The Top 7 SEO Trends of 2020

We’re six months into 2020, and the SEO trends for 2020 are still evolving. As online businesses continue to crop up every day, it’s crucial to stay on top of the competition. The SEO standards are changing almost daily nowadays, with Google implementations and policy changes coming out constantly.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what we’ve already seen in terms of SEO in 2020, and combine it with what we expect to still notice during this hectic, coronavirus-ridden year. Digital marketers from all over the world are flocking to SEO optimization pages to get acquainted with the latest trends in digital marketing.

Let’s have a closer look at what 2020 still has in store for us. Is it more of the same, or are there changes on the horizon?

1. Google Snippets Are the Present and Future of Google Search

The goal of almost every digital marketer is to get featured in the Google Snippet and drive traffic to their site. In most cases, the Google snippet displays the exact answer to the question that someone has written in the search engine.

This study by Ahrefs shows just how important Google Snippets can be to a business. They even go as far as to say that being featured in a Google Snippet is more important than being on top of Google search ranking tree.

The tendency nowadays is for the digital marketers to answer the specific question directly in the first few paragraphs of the article. Optimizing content for Google Snippets is here to stay, and is likely to get even more important.

But how do you write content for Google Snippets?

Ideally, the answer to the question should be presented in the second paragraph of the article or blog post. It should directly answer the question. This is perhaps the most important piece of content, nowadays.

2. More and More People Use Voice Search

Voice search is becoming increasingly popular due to just how effective and quick it can be. Who would have thought that voice search would be such a big hit back in 2012, when it was destined to fail?

Just take a look at this statistical analysis of voice search. It estimates that voice-based shopping is expected to jump up to $40 billion by the year of 2022. $40 billion! Right now, over 20% of all forms of online shopping are done through voice search. And this is especially prevalent for teenagers – more than 50% of teenagers use voice search daily.

But voice search is very specific in a sense that users often ask direct, long-form questions about a topic. For example, if we ask Google a question like this: “Google, what is the average height in the USA?”, we are expected to find a direct answer to the question.

But how does Google find the answer?

It crawls through the websites that it finds relevant to the question and then locates the website where this question is answered as directly as possible.

So optimizing your website for Voice search is getting more and more important, and you can enhance your voice search score by adding more lists and bullet points.

3. Variety of Content is Crucial

According to a study, up to 62% of all Google universal searches include video content. And when you search in Google for a query, you are very likely to spot a video before a piece of written content.

A mixture of the two will work the best in the future, probably. That’s because Google just loves video content, and you’ll usually find Youtube links and videos on the first search page.

For example, it might not be a bad idea to include helpful video content to your website and embed it. That will drive traffic to your site, but remember to optimize the video first.

4. Longer Blog Posts are Better

We know the good old saying that you are probably tired of reading by now: “content is king”. In fact, it’s so overused that even my grandpa should know about it now.

But only because it’s so true. Of course, Google will prefer high-quality content over poorly-written content with poor grammar. But one aspect that many seem to neglect is content length.

Longer Blog Posts are Better

If you take a look at the 5 top results in any topic in Google and open each link, you’ll see that almost every post or article is longer than 2000 words. So not only will you have to write quality content, but this content will also have to be longer than your competitor’s content. Tricky.

But then again, so many blog posts out there seem to just answer a question first and then veer off topic. This is a bad tactic, and is seen by Google as “word-pounding”. The content has to be relevant to the topic, and it should not steer away from the main topic of the article at any point.

5. Mobile First

Another “cliché” of digital marketing and SEO that you’ve probably already heard about is that mobile SEO is the key. And that could not be more true for 2020, and for the future, as well.

So many people advise new players on the market to take on the “mobile-first” approach when it comes to website optimization. That means that the site should be primarily focused on mobile devices, and only then designed for desktops.

Today, we do the vast majority of our web browsing on our phones. And the same can be said for shopping. We want to have the comfort of browsing from anywhere and at any time, which is achievable with mobile devices.

However, many sites out there still aren’t fully optimized for mobile. And that’s where there is a chance to shine through and beat the competition.

6. Keyword Research is Still Important

This is old news, but keyword research and keyword implementation is still here, and it’s getting more and more important. But nowadays, we have to worry more about writing and implementing the keywords as naturally as possible.

Keyword stuffing is an old tactic. But the importance of good, thorough keyword research is just as important.

It’s better to focus on the topics and research keywords for specific topics rather than staying on the keyword level. That gives you a bigger pool of keywords to choose from, allowing you to select the most relevant ones.

Using tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and others can solve a lot of headaches for your SEO problems.

7. The Success of Local SEO Depends on Popularity

Around 46% of all Google searches are made with the intent to find a local business. That’s why you should worry about mastering your local competition before you go on and take on the world. That’s applicable to local businesses, of course.

Usually, the businesses that are more popular will also rank higher on Google. So building a local authority, even on Google, should be your ultimate goal as a local business.

But a lot of it comes down to how you treat your customers, and what services you provide. So the mentions of your business on social media, forums, and other articles on other website can improve your authority.

Conclusion

2020 will remain a year where we will still try to master the new SEO standards. However, these standards are ever-changing, and they are changing fast. So the sooner you try to master and implement these SEO techniques to your online business, the more SEO-optimized your website will be for 2020.

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