4 SEO trends that will influence the market in 2020

Google’s algorithm is evolving much faster than ever, making it even more challenging when creating a successful SEO strategy. If you are wondering why, think about the fact that, Google is, after all, a very successful business and, just like any other successful business, it has its competitors. To stay on top of the market, Google needs to think of its users and come up with new ways to make search results as relevant as possible.

2019 is already halfway through, so in order to plan your next SEO campaign, you need to stay up to date with what the trends will be in the year to come.

 

Voice Search

Siri, Alexa, and other voice assistants have become indispensable for many, so it is no wonder the first trend for 2020 is going to be voice search. The trick when it comes to voice assistant search is that, because they are not typing the words directly, people tend to search for more complex phrases. So, instead of using simple keywords, it is time to start focusing on incorporating more relevant scannable phrases into your content. This gives Google more content to work with when generating results. But what do voice assistants use to generate such relevant results? Amongst other things, rich snippets.

 

Mobile-first Indexing

As people turn to mobile devices in detriment of laptops or computers, optimizing your content to be as mobile-friendly as possible is paramount. “For quite some time now, Google has made mobile performance an important factor when ranking websites, so if you want to stay relevant, make mobile-optimization your number one priority.” advise SEO experts at  Big Surf Digital.

Most importantly, even Google accesses websites as if it were using a mobile phone and does not even bother to list websites that are not optimized for small devices. This means you need to work on the page speed as well, to make sure it loads everything as fast as possible, as research shows users will close a page if it takes more than 2 seconds to load.

 

Rich Snippets

Broadly speaking, snippets are the overall search result displayed by Google for one website. It normally includes the title tag, the URL and the meta description. Rich snippets include a bit more information, making the results stand out from the crowd. The content of rich snippets can vary, depending on the content of your website. For businesses, it can include opening hours or reviews, for events it can show dates and for eCommerce, it can show product information.

 

User Experience

For 2020, it is all about user experience. Search engines are more focused on this than ever. Loading speed, content quality and relevance, as well as how much people spend on your website are all relevant aspects that Google uses to rank your website. This is precisely why you will only find websites with positive metrics at the top of the search results, no matter how spam my they may get. Google wants its users to be happy and websites with high metrics are making users happy.