Your SEO strategy in 2020

Your SEO strategy in 2020
The Google algorithm is getting better every year, so in 2020 Google will be even better able to show the right search results to each individual user. Have you already defined your SEO strategy for 2020? You may be able to fine-tune your SEO strategy for the coming year on the basis of this article. In this article you will be included in the latest SEO developments and how you can optimally use these in 2020.
For starting online marketers, we briefly explain what SEO is at all:

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, or search engine optimization, and is the improvement / optimization of the technology, content and authority of a website with the aim of increasing the organic search traffic from different search engines.

But how on earth would you still do that in 2020? For example, the number of competing websites and web shops is increasing sharply or there may be a number of huge players in your industry who want to rank on the same keywords as you. In this article we will try to answer that pressing question.

SEO in 2020

Every year you have the two different camps again. One side no longer believes in SEO, while the other side bets fully on SEO For years, for example, various experts have been saying that SEO makes little sense, since the ads from, for example, Google Ads are getting bigger and longer and that a user is not makes sense to scroll after he has already read or scanned the Google Shopping results and paid search results. However, next year it also seems that the other camp is right: a well-defined and thorough SEO strategy will also help you in 2020 with your business objectives. There are, however, a number of important developments that every SEO specialist or website owner must take into account. 

1. Google BERT

On October 25, 2019, Google announced the largest algorithm update in the past five years. Google confirms that it has made changes to the algorithm to show correct search results for the most difficult searches, including long keywords. What you should know is that Google BERT has initially applied search results in English. You can set the watch correctly which is that in 2020, Google BERT will also be applied to searches in Dutch.

Since the start of Voice Search, Google Bert has become an expected answer from Google, since users who enjoy Voice Search have longer searches and specifically ask many (longer) questions. Context and pages that answer inquiries and research questions will benefit from this command, which will be at the expense of oldskool SEO scripts.

There are a number of important aspects to keep in mind after Google BERT publishes searches:

Scan the site and link structure. The context is essential to Google BERT, so help Google understand your website well.
Answer the frequently asked questions. Jump in Voice Search and Search Longer. More on this topic later in this article.
Page Speed. In 2020 it is more important than before.

For searches in English, it is now estimated that more than ten percent of searches give better results than before the update. So avoid negative impact and improve your website before entering Google BERT.

2. voice searches

The spoken search is written in every five-year trend report. In 2020, Voice Search entered a number of countries, such as the United States, in full. Number of statistics and predictions:

In 2020, half of all online searches will take place through voice searches.
In 2020, more than a quarter of searches are performed on a device without a screen.
Almost ten percent of all searches in the United States begin with "how."

These statistics and predictions indicate that Voice Search must really embrace this if you want to increase the growth in organic traffic.
The Dutch user is also increasingly ready for this shift, given the size of Google Home in Dutch families and AirPods popular with young and old.

The advice is to start designing and optimizing your website for spoken searches right away. How can you do that?

• Optimization of the user's intention. What does the user really want to know or do?
• Prepare a number of pages and messages for distinctive figures. More about this later.
• Write your content in a natural and modern way instead of the oldskool SEO method.
• Focus less on direct keywords, but focus on semantic search.
• Answer the questions you are looking for.
• Use more and more long-term keywords to increase your reach.
• I write briefly but powerfully.
• Use structured data so that Google can better understand your website.

Certainly the latter is an important point for attention. In this way the images became increasingly important and often presented. This development is related to developments around structured data. A good tip to use this is to write a page with "frequently asked questions" ....

3. Featured snippets

Featured snippets are, as it were, excerpts that appear prominently, namely on the top or side, in the search results. In most cases, they are answers that directly answer a question. The great thing is that these content is no longer from Google itself, but that this content is from third parties. So you too can start using featured snippets! Since the number of searches that start with "how" or "what" is already huge and only growing, featured snippets are a huge opportunity for your SEO strategy in 2020.

To be eligible for a featured snippet, you don't necessarily have to appear in position 1 in the search results and you don't have to be a major player in the industry. The algorithm of featured snippets works slightly differently than the standard algorithm. However, the featured snippet can normally be found in the top 5 or top 10 of the search results. A good chance to generate extra traffic when you are not in position 1 or 2 in the search results.

How do you get such a featured snippet?

    Also process the user's question directly on your page, for example in one of your headlines or even in the title of your page or message.
    Of course there is an answer to every question. If you answer the question as clearly and concretely as possible, you are more likely to take a featured snippet. For example, use numbers and write the answer immediately after the question in about 35-65 characters.

Make sure you already start writing targeted to answer all the questions users in your industry have. The potential of featured snippets is huge and one of the most important aspects to stand out organically in 2020. In addition, there are signs that Google will show more and more featured snippets in 2020, as Google is able to recognize and match the intention of the user to a page. As the search engine is increasingly becoming a source of information rather than scrolling and clicking, it is all the more important to be present in featured snippets. Moreover, it contributes to a bit of branding and authority if you are the one who answers user questions within a certain industry. It inspires direct confidence from your target group.

4. Page speed and general technique

A part that is already extremely important in determining the rankings, but that will become even more important in 2020: page speed. In addition to being an important ranking factor, users are dropping out faster and faster if your website does not meet the standards.

It is of course not a recent development. Various browsers, including Google Chrome, have been displaying warning signs for websites with slow speeds for some time. You can optimize your page speed in various ways, namely by caching, upgrading your server to make it faster, and compressing your images.

However, it is not only the page speed that is crucial, because you do not lose sight of the overall technology of the website. In addition to the well-known structures such as the site structure, menu structure and internal link structure, many websites can make a profit in terms of videos and images that take up a lot of space. In addition to compressing your images, you can choose to switch to more modern formats than the well-known, but older formats such as PNG and JPEG.

5. Link building and authority

It will also be a current topic in 2020: link building. The ultimate goal of link building is to grow your website into authority within your industry. The result is often that you see higher positions in the search results. Link building is expected to become even more important in 2020 than it is now. In this article it has already become clear that Google is increasingly able to find out the search intention of the user and the context of your website. In addition, Google is also becoming better at recognizing good, quality backlinks and therefore also less qualitative backlinks. For example, in 2020 Google will hand out more penalties than ever if you receive a lot of backlinks from irrelevant and bad domains. Therefore, do not focus on quantity, but on the quality of your backlinks. For this, not only look at the scores in terms of authority, but certainly also look at scores that Google itself gives to certain websites, such as the number of organic visitors to a website or the number of top positions on so-called "high-volume keywords".

Moreover, things will also change in the field of link building. From the spring of 2020, the use of nofollow links will change. From next spring you can also mark backlinks more specifically, such as sponsored backlinks or generated backlinks. Very valuable if you are an active link builder on relevant and high-quality blog websites.

Is your SEO strategy 2020 proof?

In 2020, Google will be in an even better position to match a user's searches to your search results. When writing content, but also with other SEO work, consider whether you are actually adding value to the user and whether you are answering the question or the intention that a user has at that moment.

What about your SEO strategy for the coming year? Is this already 2020 proof?