How to Nail the User Experience with SEO in 2020?

 

Year after year, we see how the digital world evolves and grows. Now more than ever, digital marketers and SEO experts are tasked with the never-ending responsibility of consistently changing strategies, user intention optimizations, and how to align a growing thirst for quality content with your business goals and brand identity. With the rollout of BERT coupled with the existing RankBrain and Neural Matching algorithms set in place by Google, putting your customers’ experience first tops the chart in terms of importance. In order to stay on track and compete with your competitors, there are some clear trends for SEO in 2020 you should consider.

 

Setting Up Your SEO to Face Google Algorithms

 

So far, we are aware of the 3 main ranking algorithms Google uses to provide its audience with the best possible user experience, but is it possible to do SEO for all three? In short, no, however, we are able to pinpoint certain ranking factors that can make sure you’re giving your site its best chance at surviving SEO in 2020. Google’s Neural Network and BERT algorithms are in place for user intent and offering a better-personalized user experience; however, RankBrain is still relevant and a key target for SEO agencies to focus efforts on. 

 

Let’s take a look at these top 7 SEO trends for 2020 that will help grow your business, build quality content, and gain perspective on the user experience.

 

Understanding the New Deal with Zero-Click SEO Trends?

 

It’s clear that in Google’s nonstop passion for being the go-to search engine, new trends are popping up that are changing the SEO and marketing game, whether it be for the better or worse. Now more than half of search queries result in zero-click searches. This is the apparent effect of rich & featured snippets, Google’s Local Packs, knowledge data maps, and other SERP features.

 

The main effect of this is usually for localized search queries that include key phrases like “near me” or “hours for x store” and other local-based searches. These searches, usually do not yield any conversions and are mainly used for time or location-sensitive searches because they are needing a simple, quick answer.

 

 

Don’t Trip Up and Miss Out on Rich & Featured Snippet Opportunities

 

Since we’ve seen a spike in 0-click searches, it becomes logical to ensure we are optimizing for rich and featured snippets in order to boost your business and take advantage of advancing SEO trends for 2020. Just in case, the terms “rich” and “featured” seem familiar, let’s provide one to two lines of explainer for each:

 

Rich Snippets contain images, star ratings, and reviews, in addition to the standard title and description. These are typically easier to rank than featured snippets, but still much more difficult than ranking for textual SERP position.

 

Featured Snippets is the large section of information that sits at the top of a SERP page and usually goes into a very precise answer for search queries. There is normally stiff competition to rank for this SERP feature, and however, they yield much higher click-thru-rates (CTR) than most other SERP results.

 

Leveraging Mobile UX For SEO Gains in 2020

 

Let’s face it: Marketing now is certainly not what it used to be 10 years, 5 years, or even a year ago. Search platforms are always learning and pushing toward offering the best user experience, end-to-end. Lots of users have grown more autonomous and bypass ads altogether, many even have ad-blocking extensions on their browsers, so what can be done to reach this hide-and-seek style of a user?

 

Why does the mobile user experience matter to you?

 

Without drawing out a long-winded answer, more and more searches are being done through mobile devices. This means more of your customers are viewing your site on some type of smartphone, tablet, or other mobile devices. Have you taken a moment to personally look at your site from a mobile device? How does it feel to you? Does it represent your brand and similar user experiences of browsing via desktop?

 

With more consumers turning to their mobile devices to make decisions, conduct product searches, and in a growing number of industries, purchasing actions. Having a site that is optimized for the mobile experience is expected to have more effects on rankings for 2020. Are you giving your mobile users the best experience they can get? 

 

Curating Creative Quality Content That Attracts, Educates, and Converts

 

Most SEO experts say that quality content matters, some will go further to explain why it matters. Online advertising has also been undergoing some dramatic changes, many of which are a result of ad delivery and costs. The costs are expected to continue to rise for online ads, and there is still no guarantee your audience will react to your ads. Most ad clicks result in super-high bounce rates, as many viewers stay on these types of pages for less than a second.

 

This is the driving force behind crafting high-quality content. Not only does it position your brand as an authority in your niche, but it also educates your users and generates quality business leads because of the content you’ve produced. This SEO strategy has not changed and is an essential part of any SEO strategy. Better content is rewarded with better SERP positioning in search engines like Google, whose sole goal is to deliver the best search experience on the planet.

 

The type of content you produce is also a factor in determining its quality. Over 2/3 of users click away from content that has a salesy feel to it. If you’re being overly promotional, then you could be turning your traffic off and sending them into the arms of your competitor who focused on their needs and not a business perspective when developing their content.

 

Value Content Expected to Dominate Natural SERP Results

 

Just as much as quality matters to ranking, the length of your content is also important. The main reason for this is to provide users with single-location information pages, which can be accomplished by creating longer content to answer more questions your audience may have.

 

Readership among articles sees a spike once content reaches a certain length that provides enough information that it starts to involve the users more and speaks to their interests, questions, and aids in the development of a strong community.

 

CTR Control: Is Dwell Time the New Bounce Rate?

 

The number of clicks your SERP listing receives is very important in determining the popularity of your content. This is known as the click-through-rate or CTR and is calculated by comparing the number of clicks your result gets to the number of times it appears on SERP pages in total. While your CTR is an incredibly valuable metric to ensure it is intact, the amount of time someone spends on your page before leaving is just as important.

 

This is known as the bounce rate, more specifically it can be calculated into a session duration per user to get an average time on page for users. The higher this is, the more relevant the content appears and the more search engines will be signaled your content is time-worthy and attractive.

 

The best way to conquer low dwell times is to make a responsive design that has on-page user interactions that add value to the existing content. This can be a fun and creative infographic, an Industry-based calculator, interactive images (before & after sliders, flash frames with short game objectives, etc.). These are proven ways to keep users on the page and interacting with your content which both helps guiding them closer to your funnel and shows search engines how important your content really is to users.

 

Linkbuilding Remains the Name of the Game

 

Linkbuilding is the idea of prospecting quality links from other authority sites that point back to your content, landing page, or other aspects of your business digitally. It has been a growing focus for the last few years and is one of the few ranking factors SEOs can handle. Having an established link building campaign is essential for building an authoritative web presence and generating targeted traffic gained from high-level backlinks which can come from industry experts, .govs, .edus, and other strong domains that search engines deem an authority. Keep your link game strong and build quality backlinks in 2020.

 

Reach Your 2020 SEO Goals with the Right Strategy

 

Taking note of these upcoming trends and getting a head start on its implementation will help you gain valuable rankings, quality traffic generation, and connect with your audience by providing the best user experience possible. Some other methods are available as well.

Wishing you to dominate the 2020 SEO market!