TOP 5 SEO OPTIMIZATION TRENDS OF 2020

Whether it is an online or an offline business, every business competes with growing more and generating more ROI. Nowadays, when the internet is ruling all over the world, people have started giving their business an online platform, so that the potential customers can reach them easily within a few clicks, and the key is SEO Optimization (or Search Engine Optimization). SEO is an element of digital marketing strategy, that utilizes the internet to promote a product, service or business so that one can find your business easily among the top search results. In other words, it is the process where web pages and content get ranked by using relevant keywords and content optimization.

As of January 2020, there were over 1.74 billion websites on the internet and still counting, which results in a massive competition in every market. Therefore, to rank your website on the top, there are specific requirements of the search engines that are to be achieved by several SEO optimization strategies.

SEO is dynamic. Some things are the same, like planning keywords, analyzing the performance on google search console, actively updating local business on Google my Business, etc. While several other strategies should be taken care of to target to rank on the zero results of SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).

FAQ Implementation or Featured Snippets

Google keeps updating its algorithm and has evolved to deliver a better search experience to the user. Among all the features FAQ’s is one, Google displays it on the top of the SERP result or zero results and also are excellent for voice search results. As per research by Hubspot, that content that has a featured snippet implemented gets a 2X higher CTR (Click-through Rate). The featured snippets provide short and precise answers to the most common questions asked by a person. It helps in generating more organic traffic to the website.

Note: Zero result is the highest position a web page can get without any advertisement but only by answering the most common queries of the niche in chronological order and also by adding the Q&A section or “how-to” section in the website.

SEO Tip #1: The normal length of the block of content in featured snippets should be within 40-60 words to rank in the Featured Snippet spot.

Voice Search Optimization

“OK Google, find the best restaurants near me.” 

Keywords were born this way. Growth in the use of smartphones has led voice search to become a popular means to search for anything on the internet. Smart speakers like Alexa, Siri, Google Home have also increased the rate of voice search since it is faster and conversational. So most people will search for their queries on the internet by just the way they speak. Implementing conversational and targetted voice queries on your website will help you generate more traffic to your site. In addition to this, implementing words like “how, what, best, top, why, new, top, types, and many more” will improve the search results since most people search for their queries in the form of questions.

SEO Tip #2: While optimizing a website for voice search, target keywords that are long and detailed, and also the content should be written in the form of an answer.

Video as a Source of Information

As per research, 62% of Google’s universal searches include video as the form of answers to a query, and people spend an average of 67 minutes daily by watching online videos and expecting it to strike 100 minutes per day by 2021. YouTube has more than 1 billion mobile views per day and is also considered the most relevant source of information in the form of videos. Just like voice searches, video content on the internet are also exponentially on the rise, since it provides adaptable content with authentic information about the query in the person’s mind. It is an integral part of the SEO strategy and digital marketing efforts. Modern internet users prefer to get information through online videos. Creating videos and uploading it on multiple platforms will support the existing content on your website, and by using appropriate keywords in the description and headline of your video will help the video to reach the most significant number of audience who are curious of that subject.

SEO Tip #3: Providing transcription for the video will help the user understand a video better.

SEO Tip #4: Optimize the video with an eye-catching thumbnail that easily predicts the content in the video.

High-quality Content

Creating high-quality content is an essential element of the practical success of SEO strategies. Users want content that is suitable, practical, and educational in forms of blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, any many more. The average length of the top results of a search is a minimum of 2,000 words. Also, the Web pages that have long and quality information and the answers to all the questions, the users have, usually get more visibility. Because the users prefer to get all the information they need from a single reliable source. In addition to this, the more time the users spend on a web page, it will help the page to build authority; thus Google, increasing the rank of that page, which will lead more organic traffic to your website.

SEO Tip #5:  Embed meta description and meta title for the content, where the length of the title should be within 50-60 characters, and the length of the Meta description should be within 155-160 characters.

SEO Tip #6: Add keywords to the meta title, meta description, and alt tags.

BERT Focused Optimization

Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding or simply BERT is Google’s new algorithm announced in October 2019. It is Google’s technique of natural language processing, and it deals with the very on the behavior of how people use language to search their queries. To rank a website as per the BERT strategy, you can create highly specific content according to the E.A.T. (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) principle that matches the user’s intent.

Tools For SEO Optimization

Besides fulfilling all the latest trends in SEO Optimization, there are a few important tools that will help your website achieve the top rank. 

Keywordtool.io to get a list of keywords ideas and that has the most search volumes.

Google Analytics to analyze the traffic of the website and the search insights.

AHREFS Backlink checker to analyze the backlinks to a website. 

Google Trends and News to get an idea of the latest trends in your niche to write content.

Yoast SEO to optimize blog posts according to SEO.

Summing up, we know Google constantly keeps updating its algorithm. There is no right process to perform SEO optimization on a website, but it should be done according to the requirements of the search engine guidelines. The most important factor is to keep yourself updated about the latest Google updates since it is on its way to becoming the end destination of all the queries of a user.