5 SEO Trends for 2020 – Everything You Need to Know

By jack123 | SEO | 0 Comments

5 SEO Trends for 2020

Lately, Google updated its ranking algorithm more frequently than ever before. We’ve been able to notice significant changes in the SERPs regularly. As online marketing and technology trends will keep on changing, Google will update its algorithm accordingly. This will negatively impact the most SEOs that are not up to date with the latest ranking requirements.

As competition increases, using the latest tactics and technologies is the best way to attain a competitive advantage. To dominate the rankings you’ll have to meet specific criteria imposed by Google. As these requirements change so frequently, understanding the direction the marketing moves towards is very important. For that reason, we prepared a list with 5 SEO trends that will dominate the industry in 2020 and beyond.

Voice Search

Ranking websites high is mostly about providing Google with the right data that signals your authority in a specific field. However, you should never optimize your website and create content for the algorithms. Your SEO and marketing efforts should always have your target audience in mind.

Understanding how your users are searching is the best way to ensure that you’re optimizing your pages the right way. As voice becomes an ever more prominent search option, the SEO landscape will radically change.

Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google, and even Cortana are already being used by millions nowadays. As devices become more integrated with one another voice search is going to play an important role in how we interact with our gadgets and with the internet as a whole. And, this represents a great opportunity for SEOs.

We already know that the device used for search impacts the length of the search query. A user on mobile may only type a few keywords while one on desktop might take the time to write a longer query. Similarly, as users can speak their searches rather than type them, the search queries will become larger.

In a voice ecosystem, your content should include scalable search phrases that are user-friendly. Google already understands synonyms and languages well so you shouldn’t be afraid of including larger phrases rather than short keywords. This will give Google more data to work with and potentially provide you with a better ranking even in the case of voice search as it’s going to be one of the 5 key SEO trends for 2020.

Featured Snippets

The goal of search engines like Google is to keep you on their website for as long as possible. This increases the chance of you clicking on one of their ads or generating revenue for the company in any other way. Although Google aimed to provide relevant pages to users efficiently they have taken a different approach lately.

Featured snippets represent a feature loved by Google and by the users but hated by website owners. The snippets provide users directly with the answer they are looking for. This removes the need to further explore content on websites to find answers. So, it keeps the users active on Google for longer.

The SERPs include less and less organic results lately. In a world dominated by mobile and voice search, this trend will only get bigger. Over half of the people are using mobile devices to surf the internet. They are users that don’t have time and are grateful for the featured snippets.

To keep your traffic high in such an environment your content needs to be present in the featured snippets. Although there isn’t a direct formula to get featured into the snippet, there are a few things you can do.

Try using more bullet points and tables in your articles. Search engines read them easily and like to display them in featured snippets. Moreover, make sure to answer relevant questions and provide your users with quality content. This will impact your overall rankings the most.

Mobile-First Indexing

As more people than ever before are using mobile devices for search, Google has started taking a different approach with everything. Whilst optimizing your website for mobile was only a recommendation a while ago, now it has become a requirement for ranking.

Because mobile traffic overtook the desktop one, Google made its intentions clear back in 2018. Google is using something called “Mobile-first indexing.” This means that the search crawlers are only using the mobile version of your site when determinating your rankings.

This means that if your website is not mobile-friendly you’re leaving a lot of potential on the table. Even if your site is perfectly optimized for the desktop you still need to work on its mobile version. This is going to be an ever-increasing trend that you need to consider for 2020 along with the other 5 SEO trends on our list.

Optimizing your website for mobile is not as hard as you think but you do need to consider a handful of factors. Page speed is ever more important on mobile versions. Make sure your site is fast and secure so you don’t lose any potential traffic.

Consider switching to an AMP version for mobile to deliver the best user experience. Don’t forget about the UX and make sure your website design is responsive to a mobile device too. This will enable you to take full advantage of the 5 upcoming SEO trends for 2020.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence represents a key technology for the future. Whether you like it or not, AI is going to play a significant role in SEO in the following years. Its use case is limited right now but you still need to be ready for this trend.

Google is already using AI to determinate the rankings and penalize or boost certain sites. This implementation is only going to get bigger. Google is also working on an algorithm called Rankbrain that will handle new search queries on its own – they are about 15% of all queries.

This means that your pages would need to be easily understandable by crawlers and algorithms to ensure a high ranking. The fact that even Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google considers AI to be the greatest technological development in his lifetime speaks loudly about the future of SEO.

GDPR

Although GDPR is not directly related to web ranking it plays an important role in the user experience. The EU released the General Data Protection Regulation to protect its citizens from malicious data practices. Having your business optimized for GDPR is important regardless if you’re part of the EU or not.

Many websites don’t have their GDPR figured out yet. As long as you want to have traffic from EU countries you need to figure this out as it is one of the 5 essential SEO trends for 2020.

Conclusion

The SEO landscape is in constant change. If you want to rank high, you must be up to date with the latest trends. The 5 SEO trends for 2020 that we mentioned above are going to play an important role in the rankings. That being said, make sure to have your website optimized for mobile and voice search as well as for the featured snippets. Also, take into consideration the implications of AI and GDPR as they will be key in the following years.