2020 SEO Trends
SEO is a fast moving little blighter – it’s the rodent in a digital game of cat and mouse. Just when you think you’ve got your claws into to toy with it for a bit, the damn thing dashes up a drainpipe where it plans its next succession of stealth moves.
Search engine algorithms evolve year after year to make the search space more technologically sophisticated. What makes SEO so intriguing is the fact it does have pace and stamina to keep up with digital trends in consumer behaviour. But if you want to maximise your SEO potential, you’ve got to keep up too, which means having your finger on the pulse.
Here are 4 SEO trends to watch out for in 2020:
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Google BERT
Last month Google started rolling out its latest algorithm – Google BERT, designed to better understand natural language. This is said to be the biggest change in search since Google’s RankBrain released 5 years ago. It’s also likely to affect 1 in 10 search queries. If you haven’t heard, BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers which basically means the algorithm is trying to understand language with a human approach – thinking like a person, rather than a computer. Not much of a surprise when you consider the advances in machine learning.
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Linkless mentions
Did we ever think we would see the day where there would be value in a mention without a link? Well here it is. Google is now counting brand mentions and mentions of brand’s products/services as rank signals, WITHOUT necessarily having a link back to your site. Obviously a link is much more valuable, but it does mean that finally linkless mentions of your brand across the net will count for something at least. Our advice would be to still grow your backlinks where possible but to also capitalise on brand mentions by engaging with them.
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Zero-click searches
We have been spending time and resources shortening click depth and improving user experience with solid internal link structures for when users land on our websites, but one major change for 2020 is the fact that more and more users will get the answer they desire without even needing to click beyond the SERPs. The use of featured snippets, knowledge graphs and Google Packs have helped to structure data more efficiently meaning vital information that’s relevant to user search is pulled through to the Google page, giving instant gratification.
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Voice search
As I covered in a recent blog we are on the cusp of seeing big developments to voice search and how it’s used, particularly across social media. Comscore predicted that by 2020 around half of all online searches would be done using voice. When you consider this and the release of the new BERT algorithm, it’s glaringly obvious that conversational based searches are the way forward. Let’s stop optimising our sites for robots and focus on the human mindset.
The conclusion
What do all these trends have in common? They are all utilising artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand context much more efficiently and provide answers much faster. If we aren’t factoring this into our SEO strategy then we really ought to be.
Whitefish Marketing is a digital agency based in Folkestone, Kent with deep skills in SEO and content marketing. Get in touch with us on 01303 720 288.
