Google is always planning something new every now and then; and each change impacts differently. With every change, Google expects that we alter our website features and campaigns if we want to rank. Hence, we always need to be on the lookout to see what new is coming so that we are ready for the change. Now, as we begin the year 2020, let us take a look at the possible SEO changes that are to be seen this year and how these factors will change the way strategies will be formulated.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is a crucial part of SEO since over the past half decade; and it will continue to be so. The latest development in this field has been BERT – Google’s neural network-basd technique for natural language processing. This has been the biggest leap since the past five years, and it is here to stay. BERT gives Google a better understanding of how language is used, and helps comprehend the content of individual words within searches. And, understanding that BERT is here to stay, one must focus their efforts on creating the most useful, natural, and highest quality content for their site. In short, write content for users.
Voice Search
Voice search is another important feature that was released way back in 2012, but is in high usage even today. You must thus optimize for voice search too, understand that many users are using voice to search for things rather than typing, and how they speak is very different from what they type. Another interesting thing you must note is that voice search also significantly infleucnes featured snippets; and you must already know about how Google has changed its featured snippet rule too, as of effect from 23rd January 2020.
Entities
Google is putting a lot of resources into entities, which are concepts that are unique, well-defined, and distinguished. An entity could be anything from an idea, a colour, a type, a size, a brand, or anything else. So, you need to understand how Google understands each different identity on your site. In 2015, Google submitted a patent named “Ranking Search Results Based On Entity Metrics”, and entities have ever since been important. This has taken machine learning to an entirely new level, and allows Google to accurately calculate the probability of user intent.
Queryless searches
In 2017, Google released Google Discover, which prompted a new kind of search – a queryless search. It is an AI-driven content recommendation tool that claims 80 million active users. Google has added an extra layer called the Topic Layer, which is engineered to understand how a user’s interest develops over time. Discover thus identifies the most accurate content for the user, delivered from an array of websites, by understanding the various topics a user is interested in. But, to appear in Discover, pages need to be indexed by Google and meet Google News content policies. This is because content is ranked based on an algorithm that inspects the quality of content alongside the interests of the user, and the topic of the page in question. Thus, you can boost the performance of your content within Discover by posting unique and interesting content that is clubbed with high-quality optimized relevant images.
EAT
EAT stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. While EAT isn’t a ranking factor, it is a critical element for success of your website. And, this is more important for those pages that are offering information about something that can impact a user’s health, financial stability, or safety. Thus, if your page has information that can change a user’s life to a good extent, EAT is important for you. While you can’t optimize for EAT as it isn’t an algorithm, you can always implement changes to make sure your site sends the right kind of quality signals to Google.
Topics and semantics
Google is now putting lesser priority on links and keywords, which is why topic modeling and semantics are becoming important. With the Topic Layer that Google has introduced since the past few months, the algorithm has a deep understanding of semantics, and yearns to provide users with lots of important information about what they are seeking. This makes it extremely crucial to create high quality, meaningful, and in-depth content for users, and also a good information structure.
From all of the above, what can be concluded is that you need to now invest in technical strategy, entities, and semantic connectivity if you want to reach the full potential. Thus, you need the most intelligent strategy to succeed in 2020. And for this, you can always hire professional and experienced digital marketing services in Bangalore who have been in the industry for a long time, and have a proven record of success, so that you can be sure that they will be of great help.
