SEO Trends: What to Expect in 2020?

What is the better way to spend the post-Christmas period than reading about trends for the new year. When writing your search, thoughts arise: “What will SEO look like in 2020? What trends will be there? What strategy should I use?

Most of the SEO trends of 2018 are also the SEO trends for this 2020. Why? Because they are megatrends that are not only very important for a year, but in principle last longer. Growth of voice search will be a great change in SEO trends but digital marketing trends change over years.

So, here are our top 7 SEO trends for this year 2020:

1. Data Structure and Relevance

Google is improving on structured data processing and content capture on Web sites. Even non-branded data can now be perfectly processed by Google. There, the content of the websites is graphically processed to provide users with the best possible response to a search.

In 2020, Google will further encourage the processing of website data. The search engine will increasingly use structured data. In 2018, Google frequently experimented with featured snippet content.

These tests show that Google really only presents the most relevant content included by users as “featured snippets”. You can also visit “SEO Agency Dubai” for getting better consultancy on feature snippets or either way you can join the best “SEO Forum” online.

What you Can Do:

There is no guarantee that Google will play your content as if it were a “featured snippet” in SERPs. But with a clear text structure, paragraphs, and unique content, you can make it even more relevant.

For example, it is wise to answer specific paragraph questions for the “topic” of a URL. Google demonstrates this approach as “When we recognize that a query requests an answer to a question.

The structured data, which provide rating stars in the fragments of text, are already standard for many online stores. If you want your website to be suitable for data to be structured even better in 2020, you can check how in our XXL Guide for JSON-LD.

2. Mobile

After Google launched its first “Mobile First Index” in 2018, the search engine focus in 2020 will be even more targeted at mobile devices. In recent years, Google has worked with the “Mobilegeddon” and the Mobile-First-Index to raise awareness of mobile content between SEO and webmasters.

The data also supports Mountain View’s search criteria experts. After all, more searches are now done through mobile devices than through desktop computers, with an upward trend.

What you Can Do:

You should optimize your web store or website predominantly for mobile devices. This is especially important for pages that download and move at high speed, that have high usability and that are easily consumed by content.

But what does it mean to consume easily? Texts should be as short as possible and should be well structured.

The contrast should also be high enough so that your content is easy to read even on the smallest screens. Always remember that mobile users spend little time on a website and it takes only three seconds for a mobile site to load before giving up.

3. Voice Search

With the increase in the use of digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home or Apple’s Siri, the need to search the web through voice search will also increase. As a result, users’ search behavior will also change over the long term.

According to a survey carried out by Google, it is young people who especially use voice search. For example, 41% of young people between the ages of 13 and 18 surveyed talk to their smartphones every day.

Comscore predicted that in 2020 around 50% of all searches will be done by voice. This development is obvious, as it is accompanied by the increasing use of mobile Internet, as well as the consequent diffusion of digital assistants.

With the smartphone, nobody worries about entering long questions with the keyboard, voice search is the optimal solution.

Annual Google Trends reviews also show that users also ask specific questions to Google. Google has also been listing questions with interrogative pronouns in its retrospectives since 2016. This is no longer surprising in relation to voice search.

So no one will say in the voice search of your phone “Italian restaurant in Valencia”, but they will say “Ok, Google. Where is the best Italian restaurant in Valencia?

Voice search will increasingly challenge webmasters in 2020, who will have to answer increasingly specific questions to users.

The importance of correct answers on Google to user questions is based on the message from the Google Webmaster Congress of December 17, 2018. Since then, rich texts for question and answer web pages have also been displayed on SERPs.

What you Can Do:

In order for Google to quickly provide an adequate response to a search through voice search, your data must be well structured. It is also important that you use your content to try to provide concrete answers to specific questions.

To help you with content optimization, you can use an interrogative pronoun tool or verify with Google Suggest what questions users ask about your products or content.

More than ever, it is about your content providing real value and providing a concrete solution to a user’s need. Now you can take care of the corresponding marking for voice search.

Speakable markup has already been posted on schema.org for the “spoken”. To date, (status: January 2020) is still “pending”. However, it is worth taking a close look at the marking.

4. Content

2020 will definitely end with texts written exclusively for search engines. No more time for typing in the longest possible word in the hope that Google and the user would choose the correct one.

Content optimization is increasingly based on “Memorable Experience” as described by Marcus Tandler in his speech at the SEOKomm 2018 conference. The user should take something from your site and also remember your site in the future.

This approach can be expanded to include the idea of ​​Robert Seeger, an expert in brand development. He also spoke about the 3H concept at the SEOKomm 2018 congress.

This implies that the content must always represent the brain, the heart and the attitude for difficult topics. In this sense, the “memorable experience” consists of the texts attracting both the intellect and the emotions of the users.

Also, the perfect content expresses an attitude of the company. This can be shared or not. In any case, a target group you are looking for, finds exactly the content you were looking for.

What you Can Do:

Try to create the best content that exists on the Internet about your topic. This content should give your target group exactly the added value they are looking for. For this, it is important to respond as best as possible to the user’s intention.

Are your users looking for information or do they want to buy something? Regardless of what you ask, get to the point and offer quality.

5. IA

With the introduction of RankBrain in 2015, Google is officially expanding its AI experience.

Previously, Google was already known to work with AI, but only with the decisive article from October 26, 2015 on bloomberg.com Google publicly confirmed that the RankBrain algorithm exists and the search engine uses AI to generate search results.

Since then, Google has used AI and machine learning to answer some of the daily searches. About 15% of daily entries in the Google search bar have never been entered before. Therefore the RankBrain algorithm takes on the task of answering all these requests in an appropriate way.

But RankBrain is only part of the artificial intelligence that Google uses. Google has meanwhile created its own website that outlines the principles that Google follows in the development of artificial intelligence. What Google is doing with AI is summed up by the group in one sentence:

This means that Google in 2020 will again improve the delivery of the best content to users when they search. If Google Artificial Intelligence can talk to strangers or draw, RankBrain will help you analyze your content very precisely.

A simple juxtaposition of certain keywords, including filler words, no longer offers any more potential for achieving the best rankings.

What you Can Do:

By 2020 at the latest you should focus on having excellent content and a technically functional website for an optimal user experience. Invest the same time you spent searching for Google errors in content quality and technology.

Your users will not love your site because you have achieved the best short-term ratings using dubious methods, but because you deliver real value on a quick page.

Gary Illyes of Google had previously said in the 2017 Search Engine Journal that it’s easy to optimize for RankBrain. The content must be natural. His short tip: let others read your web texts. If they sound natural to you, that’s good for RankBrain, too.

6. Backlinks

The Backlinks are always a hot topic of discussion in SEO. Originally they were an important link between the websites on the WWW. Currently they still are. However, search engine backlinks have come under fire over time because they have been artificially misused and fixed by an SEO Expert.

In 2020, Backlinks will continue to apply, but one thing comes to the fore: each referral link must provide high-quality traffic. Therefore, you shouldn’t consider a link from a website that is way overdue in SERPs as a valuable backlink.

In Short : the relevant backlinks for your website are ultimately the links that bring you traffic. To get links like that, you don’t have to be a magician. If your content is of high quality and your website works perfectly technically, backlinks with traffic should come automatically.

What you Can Do:

With your backlinks make sure they meet EAT guidelines . Quality Raters use these standards to evaluate a website (Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, Section 3.2). The page providing the link must have the necessary expertise on the subject of the page to which it is linked.

Also, the linked page must be an “authority” to this problem. This may mean that the linked URL itself has often been linked by relevant pages that comply with EAT guidelines.

Trust provides a link page if, for example, you have good reviews or if the author has a respectable profile. Therefore, links to your website should only come from websites that comply with these guidelines.

7. Progressive Web Applications

Progressive web applications have not often been on the SEO agenda. But in 2020 it will be a good opportunity to consider if your own website cannot be made as a PWA.

Especially if your website still doesn’t respond. The benefits of PWAs are manifold. They offer the “best of both worlds” and combine websites and applications.

Progressive web apps work offline, can send Push messages, and are installable as a native app on the smartphone’s home screen. Also, you can use the full screen.

What is interesting for SEO is that PWAs can be indexed by search engines and work on all devices. For usability there is talk that PWAs do not need to be downloaded or do not need updates.

Progressive web applications thus satisfy all the requirements for a website that are important in 2020: they are fast, mobile-focused and offer the opportunity to become a true “staying experience” on the screen of smartphones as “bookmarks of the application”.

What you Can Do:

Analyze your website and see if it is worth implementing as a PWA. Familiarize yourself with the subject in any case. So you can now gain significant experience with PWAs.

Aleyda Solis has written a very comprehensive and inspiring article on progressive web applications, which we recommend here .

Conclusion

Anyone expecting big news or crazy predictions in this article must be disappointed. In our opinion, they will be the great mega-trends that will occupy the SEO world in 2020, such as mobile, Google voice search or AI.

Ultimately these are still challenging enough for this year to be an exciting year for SEO. What do you think? What trend do you think we have forgotten? Have you done something special? We look forward to receiving your feedback!