Google makes thousands of changes to its search algorithm each year. By not upgrading your SEO strategy, you risk losing your current rankings, which in turn, will reduce the amount of organic traffic you receive.
Here are the top six ways by which you can up your SEO game in 2020.
1 – Create Linkable Content
A linkable asset is a piece of content crafted to attract links naturally and generate social shares. As you know, the more backlinks you have, the better your rankings will be (given that there aren’t too many low-quality referring domains).
Blogging offers many benefits and one of it is the acquiring links. But not every post attracts enough links. Hence you need to choose the type of content carefully. Here are a few varieties of content that gets you links naturally.
Studies and Research: Bloggers have started backing each claim they make on their content. This means if you can create a stats-based post around your industry, it can help you attract lots of backlinks. Hubspot’s marketing statistics page has attracted 47,423 links from 11,202 root domains.
Infographics: People love sharing infographics as they are visually appealing and contain information at the same time. NeoMam Studios infographic on the topic “why your brain craves infographics” received more than 9.5K backlinks.
Tutorials: Tutorials cover topics in-depth and can attract tons of backlinks. Bloggers writing on a similar subject (but for experts) would rather link to a tutorial that covers the basics than explaining it in their article. W3School’s HTML tutorial has received over 721,849 backlinks.
2 – Leverage Question Keywords For Voice Search
Voice search will soon overtake traditional text-based searches. 50% of the searches will be voice-based in 2020.
Voice searches consist mostly of questions (e.g., what is SEO? Or When is the next world cup?).
In order to rank on the top for voice searches revolving around your niche, it is crucial to optimize your site for voice search. Also, create content that answers multiple questions in one post to increase the chances of ranking for voice search.
Backlinko’s SEO guide is an excellent example of content answering multiple questions. The guide not only covers all aspects of SEO, but it also explains various problems, such as “how search engines work”, “how SEO works”, and “why is SEO important”.
3 – Offer A Better User Experience
Every update Google makes to its search algorithm is focused on offering a better user experience. This is a clear signal for websites that they, too, need to focus on improving UX constantly.
One of the best ways to offer a better user experience is by having easy navigation throughout the site.
Here are a few other things you can do to improve the user experience.
- Make your website mobile-friendly.
- Use clear call-to-action.
- Segment key information using subheadings or bullet points.
- Eliminate broken links.
- Use white space.
- Optimize your site loading speed. Leverage the power of a robust content delivery network to decrease the page load time.
- Avoid overwhelming visitors with too much information on a single page.
Run A/B tests to understand what resonates best with your visitors and what doesn’t. Additionally, run surveys on your website to know what your customers think would be best for them.
4 – Optimize For Featured Snippet
Featured snippets are special boxes that contain short, precise answers to the searchers’ queries. They are located at the top of the SERPs (position zero). 13.66% of search results have a featured snippet.
Since people get answers to most of their questions right on the search results page, the click-through rate has significantly decreased. Therefore, it is essential to take measures to get into the featured snippet.
The first step is to find opportunities. Look for keywords you already rank for and the ones that have a featured snippet. 99% of all featured snippets are from pages that rank on the first page for that term. Use tools like Ahrefs to find this information.
Now, add a snippet bait. A snippet bait is 40-60 words of content specifically designed to fit inside the featured snippet box. Hubspot is an excellent example of it. They create little boxes that look like featured snippets.
5 – Use Videos To Increase Dwell Time
Dwell time is the amount of time a visitor spends on a web page when they have clicked on a link on SERPs before they go back to the search results.
Dwell time is one of the 200 ranking factors that Google uses to rank websites.
When people spend more time on your website, it sends a strong signal to Google that people love your content.
One of the best ways to improve dwell time is to integrate videos on your website. The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video.
Make sure you use accurate schema tags to enable search engine bots to understand your video content better and rank it accordingly.
6 – Eliminate Any Technical SEO Error
Technical SEO plays a vital role in every SEO strategy. Even a minor error in your site’s technical SEO can hurt your rankings.
Use tools like SEMrush or Screaming Frog to identify technical SEO errors on your website. Enter your domain into the tool, and it will return with errors and suggestions on how to fix it.
Here are a few things you must check when doing a technical SEO audit of your site.
Robots.txt: robots.txt tells search engine crawlers which page on your site to crawl and which to ignore. Make sure your robots.txt file isn’t blocking important pages on your site from being crawled.
XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap contains a list of all the URLs on your website, enabling search engine crawlers to index your site efficiently, thus ranking them accordingly.
Broken Internal Links: Having too many broken internal links can hurt your SEO. Therefore, it is crucial to fix broken internal links and redirects.
HTTP Redirects: The more the number of redirects, the longer your site takes to load.
Schema Markup: Schema markup helps search engine crawlers better understand your site’s structure and categorize your content. Add schema markup on your site (if you haven’t yet).
What’s Next?
Now that you know the top six ways to upgrade your SEO strategy, it’s time to implement it. Keep an eye on upcoming Google updates and how it can impact your SEO to make the most out of it. Happy SEO!
Of course, you might not have the time or skills do put all of this work into developing your SEO strategy. Luckily, you don’t have to do it all alone because there are SEO agencies out there to assist you along the way, handling the most challenging aspects of content marketing.
Your brand needs SEO, and going with just another average agency won’t cut it. Digital Current is an industry leader in this regard and has the skills required to improve your online presence and take your website to the top of the search engine rankings.