Reasons Why 2020 Will Be the Year of SEO [How to Leverage SEO]

Summary

  1. As the new technological inventions come up, the parameters of SEO strategy change.
  2. With innovative mobile phones and interactive sound platforms coming up, Voice search is going to dominate the 2020 search scenario.
  3. To stay on the top of your game, the latest SEO strategies like optimizing content for voice search, mobile-friendly websites, the brand-building will gain importance.

Did you just lay your baby steps in the business world recently? Is the cut-throat competition intimidating you? Are you trying hard to not be blown away with the wave of new startup businesses every day?

Then you need to row the boat of SEO to sail through.

In today’s time, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a marketing strategy that every startup business needs to master. Before we go ahead, you should know that SEO is a dynamic discipline. SEO practices change according to the changing technology, changing mindsets and preferences of users.

SEO, in other words content marketing, is basically a set of practices by which marketers try to bring their content (product or service) in the limelight by giving it a higher ranking on the search engine. Every search engine has algorithms that read the relevance of content and rank it likewise. The parameters that Google or other search engines use change as per the user requirements as well as based on their own analysis.

For example: Content in the form of bullet points or pointers gets a higher ranking than the paragraph form because it is easy to consume content in the form of pointers.

Similarly, the use of the right keywords with high search volume, link building, keyword density, anchor text, etc. are some of the core SEO practices.

When we say, 2020 will be the year of SEO, we mean that SEO practices will undergo a change and mastering them will highly define whether your content is reaching the right audience by getting a higher ranking in search engine results.

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Let us see which SEO practices will dominate the business world in 2020.

Voice Search Will Gain Popularity

With the advent of innovative smartphones, the search method has shifted from words being plugged into search engine boxes to voice search. Keywords were born with the whole practice of searching by typing in the search box of search engines.

These days, optimizing your website for voice search is important to generate more traffic. This will be possible by adopting a conversational style in your SEO strategy for 2020.

Voice search is not only being exercised on mobile phones but also on home voice assistants like Google Home, Alexa, Amazon Echo, Voice Pod, etc.

How Will Voice Search Change SEO?

Research says that by 2020, 50% of internet searches will be carried via voice search. Therefore your content must have the quality such that it ranks in the voice search results.

When voice search is done, users generally do not use short choppy keywords that are used in the written search. In the voice search style, users search by speaking in a conversational tone. Therefore content marketers will need to have this kind of an approach in mind while optimizing their content for the search engine.

Run for Featured Snippet Will Increase

A featured snippet is a box with the answer to your question that appears at the top of your search results. This answer box is usually pulled from the top 10 results by the search engine.

According to Ahrefs, a featured snippet gives a good boost to your CTRs. They say that 8.6% of all clicks go to the featured snippet.

Here is an example of how the featured snippets will gain popularity in 2020.

I did a voice search ‘what are project management tools and techniques?’ and this is what came up.

Importance of SEO in 2020

This information is from ProofHub and it gives you a clear answer to the question you asked in your search with a list of names of project management tools and techniques. It is a good snippet because it does not give you the entire information and you will have to click on the link to read about these solutions.

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This snippet has pushed the other search results down below ‘people also ask’ questions and got more screen space.

But the complication is that all smart speakers do not use the same algorithms for answering queries. If I am ProofHub, I am happy with that position on Google, but if you ask Bing the same question, you get directed to mindmajix’s project management tools techniques impact success.

In 2020, it will become all the more important to optimize content according to voice search as smart speakers will be a part and parcel of our daily life.

Here are a few tips to feature in Google’s featured snippet and dominate voice search.

  1. When you create content, aim for long-tail keywords. Think what are the questions your readers want to ask and how will they ask and then target those words.
  2. Your title tags and headers should contain the questions your users ask. For example, if you are writing an article ‘Ultimate guide to project management’, then keep questions like ‘what is project management’ in the title tag so that you can rank for these keywords too.
  3. The average length of a featured snippet is 40 to 60 words, so keep your content succinct to increase your chances of getting a featured snippet.

You can take care of these points while creating new content. At the same time, you can optimize your older content on the same lines.

Brand Building Is Important

Most people do not understand the importance of brand building in impacting SEO. But it is an important factor for search engines to decide where your content ranks.

The trick is that you have to try to have the maximum space on the real estate of search page for your brand searches by creating your own links. So that nothing negative shows on that page.

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So How Is a Brand Built?

A brand is built by using an omnichannel approach to marketing. Blogs, social media, podcasts are some of the platforms that help you build brand awareness and also give Google more brand links to index.

The more first page results your brand has for search terms related to it, the more are the chances of your brand being better positioned when voice search takes over.

When your brand is an established one, you get more links which is an important factor in ranking. Social shares and inbound links from other sites with authority matter a lot.

You will need to build new relationships with potential customers and deepen previous relations. At the same time, reach out to experts in your niche. If they agree to share your content, your brand will be built quickly.

Mobile Optimization of Your Website Is Important

We all know what a role mobile phones have started paying in our life. 31% of mobile users use voice search at least once a week. Do you think Google will serve them a search result that is not mobile-friendly?

You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test to see if your website is mobile-friendly or not. If you fail this test, then you need to reconsider some things. Try changing your CMS ( Content Management System) by switching to something which is mobile friendly which can reconfigure its layout for different screen sizes and still look great.

Here are some tips for mobile-friendly content.

  • Keep paragraphs short.
  • Use headers after every 2-3 paragraphs to introduce a new idea.
  • Use numbered and bulleted points.

Conclusion

When we say 2020 will be the year of SEO, it is basically the impact of technology and changing lifestyle which impacts the SEO practices. Creating meaningful content is definitely the master trick but the right content will make sense when your website will first get a place in the top search results. Therefore get ready for this by starting early and already securing a place for yourself by optimizing your content on these lines.


Author bio

Vartika Kashyap is the Marketing Manager at ProofHub and has been one of the LinkedIn Top Voices in 2018. Her articles are inspired by office situations and work related events. She likes to write about productivity, team building, work culture, leadership, entrepreneurship among others and contributing to a better workplace is what makes her click.

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