
3). Bert – a powerful ally
BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. A bit wordy, huh? Albeit confusing, BERT is one of Google’s major changes since RankBrain in 2014. So, if you have never heard of BERT before, you are definitely missing out. However, BERT is one of those things that you just can’t mess with. There’s no way to optimise your content for it. BERT is just Google’s way of improving its understanding of our language.
What you can do, though, is optimise your content for the intent behind each query. So, start by searching your keywords top 10 SERP content ranking and identifying if the results are informational, navigational, or transactional. Once you have that down, you can start developing your content because you will have identified the underlying intent.
“take your marketing game to the next level by embracing the latest trends.”
4). Switch to video
It’s not new that Google is enamoured with videos. Visual representations are crucial to Google as it thinks it adds more relevance to your content. And to back that up, according to a study about video content, at least 62% of Google searches include videos. So, if you’re not including video in your communicational pieces, what are you waiting for?
If you are not taking advantage of the power of videos, here’s an idea – you can start making YouTube videos related to your website’s content. You can also embed videos on your website. It’s not a guarantee that you will get first page results, but at least you will be getting more attention from users and Google too.
5). Mobile search will dominate
Users are actively migrating over to using their smartphones en masse. Almost everyone in the world has one, and up to 40% of online transactions are conducted using mobile phones. So, you need to make it one of your top priorities to optimise your content for mobile phones if you haven’t already.
6). Be mindful of the length of your content
Google is a sucker for high-value content. If your content is relevant to your audience, up to date and viral, you have found the key to appearing on the first page of search results. But how does length matter? There’s a lot of chatter about the ideal length of a blog post. Several pieces of research suggest that it should be at least 2000 words.
This is because Google thinks that because your user is taking more time to read your article, it must be engaging and of high value to them. So, try to make your posts at least 2000 words long. However, don’t stretch them out mindlessly or your audience will abandon reading halfway through, and this could be potentially worse.
7). Jump in on an alliance with an influencer
Influencer Marketing has been widely used these last few years with the advance of social media. Brands all over the world know how to identify influencers in the same niche and strike up powerful alliances that benefit both parties.
Are you wondering how Influencer Marketing relates to SEO? When you partner up with an influencer, you are exponentially widening your content reach, which will translate into more people finding your website. Influencers can also be helpful to build backlinks which will help you to rank better in the search results since backlinks are highly valuable for Google.
It might be helpful to do a background search on the influencers before allying with them. They should be in the same industry as your brand and be relevant to your audience.
Also, make sure that they understand how they can help you link back high-value content to your website. If you partner up with an Influencer that is relevant to your brand and audience, you can potentially improve your awareness drastically, as well as boost your ranking.
8). Make your users feel safe
This may seem more like a piece of advice than an actual SEO trend but not having a safe website can truly make or break you.
Nowadays, website security is something we all covet. If your users don’t feel safe, they will more than likely abandon your website, and this can wreak havoc on your search results ranking. So, make sure that you enable HTTPS protocol for your website. This will help establish a secure connection between your website and your users’ browsers.
Google is also aware that users like to feel safe when navigating third-party websites, which is why you may notice that websites using HTTPS rank a bit higher than those that don’t.
9). CTR and dwell times
As we talked about previously, the amount of time that a user spends on your website may indicate that they find your content valuable. This is exactly what Google wants. So, two new metrics to check out are CTR (Click-Through Rate) and dwell time.
On the one hand, you have the CTR metric, which comes in handy to learn how many people click on your website’ link based on the SERP. On the other, there’s the dwell time that tracks the time people spend visiting your site once they have landed on it.
So, you can see how these two metrics are different from each other but at the same time come from the same place – which is interest. Someone sees your web page because of a search query, they click on it, and then they find your content relevant based on what they searched for.
If these two metrics align, Google will immediately categorise your website as high-value content and will potentially move it higher up in the search results ranking.
Parting thoughts
So, as you can see, many new SEO trends are hitting the online world this year, and it’s important that you learn them all and apply them to your site. The more of these trends you incorporate into your site, the higher up you will rank in the search results. If you do this right, you will immediately see the rewards and your business will also be reaping the benefits, as more people will gain awareness of its existence and potentially convert.
However, we are aware that keeping up to date with this ever-changing world of technology and algorithms may be tricky. You may not have the time to even apply all these changes yourself. This is where we come in.
At edirect, SEO company Dubai we have a vast array of SEO services that we can help your business with, from content optimisation to affordable bespoke SEO packages, we cover it all. If you’re interested to learn what else we can do for your business, contact us today!