Search Engine Optimization has been the tool of choice for driving quality and high-output traffic to your website for years—ever since search engines themselves became most people’s go-to for an efficient internet browsing experience. If you’re looking for good SEO, South Africa and the rest of the world over can now rejoice: we’re about to enter a new decade, and with that will come new SEO trends.
Why are the SEO trends changing? The Internet is an ever-changing landscape, and with it changes the rules to the road. If you want to succeed in ranking well in the new decade, read on as we discuss several new SEO Trends that will take you to the year 2020—and beyond.
1. Don’t Forget Your Featured Snippet
As the popular search engines work to ensure that their users have better and more informative experiences, many of the search engines have decided to move away from the strict link-and-meta-description formula and started to incorporate snippets — or small previews of your website — right into the search engine result page listing.
This means that a potential viewer can see more of your website without going to your website—which means that it’s your goal to make that featured snippet as enticing as possible.
2. 2020 Focuses In On Security
Due to the myriad identity theft and other fraud cases going around the internet recently, lots of people are looking to keep their internet browsing experience as secure as possible. While this used to merely be an expectation for banks and other financial or identity-related websites, it seems like web users of tomorrow are hoping that this extends to all of their internet stops.
3. 2020 Ushers In Voice Search Technology
As more and more people are using websites and browsers located on their smartphones, many people are using voice search technologies on their phones to do their daily work. Typing may one day become a thing of the past, so now’s a good time to hop on the wagon and make sure that your website is optimized for voice searching.
4. 2020: Mobile Vs. Desktop UX
To continue in the previous vein of commentary, it’s been noted in the past that often web designers would put much of their time and resources into optimizing the UX, or the user experience, for the desktop version of the site—with the mobile UX optimized only as a secondary or bonus thought. In the coming decade, this will likely be reversed. Expect to see that the mobile version of your site is the one that gets the most hits and therefore determines your search engine ranking.
5. The Rise of Video Content
Videos have been popular for some time now, but studies are showing that in more and more areas of the internet, site users would prefer a video to almost any other type of content. Including even a screen recording of your reading out content often ensures that people will more likely take in all the content on your screen — i.e., videos aren’t just for entertainers anymore.
6. Digital Experiences Will Be Paramount
In past decades when the internet was a new thing, users were much less quick to judge and much more permissive about things like slowly loading websites and complex, buggy website features. This won’t fly in the future! As an entire generation comes into their adult paychecks who does not remember a time prior to the internet, it’s time to upgrade your site so that the user experience is seamless. Any frustrating lag times will send your site viewers running for the hills.
7. Longer Is Better
In the past, short and snippy articles were the way to go. In a world where short-form content (such as the social media websites feature) is paramount, many blogs, websites, and other content creators thought that minimizing their content was best. And, for a time, that was. However, as we go into the next decade, it’s looking like people would rather see a page with 2000+ words on it. Perhaps they think that it is better worth their time.
Search Engine Optimization is a tool that evolves as quickly as does the Internet itself. Therefore, you definitely have to stay on your game to make sure that you’re competitive! As the year turns over, make sure to concentrate on providing your users with great user experience, quality content, and definitely a very quick loading website.
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