Are you aware of the SEO trends of 2020?
SEO is always changing, which means it’s important to keep up with the latest trends. But what are the best from the rest and how can you use them in your ever evolving strategy?
We’ve put together eleven great SEO trends for 2020, and why they work so well when used in an overall marketing strategy.
1.Cover your bases with foundational SEO
Basic SEO still matters… titles, metas, headers, alt text, site speed, robots.txt, UX, CRO, analytics, etc. Basic yet increasingly sophisticated, they still matter because they make the web continually accessible.
Set up your foundation
Just remember that once you have the basics in place, you can start building more SEO trends into your marketing strategy. Just make sure you lay a strong foundation first.
Check it out: A great example is Google’s Visual API that allows you to assign labels to images and quickly classify them into millions of pre-defined categories.
2. Schema Markup
A code that you add to your website to help search engines understand your content better as well as return more informative results for users, Schema markup remains a handy SEO trend for 2020.
Gain web traffic
Helping your website stand out from the competition, Schema markup also powers rich snippets that tend towards higher click through rates – and more web traffic.
Check it out: Learn more about Schema and how you can use it.
3. Research what matters for your industry
It’s important to know what the SEO trends in 2020 are, but it’s more important to ask, which ones are most important for your industry?
Take a closer look
Depending on what you do and who your target audience is, identifying what your customers want ensures you apply the right SEO, alongside the relevant content you need. For example, page speed is an important SEO trend 2020, but is it for your industry?
Check it out: Rei, a website selling a vast range of outdoor gear is a perfect example of a company that knows which SEO matters and why. In this case, fast loading.
Their business relies on displaying their wares with great product photos but due to the sheer amount of images needed, as well as the need for flash, their website could have loading issues.
If a website doesn’t load properly, users are more likely to click away. Taking heed of this, Rei has ensured their website loads extremely fast – with a speedy load time of 1.07 seconds.
4. Write great, useful content
Well written content that is useful for your audience has always mattered but without proper help, it’s easy to rely on keywords in the belief that Google will pick your content up and run with it in their page rankings. It won’t. Google is far too clever for that and it continuously pushes websites to be better than stilted communication in so many ways.
Naturally does it
That push definitely includes content, especially since the 2019 BERT system update. Designed to help Google understand the natural language people use when they search online, it means that with SEO we not only need to write well written content but we need to write it in a way that appeals and is natural.
Talk to your viewers through your content and give them what they need to know in the best way possible.
Check it out: Etsy has a solid content strategy for bringing in targeted organic traffic and it does so in a variety of ways. As well as writing great content that works alongside their services, their user-generated content is appealing, and the cleverly placed anchors helps direct users to other areas including their blog, which is updated daily and has a lot of inspirational stories on Etsy merchants as well as coverage on the types of goods Etsy sells.
5. Understand and fulfil searcher intent
When it comes to keywords, getting behind the words, and looking at the intent behind them ensures a better understanding about the overall content you’re giving your visitors.
How to do it
Look at people’s purpose when they do an online search. What are they looking for and what are they putting in to look for that information?
Look to Google – they’ve got all the data they need to determine search intent and multi-search inten. They will rank pages that fit their search term the best, alongside any search intent behind a specific search query.
Once you understand what people are searching for and when you go in closely and look at what is showing for a particular keyword (things such as related content and images etc.) you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your audience.
Check it out: Search intent extends a few distinct types including informational intent (looking for information on something by asking a specific question), commercial investigation intent (using the web to do research on what they want to know) and keyword intent (using intent-specific words to find what they want).
6. Optimize for featured snippets
Featured snippets are a brilliant, bite-sized way to get information quickly. The way to rank for one is to write really good quality, easy to understand summaries on your particular business, products or service.
Find similar snippets
Go online and find what other people in your business are doing, it’s a fantastic way to find keywords too. Consider what words to use that are likely to generate featured snippets.
Check it out: According to Ahrefs, 99.58% of featured snippet pages already rank in the top 10 SERPs in Google for a particular search query.
7. Get entity and topical integration into your IA
Research into what people are looking for in relation to your business; the entity, the places, the people, the things…
Google is big on seeking to understand what people are looking for via Natural Language Processing (NLP) – and the connection between entities and words in online searches.
Integrate it
Once you have a clear understanding of what people are investigating in your particular space, you can begin to organise your website to work more efficiently when it comes to providing answers and structures.
Check it out: Learn more about Natural Language Processing and how to apply it.
8. Invest in visuals
Images are important, right? What catches our eye matters, so make sure you invest in high quality images and video content.
Google likes it too
Once you have a cache of great images and/or videos, it is important to structure them in the right way too as the more structured this kind of content is, the more Google can provide those sections in their search results.
Check it out: Talk to a design agency about producing high quality images and/or a range of motion graphics for your website.
9. Repurpose your content
When it comes to SEO trends in 2020, or indeed, in any year, repurposing your content is key. By content, we mean everything from your website copy to your blogs to audio and video. Repurposing content is a clever way to reach a new audience and dust off forgotten information.
Look at your top performers
Start by looking at some of your top performing content and think about how you can repurpose it… turn a great blog into information via video? Reposition key information into slides? It’s all about thinking creatively.
Check it out: Other ideas to consider: try a new take on an old blog; build an infographic; repost on social media; host a webinar; update case studies; try a Pinterest board.
10. Prune or improve thin or low-quality pages
Do you have lots of information you want to get across to your customers? Most companies do; but the danger is, an overload of content and information that can actually turn your audience away.
Don’t overwhelm them
Too much information can be overwhelming and as a design agency, we’re good at spotting the danger of saying the same thing in different ways. It’s better to find a way to say it succinctly and clearly.
Check it out: Find out how to test and meta no-index low-quality, thin pages. This can work especially well on larger websites.
11. Get customer insights
You want to reach your target audience and persuade them to buy your products and services, right? The best way to get them on board is to understand them.
Gaining customer insights via the right date will help in so many ways, including making better decisions about how and when and what to sell them.
Great results
You’ll also find that campaigns or strategies are easier to create and are more effective – leading to greater success and profits.
Check it out: Try tools such as SparkToro that allow you to discover what your audience reads, watches, listens-to and follows.
Which SEO trends of 2020 do you want to try first? These strategies are easy to apply, make a huge difference to your sales and can improve the way customers interact with you.
