SEO Trends for 2020 That You Need to Know

In 2020, we can only expect the competition for the attention of Internet audiences to become even more intense. More and more businesses appear each day, all raring to get to the top of the search results.

Add to that the fact that search engines, Google, in particular, will continue to make changes to their algorithms in the coming year. SEOs must be on their toes to stay on top of the latest SEO trends. Here are some of the changes, which include the further ascendance of video, voice, and mobile as well as premiums on longer content and possible openings for non-Google search engines.

Content is King, and Video is the King of Content

It has been said time and again that content is king. To be more specific, with the ever-growing popularity of video, there is no doubt that it is the type of content that sits on the throne.

Research has shown that video content is many times more likely to appear on page 1 of SERPs than a web page with plain, written content. Experts have also been predicting that by 2022, videos will account for 82% of all web traffic.

If you want to jump onto the video bandwagon, then start embedding more of it on your website. Optimize it and add copy on the web page so that Google will understand what your video is about, allowing it to index your video appropriately.

Voice Search Will Get Bigger

In 2019, some 40% of adults use voice search at least once per day. By 2020, the total number of searches is projected to reach close to 50%.

With about half of all searches triggered by voice in 2020, SEOs will face a major challenge. Since voice searches are distinct from typed ones, SEOs have to come up with matching voice search strings, and the best way to do that is for them to be more adept at thinking and speaking their online audience’s language.

Longer, High-Quality Content

If the articles on your web pages have 2,000 or more words, your content will likely become more visible than pieces with much fewer words. It’s also logical to assume that the higher the word count, the longer users will stay on a web page reading it. With the increased dwell time, the chances of Google rewarding that page with more organic traffic will also be better. With this, we can expect websites to carry lengthier articles in 2020.

Length, however, isn’t enough to get Google to notice it. Content must also be useful, relevant to the queries users make and answer users’ questions as comprehensively as it can.

Don’t Neglect Non-Google Search Engines

No one will dispute the dominance of Google in the search engine game. It has been the best search engine available for years, and it will likely stay at the top for many more years to come.

That, however, doesn’t mean other search engines won’t be making waves of their own. In fact, other search engines are already beginning to rise. In 2020, more people will be using other search engines like Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and DuckDuckGo, which, incidentally, has been growing in popularity because of the premium it puts on privacy.

So if you’re an SEO professional and you want to make an impact on other search-enabled platforms, then optimize your websites for them, too.

The Dominance of Mobile Search Will Continue

Consider this: In 2019, 80% of Internet users used a mobile device to surf the web. About 40% of online transactions are also done on mobile. And with Google openly making an effort to improve the mobile search experience by implementing mobile-first indexing, there is no doubt that mobile search is now the king of the SEO landscape and will remain so in 2020 and beyond.

In other words, it is utterly necessary for every SEO out there to optimize for mobile. Failure to do so means reaching your SEO goals is going to be an uphill climb. Incidentally, optimizing for voice search means you’re also optimizing for mobile, so it pays to make a little effort toward this end, too.

These are just some of the SEO trends for 2020 that you need to know. If you’re already aware of them, double your efforts when following these trends and improve your chances of generating more targeted traffic from search engines.