10 Trending Points in SEO in 2020 [Interview with 50 SEO Experts]

Trend 1: 

BERT and User Focused Optimization

In 2019, BERT, a new algorithm launched by Google, received a lot of attention. It was natural for SEO professionals to learn how to optimize for BERT.

But before thinking about optimizing for this particular algorithm, ask Kelly Stanze. Kelly Stanze, a search strategist at Hallmark, focuses on user-focused optimization and content delivery technology.

In other words, it recalculates the access point for the user's search and places the content accordingly.

"We're looking at how something is crawled, indexed, and served in several different search environments," Stanze said.

"When users search for something, they have more options than ever before. Keeping the basics of clean structure and content delivery in mind will be more important for SEOs."

With the inclusion of BERT in the search ranking and emphasis snippet algorithm, `` Google has drastically turned search into matching search intent rather than string matching, '' says Eli Elli, a growth consultant and advisor. It is the word of Mr. Schwartz.

"You have to write content that is relevant to the user's search intent, not the text that users use when searching," Schwartz said.

"Keyword research tools will be less relevant to the key data sets for content creation. In 2020, really smart SEOs will get up from their desks and talk to their customers. What they are doing is to find out. "

"Keyword research is going to be an old technique," said Frederick Dabout, senior program manager at Bing.

"Natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning are not showing signs of slowing down, and we can expect the search engine to shift further from keyword to search intent in 2020," said Davut. States.

"SEO planners and tool providers will need to shift their efforts to search intent research to meet the needs of users."

Jen Matthew, senior SEO manager at Groupon, pointed out that "Google isn't focused on whether content or pages match keywords, but on the basis of user search intent. We will continue to update to optimize the results."

"SEO reps need to understand what this means for their content, and they need to understand what Google's past updates are driving these trends."

"In the last few years, we have focused on search intent and gained a better understanding of the customer journey," said Duane Forrester, vice president of Industry Insights at Yext. Understanding search intent plays a key role in the future landscape and is essential to the survival and growth of many online businesses.

"If you focus on your customers' search intent, you'll know where they fit along the path," Forrester said.

"Providing the best answers to the questions that arise along that path will help us more reliably engage customers and drive conversions."

What does this mean for you?

According to Keith Good, SEO strategist at IBM, "Watch how users talk about the challenges, issues, and needs of each phase of the buyers journey."

"Furthermore, we should look beyond the purchase of the buyers journey to address the needs that arise after sales, including support, opportunities to become advocates, build communities, and maintain relationships for future purchases. You need content that has been updated, "Good added.

"Always keep an eye on customers," said Sam Hollingsworth, director of search at Elevation Tensousant.

"Many brands forget or understand what attracts and impresses potential customers. Customers want real value," Hollingsworth said. States.

"Like a real store, customers want to know if you have a customer perspective or are a reliable partner to build long-term relationships (hopefully for life)."

Search Harmit Lead SEO and Owner, Carolyn Leeden, hopes that the change in qualitative and human-only search will happen in 2020.

"Many marketers market their products and services without talking one-on-one with their target audience," says Leeden.

"If we don't talk to customers and don't understand why they behave, we limit our ability to create smart and overall strategies." Says Sara Garbatch, senior account manager and Search and Audience Insight for the company.

"Stopping treating SEO as a seasoning to add to digital marketing is more demanding than ever on companies. Treating it as a key ingredient in business planning," Jones said.

"SEO reps will need to improve their overall marketing and digital asset understanding skillset. There is less need to fix SEO issues, and there is no need to fix marketing and business issues. It will increase. "

Trend 2:

 High quality, optimized content

"It has and has always been one of the lifebloods of SEO," said Search Engine Journal assistant editor Anna Claw.

That is content.

"Content affects everything in SEO," Craw said. "From site structure to the internal link strategy of the links you build."

"To be successful in 2020, you must write something relevant and worthwhile," said Tony Wright, CEO of Light IMC.

"That means SEOs need to learn how to write content or hire people who know how to write content," Wright said.

"Google's editing skills are not yet complete. There may be some content that doesn't need to be ranked, but the day of the best content wins."

"The best content on your topic, at least the content that will be important in that topic. Set your goal to retain it," said Eric Enge, General Manager, Perfective Digital. States. To do so, your content should be evaluated by Google in the future.

"This will give you an effective victory in long-tail searches (approximately 70% of all search queries) because it builds the authority of your site and reduces demand for your content. It will help create a direct positive impact on creation and ROI, "said Engi.

"Furthermore, this approach to content is nothing less than the approach Google is looking for to meet the needs of its users, and is a market investment that Google does not make, because Google It's going to be algorithmic."

"2020 will be a year of freedom from keyword obsessions, '' said Jesse McDonald, IBM's global SEO strategist and Jessica Levenson, a SEO and content strategy consultant. I have.

Stop habits such as individual keyword ranking, page views, and random content creation.

"We need to focus more on the topic," McDonald said.

"Switching to focus on a topic creates content that covers the entire conversation (with the customer), rather than worrying about a single keyword targeted by a particular page," McDonald said. To tell.

"We should adopt a well-crafted and organized cluster of content that provides a thorough and intuitive experience while meeting business goals," Levenson said.

"It's important to know the next answer users want, and they can be summarized below," Levenson said.

According to Aja Frost, a leader in content SEO at HubSpot, "another thing to watch out for is content cannification."

"We recommend that you review all content with overlapping rankings. We will integrate, redirect, and archive as needed to ensure that all pages rank higher with a unique set of keywords," Frost says.

Trend 3:

E-A-T and unfair advantage

"In 2020, Google will continue to look at its overall reputation, the EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) of certain companies, and the individuals who have published content on behalf of the companies," said Path Interactive's SEO director. Lily Ray says.

"Companies with bad credit, bad customer service, or other credit-related issues will have tough times," Ray said.

"These trust issues involve not only reviews and feedback on your brand, but also technical and security issues on the site."

Ray predicts that in the area of ​​YMYL (Your Money, Your Life), it would be more difficult to rank higher in natural search results without sufficient expertise and credibility to write those topics. ing.

"In 2020, reliability will be very important to publishers," said Grace Kindred, junior technical SEO analyst at NES UK.

"We will focus on high quality content and fake news," said Kindred.

"The focus on author credibility (author recognition and showing authority in a particular area) is more important than ever, and so is the site as a whole."

According to Search Engine Journal founder Lauren Baker, "the nofollow-inspired approach is an attempt by Google to better understand news sources, articles and references to academic research." That is.

"There are ways to make it easier for Google to understand the authoritativeness and authenticity of certain content, such as author qualifications (defined by structured data markup) and fact-checking schemas. Even published stories, "says Baker.

Simply put, "the offline effect extends to the online world," said Jason Bernard, owner of Kalicube.pro. Every business needs to find its own inequity advantage.

"In entity-based searches, such as the rise of the Knowledge Graph and the EAT, the ability to create offline reputations in an accurate and convincing way will be a major differentiator," said Bernard. He states.

"These offline events, such as conferences, awards, and partnerships, are not immediately valued by Google. We will make them available online, communicate them to Google, and help them understand Google."

Alexis Sanders, senior manager of SEO at Merkle, shared how to be digitally competitive.

Trend 4:

User Experience and Technical SEO

"The big trend smart CEOs will focus on in 2020 is user experience," said Brock Murray, co-founder of seoplus +.

"The user experience is the overall experience, including contact with search results, the experience on the landing page, and after visiting the site. Imagine remarketing, drip campaigns, personalization for returning visitors, etc." Murray said.

"Think about the value you can offer and think about how you can help them get the best experience while they are visiting."

"Technical SEO is an important part of the user experience debate," says Goode.

"I think Google will do a lot to make up for technical mistakes (canonical corrections, hreflang corrections, etc.), but the importance of SEOs strengthening the technical SEO base is more It's going to be big, "Goode says.

"It's no accident that Martin Spirit spends a lot of time talking about technical best practices from Google's point of view, and we need to think about that."

Discussions on technical SEO and user experience should include the topic of site speed and page speed.

Dan Tyler, SALT.agency's SEO account director, says that the discussion around site speed has been revived with new Chrome "warning for slow sites" and speed report in Search Console etc. Mentions.

"We need to talk to the developers again, and in some cases we may need to refresh the page templates and redesign the way assets are imported," Taylor said.

"Going into the technical arena will take into account the technical SEO ecosystem," said Arainda Solis, founder and international SEO consultant at Orainti. JavaScript framework, PWA, automation of SEO for large sites, etc.

"The move has started several years ago, but it will be clearer this year," said Solis. `` In 2020, the focus will be on JavaScript frameworks, app-driven businesses that have begun to shift to the Web thanks to PWA, and automation of tasks related to SEO for large-scale sites using machine learning technology with Python. right."

Trend 5:

Mobile SEO

Is it surprising that mobile SEO is a key trend in 2020? But it is not. Wright says:

"Many of the customers who come to me have mobile sites, but the results are often terrible," Wright said.

"To survive 2020, we need to take steps for 2017 and modify our mobile site."

What does that mean?

"We will create a mobile-first site, and then apply it to the desktop version," Kindred said. "This will eliminate the need for speed optimization after launch."

"If your website isn't mobile-friendly, you should take action immediately," said LS Jo.com founder and CEO Chris Jones. No waiting.

"Every online report must reflect mobile performance at the forefront," Jones said.

"Rather than imagine a user sitting on a desktop computer, in many cases you should understand that the people who find your website are via mobile."

But mobile SEO is not the end. You should study mobile search results.

"SEOs need to actually see mobile search results." What search results, what traffic can be expected, and what optimizations impact revenue "To know," says Cindy Kram, CEO of MobileMoxie.

Trend 6:

Structured Data

It goes without saying that high-quality content is important in 2020. However, algorithms do not fully understand context.

"That's why we need search engines to give" hints "to better understand content in order to deliver search results based on searchers' search intent," said Jeremy Nauff, CEO of Spartan Media. He says.

"Implementing structured data will help search engines understand not only the elements on a page, but also the relationships between those elements and how those pages relate to other pages on your website." Naf said.

`` In the end, not only Google but also Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and AI chatbots using structured data will be newly introduced in the future so that you will have the opportunity to be discovered by customers through all channels We want to gain the edge over the features that do this, "said Marsa Ban Bakul, CEO of Shema App.

"Successfully implemented structured data can be a layer of your marketing data," said Van.

"We'll publish your content to every machine, search engine, voice assistant, and chatbot. We can deliver your services to customers everywhere and every moment."

"Smart SEOs will use structured data for their analytics work. They know what parts of the content will yield what, and use that data to help the company with content strategies, marketing strategies, product features and more. Use it across the board. "

"Even if the basic markup is completed within 2019, don't worry," said Sherry Fagin, a search brand ambassador for SEMrush.

"New types of markup are continually being added and updated," Faggin said. "If you neglect the implementation, you will be subject to manual penalties. You should not assume that automatic insertion features, such as plug-ins, can completely implement structured data."

Trend 7:

Optimizing for Entity and Knowledge Graph

"Findings of the future will increasingly reflect the real world," said Bill Slauski, SEO Research Director at Go Fish Digital.

"Google is looking for ways to include information related to entities in search results, such as through expanded queries," said Slauski.

"It's possible to optimize the entity for your site, for example by optimizing it to Google's Knowledge Graph. Measure whether it appears in the Knowledge Graph."

According to Greg Gifford, search vice president of SearchLab Chicago, "Because local search is the center of entity-based search, everyone is aware of what is happening in this area. It should be. "

"Local search has been around the entity for years, and without having to own a website, you can rank your local business high," Gifford said.

"Google measures real-world visits and has recently patented a technology that uses" visit quality "as a ranking factor. "

Dickson Jones, founder of DHJ Ventures, said: "Most of the underlying content needs to be tied to the determined entity. Writing information around the entity in a semantic helps a better answer to the user journey. Content-based solution Not only will it be the content that Google deems better for better search results. "

"In 2020, internal links will be noticeable, but they should be based on things, not strings," Jones said. "Understanding a unique knowledge graph about yourself allows us to link these concepts to the interests of both users and crawlers in the content we control."

Do you want to recognize your brand or business as an entity? Here's some advice from Arena Benny, SEO and Content Leader at Nextvia.

"If we can publish original industry reports, expert editorial edits, and influential statements in the market, Google will recognize you as an entity," said Benny. "The signals associated with these entities will help keep the display high."

Trend 8:

Link building and brand building

Do you want to get top-notch links in 2020?

"Link building will change from a dark era to a customer-first approach in 2020," said Shannon McGeek, head of PR and content at Aira Digital.

This means the following three types of journalism.

1.Planned articles:

Topics reported annually by journalists at specific times (eg Black Friday, Valentine's Day)

2.Articles that are planned and respond to change:

It is a timely event or theme reported by journalists, but it has the characteristic that editors and journalists can not understand the exact story until writing in the morning of the editorial meeting.

3.Articles that respond to change:

Breaking news, with features such as being written here now, that are unplanned and unpredictable.

"In 2020, link building will have branding implications," said Carrie Rose, co-founder and creative director of Rise at Seven.

"SEOs will be responsible for building links and placing media to drive traffic and brand exposure. It's not just about links that help rank search results." Said Rose.

"Current link building is the core of the brand and is not considered a brand building activity."

"It's essential to build a brand that people want to trust and do business with," said Cassie Gillett, senior director of digital marketing at KoMarketing.

"Customers are becoming smarter and more predictive in terms of marketing," Gillett says.

"The more they trust you, the more you share your content (links), the more you talk about you (and its value), and the more you buy your products (profits) It will be like that. ''

Trend 9: 

Focus on visibility, not just blue links

In 2019, zero search results became a big topic. In 2020, the importance of SEO on search results screens will only increase.

Chris Shepard, founder of Zyppy, says that responding to zero search results will be key.

"Brand marketing will be more on Google, not on your website," shepherd said. "Smart marketers need to learn how to adapt and win their advantage, and work more strategically on the information presented in search result snippets."

"This is also a basic tactic to increase the actual number of clicks for impressions, such as optimizing highlight snippets, leveraging new schemas (eg FAQs and HowTos), anti-images, optimizing favicons," shepherd said. Including ".

However, "planning for 2020 will require more than just handling zero search results, but optimizing for more than just blue links," Cram said.

"The top position displayed below the highlighting snippet or knowledge graph is different from the top position without them," Cram said.

"Similarly, even if you're not in first place, if you see it under People Also Ask or Interesting Finds, you won't get much traffic. Because you get

"We should respond better to the current search results. They should get clicks from places other than traditional natural search results, such as in map packs, news, and events," she added.

Trend 10:

Programming

"In 2020, you should begin learning programming languages ​​such as Python and R to reduce time-consuming tasks," said Britney Muller, senior SEO scientist at Moz.

Automating SEO will open up the following marketing benefits:

• Branding
• Design a great customer experience
• Storytelling
• Speak in the language customers use
• Hear from target markets and provide thoughtful, timely responses
• Providing ease of consumption of content (in the way the user prefers)
• Human power
• Paul Shapiro, head of Catalyst's SEO division, said: "Programming makes SEOs better SEOs, and they have more opportunities to be hired."

"The use of more than Excel for analysis work is a big advantage. It will allow you to do more sophisticated analysis and will also have the following effects:"

Integration with other data

Applying machine learning to solve complex problems

Decisions that are usually difficult for human input (if time for input is limited).

If you have any quires about the article above, feel free to contact me. I will be glad to hear from you.