December 20, 2019

SEO Trends 2020: How to Make the Most of Google Search

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Today SEO is currently one of the youngest marketing disciplines, yet it is growing incredibly fast. It looks almost entirely different from what it was when it first started.

Although the basic principles remain the same (SEO aims to make the site easy to find and to understand), the strategies involved today are very different from those of 15, 5, or even one year ago.

What are the most essential SEO trends in 2020, and how do you implement them with the help of an SEO company in Orange County?

SEO Trend 1: Mobile and voice search

An SEO Company in Orange County states that voice search is still less common, but we know that mobile search is gaining momentum, and we have many sources to confirm this, including:

  • As early as 2015, Google revealed that in 10 countries including the U.S. and Japan, more people use mobile search than desktop search
  • In 2018, more than half of U.S. website traffic was from mobile devices
  • Users spent on average three and a half hours a day on their mobile devices last year

Hence, Google changed its priority by introducing the mobile-first index, which means that Google mainly uses a mobile version page for indexing and ranking.

In other words, if your page doesn’t display well on mobile devices, or if you have less content optimized for a mobile version, you may lose rankings for mobile as well as desktop search results.

Voice search is becoming popular, and these two trends are closely related:

  • While performing any task, both mobile and voice users may be looking for answers to random questions.
  • In both cases, the top result matters. So now instead of competing with the top five results, we are now competing with both voice search and mobile research

How to optimize your website for mobile and voice search

Make your site mobile friendly and fast (page speed matters!). Tweak your content strategy to take advantage of those unique snippet opportunities to outperform your competitors. Mobile users rarely have time to scroll, and by voice search, only one result is read to the user.

There are many options available, but when it comes down to optimization it’s all about: 

  • Research (and learn from) the currently featured snippets for your relevant queries
  • Use H2-H3 subtitles to construct content, which solves the problem behind the question that triggered the featured snippet
  • Provide quick and concise answers (no more than 90 characters) under each subheadline for Google to scroll and use.

SEO Trend 2: Semantic searching and intent optimization

Google started exact-match keyword optimization a few years ago, but our industry has been a little slow in maintaining this growth. Today, Google no longer uses actual strings entered into your search box. Instead of this, it is looking at the query context and analyzes possible search intents to deliver results.

Google is very good at understanding the searchers’ intent. Outdated content creation methods focus on a single keyword string, which won’t work.

How to optimize content for semantic searching and search intent

A simple Google search to understand how to interpret a query is an excellent first step. Do the same type of research and find other ways Google tries to solve problems for users.

Using semantic search tools is another good idea. The text optimizer is an intent optimization platform that helps you aggregate any search query into related concepts and entities.

It uses Google’s search summary to come up with ideas to expand your original copy to provide more solutions and meet the needs of Google and its users.

SEO Trend 3: SERP marketing and content diversification

For years, Google has struggled to be a destination, not just a discovery project. With knowledge graphs, quick answers, and interactive and visual results, Google has built an ultimate resource that can provide comprehensive solutions to any query.

In a search results page, we see:

  • Google.com/travel recommendations
  • Knowledge map (including maps, user reviews, basic facts, etc.)
  • Related videos (this search element is interactive because you can scroll through the carousel to see more videos)
  • “People Also Ask” (This box is also interactive: you can click on any question to read the answer and expand on subsequent issues. Interestingly, the item you clicked on determines the subject of all other related questions.)
  • Visual results, including more similar destinations, related searches, etc.
  • Organic “text” results are lost to some extent

This is where the SERP marketing by an SEO company in Orange County comes into play. You need to switch your focus from organic research results and start optimizing for all other search elements, including images, videos, and “quick-answer” sections.