We’ve heard this phrase from digital marketers before, but in 2020, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is really having a moment. As a result of the pandemic, more and more customers are opting for digital interactions with brands instead of visiting brick and mortar stores, which means now is the time to keep our fingers on the pulse of the ever-changing landscape of search engine algorithms. Search is now one of the main avenues we as content marketers have at our disposal to attract and retain customers. Capitalising on new and emerging SEO trends can not only please the Google bots and help give your online real estate the boost it needs to rank on the first Search Engine Results Page (SERP), but is also one of the most cost-effective ways to increase brand awareness and ultimately your ROI.
With Google now in control of more than 90% of the search market, you shouldn’t see SEO as a one-time investment, but an ongoing process of tailoring content – getting your words directly in front of those who matter the most. Over the past few years, the process of growing the quantity and quality of website traffic has undergone many changes. With Google rolling out smart algorithm updates like RankBrain, Hummingbird and the Exact Match Domain, SEO specialists and content marketers have been forced to stay on their toes and seamlessly weave in these new techniques into their digital marketing strategies, all in the hopes of securing that prime piece of online real estate – the first page of Google search.
Google’s search engine might make life easier for end-users, but the fluidity of these game-changing updates means that what used to be industry best practice five years ago could actually accrue penalties for your search ranking in 2020. For example, Google's 2019 BERT update drove SEO professionals to focus more on optimising content based on search intent rather than stuffing keywords into their online copy. So, to stay front of mind and on top of search in 2020, you need to keep a close eye on key SEO trends in the industry. We’ve collected a couple of fundamental trends that will help to keep your website on Google's first page of results, even in these challenging times.
1. BERT: Understanding Users Questions Better Than Ever
Back in 2019, Google announced one of its most innovative algorithm updates in five years: the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT for short. Essentially improving how Google search engines understand language nuances and break down search queries, BERT acknowledges the context of the question instead of basing search results on each word, which helps to give users more relevant answers.
How do you optimise for BERT?
The short answer to this is: you can’t. Industry leaders wrongly pre-warned SEO professionals about the inevitable impact of BERT and the ramifications it would have on how you optimise your articles, when in fact, BERT has nothing to do with keyword insertion or the quality of your backlinks. It is actually one of Google’s steps towards rewarding businesses for creating relevant and accurate content that resonates with end-users.
Optimising content for your customers should be the golden rule for 2020 — this means putting a greater focus on what exactly your customers’ search intent is and how they find your user experience while navigating through your website. So, we’d recommend tailoring your web copy to appealing to people’s interests and goals, not on trying to please the Google gods. The recipe for success is to create content that speaks to users’ unique pain points and leads them down the path to a solution to their problem. At the same time, in 2020 it’s more important than ever before that your brand has a multichannel, multifaceted marketing strategy so that you can reach your key audiences across multiple touchpoints. When you realise that the consumer purchasing journey is no longer a linear path that leads directly to the check-out counter, but instead involves a series of omnichannel high-intent touchpoints, that’s when you realise just how important every piece of digital marketing communication is. Over time, if your brand voice and values are consistent across these channels, it builds trust with your audience and increases the likelihood of not only converting them into paying customers but instilling brand loyalty too.
One thing BERT’s advanced language processing system has improved is the quality of the feature snippets that appear in Google searches. The new algorithm ensures that position zero (the box at the top of the Google search page) directly answers the user’s query. However, as these feature snippets grow more accurate, so does another trend in 2020: zero-click searches.
2. Zero-Click Searches: Fast Answers For Shorter Attention Spans
When featured snippets were first released back in 2014, they had a significant impact on Google’s page one design, search results and website traffic. The featured snippet is Google’s attempt at answering the user’s inquiry, including a preview of the content and a link to the source, like the best apple pie recipe except above. However, recent research has shown that these links are rarely clicked, with almost 55% of all Google searches yielding zero clicks in June 2019. This has resulted in what SEO specialists call, “the zero-click era,” where most users find the answers they need on the first results page, giving them little incentive to click on those valuable top links. So, this would imply that even if your website ranks high on Google search, there’s no guarantee that audiences will click to find out further on your page.
How do you win in the era of zero-click searches?
Google may have improved the end-user browsing experience (meaning people don’t have to endlessly scroll for answers anymore), but their latest featured snippets have a knock-on effect for SEO specialists who have to work even harder to strengthen their SEO strategy. We’ve now entered the “Age of Assistance”, where users are more curious and impatient than ever before, so we as content marketers need to ensure the answers to their pain points are clear and visible across our websites.
When it comes to the backend of the website, the best way to optimise for zero-click searches is to ensure your feature snippet copy is succinct and that you’ve spent the time implementing structured data, which helps Google’s crawlers analyse, label and organise the information on your webpages. Smart brands are now realising the benefits of having structured data markup on their websites. This tool allows you to have control over indexing rich, searcher friendly information that you want the end-users to find, instead of Google’s BERT algorithms making the decision for you.
Occupying position zero definitely increases your online presence – the trick is to use it to your advantage. And one of the most popular ways is by using structured data to improve featured snippets and rich snippets through Schema. Featured snippets drive the greatest number of clicks, attracting about 50% of the total traffic to your website. Using schema allows you to chose a specific vocabulary of tags that you can add to your HTML code, which ultimately improves the way Google interprets your content, boosting your search rankings and click-through rates. With three different schema formats to choose from, including Microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD, Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data because its scripts are relatively easier to add, update and remove.
Aside from the dilemma of zero-click searches, another SEO trend shows users’ growing preference for fast, snackable content, which has resulted in the rise of video content as part of many brands digital marketing strategy.
3. Video For SEO: Quick, Engaging, Memorable Content
We’ve mentioned before that by 2022, Cisco forecasts that video traffic will account for 82% of all consumer internet traffic. Let’s face it, no one can deny the popularity of seamless, in-feed video experiences, and they’re only going to become more important in the content marketing mix as audiences’ thirst for behind the scenes brand footage, panel discussions and riveting documentaries continue to grow.
Luckily for us, Google also loves videos. With YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world, SEO professionals are keen to utilise this channel. Why? Because this rich form of media is easily categorised by Google crawlers and instantly shareable. When audiences share your video, you can create more backlinks which help to boost your overall Google ranking. Short videos are also great for getting top positions in SERP featured snippets as well, which will ultimately help drive more traffic to your website.
Website pages and blog content with embedded videos are also more likely to rank higher on the first SERP than content that consists of image files and plain text. Videos also have the advantage of driving organic traffic from SERPs, which makes them an essential tool in the SEO digital marketing strategy.
How do you optimise your videos for search?
It’s important when creating video content that you resonate with your buyers’ personas and share your knowledge and expertise in an easily digestible way. But another useful tip to guide you when you’re producing videos is through social media listening, keyword search and monitoring the “People Also Ask” section in Google’s SERPS (a dynamic feature containing sets of questions related to the original search query) to see exactly what people are talking about in your industry.
Aside from having well-directed, engaging videos, you also need to prioritise checking the YouTube captions to make sure they match your script. Typos and grammatical errors may dilute the message you’re trying to put forward and make your innovative video fall on deaf ears. It’s also important at this transcribing stage to ensure you insert keywords into the captions, so Google’s crawlers know how to categorise the content.
4. Voice Search is the Future
The phenomenon of voice search has impacted digital marketing in a big way, with Forbes claiming that “65% of 25-to-49-year-olds speak to their devices at least once per day”, thanks to the increasing popularity of Google Assistant smart devices. Forward-thinking brands are changing the way they write, tailoring copy to how searchers speak – in addition to how they are typing more informal, long-tail search queries.
Generally speaking, long-tail searchers are beyond the “discovery” or “informational” stages of the user buyer journey and are looking for more specific answers to lead them down the yellow-brick road to conversion. Therefore, optimising your content for hyperspecific and sometimes hyperlocal content, particularly if you’re a small business, may help you rank higher in Google search and have a higher likelihood of converting potential customers. Google’s BERT algorithm seems like it was made for voice search, as it picks up the context of the users' natural, conversational language to direct them in the right place.
How do you optimise your content for voice search?
A great way to optimise your content is to identify profitable keywords and increase the amount of long-form content you create. The more long-form content you have on your website, the more long-tail keyword variations Google crawlers will pick up when indexing your website, increasing the likelihood of you ranking higher on the first SERP. Peter Boyd, President of PaperStreet Web Design, was quick to comment when it came to blogging and voice search,“Blogging is great, but simply creating 250- to 500-word posts on a topic does not cut it anymore. You need to produce longer content that answers all possible questions. Creating multiple smaller posts is not as effective as a single longer post.”
If you consistently publish in-depth blog content around popular higher-converting long-tail keywords, not only will you prove that you are a trusted expert in your industry but over time, you will also see an increase in organic traffic to your website, from engaged customers that want to interact immediately and grow your brand.
You also have to ensure that once end-users get to your website via voice search, that your website is fully functional for mobiles. It may seem obvious, but this month, Google plans to roll out mobile-first indexing across all properties on the web, analysing a website’s mobile content to determine its ranking across all device types, so this year it’s essential to take a mobile-first approach.
Social media expert, Sophie Bowman from Brand Branding PR agrees, “Desktop-only optimisation is the cardinal SEO sin. The average human spends more than four hours a day on their phone, so your web visitor’s mobile experience is more important than ever. Google’s algorithm is mobile-first, meaning it asserts the mobile version of a page for ranking. So, your website has to use a responsive, mobile-friendly display that functions well on all devices”.
The pandemic has seen more people than ever before working remotely, which has drastically increased the amount of time people spend online on a global scale. Therefore, it’s only natural that website optimisation, content creation and local search optimisation should be a number one priority for digital marketers and SEO specialists across all industries. SEO is not a one-off strategy. To sustain momentum and see returns on your investment, it's essential to keep on top of key trends while also remembering to write for people, not just for search engines. It may take a while but there’s always light at the end of the tunnel – if you’re persistent enough to search for it.