Top 10 SEO Trends You Should Follow To Stay Ahead Of Your Competitors In 2020

Trend#1: Rise of Voice Search Optimization

Voice Search is the most recent entry in SEO trends. ComScore states that by 2020, 50% of all searches will be made by voice!

Voice Search is a speech recognition technology, that enables the user to perform a search by voice command. A few years back, when smartphones did not exist, people used to search only by typing words in search engine boxes. That’s why, keywords were born.

But, as innovative smartphones were introduced, people started using virtual assistants! Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant are real-life examples of voice search smart devices.

Optimizing your website for voice search may help you to generate more organic traffic. However, voice search may bring a major transformation in the digital era, as it can turn SEO upside down. Voice search is all about making queries via voice rather than entering keywords in search boxes. Eventually, the search terms have become more casual and targeted at the same time.

The change is about to happen!

Thus, if you want to stand out in the game of search engine ranking, your website needs to adapt to this latest trend.

Trend#2: Featured Snippets for More Search Clicks

Not ranking on the top of search engine result pages, despite many efforts?

Don’t worry! You can still drive more organic traffic to your website.

Google is continuously evolving to provide better search experience for the user. The same follows for a Featured Snippet.
It is a format which is supposed to provide brief and direct answer to the query of user. Usually, Featured Snippets seem on top of the organic results, the position commonly referred to as “Position 0”.

With this feature, you can direct more clicks to your website; you just need to determine frequently asked questions under your niche, and provide clear answers on your website.

Featured Snippets act as a golden opportunity for content developers, since they enable you to generate more organic traffic, even if you are not ranking on the top of search engine result pages.

This is one of the most important trends for 2020, as more than half of the clicks from google originate from Featured Snippets.

Trend #3: Focus on E-A-T or Fade Away

Content plays an important role in digital space! It’s like backbone of the complete SEO process.

If you want to get ranked on the top of search engine result pages, then having a fool-proof content strategy is crucial. Your content plays the same role, like how a ticket does, by connecting you with users.

In 2020, you need to be more serious about E-A-T.

No, you don’t need to omit your breakfast or lunch!

E-A-T represents three major key attributes of content, that a search engine considers, while ranking it in SERPs.
E- Expertise
A- Authoritativeness
T- Trustworthiness

If you want to get high ranking in SERPs, your website should have right EAT!

However, you can increase the user engagement rate on your website, by utilizing different types of media such as videos, attractive images and more. If you focus on creating quality content, with the right expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, your SEO will likely bloom in 2020.

Trend #4. Quality Backlinks

Undoubtedly, content is the king!

But, ranking on search engine is a combination of both quality content and links. Backlinks are the strong links originated by third parties, that divert towards your web pages. These links act as a token of credibility in the eyes of search engines.

Some people don’t care about the backlinks, keeping a misconception in their minds, that content alone is enough to be the one and only factor for any website to rank! On the contrary, the truth lies behind the fact that SEO-friendly content plays more crucial role in ranking the website, which means, you need strong and quality backlinks to rank your website higher on search engine result pages.

If you are creating high-quality content on your website, going out for links is perfectly fine.

So, focus on creating quality links too, instead of relying on creating quality-content only.

Trend #5: Mobile Optimization Is Crucial

It’s no secret that mobile searches are increasing at massive rate year by year!

Do you know, more than 70% of search traffic comes from mobile device.

Mobile users are increasing at an alarming rate. People search from their smartphones and search engines showcase only the websites that are well optimized for mobile devices. So, if a website is not optimized for mobile devices, it may lose many users.

In 2016, Google introduced mobile-first indexing, and has recently announced that this would now be by default for new websites.

This is one of the most important trends as, in 2020, mobile UX will determine your ranking.

Thus, it’s crucial to have well optimized mobile friendly website.

You need to pay attention to each of the key factors in mobile optimization, including simple and clear navigation, fast loading speed, click to call functionality, maps and big CTAs.

If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, each page of your website should be well optimized for mobile devices. Always remember that higher you are in the Google mobile page index, the more noteworthy your webpage will be.

Trend #6: Don’t Forget Semantic Search

Exact-match optimization vanished a long time back!

Now is the time for semantic search.

With the rise of AI and voice search, semantic search has now become more and more important.

Putting together, all this help search engines better interpret what the user might be looking for, even when the user’s query is misspelled or is too vague.

What does semantic search exactly mean?

It’s a kind of search to improve search accuracy by understanding the user’s intent to generate relevant results.

In the upcoming years, semantic search is expected to gain more importance.

Trend #7: Importance of CTR & Dwell Time

As people have become habitual of fast internet connections, they want every information within milliseconds!

In 2020, click-through rates (CTR) and dwell time will become the crucial metrics for determining the success of search engine optimization. Both metrics with provide a great insight into the performance of SEO activities.

These insights will help you understand the user behavior on your content and the website. The amount of time, a user spends on a webpage usually indicates, how contented the user is in finding what they are looking for.

Trend #8: Local SEO Is Changing

Although local SEO is not one of the newest SEO trends, but the elevating shift towards a mobile search will make it exceptionally significant.

For every business, getting on the first page of a SERP, or in Google’s Local Pack, will be essential for substantial traffic.

Do you know, 90% of people do not get past the first page of SERP.

If you have not put your thought on local SEO yet, your may have to face the lions of the local market. Simply claiming the business profile on ‘Google My Business’ is not sufficient now, you need to make your local listing more detailed. You need to cover google reviews and use personalized keywords such as “near me” to achieve better ranking results in local SEO.

Here’s An Exclusive On Google Algorithm Updates In 2019.

Trend #9: Content Length Matters

Like the quality of content, the length is also important.

Today, web pages that contain higher quality content, get more visibility.

But why? Well, the reason behind this is that users prefer to get complete information they want from a single reliable source.

Usually, an article of 2,000 words will get more readers than the one with fewer words.

Your article must be rich in information and comprehensive, this increases the session duration of the page. The more time users spend on a web page; the better get chances of its higher ranking on search engines.

Ideally, creating and publishing high-quality content regularly on your website, should be part of your content marketing strategy, so that your site always stays active in search engines’ eyes.

Trend #10: Don’t Forget Videos

People love watching videos instead of reading a blog or an article.

On an average, 6 out of 10 people prefer watching online videos on mobile or laptop over the television. YouTube is considered to be the most popular platform over the web.

Thus, most of the businesses are getting on the edge of creating online videos.

You can opt for video production services to have nice creative videos, that would attract many users than a blog.

You may be wondering, how videos affect SEO?

If you want to reach more people, you will be required to create and optimize your videos for the users accordingly. You need to involve a set of particular keywords in the title and description of your video. In this way, you may reach the largest number of people who are interested in your niche.

To achieve better SEO results in 2020, you should consider video optimization in your SEO strategy!

In The Nutshell

In this digital world, SEO is essential for every business and is now changing rapidly. If you want to keep yourself ahead of your competitors, update yourself with the latest trends mentioned above.

Still have questions?

Talk to one of our SEO experts today! The digital marketing team of Tarika Technologies comprises of experienced SEO experts as well, who with possess a complete know-how of smart SEO techniques that help the brands and businesses establish strong identities on the digital platform higher ranks, and the ability to engage better, make sale, and generate higher ROIs.

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