The most basic explanation for this is that search engines generate the majority of user-generated traffic. Without SEO, websites would have to rely heavily on bought leads and other means of promotion, both of which are substantially more expensive. In a nutshell, SEO’s purpose is to position your platform in the right place at the right time so that users looking for the services, goods, or information you provide may simply find you.
According to Search Engine Land, an average of 51% of visitors found their way to a website via organic search last year. This suggests that organic SEO traffic was more essential than paid searches (PPC), which accounted for 10% of total traffic. In comparison, social media accounted for only 5% of the total.
Why SEO is Your Most Vital Digital Marketing Tool
The key reason for SEO’s importance is that it is responsible for bringing the most traffic to any given website. Three things have an impact on this: organic traffic leverage, local searches, and reputation and trust-building.
Organic traffic is exactly that — natural, intuitive, and organic. Furthermore, most visitors will scroll straight to the results that Google provides them naturally, bypassing the advertising at the top. It’s crucial to remember this.
In any connection, trust is crucial, especially in the buyer-consumer one. In fact, many shoppers will avoid purchasing items from unknown brands or firms. Instead, they rely on search engines to find the best content. This means that the further a website is from Google’s top page, the less reliable it appears. On the other hand, once a website is on the first page, its reputation improves dramatically.
Finally, local searches are particularly crucial for businesses with a physical location. Finding your location or the one closest to them is a really useful feature.
Keeping all of this in mind, here are the top SEO trends for 2020, which will determine what changes you’ll need to make to your digital marketing plan this year.
Trend #1: Growth of Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence
Natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) are already gaining traction. This trend has continued until 2020, implying that search engines, particularly Google, would be able to better identify and define what customers genuinely desire than we have seen thus far.
NLP and Semantic AI are used by major news outlets like The Guardian and even social media sites like Quora. However, the same technologies can be used to enhance user engagement on smaller platforms such as personal blogs, medium-sized content magazines, and e-commerce websites. NLP can be used to do the following things:
- Improve the structured data markup on specific pages with large public graphs;
- Leverage semantically-rich metadata;
- Experiment with word-vectors to find topics you might want to cover in order to become relevant on a specific topic;
- Analyze the competition to quickly track which concept is driving the changes in the SERPs of Google.
To get started using NLP and AI for your business, start by strengthening the data markup on your website, implementing semantically-rich metadata to lead content recommendation results to your site, and remember to use synonyms of keywords to receive smart redirections. Because SEO is an iterative process, performing a technical audit from time to time to assess and enhance your SEO strategy and obtain the best results is always a good idea.
Trend #2: Increase in Mobile and Voice Searches
It’s vital to remember that mobile search refers to the act of accessing and using a search engine via a portable device or smartphone. Needless to say, the type of information users look for on mobile devices differs from what they look for on computers. Users looking for something on their mobile devices, for example, are more likely to need something that is location-specific and close to where they are at the moment of their search. Furthermore, given the limitations of a mobile screen, mobile searchers want short and concise information presented in an easy-to-read or absorb format. As a result, voice searches are steadily rising to better suit user convenience.
If you’re going to use voice searches, you should build conversational content that can answer simple questions. It is highly useful to optimize the content using long-tail keywords and to anticipate future user questions that will be answered by using your content in this situation.
Trend #3: Locally Oriented Queries Come to the Fore
Furthermore, because they go hand in hand with mobile searches, regionally oriented queries have become increasingly significant. This means that having your location clearly mentioned on your website, as well as map embedding options, will be quite helpful to individuals looking for your company. Local SEO is an important aspect of SEO that must be considered, especially for businesses that operate online.
Local SEO is the most effective approach to place your company on the map, both metaphorically and literally. Because that information is presented in the Google SERP organic results, it’s vital to have what’s known as the 3-local pack: locations, reviews, and prices. Schema markups are an excellent approach to improve your local SEO. By including this microdata, you can improve the description of your webpage.
Trend #4: Intent and Content-Based Keywords
“SEO specialists will have to mix pure optimization with other online marketing techniques and employ anything they can to improve the number of hits, since the total % of organic clicks in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) is declining (Featured Snippets, Rich Snippets, Local Packs, etc.). All other traditional SEO methods are still necessary, but they must be implemented differently.” Tomo Rakocevic, an SEO specialist, agrees.
Keyword research, for example, is still critical, but instead of focusing solely on keywords, SEO professionals must now consider the use of “entities,” “themes,” and the intent behind these keywords. On-page SEO continues to be important, but its nature has evolved as well. It’s not enough to just put keywords in the content. Rather, SEO specialists must comprehend the context and relationships between terms in order to optimize the post in a way that best meets the user’s expectations.
Content and keywords, as always, are critical in increasing a webpage’s Google relevancy. The ideal strategy is to divide the content and structure the articles. How-to sections, classifieds, and other such features are always beneficial. It will boost the chances of the fresh content being selected as a featured snippet.
Trend #5: User Experience is King
As long as search engine technology advances, this trend will continue. While technical SEO remains an important part of the workflow, the focus has now switched to website loading speed and mobile-friendliness for businesses trying to implement an SEO plan. To put it another way, a website that is difficult to read or loads slowly will certainly struggle to maintain high search engine ranks.
In general, the user experience is critical. Users must always be at the forefront of SEO experts’ minds. This necessitates the use of simple but effective website structures.
Given the importance of a positive user experience, use mobile optimization to ensure that your web pages are available on any device. Users are becoming increasingly demanding about the website’s performance, therefore if there are faults, they must be fixed right away.
Trend #6: Authenticity Wins the Race
Finally, while off-page optimization remains one of the most significant factors, with the advancement of AI, depending just on the power of backlinks is no longer sufficient. So, what exactly is it? Essentially, the most important trend in SEO in 2020 is for content to be as natural as possible, with a focus on users and their intent rather than search engines, and incorporating all of these factors when developing an SEO strategy. In the current context, a holistic strategy is the only way to go.
Every issue will necessitate some investigation, and you should have a list of sources from which to draw information. However, one of the most important aspects of search engine optimized content is ensuring that your articles have a unique twist or insight.
Conclusion
No matter what area you’re in or what items or services you sell, SEO will continue to play an important role in digital marketing strategy. To stay ahead of the competition, make sure your material is relevant to the topic you’re trying to address, that your website loads quickly, and that it’s viewable on mobile devices. When writing content, keep keywords in mind, but don’t use them in an inorganic way. Finally, if your company has physical locations, make sure they are properly listed on Google and that your website includes appropriate addresses and embedded maps.
Need help with getting your business found online? Stridec is a top SEO agency in Singapore that can help you achieve your objectives with a structured and effective SEO programme that will get your more customers and sales. Contact us for a discussion now.