SEO is as unpredictable as a hurricane.
SEO is evolving and becoming better at enhancing user experience and reading search intent. Here are 8 trends that you need to keep up with if you desire to maintain your search result rankings on the search engine.
What you might assume is a Category 1 change to Google’s algorithm can end up being a Category 5 issue—one that will cause huge problems to your site, keyword rankings and organic traffic.
It’s that unpredictability that many SEOs hate.
Nobody knows where SEO is heading, which makes strategy and planning very difficult.
Some may say that SEO is dead. But, I would like to differ – SEO is not dead, SEO is somewhat evolving. Unlike earlier, SEO gives more priority to user-experience than search engine crawlers.
However, there is no denying the fact that Google’s frequent updates can hugely impact the websites. The uncertainty that it brings makes it difficult for businesses to plan and strategize accordingly.
Well, to make your SEO planning spot on, I have come up with some major things that will drive the SEO game in the year 2020.
Without any further delay, let’s dive right in –
Focus on Speed and the “On-the-Go” Mentality
Do you feel like you’re always on the go, and never have time to relax?
“I think the future of SEO lies in speed! Many SEOs might think that this just begins and ends with site speed, but, there’s actually a lot more to it.
Because of the advancements in consumer technology, we’re connected wherever we go—and this has allowed users to adopt a fast-paced, ‘on-the-go’ mentality, whether they are on the move or not! Simply put, if your site; your content; your answer can’t be accessed quickly, then it’s going to be overlooked.
This is why we need to think beyond site speed.
The content that we are creating needs to be coherent, yet informative. The way in which we are presenting it needs to be fast, yet effective. We need to give the user exactly what they are looking for, in the shortest time possible. And they need to be able to access it—whether it be an organic search or through internal linking—as quickly as possible.
Otherwise, they just aren’t interested.
47% of users don’t wait longer than two seconds for a page to load, and a similar mentality can and should be applied to them finding what they are looking for once they are on the page.
As much as we need to understand what the user wants to know, it is paramount that we also understand how they are accessing it, and why.”
User Search Intent
Google’s recent BERT update (October 2019) has made it clear that it is giving priority to the websites that are optimizing their content to meet user’s search intent.
Over the years, Google has strictly restricted content with high keyword density and backlinks. We all remember the outrage it caused across the websites when Google rolled out its famous Penguin Update in April 2012. No user likes to click on several website links before getting the information they were looking for. To make search activity easier for its users, Google has introduced several new features over the year – featured snippets, the ‘People Also Ask’ boxes, the knowledge panel – all of which were launched for enhancing user experience.
As an SEO expert, your goal in 2020 should be to create content, keeping in mind the user’s search intent and try to appear on all the search engine features mentioned above.
“Google’s future is focused on two factors that impact marketers.
The first is presenting information to users without them using a query. This is powered by their understanding and use of entities, natural language processing (NLP), and artificial intelligence.
Secondly, Google is focused on discovering the answer to a searcher’s question even if it exists within the middle of a video file, audio file, or an image.
Searches without a screen (both image and voice) are predicted to be 50% of searches by 2020, and Google is working hard to surface those content types—which are new areas of optimization for SEOs.”
Smarter and Well-Structured Content
Not just blog articles, but Google will also focus on providing information to the users without their query, and discovering answers to a user’s question even if the solution exists in a video/audio/image format.
Therefore, to appear on the search results, you will need to make sure that your content up with structured data. – content includes image files, file labelings, page placements, and landing page quality.
Think About Voice Search to Hit Google’s Direct Answers Box
Voice search software, like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, take information from Google’s Direct Answers box and replay it to the searcher.
Several SEO experts have already begun to optimize their website content using a more conversational and Q/A approach.
For example, if a user asks their device, “What is the best website design company in Hyderabad?“, An SEO copywriter should begin to work on the content in a Q/A format to answer this question.
This prediction also suggests that in the times to come, SEO professionals will invest the right amount of their time in studying their users’ search intent and brainstorm the type of questions that they may ask their voice search devices.
Kick Off a Voice and Visual Data Hybrid
Voice search is on the rise—as is visual data. Users don’t want to sit down and type a question into their search engines; they want to speak to a machine buddy and have their questions answered.
“The future of SEO might be the combination of voice and visual data. Speakable schema markup is just starting to take shape, and although a lot of people are saying that voice will kill search, Google has vested interest in making sure that doesn’t happen.
Voice may be the quickest way to ask a question, but reading/skimming is still the fastest way to consume content. Video is also great and will continue to grow as a popular medium. So I think that including speakable schema and writing conversationally will ultimately future-proof your content.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to advance, Google’s machine learning framework RankBrain will get better at figuring out the user intent for every query. This will bring a direct win situation for those businesses who are indulging in customer-centric content marketing.
Also, now, the focus will be more on covering an entire topic in detail instead of creating a generic content around a specific keyword. Having said this, you will need to focus more on your content strategy, instead of keyword density.
Backlinking
As we all know, backlinks are majorly classified as dofollow and nofollow links. We all thought that dofollow links are much more potent than nofollow links. However, as the SEO game is changing, the line between the two has become quite blurred.
Remember Google’s Reasonable Surfer? Google does not value every outbound link equally, irrespective of the nofollow tags. This was made clear, years before, back in 2004.
Following the recent trends, famous online publishers like Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur have begun to incorporate no-follow external links. Other significant publishers like Huffington Post have wholly discarded their guest publishing features. Other “mom blogs” only accept paid guest blogs now.
If this trend continues, the number of dofollow links will decrease to a small amount that the fine line between the two link types will no longer be apparent.
Build a Brand, Rather Than Following an Algorithm
ding, not following algorithms…
All SEOs are guilty of algorithm hunting. Whether you’ve noticed a change in your rankings or read news from an SEO blog, algorithms are what help us to rank—meaning they’re important, right?
Almost all of us have been a victim of Google’s algorithm updates. Even though we might be able to predict what lies in store for SEO of the future, but we can never be entirely sure about what Google comes up with next.
Future technologies like AI and machine learning will lead to an evolution of the search engine where they become very (I repeat) brilliant that it will become tough to catch up with the algorithm.
Therefore, instead of wasting time on worrying too much about the algorithm, the only best way is to focus on building your business into a brand that your target audience remember by heart.
Why?
It is easy – the more people the people know about your brand, the more you will get the engagement, and the more people will post reviews about your services on the world wide web. This way, the search engine will be compelled to take notice of your business.
The bottom line:
Stop caring about the algorithm and build a strong brand that everyone in your space loves and talks about here and there.”
FINAL WORDS:
One thing that remains true throughout the history and future of SEO is that – you have a presence on the internet to attract your end customers and not the website crawlers.
Today, most of the websites are struggling with SEO because they are developing content and optimizing their website to target the search crawlers, not humans dominatingly.
Whereas, in the coming future, Google will only focus on user experience and will eliminate everything that affects it.
