2020 SEO predictions say you should start optimizing your website right now

It’s the beginning of a new year, and SEO experts have tracked the past SEO trends to analyze the best SEO practices that will boost businesses in 2020. If you want your SEO game to be stronger than ever this year, you better stay ahead with your strategies by taking a look at the SEO predictions of the year. 

Your business is dead if it’s not on mobile yet

With the mobile-first index launched on 1st July 2019, most businesses spent the latter half of 2019 growing their reach on mobile because that’s where the real audience is. If you are among the last few businesses who are still waiting till 2020 to optimize your mobile site for indexing, just get it done already. Without a mobile site, you will be missing out majorly on the traffic and see a decline in the site ranking.

The need for speed

A slow page restricts search engine bots to crawl enough pages at a time, which could cause a negative impact on your indexation. Without taking care of the page speed, no amount of on-page SEO or off-page SEO optimization could save your site from performing poorly. Web-users seek instant information on the internet and a mere delay of 2 seconds in the site loading time can increase the bounce rate by 103%.  

Video content is here to dominate

As the trend suggests, 2020 will be the year of video content. We’ve already seen how video content was rapidly gaining popularity in 2019 with social networking apps like Facebook and Instagram, integrating video-sharing features. Video content has the potential to earn tremendous views within a short period and even go viral. 

Video content is more engaging and interesting compared to any other form of content. Additionally, it is very easy to understand and can offer a high ROI. The younger generation, in particular, is attracted to video content, which allows brands who want to target them easily. 

Local SEO will keep flourishing

Local SEO will get much impetus this year, which means the competition to rank in local searches will also get fierce. With many similar businesses in a locality, it could give you a really tough time to make your business top the local listing, but once you can make it there, the door to your business establishment is going to seldom close.

To ace local SEO, ensure that you have an updated Google My Business Listing. Your NAP information should be consistent across the internet. Customer ratings and reviews drive local visits, so make sure to ask your customers to leave honest feedback and rating on your GMB page. This will build trust among new audiences and drive them to try your products and services. Being active on social media and having a dedicated business website could also help you build a customer base much quicker than you can. 

More focus to be given on voice search optimization

2020 will see considerable development in terms of how content is presented on the internet. Until 2018, the content was mostly limited to written form with occasional infographics and podcasts to break the monotony. Websites mainly focus on content that could educate the audience. Hence the focus was solely given on providing information without giving much thought to the tone of the content. 

However, with the rising popularity of smart devices and voice searches, Gartner predicted in 2017 that by 2020, i.e., this year, 30% of all searches will be done through voice. This means that people are increasingly becoming interested in voice-based content. So businesses who want to stay at par with the advancing technology need to adapt to the new trend and develop content that is more conversational and engaging in nature.

Influencer marketing will benefit SEO

Influencer marketing will benefit SEO in 2020 more than ever. Influencer marketing has been a hit in 2019 and it has helped many sites in leveraging their online presence. Influencers can equally benefit your website’s SEO strategies. Most influencers have their own blogs or sites with thousands of followers or even more. When such influencers collaborate with your brand and recommend your products or services on their personal channel and link back to your site, you get a high-quality backlink that can leverage your ranking.

Additionally, when a popular influencer recommends your product or service, there are many other influencers of their caliber or micro-influencers who would be interested in trying them as well, which means that your business can get more exposure. It is also true that the reach and engagement that is achieved by an influencer is usually more compared to the reach and engagement that you receive on your company blog.

Besides, influencers are so popular that anything they recommend is noticed by the followers instantly. So, by the time you figure out the best channel to market your businesses on the web, working with a popular influencer can also get your products flying off the shelves in a brief span. 

We are just in the 2nd month of 2020, and there isn’t much time when we step to the 3rd. With these SEO predictions of 2020, one thing is for sure; if you don’t explore the newer avenues of website optimization, you will miss out on the opportunities to rank on the top of SERP. Start optimizing your website as per the SEO trends predicted above, and you’ll catch with your competitors in no time.