The SEO Landscape in 2020
At Sharp Tack Media we have taken out our crystal ball and knowing that we might be wrong in some of our predictions about what will happen in SEO in the coming months, here is our prediction. With more and more businesses going online everyday through the use of low-cost web design, the SEO market is under a constant state of high competition that is only going to accelerate in 2020. These are the five trends that could mark the evolution of Web positioning in 2020.
SEARCH INTENT
SEO experts and consultants have stated that search intent will become more important this year 2020. Therefore, Google will optimize their understanding of user searches and the quality of responses or search results. That is, whether or not the pages answer those questions. The content and its optimization will have special importance for a search intention.
In addition, SEO professionals must deepen their understanding of search engines and know what Google interprets, what users search for, and what results are offered to certain searches.
VOICE SEARCHES
Users increasingly want it easier and more comfortable. Therefore, voice searches are growing astronomically. It is a behavior that is occurring both through the search engines themselves and through smart speakers (Echo, Google Home, etc.) and virtual assistants (Android, Cortana, Siri).
This change in the way of carrying out searches makes it necessary to create positioning strategies designed and adapted to the use of longtail keywords and to every day or conversational vocabulary. In addition, the incorporation of the BERT algorithm by Google facilitates the understanding of a more natural language by users, offering them increasingly adapted results to those searches.
AMP STORIES
Google has already incorporated the AMP Stories format on mobile devices, which basically allows content creators to tell visual stories integrated directly into the search engine.
AMP stories are very similar to Instagram and Facebook stories. The only difference is it isn’t added to an app but is placed right in search result pages. So, instead of users staying on their apps, AMP allows them to view stories off of their apps with an extremely fast loading content rate.
This advance by the major search engine will gain further importance in 2020. But SEO professionals should know that it is currently in beta, requiring an application to access the experimental program and adopt AMP technology for its use.
GOOGLE DISCOVER
The new Google incorporation is aimed at the latest generations of users. This initiative would continue with the line of Google Feed, launched to offer the content that users need. And in this principle, Google Discover operates, as a link between the information that interests the user and the content that the search engine provides.
Every time the user is struck by some content, he can click “follow” to receive more information on that topic from different sources. It not only shows new and updated content, but understands that there is older information or articles that the user is unaware of and, therefore, it also facilitates access.
As for SEO work, it will influence the optimization of content. Now SEO professionals have another open way, that of positioning themselves within the content that Google Discover provides users according to their interests and needs.
THE MULTIMEDIA FORMATS
It is not new information for us to find that the content most consumed by users cater to multimedia formats (videos, images, infographics, etc.). Marketing is increasingly linked to visual content at the request of the users themselves. In this sense, display campaigns and their optimization within SEO work would come into play.
What Should I do For My Brand in 2020?
SEO, by its very nature, is a discipline that does not depend so much on the characteristics of the brand when deciding on one or the other trend, since winning a good place in the SERP thanks to natural positioning requires working in all areas. So, when it comes to saying in which SEO fields to work on, only two factors are important: the available budget and the work that has been done to date.
In general, if you have not done a lot of SEO work, it is advisable to start at the beginning, optimizing the page architecture and the loading time and attending to the SEO mobile requirements. Checking that all this is in order and is appropriate to the new requirements of the algorithms is also a periodic task of any brand, whatever the level at which its SEO strategy is. Once a good foundation has been laid, creating extensive and quality content and building brand reputation should be enough to start, little by little, to obtain interesting results in 2020 and beyond.
