SEO Trends for 2020 that Business Owners Should Know

As a business owner, you don’t need to be an expert in SEO – you’re too busy running your business, servicing your customers, and providing employment to spend time fine tuning your SEO knowledge.

One thing you have probably picked up on, however, is that SEO is a constantly evolving picture.

So, what are the things that are going to be important in 2020 and beyond? What are the current trends in SEO?

Four of the most important from a business owner’s perspective are below.

Mobile Usability

If we were writing this blog five years ago, this entry would be about ensuring you have a mobile-friendly website. We are way beyond that advice now, as having a mobile-friendly website should be a given.

What you need to focus on over the coming months and years is the usability of your website when a user accesses it on a mobile device:

• Does the website load fast?
• Is the text easy to read?
• Does the colour scheme look good on smaller screens?
• Is the navigation easy to use and is it slick?
• Are the buttons easy to tap with occasionally clunky fingers and thumbs?
• Can visitors do everything on a mobile device that they can on a computer?
• Etc

Why is all this important? Google’s number one priority is to ensure its users have the best possible experience. As a result, you need to ensure that users searching on mobile devices get a good experience when they are on your site.

Quality Content

If we were writing this blog five years ago, quality content would be on the list then just as it is now.

This is because creating quality content is one of the main constants in the world of SEO. As time goes on, in fact, it has become more and more apparent that there is no shortcut around providing quality content, nor are there any cheats to get through the requirement.

What does quality content mean? In brief, you need to include sufficient detail on every page, you need to add content to your website frequently, there should be variety (blogs, articles, videos, images, infographics, etc), and it should be well written, produced, and/or presented.

Featured Snippets

This point follows on from the previous one.

Also, the heading sounds like a bit of jargon-speak but stick with it as it’s important.

It’s also not difficult to understand as you have probably seen featured snippets while using Google search.

A featured snippet is where Google displays the answer to the user’s query directly on the search results page. It takes the information from the website it believes provides the best answer, and it includes a link to this website. Plus, it puts all this right at the top of the page. Here’s an example:

How do you get this result for searches related to your business? It’s back to the previous point – create great quality content.

Mobile and Voice Search

The way people search on Google has been changing for several years now and continues to evolve. More searches are now done on mobile devices than on computers, while voice searching is becoming more popular.

The latter is being driven by the increasing use of personal assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Home, and Cortana.

This one comes back to content again. Specifically, thinking about how people search in relation to your business.

Do they use mobile devices and where are they when they are searching? What different methods of search do people use at different stages of the buying journey? These are just some of the questions you need to think about.

Developing a Strategy for 2020

Of course, your website developer in Auckland or SEO service provider will look at much more than the four trends highlighted above when creating a strategy for your business. Understanding these trends, however, will help give you an advantage over your competition.