Five best SEO practices for the year 2020

Can you believe that the concept of Search Engine Optimization is almost half a century old?

Now, in 2020, the internet is a highly crowded place. Millions of websites constantly compete for that coveted #1 place in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

So, here’s the million-dollar question you should be asking. What should I do to appear on top of the SERP?

The answer isn’t simple, as the efficiency of your SEO strategy depends on many factors. However, here is something you can do.

 

Follow the best SEO practices that would make search engine algorithms
happy

Your SEO strategy should evolve with search engine algorithms

The search behavior of people is constantly changing. It has moved from desktop to mobile browsing, and from text-based searches to voice and images.

Search engine algorithms are constantly also evolving to address the changing search behaviors. They are becoming smarter and more human-like. So, your SEO strategy in 2020 should address these changes.

Stay tuned, and we will walk you through the best SEO practices for 2020.

SEO Best Practice 2020 #1 – Combine your SEO and influencer marketing

But, what influencer marketing has got to do with SEO? You might be wondering.

Influencers are authorities in their fields. People are looking up to them for opinions and reviews. But, how do

influencers can help your SEO strategy? Influencers often own high-quality websites or online profiles. When an influencer provides a backlink to your website, the search engine algorithms consider them as high-quality backlinks.

Hence, one of the best SEO practices in 2020 is to combine your influencer marketing with link building. Request your influencers to go a step beyond the product promotion and reviews, and ask for backlinks.

SEO Best Practice 2020 #2 – Optimize for search intent along with keywords

People search with various intent – to buy, to know, or to compare. So, your keyword research should also include intent research.

What’s the common intent with which people use your targeted keywords? For example, if you are selling a blood pressure meter and target the “blood pressure” keyword, you might be hitting the wrong audience.

Most of the people use the keyword “blood pressure” has an intent to know rather than to buy. So, make sure the keywords that you are targeting are often used with your desired intent. If needed, re-optimize your page to cater to that intent.

SEO Best Practice 2020 #3 – Optimize for Voice and Image search

According to research by Gartner, by 2020, 30% of searches will be through voice. Google reports that 27% of the online population is using voice search on their mobiles.

Statistics suggest that Google picks the results for voice search from the top three of traditional search results. Hence, to drive traffic from the voice search, you need to rank high (obviously!).

To optimize your content for voice search, include more questions and answers. Within the scope of your topic, add more questions, and try to answer them in your content. This conversational flow will help in voice search.

Image search is another trend. With the introduction of Google Lens, people are searching for what they see. You can tap into this new potential audience by optimizing your images.

• Don’t skip image titles, metadata
• Organize your main content around the image
• Use fresh and original images

SEO Best Practice 2020 #4 – Concentrate on EAT

According to Google’s quality evaluator guidelines, the top quality characteristics of a web page are – Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness(EAT).

Quality evaluators are those who manually review webpages and rate them. Even though their feedback doesn’t directly affect your SEO, Google uses it to fine-tune their search engine algorithms.

So, How can you improve EAT characteristics?

• Your main content must be written by subject matter experts.
• You must have quality backlinks from reputed websites.
• Your website administration and content must be transparent.

SEO Best Practice 2020 #5 – The balanced featured snippet strategy

During the initial days of featured snippets, the SEO experts went gaga over it. However, Google is planning a de-duplication of it’s SERP. That means websites with featured snippets won’t appear again on the first result page.

If you are on rank #1 to #10 on Google search results and own a featured snippet for a keyword, after de-duplication, your rank might go below #11.

So, one of the best SEO practices in 2020 is to come up with a balanced featured snippet strategy. Do you really want to be the featured snippet for certain keywords? It’s not easy to answer this question. Depending on the nature of your business and analytics, you need to decide about featured snippets.

Follow these SEO best practices for 2020, and let us know how they have helped you improve your search rankings.

Do you have some tips to share? Please do share them in the comments below.