What are the top SEO strategies that impact the business, dominate competitors, and double the conversions?
This is one of the most frequently asked questions I ever heard by potential marketers and business owners in 2020.
Luckily, being a professional- I got the answer!
There are tons of SEO trends evolved for the next years that can meet significant business requirements while increasing the ranking of websites in search engines. Now all you need to do is unleash those trends and execute the plans wisely for outstanding outcomes.
With a lot of small new businesses spring up to battle the stiff competition, companies are vying to gain attention and exposure from the relevant audience.
Sure, you can use a lot of tools and software to make the best out of your campaign, but do you really think this is enough to gain long-term growth & sustainability?
Well, I am not sure what processes you have previously followed for your business website.
But today the trends I am going to reveal are the actual answer to the question asked above that can even exceed your expectations.
The key is to never ignore them- if you really want to skyrocket your sales and leads.
I repeat, NEVER!
1. Voice searches are going to dominate the web
“Find the nearest pizza hut near me”
This is probably the voice search request of most foodaholics in the world, especially if you are a pizza lover, you better know!
Anyway, the point is, the number of searches for this query is alone more than 30 million in the world in past few years. According to the research, 30% of voice searches have been performed through mobile.
Since voice searches are getting tremendous popularity with time, more and more people prefer typing the search queries the same way they are speaking generally.
Now have you noticed most of these kinds of search queries are specific in nature, and quite long-tail? The reason is, people want an accurate answer to their question by entering the exact query in detail.
People who use such long-tail keywords are still in a stage to consider and even more likely to convert than the audience who are existing in the awareness stage.
2. Featured snippets are not going anywhere soon!
A featured snippet refers to the basic summary of your answer that reflects the user’s search query. Now search engines display this query at the top, even above all the paid & organic listings and ads.
These snippets have been around for more than 5 years and have led to a lot of potential changes in SERPs. Today, more than half of these queries get no clicks or visits, the reason is, users already get their answers directly from search engine results.
According to Ahref’s research, around 2 million featured snippets receive more traffic as compared to top search results.
For example, if you are entering ‘what does Search Engine Optimization mean?’ in Google, you will find a featured snippet at the top even above all the organic listings. Now users can easily read all the details from the snippets, they even don’t need to click unless they want detailed information on the subject.
Following that question-based query in Google, you will also see the “people also ask” section where you probably find 3 more questions that further clear your mind and give more insights into the question.
So, if you need in-depth details about the subject, you can click those questions or simply follow the snippet results.
3. Leveraging influences for SEO will become the ‘new normal’
I know it’s hard to take accountability, but when you are ready to ADid you know more than 18% of business owners tend to spend half of their budget on influencers’ help?
With such a staggering percentage, you can never deny the importance of influencer marketing, especially if you belong to the fashion, e-commerce & retail, or travel industry.
The fact is, the online audience is already overwhelmed with a lot of ads. They want to check some most authentic information that they can easily trust and make their purchasing decision.
Now, many times, their source of information comes from reviews generated by influencers.
People like you and I are more likely to trust an influence review than the promotional ad on Google.
So, you must be wondering what’s the actual relation between search engine optimization and influencer marketing. The fact is, when you work with an influencer, you can easily generate more targeted traffic, boost your online presence as well as build more recognition through compelling content reach.
Most companies are not able to analyze the huge return on their investment while considering influencer marketing. The reason is, they have no intentions to write content professionally, or can execute the sponsored content.
Surprisingly, your SEO marketing fails if it’s not reflecting the true needs of your audience.
If you want to get the most bang for your buck, consider influencers in your relevant industry who are already engaging with people and making impacts.
Moreover, the backlinks you achieve from these reliable influencer sites may look credible to Google and add more flavor to your SEO rankings.
4. BERT will be here to make big impacts
When the BERT algorithm was first launched in 2019, it got a lot of appreciation and attention from professionals as well as business owners. Naturally, all the SEO experts and marketers wanted to optimize their websites according to BERT updates.
BERT that stands for bidirectional encoder representations from transformers is basically a network-based technique that is quite useful for natural language processing. It allows the audience to train their question answering system. It prefers to improve the way Google understands a user’s search query.
You must be surprised to know the fact that, this is the first change introduced by Google to their search algorithms since RankBrain inculcated 6 years back.
BERT will impact one in five major search queries. Professionals who implement BERT techniques increase the likelihood of ranking fast at the first position for featured snippets in search results.
BERT is also expected to have great effects on multiple conversational queries where we add propositions like “a” “to” and “for” to make the sentence meaningful and understandable for Google.
Speaking of which, we cannot optimize the websites for BERT. Search engines only use BERT so they can easily boost the understanding of their natural language.
However, it’s possible to optimize for search queries because when we successfully able to match the query with the search intent, we can generate compelling content.
5. Mobile searches may take over completely
I know you would be surprised to know that more than 50% of transactions occur via mobile devices.
In fact, search engines like Google have also moved to mobile-first indexing and made the technique compulsory since the 1st of July 2019 which ultimately leads to improved search experience using mobile phones.
You can never go the extra mile on search engine results if your website is not optimized for mobile and users are required to pinch-zooming to find contact details and services.
You need to consider beyond responsiveness to rich featured snippets.
The best part is, if your business is optimized for voice searching, it means you are also optimized for mobile. In addition to adding long-tail keywords for website content, overall content structure or representation could also be an essential part of technical SEO.
6. Video may become the new king
Do you know search engines love videos just like everybody does?
So, videos are one of the most critical elements of your SEO Strategy.
According to recent Research, videos are 60% more likely to convert the audience as compared to simple long blocks of text. When you create compelling video content, you can easily rank your website at the top while beating tough competitors.
Also, more than 62% of universal searches in Google include videos.
Especially when you create helpful YouTube videos that reflect the content of your website, you will not gain increased rankings, but also gain more leads when search engines index your videos.
Conclusion
Just when we get confident that we fully understand all the technicalities and complexities of SEO, some complicated algorithm updates happen and change the overall perspective about different things.
SEO has now become the most holistic approach for both small and medium businesses, especially if they want to position themselves as a leader in their respective industry.
However, after highlighting all the elements, I must prefer to mention that content will still be a king in your SEO strategy. If your content is weak and lacking engaging elements, then believe me nothing could prove beneficial to your business.
That’s the reason, I believe investing in Local SEO should be the foremost strategy of every professional marketer and business owner. Without incorporating powerful SEO methodologies, it’s hard to rank your website high in the searches while getting lots of qualified leads.
So, if you are still thinking about what strategies could deliver exceptional results, scan the list of all the above-mentioned trends and execute your plans accordingly.
Let me know in the comments if you think some more trends can make a big impact in 2021.
