The SEO landscape is always evolving. Though some things do stay the same – mobile optimization, relevant keywords, etc. there happens to be a lot of factors that keep on changing.
In 2019, we saw a great lot of changes including Google and other search engines trying to become an end destination of their user’s journeys. As 2020 will be here in less than a month, in this post, we look at those major SEO trends that will help your site rank in 2020.
In 2020, we predict zero-click searches to be more popular (we will be discussing the reasons why we feel so in the upcoming section). For this reason, the information shown on the SERP becomes of more importance. Therefore, two amazing ways to stand out from the crowd in the SEO landscape would be by using Rich and Featured snippets.
So, why don’t we take a look at what rich and featured snippets are?
Rich Snippets – Though easier to get, rich snippets such as title, description, images, reviews, and product prices will lower the CTR improvements considerably when compared to Featured snippets. Rich Snippets help make your result more noticeable though your SERP position remains the same.
Featured Snippets – Featured snippets showcase an entire block of the information shown at the top of a SERP. It boosts CTR but getting a featured snippet is a tricky job in hand.
What Should You Do?
Keep in mind that getting a rich or featured snippet is never guaranteed even if you rank first in the search results. Nevertheless, the potential gains of ranking are absolutely worth putting some effort for them.
2. Zero-Click Searches
Presently, more than half of all searches happening over the Internet are ‘zero-click searches’ due to the SERP features such as snippets, knowledge graphs, Google’s Local Packs, etc. This simply means that the users get their questions answered on the SERP itself without having to click and get directed to some website.
What Should You Do?
3. The Changing Local SEO
As discussed in the previous session, a lot of searches happening over the internet comes out to be zero-click searches of which a huge number of are local searches for which results are shown in the SERP itself. Also known as Local Packs, a single local pack consumes as space as an entire SERP shown to a user.
What Should You Do?
Create a single page and try to include as many keywords as possible in it. For instance, you can create a Google My Business page for your company and incorporate keywords like near me, address, phone number, etc.
However, this is where your efforts just begin. Some of the searches over the Internet goes beyond just local packs. When comparing products, people still go to your website in search of more detailed information. This is where traditional SEO practices come to action.
You ought to have a solid backlink profile. Find the types of backlinks you’re your competitors get and try to get some of those for yourself. The key is to find not random backlinks but those that Google tags to be locally authoritative.
Furthermore, be sure to track your local ranking performance. Remember, the least change in location will influence the kind of results that the user will get.
4. Make Brand Building Your Priority
Presently, though paid advertising still works pretty well for social, organic social is pretty much dead. An ever-increasing number of companies are adopting paid advertising turning it into a real trend where ROI for paid ads will be decreasing.
For this reason, it’s pretty evident that paid ads will become the next big thing for every business who wishes to grow. Therefore, digital marketers in the upcoming year will have to concentrate more on brand building and awareness.
Also, linkless mentions are also becoming more prominent with Bing and Google confirming their usage for ranking purposes.
What Should You Do?
The very first thing you should do to increase brand awareness is to build relevant mentions. And, when it comes to 2020, you need to concentrate on building quality link profiles and managing linkless brand mentions.
If you are looking to monitor every mention of your brand as well as your products and services, you need to utilize what is called social media listening. Here, you will get to engage with your clients directly, and offer the customer care which in turn helps in building brand awareness.
You can adopt this strategy to interact with people who are really interested in your product and let them know about any campaigns or promotions that are running at the moment. Additionally, you can also find out where your main competitors are mentioned and get yourself there with some campaigns as well.
No marketer should ever overlook the power of social listening tools as it can help build awareness through direct customer interaction.
5. Machines Are Here To Stay
Google has been using learning algorithms to improve their users’ experience and avoid keyword-stuffed webpages for years now. Thus, in 2020, we expect to see this factor more important than ever with the appearance of Google’s latest algorithm called BERT.
Currently, Google uses 3 mechanism – figuring out the meaning of the query in Neural Matching, adjusting SERP’s relying on collected data about users’ behaviour, RankBrain, and analysing the structure of a search to understand the usage of keyword in BERT algorithm.
What Should You Do?
As far as BERT or neural Matching is considered, there isn’t much we could do to get ranked rather than writing quality content.
Nevertheless, when it comes to RankBrain, you should really put some effort into intent matching rather than simply rank for random keywords.
Find out what’s ranking right now and monitor the results to Google search results to see what Google consider for searches you wish to rank for. Also, decide the right intent behind the search queries you wish to rank for and create content to the match your users’ intent in their search.
Whenever the marketers finally feel they have got the SEO thing down, the rules just start to change and shift. The changes that happened in Local SEO is a great example of this.
At DigiXHub, we always have our hand on the pulse, and we adjust our SEO strategies based on the latest trends to offer the best possible results to our clients. Reach out to us to kickstart your digital marketing projects at the earliest.
