(Newswire.net — January 14, 2020) — “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. This is a great way to summarise the past year of SEO, as well as what appears to be the main areas of focus over the next 12 months. Despite this sentiment, the fact is our industry does require constant upskilling, self-education and reinforcement. With constant adjustments being made to Google’s algorithm and the industry as a whole becoming better equipped, it’s now more important than ever to stay on the front foot with these 5 key SEO trends for 2020.
Winning The Zero Click Battles
Google SERP is becoming increasingly informative for more and more searches and SEOs need to pay attention. Gone are the days of a user having to click through to a website every single time to get their answer. Google now displays a lot of information right on the SERP. Whether it be a featured snippet, the People Also Asked questions or the image section, Google is cutting websites out. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t value still for the sites occupying that real estate. Most of the features Google promotes only alludes to the full question and in many cases, the user will still click through for a more detailed solution to their query.
Doing SEO With Things Not Strings
Things, not strings they say. Well what does this mean and how will things develop into 2020? Entity based search marketing, or things, “shifts Google’s attention from “strings” to “things,” meaning that search is no longer a matter of finding text that matches the text in your query (string matching), but rather a matter of understanding the concepts in a query as well as its probable intent and mining the Google datastore for a response that represents what Google knows about that concept” as put by Google’s Amit Singhal in 2012.
Well, in the last 7 years, there are a lot more things and with this a lot more SEO value to acquire. In 2020, defining entities across your site will play a larger role in how Google views and promotes your website across their search platforms, including voice.
Taking Advantage of E-A-T
The EAT system stems from a real person testing scheme Google employs to judge the quality of search results. Well E-A-T has now escaped the testing grounds and been released into the wild and should be taken seriously by SEOs.
E-A-T is short for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. So what do these things mean exactly? Expertise refers to the quality of content and its ability to effectively answer a searcher’s question. Authority refers to the authoritativeness of the website publishing the content. Simply put, Google’s perception of your website dictated the Authority score and we’re talking link building, among some over more minor signals. Trustworthiness refers to things like impartial reviews on your GMB account, Trustpilot, TripAdvisor and the like. It extends beyond reviews and also includes things like including a T&C’s page on the site.
For full disclose on what E-A-T includes, I would suggest taking a look at the source itself.
Content Is Still King!
Yes, I know, this has been hammered home by now, but it really is true. Content on average is much better than it was 2 years or so ago. This is mainly due to Google improving the algorithm and dropping sites with thin content but also due to the industry educating itself about how to rank as well as how to convert. In addition to the Expertise area of E-A-T content needs to also satisfy Google’s expectations, which although have long since moved on from keyword spam, are still somewhat keyword related. This means that the question needs to be answered for a human but should still consider peoples’ search query habits.
In addition to just the pure content visibility side of things, content for service or product-based businesses must convert. Otherwise, what is the point? With this in mind, there are three main factors to consider when writing content; Expertise, Keywords & Conversions.
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Keith Nallawalla is Head of SEO at Digital Next Australia. Having worked on both sides of the fence in both in-house SEO roles and agency roles, Keith has a unique perspective on what clients want and need from their SEO account manager. He has worked across hundreds of websites both large and small since 2010.