TOP 7 Major SEO Trends in 2020

Are you getting ready for the New Year? Of course! We choose drinks, menus, we are interested in what color to celebrate, what should be on the table. The desire to keep up with trends also works in SEO, and all year round. We advise you to study, analyze and implement SEO trends tricks and life hacks on your own website.

In this article, I will tell you what to pay attention to, what aspects of the site to check and what should be at the heart of the project development strategy in 2020.

Key SEO trends in 2020:

• Expert Content
• YMYL-сторінки/сайти
• SERP view targeting
• Мобайл UI/UX
• Website loading speed
• Integrated marketing
• Artificial intelligence

Now let's take a closer look:

1. Expert content

This trend in promotion has been relevant for several years now and does not lose ground. This is due to several factors:

• Google is working as hard as possible to ensure that the search results satisfy users (they answer not just a specific question, but reveal the desired topic as fully and in detail as possible).
• Increasing requirements for content in terms of impact on users (YMYL pages, I will talk about them in more detail below).
• The variety of sites and information on them makes users naturally want to compare, check, seek confirmation or refutation.

Therefore, content requirements in the form of 100% uniqueness, keyword density from 1 to 5%, text watery content of no more than 15% for text.ru or no more than 65% for Advego are no longer the main criteria for quality content.

Requirements for texts in 2020

Then what kind of text will be a working tool in SEO 2020? Answering next:

• Expert. This term is currently receiving a lot of attention. But you need to clearly understand its meaning. Expertise lies in the essence of the text, in the terminology used, in the most detailed and understandable presentation of the material to the average person. It is best if an expert in a particular industry creates this content himself. For example, a hotelier writes about vacations, a travel agent speaks about monitoring cheap tours, an agronomist talks about seedlings. If this is not possible, you need to bring an expert and a copywriter together. Do not engage in rewriting and inventing.
• Interesting reading for an interested target audience. It is important not just to write text on the topic of the page. Your text should contain the information that your visitor is looking for, and only then be selling. It is necessary for you to clearly understand that the text you deem to be suitable is not always the same for your target audience. When in doubt, engage focus groups. If you do not know where to start, feel free to write out all the questions on your topic. Clear answers to them, with subheadings and examples, would make the desired text.
• Structured. The text must be well-written, both in form and content. The main thing is the logic in the order in which information is presented. No repetition, confusion. It is worth using headings, subheadings, lists, tables, infographics. At the same time, it is not necessary to try to sell a product or service to the user from the first sentence. Present your product: what it is, what features and characteristics it has, cost and “sales” go last. If we are talking about a new visitor to the site, he must first be interested. The text should also solve this problem.
• Actual. No need to write about what happened a year, two, five years ago. Describe what is relevant today and will be relevant in the near future. Exception: if the topic of your article is “product X story”.
• Illustrated. Let's not forget about the visual component. Most users first of all pay attention to the picture and only then decide whether to go deeper or go to another resource. Do not be afraid to shoot a video of the process: operation and unpacking of goods, a story about the service.
• Optimized. And only after following the previous points, start optimizing: prescribing keywords, LSI phrases, H1-H6 headings and introducing other text optimization factors.

Read more about how to write texts for a site with examples in this article.

2. YMYL pages/sites

In other words, your site must fully comply with the requirements described in the Guidelines for Assessors from Google. At the beginning of 2020, we focus on the version of September 5, 2019. But we are following the updates, since there were two of them in 2019 alone, which is a signal not to relax and be vigilant.

I remind you of the topics and directions of sites and pages that belong to the YMYL type:

• News & Events.
• Law and State.
• Finance.
• Purchases.
• Health and safety.
• Information targeted at groups of people (for example, based on religion or race).
• Other pages and sites that can influence people's lives or make important decisions (choice of housing, job search, etc.).

As you can see, in fact, all sites are partly or completely belong to the YMYL type. Therefore, this factor must be taken into account by absolutely all sites, so they will not repeat the fate of the CCN cryptoportal one day.

3. Optimization for changes

What projects should be focused on today:

• Optimized for Featured Snippets. It is important to understand what queries in your niche get zero position. Get a position in the TOP-10 for these queries, check the completeness of the answers to the query and optimize the content for this type of search result. And here it is important to work with the user correctly with the help of content, so that he would have a desire to click on this snippet, and not get an answer in the search and close the browser. Or, in topics where the answer is quite unambiguous, work on promoting and recognizing the brand so that the next time the user turns to it, and not to the general search.
  
• Favicon. It is already present in mobile search results, and Desktop is in the process of implementation, but there is already a large audience of coverage. A favicon is another way to draw attention to your snippet.
  
• Structured data or in other words - micromarking. In 2019, Google continued to work in this direction: adding new FAQ, HowTo and Q&A markup types, changing markup types for site page ratings, etc. You need to use as many different types of markup on your site as possible. This makes it possible to stand out and increase the CTR of the snippet. Which means getting traffic and sales - in fact, the goal of any business. See the full list of supported types here.
  

AggregateRating micromarking implementation

AggregateRating micromarking implementation

• Search results block on maps. For many queries, including commercial queries, a block with maps occupies a special place in local search results. In some niches, these are three organizations, in some - four. Optimized site, card with as much detail as possible, good rating and relevant reviews in the card - all of this is the key to successful ranking in local search results. And that means additional opportunities for getting traffic and sales. After all, the block with maps does not exclude the presence of sites also in the top of search results, which doubles the reach of the audience.
  

Local issuance - search + card block

• Drawings in a snippet. Adding themed images to landing pages and optimizing them for search queries is valuable not only in terms of image search. Images are also pulled into the snippet of the site page and are an additional factor in increasing the snippet's attractiveness and gaining user attention. This is especially noticeable in mobile search results, when the first screen has 2, maximum 3 results, in comparison with Desktop, where 4-5 results are visible. There are two options for submitting drawings for issue:

And this list is constantly updated. Therefore, I recommend to follow the SERP both in your niche and the one related to the latest Google updates, and adapt sites for it.

4. Mobile UX/UI

In 2020, we are no longer talking about making a website adaptive, it should already be the default for everyone. SEO 2020 trends dictate us the requirements for the appearance and convenience of this very adaptive site. It is caused by the growth of mobile traffic share; in the world this indicator only from smartphones has already broken the psychological mark of 50%.

Wherein:

• 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase (HubSpot).
• 50% of consumers visit a retail outlet within 24 hours of a local mobile search (Marketing Land).

More data here: https://www.onlinemarketinggurus.com/blog/seo-statistics

Stock up on Mobile devices, analytics systems and get down to business. Analyze:

Do you want to be in the top and have not only traffic, but also sales/conversions? Mobility is an opportunity for the growth of each site without exception!

5. Website loading speed

Programmers quietly hate anyone who says "the site is slow to load." Because increasing the download speed is a rather laborious process of improving the main and additional indicators which does not always yield the desired result. This is a problem of quality development and technology.

Today and in the coming years, the following software technologies which initially include speed minimization are gaining more and more relevance:

• PHP version 7.x. Is your site on an old version? If it is below 5.x, it makes sense to think about the new site in general. The rest - involve programmers and update the version to the newest one, in which your resource will remain operational.
• HTTP/3. We are getting ready and at the first opportunity we are switching to a new hypertext transfer protocol.
• Lazy load. Haven't implemented it yet? Then it's time to do it. Read our case study to learn how this affects download rates and more.
• webp. Lossless image compression format developed by Google. Its implementation makes it possible to save up to 50% of the weight of images. But there is one problem: this format is not supported in Safari and FireFox browsers below version 65. Before implementation, evaluate your target audience - if the share of traffic using these browsers is extremely small and does not bring income, then you can safely switch to WebP.

Important: download speed must be checked from mobile devices and with poor mobile Internet, so there is more user objectivity in your results. And remember, users expect mobile sites to load just as well, or even faster, than they do on PC.

6. Integrated marketing

The competition is growing. Search engines are increasingly focused on advertising, their own services, on the accumulation of users within search engines. This all leads to the fact that using SEO exclusively as a channel for attracting an audience becomes risky and in some niches is not fully justified, given the necessary efforts to achieve the desired results and gains. Therefore, the trend of an integrated approach in the promotion and development of the project is gaining more and more relevance. In other words, integrated business marketing. And if you are still focused solely on SEO, it's time to think about where else your target audience is, as well as what channels can become financially effective so as not to drain the budget in a non-working direction.

What channels to attract customers I recommend to consider:

• Contextual advertising. It's not about mindlessly buying ads for the most competitive and expensive keywords. It is necessary to select related and / or cheap queries, with a competent study of negative keywords. Work out the audience to target advertising. And test with a limited budget each strategy to achieve maximum returns.
• Social media. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin are all channels to attract potential buyers. The main thing is to choose those social networks that are most focused on your business area. So Pinterest is not suitable for the B2B segment, while Linkedin can give a significant increase in target audience.
• Branded traffic. In pursuit of new search traffic and new users many people miss such directions as working for a regular client, as popularization and positive perception of the brand. This can be a reliable foundation for a business that will not be affected by any change in the search results, or the emergence of new competitors in the niche, or changes in the search engines algorithms. This is your rear.
• YouTube. This channel is suitable for almost everyone. But, like any other, it requires constant work. And in addition to representing a business on YouTube, it is also an opportunity to use those same videos on the site, which means that the output increases. In addition, the popularity of video continues to grow - many users prefer to watch video content instead of reading text. This is also worth remembering.
• Thematic directories. The opportunity is shareware or with minimal cost. It allows not only to be present where there is a target audience, but also works favorably in terms of brand promotion and work with a link profile.
• Additional presence in marketplaces. It's no secret that this type of platform has a pretty strong organic presence. This is a sales tool. You need to work with it, but not as the only source, but as an additional one, so that your business does not become a hostage to these sites.
• Classical marketing methods. It is especially relevant for local businesses, but there are also working mechanisms for regional ones.

For maximum efficiency, I recommend that you first study the possibilities of each additional channel for your niche, and only then gradually introduce your business into it. Do not spray yourself too thin trying to do everything at once, it can play a cruel joke on you. Gradual implementation will make it possible to test and check the performance more objectively, gradually increase the volume of applications, without leading to the situation “There is no one to process applications”.

7. Artificial intelligence

In October 2019, Google representatives announced the successful implementation of BERT technology, which is based on machine learning. We wrote about the features of the technology, the geography of implementation and how to prepare the site for this algorithm in this article.

The introduction of artificial intelligence into the search algorithm is not a new topic, but its influence will grow. So, you should not lose sight of it. If algorithms are trained to understand text by meaning, then in pictures they can not only read captions and descriptions, but recognize elements. This is an additional argument in favor of improving the site's quality. If earlier we said that every page should be useful, then with the growing influence of artificial intelligence, every element, every file, every pixel of the site must be placed for some purpose and solve a specific task.

Conclusion

Summing up, I want to once again focus on the main promotion trends in 2020:

• Expert, relevant and interesting content.
• Sites or individual pages that fully comply with the YMYL requirements presented in the Google Assessor's Guide.
• Optimizing websites and landing pages for SERP is not just writing an attractive title, but looking for ways to stand out more significantly, thereby increasing the CTR of snippets.
• Working on improving the quality of the user interface and constantly working to improve the user experience of sites from mobile devices.
• Constant and regular work on improving the download speed indicators.
• An integrated approach to the development of the project online and offline will make it possible to more firmly gain a foothold in the niche and be more flexible to changes in search algorithms or other areas of activity.

And remember, artificial intelligence is already very close. If you do not take care of the site's  quality now, then later the “blows” can be too painful.

This is not a complete list of factors that will affect SEO promotion in 2020, but they will have a global impact on your project. Study. Analyze. Implement. And if you need, we are always ready to help!