We come from a year where news and algorithm updates by Google have played a crucial role in the day-to-day life of SEO. As we all know, Google updates its algorithm every week, but there are always one or two updates that especially shake the SERPs and become news above the rest. In this year, the main updates have taken place in March and June, but we have also been aware of many other developments such as that the labeling of the pages is not taken into account by Google or the publication of the Robots.txt code , with the removal of techniques such as the use of “No Index” in this file.
It could be said that all these developments in the SEO sector vary slightly in the way of acting in certain situations, but it does not radically change the landscape we face in 2020.
So, in this article we compile a series of factors that, although we already know they have started working in many sectors, they will play a vital role in 2020.
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It is increasingly common to attend conferences or events where the main theme is SEO and join meetings and presentations where different possibilities are discussed when automating day-to-day processes.
We talk about routine processes such as tracking for errors on our websites, monitoring results of all kinds, initial Keyword Research processes, reporting results, etc.
These processes involve a significant investment of time that, if we were able to save ourselves thanks to automations, we could devote to better strategic planning or change application.
With a little imagination and with the support of a development department for the generation of scripts and functionalities, process automations can be carried out that will facilitate our day to day and allow us to spend our time on truly important tasks.
It may be too early to talk about the use of artificial intelligence applied to SEO in general terms, but the truth is that those SEOs most interested in this type of trends are already going around the way of applying it to improve your results.
It should be noted that Google has already used this type of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques for a few years, specifically since the implementation of Rankbrain in 2015, but now we are referring to the application of these by SEOs.
Artificial intelligence could help us optimize certain positioning factors, especially those aimed at guaranteeing an optimal user experience, based on learning based on the historical data that represent user behavior on our site.
Voice Searches has become a classic of this type of articles where SEO trends are collected for next year, but the truth is that they do not finish working as a fundamental aspect in an SEO optimization strategy.
To the normalization in the use of virtual assistants such as Android, Cortana or Siri, the arrival of voice assistants for the home has been added. With this irruption, these types of searches have multiplied and are assuming the creation of a new trend in the way of looking for information, very different from what we were used to.
This boom in voice searches completely changes the way SEO is done.
On the one hand, the resolution of the user’s search intention directly becomes vital. In addition, if we compare it with the traditional way of conducting a search, it significantly expands the ways in which the search for the same response is carried out and further increases the semantic context in which the keyword fits.
So, to work SEO in order to bring traffic from voice searches, we must quickly and clearly resolve the user’s search intention, help us to mark data with Schema or JSON-LD, have content correctly structured and, for local searches, work Local SEO.
It is evidence that traffic from mobile devices has been invading the traffic coming from computers for years, far exceeding it and monopolizing all the attention. For years we have talked about a transition towards responsive web designs, improvements in loading speed and optimization of web performance in these types of devices.
However, we are on the way to improving the user experience in terms of speed and load: the new progressive frameworks developed in JS that serve dynamic content, eliminating the loading processes that occur when navigate between the different sections of a website.
For Google, it has become a priority to develop rendering systems that allow you to perfectly track this type of websites developed in JS language, so everything indicates that it won’t take long to give this type of development importance.
At the beginning of May, Google announced the update of the rendering engine executed by Googlebot, switching from using Chrome 41 to do it with Chrome 74. This update is an important step forward in correctly crawling content and ending the disadvantages of the websites developed in JavaScript when positioning them in Google, so
With this update, official Google sources ensure that bots are able to render the content in the same way as browsers do, but they should still make these processes perfect. On the other hand, other search engines are not yet able to even render these websites correctly, but sooner or later they will be forced to follow the line that marks Google, the leading leader of search engines in Europe.
Thus, one of the main trends for SEOs by 2020, will be catching up with SEO applied to this type of programming languages.
Although it is already a factor to take into account for a long time, the use of structured data has become indispensable when serving information in an organized way for processing by Google.
In addition, as time passes, Google offers new options when it comes to data marking, so we can consider it as an opportunity for certain sectors or types of websites that could not use it so far. Google offers its own assistant for marking structured data, where we can manually select the elements we want to mark and we will obtain the HTML code to integrate into our website.
The latest development regarding the marking of structured data has been the inclusion of a new option for marking FAQS sections or frequently asked questions. This option is clearly aimed at trying to appear in the snippet that Google offers in the SERPs before an informative search with a list of answers to frequently asked questions obtained from the websites themselves.
Obviously, the use of this type of structured data gives us advantages in terms of visibility. Maybe not at ranking levels in the rankings but when it comes to drawing more attention to search results with prominent snippets or rich snippets. In addition, this type of data marking provides information to Google, so it positively values its use.
On the contrary, it could be said that we are “feeding the beast” and it is likely that this will gradually turn against us. The ultimate goal of Google in this aspect is to show its own rich results that solve the user’s search intention without leaving the SERPs, so we are facing a potential loss of traffic that will grow over time, since that Google does not seem to settle for a small part of informational searches.
In short, we can bet that these 4 key aspects of which we speak, will clearly guide SEO trends for the next year 2020. In addition, they are clearly related areas, especially among cases of process automation and the application of artificial intelligence to SEO, as well as between content tagging with structured data and voice searches.
And you, what do you think will be the key aspects of SEO in 2020?
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