Over the past few years, SEO has changed a lot. It is no more about keyword stuffing, spamming links, and thin content. Fortunately, Google has stamped out those shady practices which were done to manipulate search engine results.
For the purpose of improving the quality of search engine results and for avoiding shady SEO practices, Google keeps making changes to its algorithms.
Each year, Google makes hundreds of changes. Some of Google’s major algorithm updates are Panda and Penguin that affect the search result in significant ways.
So, let’s take a look at some of the most effective SEO techniques that can get you actual results in 2020.
1. Update or Republish your old Posts:
A blog post goes through various phases. These 5 phases are:
- The Spike Phase: this is the initial stage after the blog is first published
- Trough Phase: At this phase, the blog struggles to get its traffic
- Growth Phase: At this phase, the traffic suddenly increases
- Plateau Phase: At this phase, the growth in traffic stops
- Decay Phase: At this phase, the traffic slows down
But you don’t need to worry, there is a solution to this decline in traffic. The solution is updating or republishing your blog on a regular basis. Here are some things you can consider for updating your posts:
- Add some content to the old blog
- Add data/research
- Merge similar articles
- Add relevant pictures or video embeds
- Get fresh backlinks to your updated post
- Add the current year to the heading tag
2. Prioritize Mobile-First Ranking:
Google uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. According to a report, 72.6% of internet users access the internet through their mobile. So, it is very important for a website to be accessible on desktop as well as on mobile devices.
After Google’s Mobile-First Indexing, it has become mandatory for all website owners to have a mobile version of their website as well.
What is mobile-first indexing?
Mobile-first indexing means that Google will first use a mobile version of the content for the purpose of indexing and ranking. Since the majority of people access the internet through mobile, Google bot has started indexing web pages with the smartphone agent.
Launched on 1st July 2019, mobile-first indexing is enabled in all new websites by default. For older websites, Google will continue to monitor or evaluate web pages based on the best practices.
How to prepare for mobile-first indexing:
- Create content which is easily readable over the phone
- Make sure that both your mobile and desktop sites have the same structured data
- Verify your mobile site as different property in Google Search Console.
- Put the same metadata on both mobile and desktop version of your site
3. Loading Time Optimization:
A Website with a good loading time will definitely work in 2020. From the very beginning, website loading speed is considered as one of the crucial ranking factors by search engines. Google started considering site loading speed as a ranking signal in their algorithm way back in 2010, and still, it is one of the important factors that decide your website position on a SERP.
Let’s have a look at some ways to improve the speed of your website.
- Use a better hosting option for your website. Selecting a decent host is very important as most of the users expect a site to load in 3 seconds or less if a website fails to load within 3 seconds, users use to abandon the site.
- Optimize the media file on your website. High-resolution images are heavy and take longer to process. Try to keep the image size under 100kb for achieving the ideal loading time of the website. Some of the tools that can be used to compress images are JPEG Optimizer, Tiny PNG, etc;
- Eliminate unnecessary JavaScript and CSS files as these files can be quite large.
- Reduce redirects, as redirects require extra processing time which in turn increases website loading time. Serve your site to users directly.
4. Produce More Video Content:
One of the most guaranteed ways of improving your conversion rate in 2020 is including video content in your SEO strategy. When Google assesses the relevance of a webpage to a particular keyword, it doesn’t just take texts into account but also considers the image and video contents. offering a mix of all three texts, images, and videos, one can improve the ranking of their website by showing Google that your content is varied and valuable.
Also read: Difference Between SEO and SEM
According to a survey, 85% of internet users watch online videos. This indicates that businesses should start using video as a part of their SEO strategy as video content has more capability to capture a broad audience.
How to Optimize your Video Content for SEO:
- Embed the video on our own website
- Create compelling video
- Share your video on social media platforms. This is a great way to improve engagement on your social media platforms, which will in turn benefit your SEO as well.
- Make sure to have an engaging thumbnail image
- Write a keyword and catchy title and description for your video as it plays a crucial role in the ranking of your video on the search engine result page.
5. Improve Voice Search Ranking:
As per a report, by the end of 2020 more than 50% of the searches will be conducted via voice search. Voice search has become one of the crucial aspects of SEO, which can’t be ignored in 2020.
Here are some tips on Optimization of a site for voice search:
- Target or bid on long-tail keywords, as it is how people actually use voice search.
- Focus more on local search, as people use voice search for “near me” questions. 90% time people do voice search to find places to visit, restaurants to visit, hotels to stay, etc
- Try to use more conversational language instead of robotic language in your content. Do a study on the conversation style of people, what question keywords they are using, and what type of questions are being asked most.
- Get listed on Google My Business, it will let Google know your business location, and this way you can rank for “near me” search queries.
- Optimize your featured snippet, as more than 40% of voice search answers come from featured snippets
How to Optimize your snippet:
- Create content that answers the question like FAQ pages
- Keep your content fresh, update it frequently
- Answer questions from your Google My Business Q&A section.
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