Organic Traffic- A need of the hourOrganic traffic is the energy food for the website and the priority of the business. But a question pops up that does your SEO technique land you the expected results? Or your tool to SEO might seem not to be actively working, or rather effectively? Let's look at them one by one, and try to match our tools and methods so that the pertaining synergies can be invented.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an indispensable ritual of the online world. But rather than the kind of rigid rule that's followed simultaneously for years, this is a trend that's in use consistently with flexible changes in its style and endeavor in accordance to the altering marketing scenario. Quite a no. of updates is observed in the Google Algorithm in just a period of a year, let alone an entire decade.
Why is SEO an important thing to focus on?
A website is created, mouth filled with organic content, and other essentials, but not even witnessed by a single user, visitor, whether organic or not. Will you be satisfied? The answer is simply no. Because traffic is the biggest need for every business.
So to bring the website in the regular insight of its immediate target market, its customers, and the end-users of the product or service, several efforts are being made to increase its visibility through keywords optimization, Social Media Optimization (SMO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Influencer marketing, which was explained in detail in the previous article Relationship between Influencer Marketing and SEO. The outcome of all these efforts is affecting the website's visibility in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), for which the SEO specialists further use Pay per Click Services marketing.
Coming to the main course of this article, discussing the must follow SEO trends for the changing market framework of 2020, are presented below for the sake of marketers, website owners, bloggers, SEO specialists, individual small businesses, to increase their website rankings by following the expert's suite.
Best SEO strategies to win the website rankings in 2020
To make a development first, a plan and a strategy are required. Let's make one and move ahead to engage the traffic to our website.
#1. Important research on Keywords OptimizationThe queries you create in your mind are answered by Google by landing on the matching keywords. Well, this strategy is not used in the same manner as was previously opted for in the web pages. The SEO strategy works better with an improved keyword foundation, so better the research of the appropriate keyword, better the SEO optimizes.
Text or Voice, Keywords are the primary factor for any ranking choice.
The new trend of 2020 to elevate your keyword optimization follows:
- Relate 'Topics' from 'Keywords' as this will frame a bigger picture to map out the list of secondary keywords that increase the scope. Use trial and error to enter the topics one by one into Google and YouTube, the auto-suggest feature in both helps you nearing a better keyword topic or an idea relating to it.
- Research and find keywords that receive more clicks than searches. Various sites help you monitor better search performance for your keywords. Thousands of digital marketers use these techniques to optimize the results of their keyword performance. The Click Through Rate (CTR) trend emulsifies the consistency with other CTR industries.
- A good combination of the best tools must be used to reap the desired results. Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public, UberSuggest, Ahrefs, SEMrush.
#2. The SERPs will get consolidated furtherThe situation outside keeps fluctuating and so is the situation online; yes we are talking about the SERPs. The share of advertisement is widely increased, new trends of answer boxes and featured descriptions have been introduced in 2018, which are proving capable to grab a big piece of attention clicks.
The optimistic 'People Also Ask' feature that combines the several answer boxes in a row has grown quite an importance.
Further Snoopiness has been triggered by adding the text-based organic search result videos that appear just below the 'People Also Ask' box.
All these additions have decreased the organic share of the clicks, as it takes the lead of the user in a particular direction, minimizing the number of random searches to an absolute 50%. The Zero click searches nicknamed as 'rank Zero snippet' and 'position zero' is on the rise day by day.
That means that the answer to the user's research query will be available there and then, and not after surfing a dozen WebPages in a row. This consolidation of the SERPs has made the SEO, so much tough to bite.
Driving traffic is not an easy thing to go for. You have to think of a range of ideas from the whole universe to get the user attracted to your website and engage there. Some of the ideas include introducing cookies to your website so that you may have data regarding the category of your visitors, some helpful insights and tracking, advanced targeting, Omni-channel marketing, and also the use of long-tail keywords.
Other tools include ClickFlow, which provides you the insight about the effective working of your page, or a loop of pages, to increase the traffic without deliberately building links or filling it with content.
#3. Influence of Voice Search Optimization (VSEO)Take a quick look through the Voice search statistics:
- Though started small now has taken a grand shape in the search industry. The ease of search using voice search is second to none, and today we are experiencing a voice search revolution worldwide.
- The number of Digital Voice search Assistants in use worldwide from 2019 and 2023 is expected to enlarge its base from 3.25 billion to 30 billion.
- More than half of the smartphone users must have tried this feature at least twice in the past year.
- Not only the middle-age but more than 50% of the teenagers are using the voice search mode on a daily basis.
- We create content that is optimized for it; otherwise, it seems difficult to gain any organic traction.
- It has been noticed that more than one-fourth of the search queries start with the likable of mainly these 25 keywords.
- In consideration of the competition regarding the search engine rankings, the forward road is getting steeper to climb further.
- Due to this, the searches equipped in the questionnaire form will play better for SEO 2020.
- There are two types of searches - semantic search and question keywords
- We know that Google defines an 'entity' as:
A thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable. Google identifies these entities present in the question keywords with the help of semantic search. - The word 'semantic' denotes 'search with the meaning'. It is different from that lexical search where the search engine just looks for literal matches of the query data, or near variants of them, without paying attention to the meaning of the query.
- Forms of questions answered by Google are :
- Direct Answer Questions (DAQ): These questions start with the common notations of What, Which, Where, Who, When, Why, etc.
Google develops a direct answer for a direct question asked by the researcher.
It predicts the real intent of the user.
E.g. "Who is the father of medicine?" - Short Answer Questions (SAQ): Normally, these questions start with Why, can, etc.
Here the searcher gets an answer in the form of the featured snippet which provides the explanation in absolute terms.
E.g. "Can humans drink seawater?" - Long Answer Questions (LAQ): As the name suggests, these questions required long and a more detailed answer.
E.g. "How to prepare a seven-course meal?"
Generally, these questions require a detailed summary of the procedural steps to be followed and are somewhat lengthy in nature.
You can learn in more detail about the Voice Search schema markup to dominate the answer boxes in the SERPs.
#4. Influencers improve site engagement standards to a great deal. As discussed in our previous topic Relationship between Influencer Marketing and SEO, there was a detailed explanation as to how influencers help direct their ready-made traffic towards the linking site or page. The effectiveness of the content is reached as your content is reviewed by the organic audience.
Audience engagement to your content peculiarly defines the quality and its eligibility to top the search results. Not stated apparently, but Google uses such quality and engagement measures to compute the effectiveness of content metrics and then rank it on the SERPs.
The standard metrics that are vital to rank are:
- Bounce Rate: The one-time visitors.
- Dwell Time: The duration between clicking on a particular search result in leaving the page by the visitor.
- Time on page: This defines the time spent by the user to read the content of a particular page on the website.
- Return visits: The second time visitors.
- Click to Call: The business connection requests received through Click-to-Call.
- Comments and Shares: Impressed audience likes to comment and share your stuff with other people in their network.
Influence marketing holds the capability to change an entire scenario for the businesses; they can allure the whole stream of the organic crowd towards a particular brand product or service.
When an Influencer endorses a particular brand,
It receives comments and engagements by the audience grand. This social engagement and sharing will meet the engagement benchmarks that results in recognition by Google, to rank on the SERPs, driving high organic traffic and lead conversions.
#5. Mobile usability has played an important role in ranking- The way your website behaves and responds through mobile plays a pivotal role in your rankings by Google.
- The world around us is becoming lazy and is researching through all its queries by using a mobile interface that is handy and portable.
- Also, the availability of mobile is an all-time hit, as compared to other hand handled devices.
- Google prioritizes the loading speed at mobile as a key metric to determine website ranking, which is important as 95% of the organic search traffic comes from mobile.
- Google does the Indexing and ranking thing due to which, Mobile –first-Indexing was enabled for all websites.
- The strategy conceptualized for SEO 2020, should be mobile-driven. You need to follow every step to make your website mobile-friendly.
#6. Importance of data is eventual for SEO- Google algorithm is much harder to crack than before. The quality and quantity of data will be the heading priority for SEO strategy. Using cookies to track user behavior, and ideal tools for keyword research and site optimization is necessary to improve and grow.
- Furthermore, when you make use of structured data to mark up the content, it helps Google in understanding the context in a better way and gets it answered for the search query results.
- Google handles near about 63,000 searches per second according to facts collected, which reaches to a high no. when counting on per day basis.
- To rank on data, select your sources and keywords carefully to determine an explicit answer for the possible query.
- Data science is important to refer to:
- To frame structural data to impact the audience.
- Devise data following the audience query.
- Understanding user's demand and question intent.
- Using appropriate tools to generate traffic.
- Taking care of the bouncing rate, loading time, response time, etc.
- Generate links from key Indexed pages.
- Identify sources of unusual traffic.
- Identify the strategy followed by crawlers.
#7. Videos entice quite a lot of visitors.Video marketing is crucial to nail the best results. The content of the video should give the user a sense of content to ensure there ranking to relevant search queries. The video consumption per person has seen a steady rise consistently.
- They have become an integral part of Internet marketing and SEO.
- They are captive and are expected to make a longer impact on the user.
- The user subscribes push notifications for the content of their favorite speaker, or You Tuber.
- Videos enhance the authenticity and clarity of the content presented on a website or a blog.
- Captions added to the videos increase searchability.
- Video transcripts further add value to the content.
- During the lockdown, the minimum time spent on videos has increased threefold.
- People are actively taking part in learning indoor and outdoor skills through videos.
- Learning from videos makes understanding better.
Thus, including video content to your website increases the interest of the user, as they may get a definite answer to their query by following the steps visually.
How to boost your SEO with video content?Here are some of the ways to strategize higher rankings to your website content through video marketing:- The thumbnail image is quite important to attract the attention of the user.
- The schema tags must be accurate and give an absolute answer to the user's query.
- Upload your video on different platforms to gain a wider reach.
- Captions and transcripts play an important part as the video can function in the silent mode during official hours
- Make the title impressive to arouse the interest instantly, and optimize the description to manage the useful info about the video.
- Make the initial and the finishing content impressive enough to hold the audience till the end.
- Use enticing voice and phrase the voice in high and low pitch to maintain the listening equilibrium.
#8. 'Entity popularity' and 'Entity Engagement' are the key vitals for Local SEOAn entity is something unique, singular, well-defined, and distinguishable. At least half of the searches on Google have local intent, which Google can pick out pretty well, which means that the searcher wants search engine results with local companies.
For eg. If you are searching for the best hotel in Jaipur, ITC Rajputana will rank among the first, because its establishment and architecture are loved by the people in the city. In other words, that place is favored by your neighborhood, which makes it rank higher by the search results.
This authority is accorded by the 'popularity of the entity' and 'entity engagement'. The engagement stands to be more pivotal for it to rank to the top.
Entity popularity is built by the number of Brand mentions on social media sites, reviews posted, articles, videos, and other engagements. Brand mentions differ from the link, together they can work wonders, but it alone also proves beneficial for local SEO.
Entity engagement is recognized if people love your business, No. of positive reviews, Recommendations, frequent searches, finding a location on Google maps, and the like.
Frequent engagements on social media suggest that your business is enquired and talked about, which is good for Local SEO. Therefore, optimize your GMB (Google My Business) listing and keep the contact details intact and readily available by the staff to optimize the returns.
#9. E.A.T. content is rewarded by GoogleGoogle Algorithm improves with every update and becomes further tough to crack. With these, we see that Google has developed quite an understanding of the website content and the user's intent.
The BERT update strictly suggests that the content that aims to direct on the E.A.T. principle will gain the search rankings. Now, what does E.A.T. stand for? - Expertise (E): The quality of the content should never be compromised.
- Authority (A): The website needs a required authority on the subject.
- Trust (T): Some authoritative links must be pointed to gain trust on the website.
Non-related and out of the line context is not paid any heed and is rejected by Google. Google identifies the content that matches the user's query on an absolute basis. So pay attention to these essentials:
- Details: Firstly, brief content is never recognized by Google. A minimum of 500 words is recommended at least and an article or blog of a minimum 2000 is eligible to be recognized by the search engines.
Secondly, the content written or provided must be complete and should fulfill the purpose of the query. - Well written: The content must engage the user. The language quotient must not be kept too high; it should rightly get along with the user. The user must not be distracted, the content shall have the ability to keep the user's interest flowing
- Value: The information seeded in the article must be well-researched and well calculated. Any falsification of the information can disregard the integrity of the content in the eyes of any expert user. The purpose and goal of the content must be clearly stated and explained.
- Well-edited: The typos, grammar, and spelling mistakes must be corrected and checked thoroughly. The article or the blog content should be well proofread, to secure the needful accuracy.
- User Experience: The website performance, revisit, reviews and recognition by the user depends mainly on the impression of the user, in terms of language, answer to the query, its loading time, response time, and the explanation stated therein served the required purpose or not. The frequent ad pop-ups may create an annoying image while disturbing the user's reading trail.
- Schema Markup: The schema markup is to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the internet, web pages, e-mail messages, and the like. Proper add up to schema make it easier for search engines to analyze your content.
All these deliberately make-up for earning the authority scores on the website for the content and the author contributing to it. It creates an upward lift for both the author and the website if presented correctly.
Conclusion: In the above article, we deeply analyzed the various tools to optimize a website on the search engine. Not only this, but we also understood the different trends and the manner for them to be used in 2020, to elevate your website and its rankings. The SEO strategy is a slow snail, but if combined with the effectiveness of multiple tools can reap the expected results, and also the content quantity and quality were required to be significantly measured before releasing it to your website.
The users are quite smart these days, they bookmark the particular website or page, suiting their needs and language requirement, and which gives a satisfactory answer to their query consistently. And for the next time, they don't just surf the series of web-pages to find the rightful content, but look forward to other blogs or content on the same website, which reduces the click rate, your chance to appear in the search results, and ultimately rank.
That's why it is recommended to take the measures of SEO accurately and to avoid any mistake causing the user to jump off the page in the minimum dwell time. The content, keyword search, and the featured snippets all play a major role in attracting the fish to the bait. Kindly follow these exclusive SEO trends to increase your website visibility in 2020. And wait for our next interesting article to supply the vital key points which help to grow your business effectively.