It’s projected that by 2024, 53.7% of the population will make online searches every day. And 91.5% of that traffic is given to just the first page of Google search results.
As you can see, not only is it important for your business to do online marketing, but it’s also vital that you employ strategies that place you on that coveted first page.
To do that, you need to utilize search engine optimization (SEO). In a nutshell, this is the process of finding top keywords and sprinkling them throughout your content.
SEO trends may be continually shifting, but there are always some basics that never die out.
Here are eight SEO trends that you need to know for 2020.
1. Featured Snippets Are Prioritized Over Search Clicks
It simply isn’t enough to just rank on the first page of results anymore. Google’s added something called Featured Snippets, which provides the user with answers to their burning questions at the top of the search results page.
This is displayed on top of the first highest-ranking website, so it’s important to focus on perfecting your technique for Featured Snippets. In general, you want to have clear answers to commonly asked questions for your business.
2. Keywords Need to Be Used Naturally
In the early stages of SEO, you could just look up a keyword and stick it pretty much anywhere in your text to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Even if the sentences read awkwardly, it didn’t matter much.
However, Google’s recently introduced BERT, which is a new algorithm that understands natural language better. This means if you just stick a keyword anywhere, weird sentences won’t help to rank your website better anymore.
So instead of trying to stuff those keywords anywhere you can, just use them naturally. When your copy flows better, your website will rank higher on SERPs.
3. Emphasis on Reputation
Not only will SEO matter, but your company’s overall online reputation will too for ranking on SERPs. The criteria is EAT: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Your website’s credentials and content will be checked, and you’ll be penalized for anything that’s false or untrustworthy.
Make sure you provide excellent customer service and experiences to rank higher.
4. User Experience Is Still King
And that brings us to our next point: user experience (UX) has always been king, and it still is.
When performing SEO, don’t just focus on the front end of things (i.e. website copy). Technical SEO is vital as well.
You’ll be heavily penalized for having slow site and page speeds, so get those as streamlined as you can. This may even involve redesigns and new templates.
5. Mobile SEO Is More Important
With smartphones getting more and more powerful, it should come as no surprise that people are doing significantly more searches on their phones now. In fact, 60% of online searches are from mobile devices.
Because of this, it’s better to build your SEO strategy as mobile-first, not desktop-first.
What does this mean?
As one example, mobile devices have different resolutions, so you have to build your site to render dynamically. Otherwise, it may look awful on some devices.
6. Focus on Structured Data
This is something many businesses fail to look at, considering it’s in the backend.
Structured data is in the backend of things, and search engine algorithms will take a look at it.
Above, we said that algorithms (such as BERT) will look for quality and context over keyword usage. However, that’s not perfected yet.
To help algorithms with context, this is where structured data comes in. Even if you’ve marked up your data in 2019, it’s a good idea to take another look at it this year.
Considering new markups are constantly coming out (or being improved), you need to stay on top of them to ensure you won’t be penalized for poorly structured data.
7. Link Building Is Important
Remember how we said the reputation of your website is important in ranking on SERPs? One way to improve your reputation is to use link building.
When you link out to other authoritative and reputable websites, you prove that you can provide your customers with the information they need and that it’s accurate.
Consider partnering with an influencer. This can help you build backlinks and increase traffic to your website since you’ll get better outreach.
8. Don’t Forget About Videos
You may think that SEO pertains to just text, but in fact, it includes videos too.
Videos are becoming more and more popular on the internet, so you need to make sure you’re providing this medium to your customers.
When you place videos on your website, make sure to optimize it with the proper keywords in your titles and descriptions. This will help your pages rank better in SERPs.
Put These SEO Trends to Good Use
By knowing the current SEO trends, you ensure that your business employs the best SEO strategies to rank your website better.
But SEO is a bit more complicated than doing keyword research and putting just the right amount of them into your website. To truly reap the full benefits of SEO, you need the aid of a professional.
With a digital marketing company, you can further target your marketing campaigns. For example, you can make them either global or local, or you can target all internet users or narrow in on a certain demographic.
A digital marketing agency fits an important piece of your online marketing puzzle. So help your business reach its full potential by using one.
Do you want to drive more traffic to your website? Then get in touch with us now. We’ll even provide you with a free strategy session!
