Monday January 27, 2020

where is SEO heading in 2020?

Where is SEO heading? What can you do to organically acquire leads and continue to see a healthy mix of web traffic in 2020?

Below we discuss and condense observations on five critical components of SEO in 2020.

component #1: post bert optimizations

Before we can deep dive into the trends driving SEO in 2020, its crucial that we introduce you to BERT.

So, what is BERT?

“BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers…it’s a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. In other words, it’s an algorithm that helps a machine to understand what words in a sentence mean, but with all the nuances of context.” – Search algorithm patent expert, Bill Slawski

Understanding the nuances of BERT and all the updates leading up to it is key for 2020 SEO. The BERT update changed the way that the Google search algorithm understands search queries through automated machine learning. This update gives us a small glimpse of where technology is heading and Google says that this shift in search will make an impact on 10% of all searches.

component #2: the ‘user focused search journey’

What is the ‘User-Focused Search Journey’ from an SEO Perspective?

Optimizing all pages of your website is crucial for SEO success. Every meta title and description should be accounted for while matching user intent along their search journey. People use multiple devices at different times of the day, different browsers, and several other ways to find information online. Optimizing for all possible types of user-generated questions across various devices and mediums is essential.

Consider every access point to your website and aligning the content to each step of the user journey. Kelly Stanze, a Search Strategist at Hallmark, gives a great explanation of this notion.

“Look at the mechanics of how something is crawled, indexed, and served in a variety of different search settings,” Stanze said. “With users having more options than ever in how they search for things, it’ll be even more important for SEOs to bear in mind the fundamentals of clean architecture and content delivery.”

Map out the customer journey! Get creative, and put yourself in the client’s perspective.

component #3. NLP + AI

In 2020, NLP and technical knowledge of SEO will be highly valued.

So, what is NLP?

NLP stands for natural language processing, a software process that transforms structured data into natural language.

Why is that important?

Remember Google’s BERT? Well, it’s latest update uses Natural Language Processing to grasp a better understanding of the intent behind a search to improve the results it provides. By embracing Ai and NLP, SEO’s could enhance their strategies and provide highly technical but still humanized and less robotic content.

Hyper-personalized search experience will be more relevant than ever before! If implemented correctly, NLP and Ai tools will enhance your content creating and analysis process while simplifying various areas of SEO.

component #4: SEO and mobile experience

Mobile SEO should be on the top of your list when strategizing for a future SEO campaign.

“Mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2019, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 51.51 percent of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017”.

User intent and user search behaviors differentiate across mobile devices versus desktop views. SEO should be a holistic methodology, covering all possible mediums of engagement.

component #5: tracking SEO success with google analytics and google tag manager

Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics can provide an excellent framework for creating a comprehensive tracking environment.

It’s essential to maintain creative and technical working knowledge from an SEO conversion tracking perspective. Set your projects up for success by creating a reliable measurement and plan for monitoring KPIs in the form of goals, macro and micro conversions, events, and alerts.

Bottom line: Traffic + Trackable Conversions = Quantifiable Leads and Economics. If you are not tracking it, it does not exist!

conclusion

Google is a search engine that processes information based on how search users behave. Over the past few years, it’s becoming more accurate and adapting to the way information is published on the internet. 2020 should be an exciting year for the SEO world!

about the author

Alan Cruz was born in Mexico City and raised in San Diego, California. He is passionate about technology, human history, surfing, soccer, and, of course, Mexican food. When he’s not in the office hustling and executing SEO, he likes to spend time reading, lifting weights, and nourishing the body, mind, and spirit connection.

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