With the new year just around the corner, many advertisers and business owners are suddenly asking themselves how they can prepare for the inevitable updates and changes to SEO rules and how these changes will effect their marketing pushes.
Luckily, as long as you can get to know these coming changes you should have a head start in making your content more accessible and more effective too. It’s always better to be prepared than to catch up afterward!
Optimizing for BERT
With the release of this new algorithm at the start of 2019, it is no surprise that every SEO expert is now clamoring to optimize for BERT and get their information to rank well given its new restrictions.
To put it plainly, the new BERT algorithm is better at disseminating honest and trustworthy content from lines and keywords designed to catch attention without too much substance behind it. This means that content will now have to completely focus on the user and how content is technically delivered.
This means that Google is now trying to match user intent with content rather than with strings. Keyword search tools will have less weight than the content itself, where searches are now better matched with information.
The Rise of Mobile SEO
Now that the majority of searches take place over a smartphone instead of a laptop or desktop computer, users are more or less likely to use certain search terms because they are more convenient to type over a phone screen.
One of the biggest areas the SEO experts will need to conquer is the intricacy of mobile search, as it begins to overtake computer searches. Many advertisers and web designers are now creating their sites for mobile fist and then porting them to work on a desktop after, placing more weight on their mobile sites.
This tactic can be especially useful for those who are relying heavily on social media to conduct business. Mobile sites usually require much less work than standard sites and can be set up quickly for just about any business.
Brand & Link Building Matter
It will be important going into 2020 to consider changing the way you think about back links. For many years SEO gurus have been using back links exclusively as a means of improving rankings, but as a means of placing media that will promote your brand and help spread your message.
Back links are no longer placeholders for search engines, but an intuitive way of pushing content that will help create an air of authority for your brand, so that users will see your brand and placed their trust in it.
The more big name sites you can get to link back to your page, the more trust search sites will place in your information, as your backlinks have proven it to be useful for other websites.
In general, customers are getting smarted and demand much more from marketing, being careful about what brands to place their trust in. This is why building a trustworthy and honest brand is essential to doing business online in 2020.
Create High-Quality Content
Previously it was very easy to generate some generic filler content for websites and use keywords to make the text easier to read for search engines, but now that Google has introduced BERT and other parameters, we must be careful about how we use content in advertising.
As search engines have become better at disseminating trustworthy and high-quality content. We must make sure that our content meets these standards if we want it to be effective in the next fiscal year.
One of the best ways for those who own their own business or advertisers who simply aren’t good writers is to hire an outside content creating team that is specialized in the writing aspect of digital advertising content.
What’s the EAT Principle?
Improving upon the EAT principle will prove to be a great challenge but effective tool for advertisers in the coming year. Also known as the principle of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, the EAT principle aims to improve the quality of the content and links we use instead of gaming them for search result points.
This means that we need to take a more measured and informed approach when dealing with large amounts of information and how search sites determine what information to trust over others.
One of the best ways to cultivate a quality experience for users is to try and take your time to develop even the smallest bits of helpful information in every corner of your site without taking any shortcuts.
With the introduction of the BERT system at Google, the EAT principle has become more important than ever. Part of this push for quality content has come from the recent efforts to combat spam and “fake news”, so trustworthiness will become very important in 2020.
Update Your User Experience
The idea of improving your overall user experience can mean many different things, as user experience can be changes by many factors. Most people decide whether they rust a site or not within just a few seconds, so first impressions are everything.
UX Improvements Include:
- Color Scheme Updates
- Personalization
- Creating Exclusivity
- Drip Campaigns
- Reducing Loading Time
- Reducing Site Clutter
User experience is what helps many people determine whether or not to place trust in your brand and spend money on your business.
Todays internet users are much more well-versed in what fake sites, scams, and other dishonest content look like, so extra time and effort must be placed in building a solid reputation and following that see your brand as an authority.
SEO Evolution and You
Because the companies that control what we see when we search online are constantly updating their processes and how they work internally, it is up to us as advertisers to keep up with these changes so we can stay relevant in 2020.
SEO is always changing always becoming increasingly dynamic, and so the way we interacting with search engines must be just as bold and creative.