Top Ten SEO trends to follow in 2020

Rest assured that Google, the mother (mai-baap) of all search engines has major plans for 2020 for strengthening its hold over the SEO market, where it has already cornered a lion’s share — 87.96%, as of October 2019. Microsoft’s Bing accounts for 5.27%; while China’s Baidu’s trails much behind at 0.57%. In sheer value terms, the global visual search market is estimated to be worth $14,727million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 9% during 2018–2023.

These statistics clearly imply that going forward, Google My Business is going to becoming the hottest platform for online brands’ visibility and search-ability on the internet. Given Google’s majority stake in the SEO market, we at LitmusBranding.com make the following top trend predictions for the search market in 2020:

1. Spends on keywords going to be up

Expect brands to up their spends on keywords that are going to bring them the clicks. You may want to use Rank Tracker along with Google Search Console to identify what keywords can be optimised for clicks on your website to get the maximum kick from your SEO initiatives.

2. Rich and Featured Snippets are going to be a rage

These snippets pack in stunning images, reviews and prices of products, etc. For identifying what kind of snippets would grab you the eyeballs and search ranking you are after, use WebSite Auditor and Rank Tracker. But before that make sure that your data is well-structured. Log in to how to structure your data for best SEO results. Also learn more about the specific characteristics of featured snippets from here.

Recommendation: How to improve SEO for your E-commerce store to generate bucks

3. Google My Business will outperform all platforms

Haven’t listed your business on ‘Google My Business’ yet? That can be suicidal. The search giant is building it as a powerful information repository/backlink for businesses. Traditional SEO tools work on the website — but you got to also check what powerful backlinks your competition is using outside of the local pack. Click on this link to understand how backlinks work, and find out which local backlinks Google considers important to assign you a higher ranking to websites that are using these backlinks.

4. Content will remain the King

Google’s latest algorithm BERT is all about content-enrichment. We are not talking about stuffing your content with keywords here — but enriching content semantically and organically for meaningful impact on the target readers. Again you may use Rank Tracker to know what’s Google’s interpretation of “good content” to get the search rankings you are after.

5. User-Generated content will become even more important

Realism is in. People like to see more of their own kind in brand promotions. Hubspot gives these ten great examples of brand campaigns based on user-generated content. The idea and the objective is to put your customer in the centre of your campaigns.

Recommendation: Advanced SEO and the works

6. Use of social listening tools will go up

With social media accounting for 34.5 per cent of global digital ad spend in 2017, up from 23.2 per cent in 2013 — brands are likely to spend more on social listening tools. Log on to Hubspot listing of ten best social listening tools to use in 2020 to keep a close count of your brand’s mention on major social media platforms.

7. Story-telling as the most popular ad format

When you get personal, you grab attention. That’s the secret behind all story-telling. See how ‘stories” have become common currencies of media exchanges among young users of Instagram and Facebook. Refer to common techniques used by Ted Talk speakers here; or access a short list of popular software tools that can be used to weave stories (Infographics, memes, stories, videos) into engaging content piece here. Of course, Canva remains the most popular of these tools, to this day.

8. Video popularity will continue to bust charts

The only change is that shorter, 15-sec spots (called ‘Bumper ads) will take precedence over long formats videos. Market watchers are gung-ho about videos and predict that roughly 86% of marketers are presently using video content to advertise, educate, and entertain and this trend is only growing to pick up steam over the coming years. Easy to use video editors like Clipchamp Create are making it cheaper and easier to make short videos. A Google study reports that 90% of bumper ad campaigns boosted global ad recall by an average of 30%. Here is one great example of a “bumper ad” made in a regional language- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGrz0ByxGI&feature=emb_logo

Recommendation: How to write SEO friendly content — include these 11 imperative elements

9. Memes still hot on whatsapp

For their humour-laced quotient, memes popularity is showing no signs of abating, especially among the young sers of whatsapp. There are loads of free software tools available for creating instant memes here and also gifs and videos with this tool. Both are super easy to use, even by amateurs.

10. Integrate voice in your content

With artificial intelligence, machine learning and chat bots taking the internet world by a storm, voice search is becoming very important in promoting a brand online. Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Assistant have enriched user experience like never before and made every device communicable. Read More about Voice Search Optimisation here.

Want to have more SEO tricks up your arm? Check out Local SEO Guide for Small Businesses from SEOPowersuite. Or simply shoot a mail or call LitmusBranding.com, a leading digital marketing company in India.