It’s officially December, and you know what that means. No, I’m not talking about your Hanukkah/Christmas shopping list. I’m talking about closing out 2019 and looking to 2020. What went well this year? What should we try next year?
If you think you can just take 2019’s SEO and content strategies and continue to use them in 2020, think again. Keep in mind that Google is updating its algorithm several times per day, with a core update roughly every three months and the occasional update, like BERT, thrown in for good measure. Just in the two and a half months since we started this blog there have been three Google updates big enough to warrant devoting entire blog posts to them, and you can bet there will be plenty more where those cam from.
Content marketers who insist on sticking with the same old SEO strategies will see their online visibility suffer as Google continues to update its algorithm to make it easier for its users to find that for which they are looking. If your content doesn’t meet Google’s standards, it won’t show up in searches, you won’t get people to your website, and you’ll miss the opportunity to get in front of a lot of people who would love to buy from your company if they only knew it existed.
So, with all the changes Google is constantly making to its algorithm, how can you be sure to create compelling content that answers your audience’s questions and shows up in searches in 2020? We have some ideas:
Table of Contents
- High-Quality, Niche Content with a High EAT Score
- Voice Search
- Long-Tail Keywords
- Images Optimized for Search
- Interactive Content
- Conclusion
1) High-Quality, Niche Content with a High EAT Score
According to WordPress, approximately 2.75 million blog posts are published each day, and while it’s certainly the largest blogging platform, it isn’t the only one.
That’s a ton of new content that’s constantly getting put out there. How can your brand possibly stand out in the middle of all that white noise? The answer is niche content.
If you haven’t done so already, the first thing you need to do is identify a niche. Who is your target audience? What are their pain points? Where are they hanging out online? What questions are they asking? Where are they going to ask them? Knowing the answers to all these questions, as well as what your competition is doing to get in front of them, is key to getting in front of leads and converting them into clients.
Once you’ve identified your niche, creating content for them is key to showing up in searches. The main benefit to finding (or creating) a niche is that competition for that specific audience should be fairly low, giving you a better chance of getting your content to show up in those searches.
But it’s not enough just to create content for your niche. It has to be high-quality content, or Google won’t let it rank high for any search term. High-quality content has to be readable and have a fair number of relevant keywords without being stuffed with keywords.
In order to determine whether content is high quality, it has to contain Expertise, and be Authoritative and Trustworthy – this is known as Google’s EAT standard and your content has to at least meet, if not exceed, those standards in order to rank highly for relevant searches.
There are a few things you can do to make sure Google sees your content as a source of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, including making sure your content is readable, is long enough to go in-depth on a topic (at least 2,000 words), contains relevant statistics and links to reputable sites to back up that information. Getting other websites to link to your content is also a great way to gain authority so don’t be afraid to partner up with some influencers in your industry who could help you out with that.
For more information on Google’s EAT standards, you can check out their guide on the topic.
2) Voice Search
You’ve probably already heard a lot about voice search, and chances are you’re going to hear a lot more about it because it’s not going away any time soon, so here’s what you need to know for 2020:
Between 2017 and 2018, the number of homes with smart speakers went up by 78% according to NPR and Edison Research. That means more than a quarter of American households already have a smart speaker and it’s a safe bet that more than a third of American households will have them by the end of 2021, if not the end of 2020.
As more Americans use their smart speakers to search for information, content marketers and SEO strategists need to be able to get our content in front them via their smart speakers. How do we go about doing that?
Mostly, it will mean a larger focus on long-tail keywords and answering specific questions our target audiences have.
For example, someone who would type “wealth management tips” into a search bar on their computer, might ask their smart speaker, “What’s the best way I can manage my wealth?” That transition in how people are looking for information means content marketers who are still using “wealth management tips” as a prominent keyword in their content on financial planning might see a dip in their online visibility as users migrate towards longer questions and more savvy content strategists create content that effectively answers those questions. This leads nicely into our next SEO trend for 2020: long-tail keywords.
3) Long-Tail Keywords
Proper use of long-tail keywords (3-5 words) has long been a necessary component of every effective content strategy, but with the rise of voice search, it’s becoming even more important.
In general, long-tail keywords tend to have a lower search volume than short-tail keywords (2-3 words), which might sound like a bad thing for your brand’s online visibility, but the fact is that focusing your marketing content on long-tail keywords is a great way to get in front of your niche.
For example, plenty of people look for legal help, but only a specific subset of those people are looking for the legal rights of pet owners.
There’s also less competition for those long-tail keywords, which means you’re more likely to show up in those searches.
Finally, people using those keywords tend to be in the later stages of the buying cycle. For example, someone looking for legal advice on a general topic is probably just casually interested in the matter, whereas someone looking for information on a specific law or legal issue is probably in need of professional legal help and is wondering where to turn.
4) Images Optimized for Search
That might sound like an oxymoron, given that Google can’t read images (yet), but do you know what Google can read?
- Your images’ file names
- Your images’ alt text
- How much time people spend on your site and whether they go back to Google.
For #1 and #2, you’ll need to use relevant keywords to make sure the images you use in your marketing content help boost your SEO, but #3 is a little less direct.
As mentioned above, Google can’t read images, meaning it has no way of knowing if the images on your website are relevant to the content surrounding those images, but the people who make it to your website will be able to tell and it will affect their buyer journey.
Poor-quality photos will cause people to lose interest, while high-quality photos will help them engage with the content, making it more likely they’ll stick around and take the next step in the buyer journey. When they don’t go back to Google, the algorithm will decide the user found what they were looking for when they clicked on your site, and when that happens enough times, it will help boost your site’s rankings with the search terms those people used to find you.
It’s also important to use the right kinds of image files depending on where and how you want to use them. For example, large images should be in JPEG, while images with transparent backgrounds should be in PNG, etc.
Pro tip: While images can be great for the user experience, keep in mind that they can also slow down your site’s load time, which will impair your search rankings. More than 2 or 3 seconds and people will lose patience and click away before your content even has time to show up on their screen. Google knows this, so if they see a slow load time, they’ll push your site down in the rankings., and even when your website does show up in searches, people will be less likely to stick around long enough for the website to load so they can consumer your awesome content and take the next step in the buyer journey.
5) Interactive Content
High-quality photos are great, but videos are on the rise, and with them, interactive content. You can publish a generic infographic that presents all the information you want in digestible, bite-sized pieces and chances are your viewers will be more likely to make it all the way through to the end of the infographic than they are to read your blog posts all the way to the end. If you can make the infographic interactive, you’ll have an even better chance of converting those leads. For example, your infographic could include buttons viewers could click on to take them to more in-depth information on a particular set of data presented in the infographic.
Video is great (and we recommend using it when you can), but it involves a greater investment of time and money, so content marketers with limited budgets are more likely to use interactive content as much as they can to keep audiences engaged without blowing the budget.
5) Conclusion
Obviously, there’s much more to SEO than just these 5 tips, but these are the biggest trends we’re seeing right now, and certainly the ones that promise to have the biggest impact on search engine marketing in 2020. If you follow the tips we’ve provided in this post, along with general SEO best practices, you should be able to maintain high online visibility with your target audience, and hopefully even improve your search rankings for target keywords.
Just remember that there’s no such thing as an overnight success when it comes to SEO. It takes time for Google to index your site and even longer to establish your site as a source of authority and trustworthiness, so don’t give up if you don’t see the results you want right away. Stick with it and you’ll start to see your website’s traffic grow. From there you just have to create great content that leads them through the buyer journey so they can become customers.
If you’ve resolved to improve your own content strategy in 2020, you can schedule a consultation with one of our SEO strategists. We can take a look at your site and the market in which you’re operating to identify gaps in the market and strategies you can use to fill those gaps and get in front of your target audience.
If you have all your SEO ducks in a row, but your site is missing opportunities to convert those leads into customers, then you need help creating content for your website that is engaging enough to keep readers interested and convincing enough to get them to take the next step in the buyer journey. We also help identify the next step in the buyer journey so you’re not going straight for the hard ask when someone isn’t ready to buy, and you’re not asking viewers to sign up for your newsletter when you should be leading them to a sales page.
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