Revamping your SEO strategy is a great way of encouraging more traffic to your site. The higher up the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) you feature, the more likely consumers are to click through to your website and convert to customers. This article will outline important SEO rules to follow in 2020 and share expert tips.
What will be important for SEO in 2020?
RankBrain and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
RankBrain is an Artificial Intelligence Algorithm that aims to help Google better understand the intent of search queries and provide a better result. RankBrain is self-improving; it collects data based on user satisfaction, organic CTR, time spent on the page and many other factors. Then, it uses this information to improve search results.
Google conducted an experiment where their engineers had to compete against RankBrain to sort search results. Google engineers achieved 70% accuracy, whilst RankBrain won with 80% accuracy.
How to optimise for RankBrain
There is no quick and easy fix, but the short answer is that you need quality content.
The long answer is: you need top-quality content based on search intent, with great user experience, fast load speed, a good amount of returning visitors and, of course, users who spend more time on your website than your competitors.
BERT
BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and is a recent algorithm released by Google with the aim of better understanding natural language. BERT is able to process words in context, by analysing it alongside the other words in the sentence. This will help determine user intent more effectively as all parts of search query will be processed in relation to one another.
Mobile first index
Google prioritises rendering and analysing the mobile version of the website because it saves server time and resources.
The most important aspect to work on is keeping your mobile version equal to your desktop version because what is missing in mobile will not appear in search.
Optimising for mobile in terms of usability, UX, speed and content visualisation is now a must.
Featured snippets
Featured snippets, or Position Zero, display a quick answer to the user’s search question. They appear as a text box before the first result.
Even though the snippet gives a direct answer, a lot of people still click on its backlink to read more information. Therefore, optimising for a featured snippet can be a quick way to jump the queue.
Optimising for featured snippets is a huge topic, and you can read more about it in this article from Moz.
Snippets are looking to be a big trend in 2020, so it’s worth incorporating them into your strategy.
Google E-A-T
Google scores content based on the level of expertise, authority and trust (E-A-T) displayed throughout the site. The medic update demonstrates that Google is continually striving to add value for its users and wants to privilege content written by experienced and trustworthy authors. They started highlighting the importance of this in 2011 when they launched Google Authorship, but this was removed in 2014 after experiencing some issues.
It’s likely that Google will continue to reward content that exhibits expertise, authority and trust and will become more important every year.
How to optimise for E-A-T
- Optimise your about page
- Include the names of authors – make sure the authors have a solid reputation in their fields or are at least knowledgeable about the subject they’re speaking on. It’s even more beneficial if the authors give interviews or have articles written about them. Information about the author can be displayed in an author box.
- Manage your reputation online – press releases, testimonials, interviews, etc.
Voice Search
Voice Search is a trend set to increase in popularity throughout 2020. The idea behind it’s that people will start searching through speech, which will create a huge list of new long-tail keywords.
Many websites write about how this is a game-changer, but optimising for featured snippets and maintaining consistent SEO practices are just as important. If your topic allows, be sure to write your content in natural language, echoing patterns of speech.
Voice eCommerce is another field with a lot of potential and could be a gamechanger for merchants in 2020. When people start making purchases using just voice commands it will revolutionise eCommerce. We’re currently working on a detailed article about Voice Commerce, so stay tuned.
Significant new technologies
HTTP/3 and QUIC protocol
Although not many websites had the time to migrate to HTTP/2, HTTP/3 is already hot on its heels. Both are improved versions of the HTTP/1 protocol.
HTTP/2 added many improvements, such as allowing objects like images and scripts to be loaded simultaneously. This helps achieve a better page speed and a much faster loading website. Unfortunately, only 35% of websites migrated to it.
One of the biggest benefits of HTTP/3 will be the improvement in the quality of networks for APIs and Internet of Things. The solution of HTTP/3 was built by Google and is also designed to be more secure. The HTTP/3 protocol was released and introduced on 26 September 2019. Currently, Cloudflare and Chrome support it, but Firefox is still working towards it.
WebP image format
WebP is a new generation image format developed by Google and introduced in 2010. However, many modern browsers have just recently started to support it.
The idea behind WebP is smaller images and higher lossless and lossy compression with better quality. A WebP image can be 50-60% smaller than a JPG or PNG, so having the images in WebP will make your website much faster.
Google is increasingly trying to encourage the web community to use this format.
The three pillars of SEO
While SEO is ever-changing, the three pillars of a well-optimised site – architecture, content and links will constantly have high importance in the ranking process.
Architecture
Good leads mean improved architecture, resulting in better crawling and an enhanced user experience. In the era of mobile-first indexing, it’s vital to prepare for mobile.
Internal linking
The internal allocation of link juice can greatly impact your SEO and could be the difference between ranking in the top 10 or not. It’s important to prioritise visibility for the top pages you’re trying to rank and provide less visibility for the not so important ones. It’s beneficial to link all main pages directly from the homepage and make the URL directly one level after it: www.mysite.com/target-page
When creating the internal structure of your website, you can also see what your top-ranking competitors are doing.
Structured Data
You can also give your website a better chance of exposure in the SERPs by using structured data such as rich snippets. By using structured data, your page has a better chance of being ranked higher.
It’s also vital that you accelerate your site speed and, in the process, improve user experience. The demand for shorter loading times will continue to grow this year and it’s important to stay on top of this. Ways to do so include improving server response time, optimising any images that appear on your site and implementing HTTP2 or 3 protocol as mentioned above.
User experience
Good User Experience is a must for SEO in 2020. Google wants to make sure that the user finds the best website to satisfy their needs and answer the user intent.
Here are the most important elements to consider:
- Clear navigation
- Maintain standards – if users are accustomed to finding shopping carts at the righthand side of the page, it’s not a good idea to put it on the left.
- Readability- make sure that all text is clear and easy to understand.
- Responsiveness – again we mention the mobile, but it’s extremely important. Use the Google Mobile-Friendly Testing tool to make sure that your mobile/responsive version is working properly.
Test your website design using heatmaps. To optimise for conversions you can also read our article about Conversion rate optimisation.
When striving to improve user experience, you should also keep in mind that bots should only be secondary when it comes to who you’re creating your website for. Google uses UX design as a factor in determining website quality. If you provide the best possible experience for your website users, they’ll repay you by spending more time on it. Ultimately, this will enhance your SERP performance.
Content
We’re all aware that high-quality content helps you to improve the relevancy and uniqueness of your site. Quality content will help crawlers to rank your site better and also naturally gain relevant links. In turn, this builds an audience of potential customers.
Here are some content-related SEO tips:
- Divide content with subheadings- users usually scroll quickly through long content so they can identify the headings.
- Analyse the top 5 results and write better content than them. Your content should be more detailed and useful than your competitors’.
- Use catchy titles- users love to click on headings like the ultimate guide, the secret to, in 2020, etc.
- Well formatted text- bold the important information and use italics when necessary. Google wants our text to be well formatted with maximum consideration for the user.
- Avoid cannibalisation- do not write content that partly or fully duplicates other topics. It’s better to improve old content than writing new.
- Avoid obvious content- Google avoids ranking obvious content, so ensure you write expert content that provides value to the user.
- Optimise for featured snippets.
- Regularly improve and update content.
Links
Developing a profile of high quality, relevant incoming links will remain important this year. In part, this can be achieved by sharing branded online content on a regular basis. By doing this, you remind the world that you exist and subsequently boost brand exposure.
Ensuring that users are engaging with your posts on social media is also important when it comes to boosting your online presence. However, there are other reasons this is vital. Search engines, for example, take social interactions into consideration when ranking your website.
Link building has changed a lot over the years and, because of malpractices, has lost power as a ranking factor. You should, therefore, avoid spamming, along with unethical practices such as commenting or stuffing, just for the sake of link building. Rather than enhancing your SEO efforts, this can actually have the opposite effect. Your sites will gain more value as you build links in a natural way and have links coming from relevant sites with high authority.
At emerchantpay, we can help you gain your customers’ trust by securing transactions on your website and more. Contact us to learn more about the solutions that we offer.