2019 brought lots of new things for search engine optimization that made optimizers perform certain changes in their techniques. Google announced two years back that it would be using AI for up to 30% of search queries, and the search engine brought many updates throughout the year that made SEOs think from a different angle.

Now, when we are about to enter 2020, one thing is for sure that the old techniques of getting more and more links for a page aren’t going to give any benefits.

Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) dead? Neither SEO nor its link building died. However, the tactics changed with effective advancements in Google’s search algorithm. Google invested to be the best and for that, the search engine has been degrading sites with low-quality search engine optimization.  On the other hand, the organizations or digital marketers who follow what Google says get top search ranks.

If you also have got your online existence and willing to increase it to a great extent, you must follow these 5 trends that will lead in 2020:

5 SEO Trends to Follow in 2020

Content

 Without any doubt, content has been the king for some recent years and the trend will lead in 2020 as well. A survey by Statista states that content marketing was the top-most digital marketing technique in 2018 that digital marketers used across the world. Content writers write such content that can amuse both users and search bots.

Your content must impress both the readers and search engines. Moreover, the content on your website, social media pages, and all other domains should be unique, engaging, relevant, and SEO-friendly as well. The words you use in the content should be potential enough to describe who you are, what you do, and what you offer.

There is great importance of content because it has an effective role in both On-Page and Off-Page SEO.  There should be enough content on each page of your website and you must have added your target keywords in them respectively. Apart from it, the quality of content is important when you are posting guest posts, articles, or infographics to increase the exposure of your business.

With all these important uses, content-led the SEO techniques in 2019 and it will continue with its leading position in 2019 as well.

Page Speed and Mobile Friendliness

Google sternly announced that it would give top ranking to the sites that load faster and provide better experiences to their users. Google included page speed as a ranking factor back in 2017 and since then it has been one of the most important practices in SEO. The world is getting faster day by day and the trend of page speed has no stops in 2020 as well.

A site has to load fast not only on desktops but on mobile devices as well. The increasing number of a mobile user's alarmed Google as the search engine has added mobile-friendliness also in its ranking factors. In fact, Google is using mobile versions of websites for the purpose of indexing and ranking. The search engine started this rolling out mobile-first indexing in 2018 and it will dominate in 2020 as well.

To check and optimize the page speed of your site, you can make use of leading tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and others. These tools help you check the insights of your page with adequate recommendations to make the page load faster and better.

Here are some quick tips you can follow to improve your site’s load time:

• Optimize the images.
• Improve server response time.
• Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
• Reduce combine files.
• Minimize time to first byte
• Enable compression

Branding vs search engine optimization

In today’s highly competitive online market, you need to understand the strong connection between search engine optimization and branding. In fact, branding is a ranking signal for online businesses. At Pubcon 2017, the leading Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, Gary Illyes confirmed that Google uses the online brand mentioned in its search algorithm.

Considering this, organizations and digital marketers make full use of this trend of brand mentioning in their circles and other online platforms. The more properties you mention of your brand, the better Google will understand your brand authority.

Google gives importance to brand reputation as it matters a lot for ranking. The search engine prefers the brands that have a good reputation, advertisement, and trust among its audiences. For better branding, you can go for strong and quality backlinks based on White-Hat SEO. Don’t know what is White-Hat SEO? Contact us!

A quite dramatic situation for SEOs in 2020 is that linkless mentions are getting more weight than linked ones. Up till now, it was just a hollow victory to get your brand mentioned without a link on a reputable platform. However, today, it’s rather a triumph for you as Google doesn’t need the links anymore rather the search engine is assessing a brand with the value, relevance, and quality of the page more.

Voice Search

Voice search has been one of the rising trends in 2019 and its importance will extensively increase in 2020. Google brought lots of new innovations in recent years to improve voice search. The search engine succeeded in its cause as the devices like Google Home, Amazon Echo, and similar others has effectively engaged users towards voice search. In 2018, optimizing for voice search was a hot topic in the digital world and the trend continued in 2019 also.

To make your top position in voice search, you can optimize your content in such a way that it can effectively give the answers to the queries a user asks. The content should get to the point, should be conversational enough to get the engagement of users, and should also be easy to understand.

Conclusion

SEO is one of the most important parts of digital marketing that you must practice in order to get maximum organic traffic. However, the trends in SEO constantly change with the passage of time and it’s important for you to stay updated all the time to be relevant and up-to-date with the latest trends!

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